“You’regood,” Tiiran continued to explain to him, sliding his back against the door to his room and raising his head.
Nikoly’s lips were parted. He stood close, the lamp down at his side in one hand, his other hand hovering over Tiiran’s shoulder. “Am I?”
“You would do as you were told,” Tiiran decided, briefly dizzy when Nikoly smiled. “Not that you’d need to be told to feed yourself or rest.”
Without the lamp close, Nikoly’s eyes were dark. “I can be told to do other things. And perhaps it makes me happy to hear you say that I am good for doing so. Perhaps I want to please you as you want to please your Orin.”
The wood of the door behind Tiiran was solid enough to keep him upright, which was fortunate, because he was suddenly lightheaded.
“The others respond better to teasing than I do,” he answered at last, with no idea how much time had passed since Nikoly had last spoken. “If youareteasing.” Tiiran did not think of Fial. “I never know how to take it. I never know… if people mean it or not.”
Nikoly took a step back. “I’m beginning to see Orin’s problem.”
“Problem?” Tiiran raised his head, his vision swimming. “Orin doesn’t have a problem. You don’t even know him.”
Nikoly held up a hand. “I misspoke.”
“Probably the late hour is to blame… or whatever you had while you were out in the capital.” Tiiran drew himself up. “But I wouldn’t know anything about,” fun in the capital, pleasing others, “that. Nor do I need to know.”
“Tiiran.”
Tiiran didn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll be up early. I should try to get some sleep. Thank you for waking me. Although I really was fine. I don’t even understand why you’d worry, to be honest. That… doesn’t make sense. You worrying for me.”
“Honeybee.”
“Goodnight.” Tiiran turned away from Nikoly altogether and fumbled with the handle on the door until it opened. Once inside, he closed it behind him, making slightly too much noise, but there were no assistants in any of the rooms near him, or sharing his with him, so only Nikoly might be bothered. “Which is not aproblem,” he muttered to himself, but stayed by the door to listen in case Nikoly spoke again.
He heard nothing, not even footsteps.
Chapter Seven
Nikoly didn’t approach him the next day except to collect a new copying request. In the early afternoon, Po brought a cup of tea to the desk that Tiiran didn’t ask for, and from the look on her face, she was annoyed about it.
“I didn’t ask you for any,” Tiiran said in response to that look, and got another one, followed by a pointed glance toward Nikoly. “Heasked you to do it?”
Po tossed her head and took Tiiran’s cup before he’d even had a sip. She returned to the tables and her work withhistea and didn’t look up again for several hours.
Neither did Nikoly except to speak with the others. He hadn’t begun his new assignment yet, working on completing something else. When the sunlight began to turn more orange than yellow, he finally got up to look for the information he’d been tasked with copying, only to return to his spot at the tables almost immediately to begin his new assignment.
Tiiran narrowed his eyes as he waited, but other than a quick roll of wrists, Nikoly did not stop to prepare himself as he should have.
Tiiran was calling out to him before he could think better of it. “Nikoly, rest your hand! You have to rest it or risk losing use of it for several days.”
Nikoly looked toward Tiiran at last, his gaze full of reproach unless Tiiran imagined it. “My hand doesn’t hurt.”
“Not yet,” Tiiran chided. He could tell Po was whispering to Nikoly but couldn’t hear what she said. Nikoly turned to answer her and Tiiran’s voice grew sharp. “We take breaks for a reason.”
Nikoly’s eyes met his across the distance. His hands, Tiiran belatedly realized, were both flat on the table and had been since Tiiran had first called to him. The reproachful look was still there, and for some reason, the combination of that and Nikoly’s patient, obedient posture made Tiiran trip over his own tongue.
“That’s… well, that’s good, obviously. That you’ve stopped, I mean.” Tiiran did his best to explain himself. “But it’s not enough. You should attend to another task for a while, or simply rest and stretch your….” He frowned. “I’ve never seen you stretch your wrists, but I’ve seen you rolling them. Are you in pain?” He nearly gasped. “Have you been in pain this whole time?”
Tiiran slid down from the stool and was at the copying tables in the next moment, Nikoly’s forearm in his hand as he pushed up the sleeve of Nikoly’s robe. “You shouldn’t damage yourself. Not even for the library.” He lowered his voice so worry wouldn’t make him shrill. “This iswhywe have breaks.”
“Yes, exactly. Time for another break, everyone,” Po said loudly from behind him.
Nikoly looked up. In late afternoon light, his eyes held flecks of gold. “You don’t take breaks, Tiiran. Not willingly. Someone has to make you.”
“Yes. Well. Fuck off,” Tiiran answered weakly, forcing his gaze away from the gold and the reproach that didn’t make the gold any less beautiful. “I at least stretch so I don’t get pains. Have your fingers seemed to tingle at all? Does your wrist ache at the end of each day? Who trained you that didn’t teach you this?” He pressed lightly against Nikoly’s wrist and then along each finger. “Does this hurt?”
