“What’s on my face?” Tiiran demanded next, though Po only shrugged before going back to work. “What is he trying to take care of?” Tiiran rolled on anyway. “We don’t have permission to do anything. Just because I let him work from the desk to help me doesn’t mean…”
He stopped in the midst of his fairly quiet but very confused rant when the entrance doors open and Nikoly himself walked in behind a short-haired woman nearly as tall as he was. She had a heavy bag in one hand and a pencil in her dark hair and paused to send a searching look over the crowd of assistants who had stopped to watch her.
“Is that apalace builder?” Tiiran heard himself ask on a wistful sigh.
“It’s up the stairs. I’ll show you,” Nikoly told her, shooting a smile to Po and the others as he and the palace builder passed, and then a more wary look to Tiiran when the two of them reached the desk.
“You.” Tiiran couldn’t seem to get his mouth to function properly. “You…. Nikoly, you…”
“Tiiran, this is Xenia Plevir with the builders here.” Nikoly gestured to each of them in turn. “Xenia, this is Tiiran. She’s come to look at the broken bookcase. Tiiran,” Nikoly went on while Tiiran gaped, “did you know your cheek readswicked Earls most cruel?”
“Fuck.” Tiiran growled, making Xenia jump. “Suck my cock anyway. I fell asleep on a book and it doesn’t—we don’t have permission for this.” Tiiran ignored Xenia’s gasp, probably for his choice of words, but maybe she was in awe of how pretty Nikoly was with his lips parted and his gaze liquid-hot on Tiiran.
“She’s just looking,” Nikoly said, a rasp in his voice. “Please don’t worry.”
He then escorted Xenia up the stairs while Tiiran was muffling a scream.
“Everyone implies I’m scary,” Tiiran muttered to himself in the rest area moments later, trying to scrub ink from his cheek, “and yet Nikoly takes it upon himself to dothisand doesn’t seem to care that my heart will not stop pounding.”
“Maybe,” Mattin remarked from one of the chairs where he was rebraiding his hair, “it’s not a bad thing. He means well, almost certainly.”
“She will need to be paid, which means a Master Keeper must approve the expense.” Tiiran scrubbed harder at his cheek with water and a towel, though there were better ways to remove ink from skin. “Even if they arefriends,” he made a noise between a huff and a growl, “she should be paid for any work done. Even just for being here now.”
“Maybe he’s paying her with….” Mattin faded delicately to silence, then cleared his throat. “You gave me Master Keeper work the other day.”
He waited.
Tiiran gestured blankly. “It needed to be done.”
“Youkeepgiving me Master Keeper work,” Mattin said next. Tiiran gave him the same confused gesture as before. Mattin glanced around, then lowered his voice, all the while still braiding. “There is no Head of House in the palace. Who is to even check the signature on the work order and know that it’s not Toak’s?” He finished one braid and set to work on the other, frowning thoughtfully. “We’re already breaking rules. And things must get done.”
Tiiran dropped his hand, hoping thatwicked Earls most cruelwas at least smudged beyond easy reading. …Which was something that might happen to any signature as well. Master Keepers drank and ate in their offices. Spills and smudges occurred.
He didn’t know what Lanth would think about that. “What if someonedoesnotice that Toak has not been here and yet is signing papers?”
Mattin looped a tie at the end of his braid. “Iwill sign it as Toak.” He shivered. “If I’m discovered, I am a beat-of-four as you are not. But you mustn’t tell anyone. I won’t. And I doubt it will be noticed.”
Tiiran was already shaking his head. “They couldn’t torture it out of me.”
Their eyes met, then Mattin picked up one of his hair clasps in a slightly unsteady hand and placed it back in his hair.
Nikoly and Xenia didn’t seem to mind working with an audience, Tiiran observed from his place on the floor across the way from where the repair work was being done. The other assistants had moved the table and books even farther from the mess before Tiiran had arrived. But they were all now standing around gawking at either Xenia or Nikoly or both, since both of them had apparently grown hot from their work and removed their outer layers.
The curtains on this part of the second level had been opened enough to let in light, and Tiiran could allow that it would indeed be very warm to be in a beam of sunlight while climbing ladders or sawing. Xenia now wore only a thin undershirt that might as well have been nothing in the bright sunlight. Tiiran had barely sat down in his corner when Nikoly had followed her lead, shrugging off his shirt and undershirt together before bending back over his work.
Niksa made a startled noise. Tiiran, his mouth firmly shut, watched the sunlight play over Nikoly’s back, then forced his gaze to his lap and spent a few moments arranging his papers and pushing a pot of ink around on the floor in front of him.
“It won’t match the rest of the case,” Xenia said in warning, and it took Tiiran far too long to realize she was speaking to him and to raise his head. “But it will at least hold the books. Anything else would take more time.”
“That is more than good enough for our current needs,” Tiiran assured her. “Thank you. Everything in the library is from different eras as it is. Changes in appearance are common. We even have records for most of the changes made.” He frowned and toyed with his chipped tooth with his tongue. “The records for this will have to be circumspect, but if are already forging paperwork….”
He stopped, frozen to his toes the second he realized he’d said that out loud.
Nikoly took a long, deep, satisfied breath and then whispered, “You are so worthy, Tiiran. I almost cannot bear it.”
“What?” Tiiran echoed weakly, although he didn’t think he’d misheard the strange words.
Nikoly didn’t repeat himself. “I thought this would make things somewhat easier for you.”
