They both knew enough not to go hunting or trapping in the Northern Territories; for one thing, it was impolite, given that some fairies could shapeshift, and for another, nobody really knew what eating too much fairy game or fruit would do to a human. Tir said that the local berries and fruit that almost-but-not-entirely resembled apricots were safe, and anyway they were still on the human side of the border; the fruit would’ve adapted itself to less-magic conditions. Oliver considered the almost-apricot and its potential for sentience and deliberate adaptation, and did not eat it.

  Tirian rolled his eyes, got up and picked two, and threw one at him. “You export these, you know.”

  “Well…yeah, but—wait, go sit down!”

  “And you make wine out of them. Expensive wine.”

  “Not me personally,” Ollie said. “I have no clue how to make wine. Yes, I know, you’ve made your point, thank you.” The not-apricot was delicious. And Tir was teasing him. And moving easily, not flinching. “Potatoes in a minute. Read your book.”

  The fire crackled. The stars twinkled. Night-birds made crystalline swooping noises in the forest. And Tirian had a book, and Ollie drew small loose sketches of leaping flames and many-petaled flowers and tall opalescent trees, and the night settled in, contented. As much as possible, in any case.

  He wanted to check under Tir’s bandages, but did not want to interrupt his fairy, when Tir was comfortable. He put aside confrontation with that conundrum for a moment.

  He wanted to sit here beside the firelight and their packs, and not move forward to the North and a Seeing Pool and a destiny. Why couldn’t this be his destiny, he thought, an unshaped glimpse of desire without words. Why couldn’t everything be this, here and now?

  Tir said, “Remind me why your people have memorials, after a funeral?”

  “What on earth are you reading? Give me that!”

  “No.” Tir held the evening’s pocket romance at arm’s length, and batted Ollie’s hand away. “It’s honestly amazing. It’s the True and Tragical Tale of the Downfall of Lady Henrietta Vane. Fifty pages in, she’s buried both parents after a carriage accident—which robbed her of her memory, both long- and short-term, except for her name and the conviction that it was her fault—”

  “That’s not how memory works!”

  “—and she’s been married, widowed, and seduced by a notorious outlaw and ravished in the woods, where she is presently starving and contemplating morality and mortality. I expect ominous wolves at any moment.”

  “There is no way that can possibly be a true history. Or tragical tale. Or whatever you said it was.” Ollie gave up on taking the novel for himself. “Anyway that’s a morbid question and also you know the answer.” Or he should; Tir had been present for not only his father’s memorial but a few state attendances for respected nobility, as well as standing shoulder to shoulder with friends among the castle’s villagers from time to time.

  They’d had that talk. Sort of. Tir had had to think about the concept of not existing, instead of simply taking on a new form, a tree or a stone or a whisper of breeze; that’d been an interesting stumbling-block in a few history and literature lessons, when they’d been younger. Most of Bellemare’s population believed to varying degrees in the old faith about a choice of reward, a starry heaven or a deep peace in the earth, but definitely not in any shape that could still talk or interact with the present world. The memorial was a ceremony of closure, of moving on.

  Ollie’d been in no shape to handle another round of that metaphysical discussion the first time around, in the anguish of grief and of loss, in the wreck of everything. He was pretty sure Tir’d asked one of the palace cooks about memorial etiquette.

  That’d been after the reality, of course. After his father’s death, and what Tir had tried to do, and hadn’t been able to do, for him.

  He knew why Tir hadn’t asked him to explain human customs, then.

  “I was only wondering if you’d—” Tir paused, redirected thoughts. “It’s not important.”

  “If I’d what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Really not important.” Followed by, more like musing aloud than anything Tirian had meant to say, “I was wondering what you’d do for me,” and then, hastily, “if something like a carriage accident occurred.”

  “Which isn’t going to happen—”

  “Well, logically, it could—”

  “And you can’t use Lady Henrietta as an argument.” Oliver felt sudden pain in his hand; surprised, he realized he’d made a fist, dug nails into a palm. Tir shouldn’t be asking—shouldn’t be thinking about—

  It wouldn’t happen. He’d throw himself in front of the carriage first. Tir wouldn’t—wouldn’t—couldn’t not be around. Unthinkable. Nonsense. No sense.

  He muttered to the fire, which crackled and snapped at him, “It’s a stupid question.”

  “Ah,” Tir said, only that, and went back to the misadventures of Lady Henrietta, not looking at him anymore.

  The not-looking felt cold. Lonely. Deliberate: he’d said something wrong or clumsy, and Tir didn’t want to talk anymore, and even hearty leaping flames couldn’t heat his body.

  He looked up at Tir. Who turned a page, intent, absorbed.

  He looked back into the fire, until his eyes watered.

  He said, “Memorials are for—for remembering. Um. Comfort. Humans leaning on humans. I know you don’t think about it like that.”

  “I remember that much.” Tir lowered the book, gave him a smile: cheerful or an excellent fakery thereof. “I was only thinking that in this fictional case it doesn’t appear to’ve been much comfort. But then again she’s buried one husband already, quite possibly having murdered him, so—”

  “I thought you said it was a tragedy!”

  “For her husbands it is. Judging by the chapter titles she’s going to go through at least three.”

  “Well,” Ollie said, “at least she’s ambitious. Don’t touch that.” Tir had reached for a branch to throw onto the fire. “Don’t touch…things.”

  “My hands,” Tir said, “are completely, inarguably, unequivocally, fine. Do you want to check?”

  “Yes!”

  The answer bounced off the fire-flames. Rang from book-pages and tree-trunks. Startled them both with its sincerity.

  “Oh,” Tir said finally. “Then…yes, then.” His cheeks might’ve been faintly pink. “Go on.”

  Ollie swallowed. Scooted closer. Bumped Tir’s ludicrous novel with a knee. Winced. “Sorry, Lady Henrietta…here, um, okay.”

  Tir’s fingers were cold, despite the fire. And thinner, despite bandages, than Oliver’s large ones. And willing, held out to be held, a treasure Oliver needed to take care with.

  When he gingerly unwound cloth and salve, fragile pink skin gazed up at him: new-made.

  “See.” Tir’s voice was oddly soft. “Fine.”

  “Not exactly.” He ran a thumb over Tir’s palm, ostensibly checking but without conscious thought behind the action. Tir’s breath caught, not quite a wince. “You’re still healing.”

  “Nearly done.”

  “I’ll redo them. Your bandages.” He couldn’t read the expression in rain-grey eyes; that was an expression, not emotionless, but not an emotion he recognized.

  And Tir was nearly done healing. From acid sand that would’ve burned a human badly enough to render those hands unusable for life, if shock didn’t shorten that too.

  Tirian wasn’t human. And had reasons of his own for being here.

  Oliver took a breath. Let it go. Tir was and had always been his best friend. Loyalty unquestioned. Devotion unimpeachable. Tir had sacrificed those hands for his sake. That new skin was thin, vulnerable as flowers, as a tear of silk under a nail. Tir was letting him touch, hold, brush fingertips over healing.

  Tir said gently, “Don’t worry. We’ve got one more obstacle to go; worry about that.”

  That hurt. Unexpectedly so: the lurch of a step onto a missing stair, the end of a quarterstaff into his stomach during a practice-yard session. Reaching for a paintbrush and closing a hand around a knife instead.

  Oliver had spent his life not being troubled by much. Generally aware of his future, the size and shape of it. He’d spent most of that life with those grey eyes at his shoulder. And he had Tir’s hands in his now.

  He said, “Stay put,” and tossed sufficient command into his voice—borrowing his mother’s Council-chamber tone—that Tir didn’t move, likely more out of surprise than actual obedience. Oliver came back with a jar of salve and fresh bandages, and went to work.

  “That tingles,” Tir complained, and the words sounded almost like normality.

  Ollie, fingers pale green with salve, tapped a smudge of herbs over his wrist. “It’s meant to speed up healing. Resilience. Flexibility. For burns.” Their palace physician had said so, anyway.

  “Aloe…and mint, and…witch hazel? I’m a walking herb garden.”

  “Quiet. It’ll help. Um…will it?” He stopped again. Fingers resting in that palm. Mint shivering in his nose, chilly and herbal in every breath. Tir was smiling, crooked and amused. Northern trees rustled shimmery leaves as counterpoint.

  “Yes, it will. I heal faster than you do, but the herb garden still works.”

  “Good,” Ollie said, for lack of any other words presenting themselves, “um, good,” and Tir laughed, so he blundered through, “Want me to read to you? I mean, if you don’t want to, um, get this stuff on—oh no wait—” He had salve on his hands too. “Um.”

  “Just wrap them back up.” Tir stretched out fingers for him to do so, and when done wiggled fingers at him, a mock-spellcasting, a joke. “Ready for anything. And I can read to you if you’re actually interested. Or we can think about the last—”

  “Not yet.”

  One eyebrow tilted at him.

  “I just…” I want to stay here, he thought. I want to listen to you talk about ludicrous penny-press novels all night. I want to go back to last year, when the worst we had to worry about involved a proposed tax increase to build a new University housing wing, or my brother having slept with the head of the wool merchants’ guild and promised him a palace commission. When the stars shone familiar and I knew how to talk to you.

  He said, “In the morning. That’s fair, right? Nothing’s likely to jump out at us at night?”

  “No guarantees.” Tir shrugged, one-shouldered, fluid as a kitten. “The Quest’s meant to test you. But it wants you to reach the Pool, or to try to; you’re supposed to find a true love and a destiny and whatever that does to the future. I’d guess—educated guess, based on past accounts and how I’m feeling right now, but only a guess, you don’t have to trust me—it’ll wait until we’re closer. I’ll stay up and keep watch and wake you if you want.”

  It, Ollie thought. Tir talked about the Quest as if it were alive. As if magic could be a breathing purring desirous thing, vast and inexorable as a hand pushing continents.

  He said, “I trust you.” He did. “Are the constellations really this different, this far up? We’re still at home, sort of, only in the borderlands…but is that the Ploughman, he’s upside-down, up here?”

  Ungainly, that topic switch; but it caught his fairy’s attention, as he’d known it would. “It’s the bleed from Fairy; it works like a mirror, sometimes…you’ll find most of them in the right places, just reversed or flipped around…well, usually it’s only flipped…we should be able to find the Golden Ark. Left. No, up and left, sorry.”

  “Thanks, found it…usually?”

  Tir’s eyes sparkled under uncanny half-known starlight. “Fairyland. Home. It likes to play tricks. Keeping you on your toes. When I was younger one of the Court games used to involve getting deliberately lost in the wilder gardens and trying to navigate back first. I won a lot, but not every time.”

  “You never talk about—wait, how old were you?” Tir had been twelve upon arrival; Ollie couldn’t picture his own mother setting him or his siblings loose in Fairy-tricky wild gardens, and expecting them to find their own way home, at that age. Also: Court, Tir’d said. One more puzzle-piece, not a surprise, but confirmed.

  “Oh, five or six. It’s a children’s game, that one. Although it does come in handy if you’re me and you need to—” Tir bit his lip. Visibly rearranged the end of that sentence. “It can be useful, is all. Testing your magic-sense. Reading skills, you versus the sky. My cousin Istrael used to bring bread and bribe the garden birds to tell her the way back, but of course you could do that too, it’s sort of acceptable cheating, as long as it’s some form of magic in play…she was good at that. That sneaky way of thinking. I imagine she still is.”

  Oliver found himself afraid to break this particular enchantment—might be the closeness to home, might be the quiet of the night, but Tir in an expansive sharing mood had only rarely happened before. He thought about that years-ago birthday night again, tipsy confessions of a mysterious mission that might not be so hard in the end.

  He went with, “I didn’t know you had cousins,” which was ideally safe enough: no outright demands for more information or inching closer to forbidden topics.

  “Many.” Tir waved a hand; the mock-grand gesture flashed bandage-white through fire gleam. “Hordes. Well, seventeen. That’re more or less my age. Cousin isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s close enough. I’m an only child, though, didn’t I ever tell you at least that much? Or…” His smile looked brighter, shyer, younger: “I was. Until your family.”

  This plainly both made Tir happy and diverted the conversation: back to human realms, Oliver’s family, their life. He agreed, “And now you’ve ended up with us. Sorry.”

  “Oh no. Not about that.” A heartbeat, and then, “Even when Cedric decides to put on amateur theatricals in the great hall and asks me to play the sinister villain.”

  “You got to stab him, at least.” They’d been in part humoring his little brother, but it’d turned out amazingly fun.

  “So I did.” Tir had stayed sitting next to him; their shoulders touched. Constellations bathed in fairy-mist spun and twirled overhead. “And you painted his backdrops. And here we are now.”

  “On a real Quest.” Not a play. Not a musical. No mock-deceased villains getting up to take a bow at the end. “Wouldn’t be here with anyone else.”

  “No,” Tir said, “you wouldn’t, because you would’ve forgotten your socks or your saddlebags or something…but, no, Oliver, you would. Because it’s for your country. Your tradition. What your firstborn heirs do, where they’re supposed to go, the people they’re supposed to find and love…you’d be here because you wouldn’t walk away from all that, or even from some prince or princess you don’t know but who needs you. You’d be here for them. With or without me.”

  Oliver stared at him.

  “Anyway that’s what I think,” his fairy finished rapidly, and dove for the adventures of the unfortunate Lady Henrietta again, a shield. “Forget I said anything. Pretend I made fun of you for forgetting about acid sand. How did you manage not to look where you were going?”

  Tir thought about him like—

  Like a hero. Like the main character in Cedric’s homegrown theatrical: courageous, self-sacrificing, instantly kind to people he’d not even met. Oliver, who hung out in village taverns and traded sketches for local gossip over mugs of ale and reluctantly put on formal shoes for official audiences and could never find the Crown Prince’s coronet before state dinners—

  But he would be here. Because despite all those points, he couldn’t imagine saying no, running from that responsibility, knowing the possible ramifications of this Quest. And Tirian knew that. Tir had known that even before Ollie himself had fully understood it.

  He watched his fairy turn a page. Tir’s hair was long enough to hide behind, and this was currently the case, but after a second he obviously forgot and tucked it absentmindedly behind an ear, getting lost in the story.

  He cleared his throat. “Would you, um, still want to share it with me? The book.”

  Tir’s head came up, eyes wide and dark; he might’ve been braced for some other comment, but only relaxed and offered, “Yes, if you’d like? Want me to start from the beginning?”

  “Nah, you’ve summarized enough. Are the ravenous wolves chasing her yet?”

  “No, only ravenous bandits…oh, wait. One page too soon. Wolves and bears.”

  “Really?”

  “Inarguably. Here, I’ll just read you this part…”

  Tir’s flexible voice flowed into the night. The North and improbable melodrama and quests and desires mixed together, forming stories, the backbone of their life.

  Tirian offered to stand watch just in case. Ollie agreed, talked him into taking the second shift, and didn’t wake him. In the morning, Tir told him off for this in language borrowed from some of Ollie’s art-student friends when compositions were going badly, reminded the universe at large that this was Oliver’s Quest and as such Ollie needed to be in the best shape out of the two of them, and as a last resort kicked a pebble at his ankle as an example of dangers on the road.

  “Why’re you grinning?”

  “No reason,” Oliver said hastily. “Just…we’re almost there. This morning’s hike, you said.”

  “I did.” Tir eyed him suspiciously. “A few hours. At least by midday. If you don’t stumble into something else hazardous.”

  “I’ve got you to rescue me. How’s the headache?”

  “Yes,” Tir said, ignoring the question, “and what happens when I’m not—oh, never mind. North. Walk, Ollie. Watch out for rocks.”

  “Rocks?” The hills hulked tall and fairly stoic.

  “Rocks,” Tir reiterated, and kicked another one his way, rounder and irregular grey-black.

  “Oh,” Ollie said, “rocks,” and kicked it back, and they had a half-game of foot-ball for a while, not keeping score, letting kicks and misses drain away any lingering irritation. Hills rose up more steeply and became mountains; crags and stoneflowers loomed.