“Jackass,” Tiiran named himself so the fae wouldn’t bother. He looked over blooming trees and budding shrubs he didn’t know the names of. Maybe he should learn plants in the spare time he didn’t have. It might help him find work in an apothecary or helping tend a noble’s garden if the library ceased to be or Piya threw him out on his ass. A noble might like to look at Tiiran and pretend a real fae was caring for their roses.
Tiiran stopped to stare at a vine on a trellis that seemed to be dead, but he doubted it was. Even in the current palace with no proper staff or care, the fae wouldn’t let just the vine die.
Or maybe they would. They abandoned children.
He moved on, giving up on the idea of caring for plants. They seemed the sort of thing to need hands-on training, not some noble’s poor attempt at sketching in a dusty book. Focusing only on the library wasn’t such a terrible crime anyway. Lanth had done it, if Tiiran ignored her life of capital visits and friends and lovers and more friends.
Maybe that was what she’d seen in Tiiran; someone who would appreciate the Great Library for what it was and for what it could be. And perhaps his strength and commitment.
He'd survived well enough before Orin or Nikoly’s interference. Even Po at her most concerned had never stepped in to stop Tiiran, knowing that a few skipped meals didn’t matter in the long term. Orin and Nikoly would see that in time, if they still cared to.
Tiiran took a deep breath, then sank into the bench that appeared behind him, nearly hidden from view by overgrown ferns.
The game, or whatever it was, with Nikoly where Tiiran allowed Nikoly to fuss over him so he could praise Nikoly for it didn’t need to continue. Likewise, the game with Orin. It would probably be a relief for both of them to be with someone who didn’t need to be reminded of things like manners or meal times. Nikoly in particular would be happy to spend his evenings having fun again instead of needing to return to the library to ensure Tiiran slept in a bed.
Tiiran didn’t even need a bed. He could sleep anywhere: before a hearth to keep warm, sharing a mattress with two other workers and pushed to the edge because he’d been too young and small to fight for space, alone in his large, cold room whenever he felt like returning to it.
He could sleep in the library on the floor. It truly didn’t matter to him. He might even save time not having to walk back and forth every day. Po wouldn’t like it, but she wouldn’t get in his way. Anyway, Mattin dozed off in the cubbies all the time. Tiiran could wake up and get right back to organizing the library in a way that was actually useful and not slapped-together “traditions” that had long since stopped serving any purpose.
Information should be easier to access, for the assistants but also for anyone who asked for it. Just because the library’s primary purpose was records for the ruler didn’t mean that couldn’t change. Mattin liked to write down song lyrics when he listened to bards play. Amie could compare historical maps for hours, not for the land divisions, but for the skill of the artists drawing them. Countless nobles had filled their journals with their hobbies and interests, from herbs, to mixing paints, to tapestry weaving, the “known” history of the fae. There should be ways for those in the future to easily find that information or research into a famous ruler or general.
Not for Nikoly or for Orin, specifically, but for people like them.
Library work was all Tiiran was good for, which he’d told them. And they had argued back that he had friends.
Friends.
Something he might have been excited to hear, once. He’d probably be excited about it in a few days, which was surely long enough for him to calm down and see reason, or if not, to work hard to forget today had ever happened. He’d be glad to have friends who didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t know how to be one in return.
Look at today. Tiiran had read things so terribly wrong. Orin might have been interested in him. Nikoly might have too. Just not how Tiiran had imagined.
Embarrassing. And not the fault of either of them, no matter how hot inside Tiiran was to think on how obvious he’d been.
The fact was, he had no right to feel whatever it was he was feeling. The temper that was not temper. The lurch of his heart in his chest. The sickness in his stomach. It was wrong of him. Either he had failed to see something or he had interpreted something badly. Or he had readmostof it correctly, but what he had been offered, friendship with perhaps a fuck, was not what he’d wanted, or was no longer an option now that Orin and Nikoly had met and might decide to continue on. Maybe, for each other, they would be the devoted kind who sought no others. Maybe Nikoly was Orin’s one-and-only, the perfect partner for him.
Tiiran went dead still, scarcely breathing enough to disturb the ferns. The pain was a wish disappearing before his eyes, another mortifying dream gone.
Orin had said he liked the idea of returning to something, to someone. Nikoly would be excellent to return to. Hadn’t Tiiran thought something similar every time Nikoly came to stand at the desk with him, or brought him tea? How good he was. How kind. He had money to buy Orin anything he wanted, and he had the time to care for him, and the knowledge to tend to wounds properly. He would work so hard to be good for Orin, to do exactly as he was told without arguing.
A minor noble could live somewhere in the nicer parts of the palace, or possibly afford a place in the capital. Nikoly would care for a home as well as he cared for people. He could fill it with books for Orin and probably wouldn’t mind Orin’s road ducklings, if Orin continued to visit those. If he did mind, they would could have a talk about it without having to stop to explain ideas every few moments as they would have to do with Tiiran. But Nikoly didn’t have to worry about equaling unnamed, faceless bed partners. Maybe he had a steady lover of his own in the capital, and he hadn’t mentioned it to Tiiran because why would he?
Tiiran was the strange-looking fae boy with the muck-spout mouth and no tact. The angry librarian with more or less boring features, if one discounted the colors of his awful hair. Someone to laugh at for believing they could be loved, or at least liked.
Tiiran glared ahead of him at the stone sculpture set in a bed of greenery that would likely be a riot of color by summertime. A gently curved figure, human in appearance except for the ears like a rabbit and the claws on the ends of its toes. It held a large pearlescent shell, open to accept offerings, although there were currently none in the shell or at the creature’s feet.
“I suppose everyone wishes sooner or later,” he growled at it, “even those who swear they never will. But at least I never expected you to really answer.”
The fae, for what else could the statue be meant to represent, stared back with stone eyes and said not a word. Neither did any other fae who might have been around.
Chapter Eleven
Tiiran must have fallen asleep there in the garden, proving his point that he would be fine no matter where he ended up. He woke up cold and wet with dew, the dark before dawn made even darker and more forbidding by the garden’s high walls.
He was alone, or felt he was. No one laughed at him, which was about the sole mercy he might expect from the closest thing he had to family. They weren’t interested in him either, but that was hardly new.
He moved stiffly, feeling the cold in his feet and legs in particular, his stomach cramping from lack of food, his hands shaking. His sleep must not have been easy, but he got himself up and shuffled out of the garden only to come face to face with a palace guard who must have thought Tiiran was a real fae come to torment him, because he jumped.
Tiiran scrubbed his stinging eyes and didn’t bother to explain himself. Maybe the guard had jumped for another reason, such as Tiiran’s appearance, because Tiiran had no doubt he was a wreck. He paused, swaying, at the juncture of two paths, debating whether he should go to his room to clean and change his clothes beneath his robe, or just open the library as usual and then return to his room.
