He sighed. There was no point in trying to call her anything else any longer.
He put his arm back around her, settled her as comfortably as he could, then looked at his primary tormentor. He supposed there would come a time when he would have to examine what the bastard had used to heal him, but for the moment, he would leave the prancing Cothromaichian stuff dancing a set with the Fadaire already trapped inside his poor chest alone. There would be time enough later to see if both could be rooted out of him.
He looked at Soilléir. “After I saw you in Neroche where I promised you a lingering death—something that keeps coming up, it seems—we decamped south for the library in Eòlas, where I thought I would see what sort of trouble looking for a book stirred up.”
“It seems you managed that well enough,” Soilléir said.
Acair sent the man his most murderous look simply because he was fairly certain there wasn’t a damned thing in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms that Soilléir of Cothromaiche hadn’t foreseen to some extent. Why he didn’t lend a hand more often was a mystery.
“I’m beginning to wonder if I just met what’s hunting me,” Acair said pointedly. “I don’t suppose you would have an opinion on that.”
Silence fell. As always, Acair didn’t care for that sort of thing because he knew what it generally indicated, which was something coming his way he absolutely wasn’t going to like. Léirsinn was still breathing raggedly, but she had put her hand on his knee in perhaps a good-hearted attempt to keep him from kicking the life from the man across from them.
Soilléir, that preening do-gooder, was only apparently sifting through an enormous pile of words in an effort to choose the ones that would inflict the most pain.
“I might be able to offer that, at least,” he said finally.
Léirsinn snorted. Acair was surprised enough by the sound that he looked at her. She smiled apologetically, but he shook his head. What a sterling gel she was and obviously possessing a superior ability to judge character. He patted her shoulder, then looked at the man he would happily crush like a bug under his boot the first chance he had.
“Do tell,” he drawled, feeling slightly more like his old self than he had but a moment ago.
“I will tell you, but I need your help.”
Acair blinked. “You what?”
“I need you to steal a spell.”
Acair spluttered. He spared a moment to wonder if he would manage to take the dull dagger down his boot and bury it in Soilléir’s gut before the man turned him into a slug.
“You want me to steal a spell,” he repeated in disbelief.
Soilléir looked at his hands for a moment or two, no doubt deciding whether or not he should wring them, then looked at Acair and nodded. “Yes.”
“Without my magic.”
“Considering where you’ll need to go to begin the hunt for it, I don’t think magic would serve you.”
Acair felt his eyes narrow. “And where, if I might be so bold, does this spell find itself—or do I even need to waste the breath it would take me to ask?”
Soilléir lifted his pale eyebrows briefly, but said nothing.
Acair realized he was on his feet pacing only because he ran into a rock so abruptly that it felt as if he weren’t wearing boots. He cursed at the pain that shot up his leg, then cursed a bit more because the moment seemed to call for that sort of thing.
He finally gained control enough of himself that he thought he could look at his fiendish foe without wanting to throttle him. He clasped his hands behind his back where they wouldn’t get him into any trouble by way of uncontrollable, rude gestures, then looked at the hapless grandson of the king of Cothromaiche.
“Where is this spell?” he asked.
“A better question might be, where did this spell once find itself? And the answer is my grandfather’s library.”
Acair thought it might serve him to refrain from shaking his head any more that day. He feared his wits were beginning to rattle around inside his skull in a manner that was unhealthy.
“And you can’t go looking for this spell yourself?”
“From my grandfather’s own solar?” Soilléir asked, looking horrified.
“Library,” Acair said shortly. He dismissed Soilléir’s look as badly done theatrics. The man would pinch his grandfather’s nightcap off his head if it served his vaunted purposes.
Soilléir smiled. “Aye, library.”
“You haven’t hit upon the idea of simply walking in and asking for it?”
Soilléir shifted. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?”
“Don’t tell me your grandfather doesn’t know it’s missing.”
“My grandfather doesn’t know it’s missing,” Soilléir agreed.
Acair felt his way down onto a different log from the one where Léirsinn sat so unsteadily. Unfortunately for him, his arse’s aim was terrible and he missed the whole damned thing. He lay on his back for a moment, looking up at the sky and wishing he were admiring it from several hundred feet off the ground instead of from a pile of rotting pine needles, then heaved himself back up and perched on that traitorous piece of wood.
“And what, again if I might be allowed to ask, does this piece of magic your grandfather doesn’t know is missing actually do?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Soilléir said slowly, “but more interesting are the circumstances that seem to surround the theft.”
“I can scarce wait to hear the details,” Acair said, though he could think of several things he would rather be discussing. He paused, considered that, then shook his head. That wasn’t true. If what Soilléir wanted from him included a trip inside Seannair of Cothromaiche’s private nest, perhaps he was more interested than he wanted to admit.
“The spell is gone, but the rest of the book is intact. It was as if someone simply went into the solar—”
“Library,” Acair exclaimed.
Soilléir smiled. “Just making sure you hadn’t forgotten. It’s as if someone merely walked in and cut a page from a particular book.” He paused. “Not that you would have any experience with that.”
Acair ignored the barb and concentrated on the matter at hand. “And you can’t remember what the spell says?”
“It was the original,” Soilléir said, “and not anything I was particularly interested in at the time, truth be told.”
“Don’t you people ever make copies of anything?” Acair said incredulously.
“The library is unbreachable,” Soilléir said.
“Apparently not,” Acair returned with a snort. “What did this spell do?”
“It’s a spell of theft.”
Acair rolled his eyes. “Pedestrian.”
“It steals souls.”
Acair was honestly rather grateful he hadn’t been sipping anything because he would have likely put the fire out with his spewing. He grasped frantically for his last shreds of good sense. He was never afraid. He had walked in places that would have turned that prissy essence changer perched on that sturdy log over there white with terror, yet he himself had hardly raised an eyebrow.