He froze, which admittedly was done rather easily all things considered.
Were those footsteps?
He’d heard that sort of thing before, but usually those plodding boots belonged to some belligerent guard delivering his daily stew of things he absolutely refused to identify. A time or two the footfalls had been lighter and belonged to a spectacular woman who had come to keep him company in his hour of need.
Now, though, he honestly couldn’t decide if he were hearing things or hearing actual things, if he could stir himself to distinguish between the two.
Aye, those were definitely footfalls. He closed his eyes and tried to identify the number of feet making them and if the cadence were pleasant or sinister. Before he’d even begun to come to any conclusion on the matter, the spell serving as the door to his hellish jail disappeared.
Before he could so much as blurt out a half-hearted, self-serving apology to whomever might have been responsible for the same, he was hauled to his feet.
“The king wants you upstairs,” one of the two guardsmen there said curtly.
He imagined the king did and suspected the invitation had less to do with enjoying a robust pint of ale together and more to do with swinging all on his own from the nearest beam. Given the rather rustic nature of the king’s lodgings, the old whoreson wouldn’t have any trouble finding one of those.
Death it would be, then.
He indulged in a brief moment of regret that his legs weren’t steadier beneath him. If he were to face the gallows, he would have preferred to have walked there with a swagger. He spared a brief nod of thanks to his spellish chaperon that appeared at his side and slung a shadowy arm around his shoulders. Enemy in life, friend in death.
He stumbled along between a pair of dwarvish guards he would have felled without so much as a twinge of conscience not half a year earlier and found it in himself to be grateful that his execution wouldn’t happen below ground. Then again, for all he knew Uachdaran had invited several souls of note he might or might not have offended in the past to the event and didn’t want them catching a chill. He could only imagine who might be on that list.
Please not Léirsinn. If he had to die, he didn’t want her to watch. Not after what she’d put herself through to save him.
It took longer than it should have to make his way through the palace and out the front doors, but his guardsmen didn’t seem anxious to rush off to other tasks. He finally limped out into the courtyard, then leaned over with his hands on his shaking thighs to catch his breath for a moment or two. When he thought he could manage it, he straightened. Perhaps his usual expression of sardonic amusement was beyond him, but he would meet his fate with his head held as high as he could manage.
The sun was inching up toward its mid-morning spot in the sky, but its pale winter light had done little to warm the air. That was no doubt why the courtyard was full of the satisfying smell of a hearty fire—
Or, perhaps not.
There, to his left, on the north side of the gates—he liked to keep those sorts of details straight in case the opportunity for flight presented itself—were the king’s stables. He was surprised to see them wearing scorch marks.
Somewhat less surprising was the sight of the king himself standing but a handful of paces away. Acair attempted a polite bow. That sent him pitching forward onto his knees, which was perhaps better than landing straightway upon his poor visage though not by much. His guards hauled him back to his feet, then did him the very great favor of holding him up until he could stand there on his own. He waited until the stars stopped swirling about his head before he nodded his thanks. The dwarves stepped away a pace or two, but no farther.
First things first. Though Léirsinn had told him the king had offered her a chamber, there was no sense in not making certain of it.
“My lady?” he asked pointedly.
“She is safely housed and recovering from her attempts to destroy my hall.” The king leveled a steely glance at him. “I blame you for her misguided actions.”
“As you should,” Acair agreed, furiously calculating the amount of strength it would take to get both himself and his love out the front gates.
Though it galled him to admit as much, he knew it would take more than he had at the moment. The best he could do was keep himself free of the dungeon and recover a bit until the opportunity for escape presented itself.
He reached for his best expression of contrition, appalled by how easily it came to him, and faced the king squarely.
“I believe I feel an apology coming on.”
Uachdaran folded his arms very slowly over his manly chest and lifted an eyebrow. “Do you, indeed.”
“Perhaps more than one,” Acair amended. “If there’s time.”
“I have all morning. Spew away.”
Acair supposed the longer the apologies, the more chance to catch his breath, so he jumped in with both feet. “First, I would like to apologize for rushing off into the night with your middle daughter. If it appeases Your Majesty any, she almost killed me with a chair.”
“I’ll speak to her about leaving things undone when next we meet,” the king said. “What else?”
“I apologize for making use of one—”
“More than one!” the king shouted.
“Several,” Acair conceded. “Several rivers belonging to you that I appropriated for my own unsavory purposes.”
The king looked at him for so long without moving that Acair began to wonder if perhaps all those sleepless nights he was responsible for might have done more damage than he’d suspected. The king was indeed a bit puffy about the eyes and he looked as if he needed a decent nap. Acair imagined his own visage didn’t look any better, so perhaps ’twas best to let that observation lie.
“Insufficient,” the king said crisply. He stroked his beard, encountered a few equally crispy ends, then pointed toward the stables. “Look at the damage there. Apologize for that.”
Acair had already looked and wasn’t sure he cared for a second viewing. “I didn’t do that.”
The king snarled a curse at him. Acair wasn’t unfamiliar with the dwarvish tongue—it came in handy for knowing which spells to poach—so he understood precisely what the king was telling him to do with himself. He would have pointed out that he couldn’t very well consign himself to Hell and engage in those sorts of activities by himself, but he imagined he didn’t need to. With the way the king was looking at him, he wasn’t entirely sure the king wouldn’t be his escort and primary tormentor if given the chance.
So, instead, he chose discretion and kept his mouth shut. He would have attempted a look of regret, but he’d tried that a time or two in the past and found that sort of thing just didn’t sit properly on his features.