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But restlessness scratched under his skin like a task left undone, when he glanced at Tir’s dark bent head. He didn’t know why.
He continued to not know why as the days moved ahead, an odd distorted blur of speed and slowness. Research about previous Quests. Training down in the weapons yard. Crawling nights during which he couldn’t help revisiting nagging questions—if he didn’t know what sort of True Love he was looking for, how would he know when he had to rescue the person, and what if the person didn’t love him back, and what if he didn’t want to change his life, to accommodate someone new, to shape his world around another person, to—
To grow up, he thought; and sighed. His mother was doubtless right; it was about time. Responsibility. Stability. An Heir with a partner, settling down.
He had the dream again, not exactly a nightmare, more than once. Confused blurry swirls of memory, images, landscapes. His father’s funeral, in the blazing sun, black veils fluttering in the air and hanging from draperies. Black in the swing of Tir’s hair, long and straight, and in the night sky after, flecked with stars like tears. A scene-shift, a jumble: his mother smiling, telling them the story of the young man she’d seen in the Seeing Pool, on her Quest, whom she’d saved and brought home. The smile on her face as she looked up and over at Henry, laughing, playing with Cedric.
A curving road, dim under mist. A ruffle of flowers, hues too pink, too sapphire, too rich to be fully human. Cool grey rocks and hushed ravines, the borders near Fairyland, beyond the fields anyone knew.
Tir came over most nights, though not every night. Often the caretaking was unobtrusive: they’d been up late talking, or reading, in any case, and Tir suggested that it’d be easier to just fall asleep in Ollie’s bed, and yawned when he said it. This was perfectly believable and Tir said it all perfectly simply; Oliver guessed that his best friend and protector did not want to leave him alone.
He could have said something. Thanked Tir for it. He didn’t, because then he’d have to think about it.
He wasn’t his mother. He wasn’t ready to run the kingdom. Maybe someday—not for a long time, he hoped—but not yet. He knew as much. He knew he was in no hurry at all.
A Quest. A marriage, most likely. Responsibilities. He did want that, in theory. He’d always assumed he’d have that…
…eventually.
He did have a fairy-companion. He wondered briefly about that: whether the Quest would require Tir’s presence, whether there’d be some danger. Of course that might not be the case; Tir might have some other purpose, further in the future.
Ollie couldn’t even guess. His life was unremarkable, at the moment. He hadn’t expected to embark on great deeds or great peril. He considered that idea, and what Tir might know.
He did not like that idea. So he shoved it aside, and buried it under Quest preparations. Anyway, so far nothing had been asked.
He wondered it again late at night, one of the nights Tir hadn’t come over, busy with some mysterious planning.
Tir did help him, though more in the everyday ordinary sense of help. Oliver ran drafted speeches and petition-replies by him, and they were always better for it; Tir stood with him on those treacherous stages and public displays, and made him smile, after, and made him laugh. In turn, Oliver drew Tirian when he was reading, when his mouth quirked up at an entertaining line, and practiced light and shadow in watercolor, pencil, oil paints.
Tir tolerated multiple studies of elegant fingers and curved lips and artistically interesting features with patient good humor. He’d let Oliver employ him as a model when needed, over the years, and only complained a reasonable amount, especially when the pose did not permit him to read a book.
Art and Tir and the dreaded public appearances and the general approval of his people: that was what Ollie was used to. What he knew. Not magic, quests, strangeness.
He liked his life, and he liked it the way he knew it. He liked gradually assuming more responsibility: meetings with the Small Council and the larger Parliament of Lords and Representatives, making visits to the new wing of the University, sitting in a few more open court sessions every month. He liked being able to forget the crown and go out to mingle with potters and off-duty Home Guard and philosophers in informal pubs, Tir in tow like a long-legged panther with literary tendencies.
Sitting in bed, knees pulled up, he considered himself as a prince: as the Crown Prince. As the future King. Self-evaluation like one of his sketches: capturing a subject.
He’d heard approving murmurs about his lack of ceremony and willingness to jump in and buy a round of drinks or sketch swift charcoal portraits of his future subjects. He knew without bragging that he was a decent artist, enough so that if he weren’t the Heir he could make a moderate-to-good living at it; as it was, he took the odd commission if he found the requester or topic intriguing, and captured family moments in spare evenings, and otherwise gave away stray pencil-scenes to tavern-owners, to friends, to the mother of the little girl with the fluffy dog he’d done a series of. The kingdom was small enough that most everyone’d run into at least one member of the royal family at least once in a lifetime, more for those living in the village clustered in the palace’s rambling stone skirts.
The appreciative murmurers hadn’t quite figured out that the Heir preferred being informal because formality was difficult. He did end up sweaty and fretful when all eyes were on him and aggressively deferential. Couldn’t help it. Too many expectations. Prickles down his back. Heart racing, every time.
His mother was a queen through and through, solid as a mountain. His father had been kind, so kind, the warmest person Ollie had ever met: the sort of royal consort who’d open the palace doors to everyone and greet them personally, with a hug or a pat on the shoulder. Henry had been good at knowing the right words. All the time.
These days the loss was no longer an open wound but an indelible scar. But, alone in his room, about to go and find his destiny, Oliver wished his father could be there. In the library, waiting. Smiling, talking about a new play at the theatre, gesturing with a big expressive hand..
He didn’t know how to explain that aching wish. He didn’t know to whom he might explain it. Cedric, eight years younger, barely had memories of their father. His sisters might’ve understood, but Em and Lou were happily living their lives elsewhere, and letters weren’t the same. And his mother—
His mother was strong. Ellie had held them all together and raised four—five, counting Tirian—children and mothered a kingdom. Oliver knew he couldn’t’ve done that.
And he knew her answer, if he got up and said I want someone to tell me it’ll all be all right somehow, would be a straightforward and loving, well, then, simply get up and go out and do what you must, Oliver, don’t be anxious, you’ll be fine.
He could maybe talk to Tir. He thought about that option. Tir would certainly listen. But that was complicated too.
Tir had only lived with them for two years, before the grief and the loss. He hadn’t known Henry as well as the rest of the family, though they’d been friends. They’d been equally fond of books and antique ballads, and Henry’d made a point of asking very seriously their youthful fairy-visitor’s opinion on human verse and prose. Tir, who’d been more shy—or at least more reserved—back then, had always willingly answered. Ollie remembered that.
He also remembered the grief. The first time they’d been guests at the next Royal Theatre opening night without King Henry, when it’d been a production of Dall’s wonderful irreverent Witches, and he’d had to get up and leave and duck into an alley because he’d thought of his father laughing at a line—
Tir had followed, and had sat with him, arm around him on the dirty boot-trodden paving-stones, while Oliver cried his heart out. Tir had produced a pocket-handkerchief from somewhere, and had said worriedly, you know, among my people we’d say he was still here, no one’s ever really gone, only a new form, the air or the light, and your father would absolutely drop in to watch the opening night of a play? Ollie remembered having to laugh, because it was nothing someone human would’ve said, and it was exactly right, because his father would.
