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Oliver kept hold of Tir’s unresponsive hand but fell into his mother’s arms, unashamed of needing support, and she held him too.
The first order of business was getting everyone settled, horses stabled, guardsmen fed, dust brushed away; Ollie only realized how hungry he was when someone brought him a plump beef pasty, golden and shiny and portable and stuffed with delicious scents, and the next second he’d managed to eat it all one-handed and was blinking at crust-crumbs on fingertips. Lyle, his mother’s steadfast porpoise of a butler, said, “Well, then, lad,” and came back with a whole tray. This might’ve been a footman’s job, and wasn’t, not today.
Fadil, asserting physician’s authority, summoned nurses from thin air, or more likely the medical school up at the University. They took Tir away; Ollie tried to argue, nearly fell over, and got sent to bed. “But—”
“We’ll wake you if anything’s changing, I promise you that. And now I am ordering you to rest.”
“But I should—”
“Ordering,” Fadi said meaningfully, and Cedric materialized at his other side and suggested, “Compromise? You’ve got extra beds down here—” The infirmary, he meant; and they did. “—and I can sit on him if he tries to get up.”
“What happened to Will?”
“Who? Oh. He’s staying down at the village inn, with the rest of the theatre troupe. He knows this is family. Come on, you, you’ve barely slept and you’ve rescued your other half and you’re done for now…”
Ollie let Cedric push him onto the closest infirmary bed. Fadi and the nurses were clustered around the one next to his, murmuring, glancing down at Tir, who had not stirred.
He meant to protest, meant to tell his brother to wake him after ten minutes; but once he lay down sleep came up and pounced like a panther with velvet claws.
He awakened to the flicker of underhearing, the following morning: a thread of thought like fretful gold, spun and worried. If I could do more, if I knew more, if we knew anything about fairies—if any of those riders had come back with anything useful—I could try that new electrical apparatus at the University—no, no, we don’t know enough yet and it’s not as if—if I could ask Mum, but she’d not know either—
Ollie got out of bed, wobbled while the gilded thread snapped itself in two, and came over to Tir’s bedside. Mentioned, to Fadi, “It’s not your fault we don’t know enough about fairies. What did you mean, electrical?”
“Oh…no.” His physician sighed, ignoring or untroubled by the Heir’s inadvertent eavesdropping. “They’ve been testing a kind of…stimulus. Applying it to anatomy. But they’ve not got a good means of control yet, and fairies…might be different in any case. I’d rather not.”
“If there’s anything to try—”
“If we get there.” They both looked at Tir’s still face again. Hands limp over crisp white bedding. Hands that would’ve held a book, or guided Sprite over a jump, or rescued Oliver. In motion, part of the world. “But I’d say waiting’s best for now. He doesn’t seem to be getting worse, he’s only…I’d give it some time.”
“Time,” Ollie said. His heart was bleeding, and he could not tell whether that was despair or hope.
“Talk to him,” Fadi said. “I’ll be doing some research, I’m thinking. Sending some letters…I want to talk to the Masters up at the University. I’ll have them come here; I’ll not leave you alone.”
Ollie nodded, unable to talk, and took the chair by the bed.
Time. He could keep trying. He did not give up.
Day after day, he did not give up.
And on the eighth day after they’d brought him home, Tir woke up.
Chapter 9: Recovery
The afternoon hung full of late gold, sun slanting through the infirmary windows in long honey-colored bars. The hospital proper, the training center attached to the University, lay just over the hill—nothing compared to the hallowed Southern halls, of course, but the best Bellemare had—but they’d concluded that nothing could be done elsewhere that couldn’t be here.
Oliver had suggested that Tir might even be more comfortable in his own bed—familiar, reassuring, home. But he’d seen reason in the counterargument for remaining here: this small but adequate palace infirmary, the one meant for bandaging up Home Guard training bruises and minor kitchen accidents. If his fairy woke up hurt or sick and needed immediate treatment, that’d be the best place.
It’d been too many long days. One after another, blurring together like paint under rain. Tir had not stirred. Oliver had faithfully kept him warm and fed him water and talked to him. And talked. And talked, until his voice creaked and croaked in his throat, brittle from overuse.
His family had come in to spell him sometimes, ordering him to sleep. He had listened, but only fitfully. They might not talk to Tir right.
He’d keep trying. All his life, if need be.
He was aware that he might need to do some work, to meet some ministers, to sign some orders, sometime. For this week, this incredible miraculous week, they’d left him alone: a gift. That wouldn’t last, though.
They could come to the infirmary. He could set up an office here. With Tir.
The entire palace staff rejoiced over the return, though in a muted kind of way. They loved Tir and they loved Oliver, and Tir was inarguably alive. But Tir did not awaken, and so Lyle’s footman armada and the housemaids and secretaries and librarians spoke in hushed voices and asked repeatedly whether they might do anything to help. A charm for safe homecoming from someone’s brother. A thick wool cloak if the infirmary grew too cold. The scents of Tir’s favorite foods, exotic imported figs and fluffy light-as-air cream-cakes and berry everything.
