“I’m glad every day Tye is dead.” Orin growled, fearsome even when quiet. “Even if it led to where we are now. Look at me, spit-fire. So I know you’re all right, look at me.”
Tiiran opened his eyes. “They used to call Lanth that when she was younger.”
“I know,” Orin said warmly. “There you are, looking much better. Finish your oranges. You have to take care of yourself too, if you and I are exchanging promises. I must insist.”
Tiiran made a noise in his throat, then coughed to banish it and devoured several pieces of orange in a row to give himself something else to focus on that wasn’t the hint of a tease in Orin’s voice.
“What would that mean exactly?” he wondered, failing to speak louder than a whisper. “Eating more?”
Orin nodded. “And staying quiet as much as you can. You never know who is listening, or who might try for the throne next, or who they are related to.”
Orin had noticed the banners. Of course he had. Anyone would except possibly Mattin for at least a few more days. But Orin had thought about what they meant and what Tiiran might feel about them.
“I will avoid dealing with any beat-of-fours as much as I can.” Tiiran made the offer, thepromise, slowly. “And, as for the rest, I might… have some help there now.” Two peeled oranges and a note with his name on it should not make his face feel so hot or tighten the tangle inside him. He put a hand to his chest but carried on. “Those banners, Orin.”
“I know.” Soft and sad. “They don’t give the message I think he intends, if that eases your worries any.”
Tiiran didn’t like the sound of that. But if Piya’s reign was in trouble, he didn’t want to think about it now.
“I’m not going to do anything as foolish as Lanth did.” That, Tiiran could promise, although his voice was rough. “It was stupid of her to do what she did. We have copies everywhere. She could have changed the records in one copy to appease one ruler who didn’t know any better and left the rest and waited for the attention to die away. She could have…. Tye’s reign was temporary. All rulers are temporary now. Lanth was an idiot to think the records mattered more than—” He stopped himself there.
“You still miss your friend,” Orin gently, and correctly, interpreted Tiiran’s anger. “She was put in a position to keep to what she believed in or save her life. That’s no easy choice. I see why you admired her so.”
They’d hauled her outside, unconcerned with her years, her title, or her dignity. Unconcerned with herlife. Taken her away to force her to the block, and then….
“Fuck off, Orin.” The words stuck in Tiiran’s throat and for a dizzying moment, Tiiran imagined how they would sound if he leapt forward and hid his face against Orin’s shoulder, if Orin would put his arms around him the way others did with friends and family and lovers. “Stupid.” Clearing his throat was a waste of time. “I wouldn’t ever do that.”
“Kitten,” Orin was still gentle, “you’d risk your head over a noble wasting some of the library’s ink.”
“We have to make it ourselves!” Tiiran immediately complained. “The supplies for it cost money! Our budget hasn’t increased in….” He trailed off at Orin’s raised eyebrow. “I don’t lose my temper over everything,” he defended himself, then worked his jaw while he tried not to argue more and prove Orin’s point. “Only some things.”
“I have noticed.” A small smile was Tiiran’s only warning. “I’m a little sad that you don’t lose your temper for me much anymore, but maybe I’ve just gotten better at distracting you.”
Tiiran put his hands to his cheeks, belatedly realizing they were sticky with orange. “Fuck you,” he said, very much afraid he was smiling.
Orin put hand over his knee, curling his fingers into a fist, then sighing and relaxing his hand. “I think Lanth would be proud of you, running the place without much help from anyone. I certainly am. Though perhaps not of how you’ve been treating yourself. Is that going to be your entire dinner?”
“Back on that again?” Tiiran muttered, pleased at the change in subject and how Orin’s attention wouldn’t linger on how Tiiran shifted in his seat and had to look away from the feeling in Orin’s words. “It’s my dinner unless I go to the kitchens. Which I don’t feel like doing right now. I have tasks that need to be done,” he insisted stubbornly. “I do.”
“Hmm.” Orin most likely did not look away. What he found so appealing about Tiiran blushing and squirming, Tiiran would never know. “Did you set those orange slices aside earlier to have tonight, or did you find them somewhere? Peeling oranges and neatly sectioning them is not a Tiiran activity,” he explained when Tiiran scoffed. “Tiiran generally does not take time for himself.”
Talking about Tiiran as though he wasn’t there earned him a sideways glare. Orin was unbothered.
Tiiran finally gave in with a noisy sigh. “Someone set them aside for me,” he admitted. “Thinks he knows what’s best for me when he’s barely been here a year,” he added in a low growl. “He’s only five and twenty.” Tiiran continued to grumble when Orin was silent. “Perhaps six and twenty,” Tiiran allowed. “And wealthy, clearly, so he’s never had to do much.Notsomeone in a position to know that much more than me.” Except for all those visits to the capital, and his journey to the capital from wherever he came from. Perhaps Nikolywasa bit more worldly than Tiiran, but that was hardly important in this matter.
“Yet someone who knows you well.” Orin’s murmur drew Tiiran’s gaze to him. Orin regarded him intently. “I’ll tell you what, hissing library cat, I will go to the kitchens to fetch myself something, and I’ll return here with something for you before I head to the barracks for the night.”
“You’re leaving already?” Tiiran scowled to cover his embarrassment at his obvious disappointment.
Orin’s enormous chest moved as if with another sigh, though Tiiran didn’t hear one.
“I’ve business around the capital yet, so I’ll be in and out of the palace for a while before I’m off again… if that’s what’s worrying you.” Someday, Tiiran was going to ask how Orin could turn his voice into a blanket like that. That same someday when he’d throw himself on top of Orin to find out if Orin felt as warm and solid as he looked. Which was to say: never. “If that is your way of asking if you’ll see me tomorrow,” Orin went on, oblivious to how Tiiran was now imagining himself splayed out on top of Orin with Orin’s arms around him, “you know you can always ask. I won’t make fun of you for it. Not for that, anyway. And only a little for anything else.”
Another shiver went down Tiiran’s back, as though he’d walked into a well-heated room from someplace cold. Orin could have been teasing him, but if he was, it was the Orin sort of teasing. The kind that meant the joke was shared between them. It made Tiiran want to risk another question, something he knew most people wouldn’t have hesitated over.
“I like to see you.”Thathe could admit to. “But I know if something does happen here, at least you’ll likely be out on an assignment somewhere. So it’s all right when you go.” That’s what he told himself.
“I will, very likely.” Orin curled that hand again, but left his fingers pressed into his broad thigh when he unfurled his fist. It made him look like someone trying to hold on. Hold on to what, was the question. Perhaps he was anxious about it all too. “Has that also worried you, little cat?”
