She gave him a look he wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t learned from his mother.
“Didn’t your mother say your granny might already be annoyed with you?” she asked.
“She’s annoyed with everyone, so this won’t worsen her opinion of me. Besides, ’tis obvious by the dust on this thing that she never uses it. She’ll never miss it.”
She pulled something out of the satchel slung over her chest and held it up. “Book, pencil. Your mother gave me both. Why don’t you use them and leave everything here undisturbed? Then your grandmother won’t know you’ve been here.”
He had the feeling his gran would know anyway, but considered what Léirsinn held in her hands. There was something to be said for at least making the attempt to keep his visit a secret. He accepted the tools his mother had given Léirsinn, then had another look about the chamber as she lit a candle in the embers of the evening’s fire. He waited for her to set the candle down in an advantageous locale, then took his grandmother’sBook of Oddities and Disgusting Spellsin his hands and tried not to give in to the temptation to chortle with delight. It even smelled exclusive.
He took a deep breath, then opened the worn leather cover.
The book didn’t disappoint. It was such a treasure trove of appalling things, he could hardly decide where to begin. He flipped page after page simply brimming over with so much goodness about badness that he was finally reduced to feelinghis way down onto a side chair so he could properly appreciate what he held in his hands.
“Well?” Léirsinn prompted.
He looked up at her. “There is too much here. I can’t begin to decide where to start.”
“Close the book, open it back up to a random page, then start copying.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that,” he demurred. “What if I choose amiss? How do I favor one thing and slight another—”
“Acair, just pick something.”
He was torn between genuine distress over having to make a choice and quite a bit of unreasonable delight over the way she said his name. He generally heardmy lordand a rather alarming number of variations ofyou bloody bastardto suit even the most discriminating of ears. His name, though? Not many used that and never with the ease she did—
“Acair?”
He looked at her and blinked. “Aye?”
“You’re half asleep and we don’t have all night.” She paused. “Do we?”
“I don’t imagine we do,” he said, dragging himself back to the matter at hand. He had to suppress the urge to simply wring his hands over an impossible decision. He looked at her. “I can’t limit myself to a few notes. I could spend the rest of my life unraveling the mysteries and stalking the mages listed here—”
“If you don’t choose five of each and do it now, you won’t have any life in which to investigate them,” she warned.
She had a point there. He forced himself to ignore how much more sense it made to simply pilfer the entire tome and hope for the best on his way over the walls. A choice it would have to be.
He sighed. “Very well, I’ll try.”
She held the candle up and leaned over his shoulder to look at the pages with him.
It took him several moments before he realized he wasn’t seeing what was on the page. He was far too distracted by the woman resting her chin on his shoulder. He tilted his head to look at her.
“I can’t concentrate.”
“Shall I slap you smartly to help?”
“I think you might do more good if you stopped breathing in my ear.”
“I’m not breathing, I’m wheezing in terror.”
“I fear, darling, that it has the same effect.”
She snorted at him and went to fetch a stool. She sat down and held up the candle. “Better?”
“Only a bit, but I am nothing if not disciplined.” He gave her a quick smile, then attempted to concentrate on the task at hand.
He wished the damned thing had been divided properly into sections, one for lists of terrible spells and another for dreadful oddities that seemed to include names of mages scribbled in the margins. Unfortunately, it was simply a compendium of random spells, hastily scribbled notes about various mages he did and unfortunately sometimes did not recognize, and vignettes about happenings that he suspected it might take him years to study properly. He gave it his best effort, truly he did, but in the end, he had to concede the battle. He looked at Léirsinn.
