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“Oh,” Tir said finally. “Then…yes, then.” His cheeks might’ve been faintly pink. “Go on.”
Ollie swallowed. Scooted closer. Bumped Tir’s ludicrous novel with a knee. Winced. “Sorry, Lady Henrietta…here, um, okay.”
Tir’s fingers were cold, despite the fire. And thinner, despite bandages, than Oliver’s large ones. And willing, held out to be held, a treasure Oliver needed to take care with.
When he gingerly unwound cloth and salve, fragile pink skin gazed up at him: new-made.
“See.” Tir’s voice was oddly soft. “Fine.”
“Not exactly.” He ran a thumb over Tir’s palm, ostensibly checking but without conscious thought behind the action. Tir’s breath caught, not quite a wince. “You’re still healing.”
“Nearly done.”
“I’ll redo them. Your bandages.” He couldn’t read the expression in rain-grey eyes; that was an expression, not emotionless, but not an emotion he recognized.
And Tir was nearly done healing. From acid sand that would’ve burned a human badly enough to render those hands unusable for life, if shock didn’t shorten that too.
Tirian wasn’t human. And had reasons of his own for being here.
Oliver took a breath. Let it go. Tir was and had always been his best friend. Loyalty unquestioned. Devotion unimpeachable. Tir had sacrificed those hands for his sake. That new skin was thin, vulnerable as flowers, as a tear of silk under a nail. Tir was letting him touch, hold, brush fingertips over healing.
Tir said gently, “Don’t worry. We’ve got one more obstacle to go; worry about that.”
That hurt. Unexpectedly so: the lurch of a step onto a missing stair, the end of a quarterstaff into his stomach during a practice-yard session. Reaching for a paintbrush and closing a hand around a knife instead.
Oliver had spent his life not being troubled by much. Generally aware of his future, the size and shape of it. He’d spent most of that life with those grey eyes at his shoulder. And he had Tir’s hands in his now.
He said, “Stay put,” and tossed sufficient command into his voice—borrowing his mother’s Council-chamber tone—that Tir didn’t move, likely more out of surprise than actual obedience. Oliver came back with a jar of salve and fresh bandages, and went to work.
“That tingles,” Tir complained, and the words sounded almost like normality.
Ollie, fingers pale green with salve, tapped a smudge of herbs over his wrist. “It’s meant to speed up healing. Resilience. Flexibility. For burns.” Their palace physician had said so, anyway.
“Aloe…and mint, and…witch hazel? I’m a walking herb garden.”
“Quiet. It’ll help. Um…will it?” He stopped again. Fingers resting in that palm. Mint shivering in his nose, chilly and herbal in every breath. Tir was smiling, crooked and amused. Northern trees rustled shimmery leaves as counterpoint.
“Yes, it will. I heal faster than you do, but the herb garden still works.”
“Good,” Ollie said, for lack of any other words presenting themselves, “um, good,” and Tir laughed, so he blundered through, “Want me to read to you? I mean, if you don’t want to, um, get this stuff on—oh no wait—” He had salve on his hands too. “Um.”
“Just wrap them back up.” Tir stretched out fingers for him to do so, and when done wiggled fingers at him, a mock-spellcasting, a joke. “Ready for anything. And I can read to you if you’re actually interested. Or we can think about the last—”
“Not yet.”
One eyebrow tilted at him.
“I just…” I want to stay here, he thought. I want to listen to you talk about ludicrous penny-press novels all night. I want to go back to last year, when the worst we had to worry about involved a proposed tax increase to build a new University housing wing, or my brother having slept with the head of the wool merchants’ guild and promised him a palace commission. When the stars shone familiar and I knew how to talk to you.
He said, “In the morning. That’s fair, right? Nothing’s likely to jump out at us at night?”
“No guarantees.” Tir shrugged, one-shouldered, fluid as a kitten. “The Quest’s meant to test you. But it wants you to reach the Pool, or to try to; you’re supposed to find a true love and a destiny and whatever that does to the future. I’d guess—educated guess, based on past accounts and how I’m feeling right now, but only a guess, you don’t have to trust me—it’ll wait until we’re closer. I’ll stay up and keep watch and wake you if you want.”
It, Ollie thought. Tir talked about the Quest as if it were alive. As if magic could be a breathing purring desirous thing, vast and inexorable as a hand pushing continents.
He said, “I trust you.” He did. “Are the constellations really this different, this far up? We’re still at home, sort of, only in the borderlands…but is that the Ploughman, he’s upside-down, up here?”
Ungainly, that topic switch; but it caught his fairy’s attention, as he’d known it would. “It’s the bleed from Fairy; it works like a mirror, sometimes…you’ll find most of them in the right places, just reversed or flipped around…well, usually it’s only flipped…we should be able to find the Golden Ark. Left. No, up and left, sorry.”
