Celino waited for the door to close, then settled into the armchair, radiating smugness. Hah. He’d stay so warm you could cook an egg in his trousers. Celino pulled out a book and settled in to keep himself occupied while Aldridge spanked his troops into order.

Half an hour later, Celino was settled in the armchair with a harder chair under his feet; then he wrapped a blanket around himself; and then he was asleep, with the book open in his lap and his chin on his chest.

—–

Ordinarily there was some savour for the elf in ferreting out the truth of an issue, and using it to engineer a solution. There were complications involved with people-work that manual labour lacked, and often that was interesting. Today, it was a wood rasp against his patience… among other things. The room, an area which while ostensibly serving as storage for the kitchen’s larger stock was generally understood to be an acceptable place for a late night game of cards or dice. From the look of things, the gathered had been involved in the former before pride was badly lacerated on several sides. It took scant seconds to discover that the issue was purely numerical; one woman, two men. That neither man had been aware of the other previously factored largely. Apparently it had come out over a hand, and Merick, who was usually the sort pulling hot-heads apart, had discovered in himself the capacity for temper. One nose was least was out of joint as a result (not figuratively at all), and there were a number of big ugly threats floating like black clouds over the gathered by the time SsillvrR arrived. On the simplest level, the issue was dissention. Unfortunately, the simplest level did nothing to deal with the very personal hostility between the two guards who were expected to be able to work together at whatever they were assigned. That didn’t stop the elf from seriously considering giving them both a night in cells to think about it. And of course, that urge had nothing to do with who was sitting in his room waiting. Allowing Celino’s waiting presence to influence his judgment would have been irresponsible at best, and so, SsillvrR waded through forty agonizing minutes of back and forth until cooler heads began to prevail. When the threat of a fight was really and truly dead, everyone was dismissed; Merick, Reath and Allen to their bunks, and Jonquil to the healer to have his nose set. SsillvrR recognized his decision to mete out some manner of discipline later a lapse in protocol but could not by that time bring himself to care too deeply. So long as no one else was going to be bruised, blackened or broken, as a direct result they could damned well wait until morning to find out whether they’d be scrubbing floors or whitewashing stalls.

The darkness he slipped into was thick and full of stars that stared down coldly. The wind off the water had picked up again, and pushed briskly past and had all but ruined the relative neatness of his unbound hair by the time he was once more inside.

SsillvrR would have liked to say his resolve remained firm the entire time. That’s exactly what would have happened in a book; there was a kind of dramatic symmetry to one’s desire being unshakeable. Truth be told, there was no time to give much real thought to the situation while playing intermediary. Being focused on his role as a mediator meant the issues surrounding sex and Celino were distilled down to their basest form, which could have been described succinctly as ‘yes’. The walk back down that hall was considerably longer this time. The door to his room was unchanged by harboring a guest, but the elf looked at it just the same, as if given a moment more it might explain exactly why this was beginning to feel like the sort of bad idea one couldn’t just gloss over. Hells, Celino hadn’t given him so much as a sign before tonight. And SsillvrR himself was forced to admit, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, it had crashed into it headlong… but it had taken Celino standing no more than an inch away with that look on his face to do it. Possibly not the soundest foundation for… well, nothing really. Another snag; Celino was unlikely to consider this more than a brief diversion, and SsillvrR himself was not at all certain this was anything more than a fling. That concept had for him long since soured; looking at the impulse that had lead him to bring Celino back to his rooms in an analytical light didn’t do much for his self respect. Under a microscope, it looked opportunistic and shallow.

SsillvrR decided he was finished staring at the door when his thoughts circled back on themselves for the second time. Inside, the room was patterned with several kinds of darkness. Thinner, dustier shades coloured the space nearest the small window where a cool moonlight illuminated a fine crack in the windowpane. Stouter shadows collected on the farthest side of objects, fuzzing the edges of a bookshelf, the bed, a chair and obliterating entirely several other articles of furniture. At first, Celino was simply a shape growing out of the chair. Gradually as his eyes adjusted the line of a limb resolved itself, then the cover of a book splayed against his chest, and the side of his face broken into sleeping planes by the moonlight. A burnt-out candle sat on the table at his side, and without it, he could not make out which book the mage had chosen before falling asleep.

It was as good an answer as any. SsillvrR considered quietly pulling the door shut after him that this was probably as clear a signal as anyone could ask for from the fates. His inclination to be fatalistic only when it agreed with his own assumptions notwithstanding, he sank down indecisively onto the edge of a chair which had been given new purpose as repository for books and tried to find the best way to deal with this in the shadows that gathered around Celino’s sleeping features.

—–

Celino woke in darkness and knew he was being watched. There was something in the shadows. He could hear the ghost of its breathing, feel the weight of its gaze. It took effort to stay relaxed with his blood turned to adrenaline in his veins. Opening his eyes would give him away; the glitter would be the first thing an attacker looked for. Where was he? Bed? No, he was upright. In the street? He was wrapped in something. Vines? The forest? Was it a dretch? a sarezaros? creepweed? something dead? The thing moved. Just a little motion, maybe a stretch. Maybe gathering for a pounce. Celino rolled his head to the side and muttered a few sleepy words in scholars’ tongue as though he were sleeping. At his hip he heard his servant obey. He shifted dreamily and laid his hand over the mouth of his purse. A handle slid into his hand.

The burning dagger made a ripping sound as it described an arc through the air. SsillvrR was looking down eighteen inches of polished steel pointed straight at his heart and all aflame; and in the light of the flames, Celino’s eyes were mad.

—–

SsillvrR had plenty of experience with the sort of intrigues that involved threatening gestures in the least expected places; most of them involved a particular patron who rarely if ever needed (or admitted to needing) defense in any such situation. He understood the psychological mechanics of such a tactic, what sort of adversary was likely to choose such a tack. He could theorize, given the layout of a building and the habits of the target, how such an attacker might gain access and when they might attempt such a trap. He could even forecast the sort of weapon an assassin might use in such a scenario, given a little knowledge of them (later he would recall Celino admitting an affinity for fire, which would explain the sheath of flames that twitched impossibly along the length of smoothed steel). What he lacked, was personal experience. By virtue of circumstance, and perhaps his position as a relatively inoffensive creature, SsillvrR had never had the pleasure of encountering a flaming blade in his bedroom–imperfect metaphors notwithstanding.

It was not a conscious decision, but rather a schooled reaction that brought his arm up to bat the blade aside with a forearm. This would ordinarily have been a clever maneuver, had he encountered the threat under ordinary circumstances. In his own bedroom, and more importantly out of uniform he noted just a little too late that he lacked the bracers which would have otherwise taken the bite of the blade for him. The pain was at first, little better than a sting as if his arm were not yet sure if it were hurt as badly as all that. SsillvrR nonetheless clamped his hand around it to close the lips of whatever slice Celino’s blade had rendered.

“What the hell was that for?” SsillvrR hissed, flexing his fingers against his heating arm experimentally. Stickiness; fabulous. That meant he was down to one non-uniform shirt that lacked for bloodstains.

—–

Celino had just a second to register Aldridge’s shocked face in the firelight before Aldridge knocked the dagger out of his hand. The room flickered crazily as the dagger spun through the air, then it bounced on the floor and the unfueled flames sputtered out. The dagger clattered to a stop in darkness. Celino brought up a hand in reflexive panic to stop Aldridge’s next blow; then Aldridge’s voice cut through the night, annoyed and resentful, and Celino relaxed.

“It was dark,” he said reasonably, “and you were silent. How in hell was I to know who you were?” He knocked over the guttered-out candle as he fumbled for it. A couple of soft curses later, he had it righted in the candlestick and lit. “You shouldn’t lurk in the dark like that–a veteran like you should know that. Here, let me see your arm.” He set the candlestick on the table and held out a hand.

—–

“It’s dark?” SsillvrR blinked incredulously at the figure, visible only as a collection of dusty shadows against the richer inkier black of the background. Privately the elf made parallels between Celino’s apparent paranoia and the sort of monstrosities that six year olds insisted lived beneath their beds. Having decided that yes, it was hurt, his arm began to throb irritatingly; SsillvrR mapped out the length of the wound with his fingertips and frowned into the darkness. Not deep, but long enough to be noticeable.

One, two, four. Eight or nine stitches?

“I don’t expect to be attacked in my own room by someone who…” the elf made a small sound that could have been either pain or frustration before deciding he couldn’t put that to words, “should have been expecting me.” The light was a feeble orange corona in the darkness. It rendered the blood oozing lazily from between his fingers glistening ink.

And to think, you thought his having fallen asleep was as clear a sign as you were going to get. SsillvrR held out his arm with a sigh, resisting the urge to wipe the blood from his free hand on his trousers. “Are you always this jumpy?”

—–

“I used to spend days at a time in the Spires,” Celino said composedly. He took Aldridge’s arm by the wrist and turned his forearm to do a superficial examination. Under the professionalism of Celino’s firm grip was a tremor, and his heart still beat too fast. Calm. Calm. Nothing happened. He kept his face smooth as he examined the cut, but when he unbuttoned the cuff to peel Aldridge’s sleeve back, his movements were a shade too jerky. He spread his free hand on the arm of the chair to steady it, and covered by peering intently at the wound. It was bad, definitely; hard to tell with the shirt in the way, but it looked deep. Straight across the muscle, probably. From the fact that Aldridge could flex his fingers, it hadn’t bit too deep, but by rights Aldridge should be making far more fuss. Hands steady yet? No. “All manner of horrible things happened to me out there,” he said as placidly as a matron discussing a family picnic. “Waking in the dark in an unfamiliar place with something moving nearby makes me uneasy. Next time, say, ‘It’s me!’ You’d be surprised at how few monsters do that.”

—–

“You’ve mentioned the Spires before. I’m guessing that’s not slang for a cathedral.” Haunted cathedrals; now SsillvrR could name six of those. At least six that were reportedly haunted. Monks and nuns, for being supposedly pious people seemed to be involved with a great deal of murder and suicide.

SsillvrR flexed his fingers while Celino peered a shade too intensely at the wound, a stickily jeering mouth in the candle light. SsillvrR himself observed it for a moment or two, rather as one might a puddle of coffee quickly soaking into a favorite rug. It argued with the elf’s natural pragmatism to do so while a physician sat staring at it, but SsillvrR considered his other options quickly. The healer (who was in her annoyance at being woken likely to be vicious with her stitches), or possibly Tourmaline, who was probably still awake, but would either flutter at him or yell.

“Only the smart ones,” the elf muttered absently, curling his fingers into a fist to keep the muscles beneath the separated skin taut. “Not to be picky, but if you’re not up to stitching this then say so now. The bloodstains probably won’t do much for the rug’s pattern.”

—–

“Cockaigne was raised from the ocean floor,” Celino said. “Clean rags, roll of needles, catgut, bandages, two basins, wine, ready a supply of water. A ring of mountains rose first, then Porfirio the First formed the inner valley and the outer ledge. In the process, the mountains splintered, creating shards of bedrock that rise hundreds of feet into the air.” As he spoke, his hands moved automatically, catching supplies as they dropped into his lap and laying out the operating space. He pressed a wad of cloth to the wound to mop up the blood, then lifted it and drew a finger down either side of the wound. Blood stopped welling into the wound as the capillaries squeezed shut, and the wound went numb. “Hold this,” he said, and left Aldridge pressing the cloth to the wound again while he laid out two basins and filled them with water from his purse. His hands were almost steady; the routine was clearing his head.

He washed his hands briskly in one basin, then dumped the water back into the purse and refilled the basin. “The Spires form a ring around the capitol city several miles thick, like a–” He groped for a metaphor a Continental would understand. “–like a forest of stone. Parts of it split into canyons so deep they clove the Underdark open, while other parts are flooded, or are piled together like great hills made of shards, or are wreathed with vines so the Spires themselves seem to be alive. They’re our wilderness. They are–” He smiled reminiscently. “–where the wild things are.” He held up a threaded needle. “Give me your arm.”

—–

Geomancy had long since been enveloped by the section of magics considered mundane in the Underground. Geomancers were more or less limited in their craft to the location of mineral veins and ore blooms. Some of the particularly clever ones could aid the miners who usually employed them by suggesting areas where tunnels would be safest, and moving small quantity of rock. General opinion put them somewhere between well-witchers and charm-crafters; trying to envision the sort of power Celino described was just disturbing enough to distract him from the angry throb of his arm. It occurred to the elf that people whose titles included things like ‘the first’ or ‘the founder’ were often ascribed greater powers than they truly had as time went on, and it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if that wasn’t perhaps the case. Tact pulled him up short; Celino talked about Cockaigne with a sort of wistful affection. The topic animated him, curled the corners of his lips in a strange little smile, and SsillvrR couldn’t quite bring himself to voice his thought lest it ruin either.

The cloth removed was thoroughly pinked and SsillvrR gave it a sidelong look that suggested he had assigned it some blame in the matter before the sensation suddenly stopped. It was not the bitter stinging distraction of ice, which he’d used often enough to draw the worse of the feeling from a cut or a puncture. Nor did it come with the heat of some of the expensive salves generally reserved for the flesh wounds of the nobles choosing to affect a dashing recklessness. Rather it was simply not there. The pain snapped its jaws shut and ceased keening, but with it went the elf’s ability to feel anything else. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together experimentally and found he was aware of the pressure, but little else. SsillvrR blinked.

Handy, that.

The splash of water into a newly appeared basin drew him back again. “This place left you jumpy enough to pull knives in the dark, and you miss it,” he observed, pulling the cloth back carefully before extending his arm.

—–

“It was adventure, and companionship, and solitude,” Celino said. He dabbed the blood from the wound with a rag dipped in wine. The wound was as deep as he expected–it would need internal stitches as well as external. “I could go there and be alone with my friends, or alone with myself, or alone with the monsters that lived there. It was no small mercy when I was fourteen and all the world had its narrow eyes on me, even better at sixteen or seventeen when all those eyes turn eager and no one would leave me alone long enough to cross the street. It was like the world’s biggest treehouse, or–do you play at dragons and knights here?” He pressed the lips of the wound together with one hand and started stitching it closed. “It was like playing dragons and knights where all the dragons are real. Of course, Old Bloody-Bones brought home to me right quick that it wasn’t all fun and games, but that made it better–there the city was, snug in its hole, barring its windows and doors against the horrors in the night, and there I was under the wild stars with the wind in my hair as I wound among the spires, on my way to play chess with the greatest horror of them all.” He smiled to himself. “I think it pleased her I came back to her because I was afraid of her. It made her feel that she was my teacher.” He looked up at Aldridge as he snipped the thread of the second stitch. “She told me that if I ever betrayed her to the city, she’d tell them all I was her protege.”

—–

“Mmm,” SsillvrR said, watching the needle flash in the dark like a minnow. This of course meant several things at once; that fourteen-year-old boys desiring privacy where that privacy extended to include other people was not necessarily a wish that ought to be granted, that the need for a kind of solitude that included miles of unfriendly terrain between you and the nearest person was something he was well familiar with, and that his vision of Celino-the-seventeen-year-old included some fairly melodramatic sighing and smoldering. All of the above would have involved fairly complex responses and SsillvrR accepted without rancor that all his thoughts at present were likely beyond his ability to convey verbally. Conversations were easier when neither side were offering more than a superficial interest in the topic at hand. SsillvrR was relatively good at those sorts of conversations; no one would ever have accused the captain of being a chatty individual, but his ability to talk about the fishing or the quality of the grain being brought in on a given year was enough to earn him the description ‘friendly’ from those he’d had a fleeting exchange with.

This was not one of those conversations. Almost it would have been nice if it were; SsillvrR tried briefly to detach himself from the desire to hear Celino continue talking this way. The effort was naturally futile, but the unpleasant pull of the mage’s tiny stitches was at least enough to distract him from his own over-analyzation.

An apparent long-standing fascination with monsters. Well, it could have been worse.

He could have played checkers.

The elf was not disbelieving, but remained unable to peel off the last shreds of his skepticism where the ideas of ancient horrors were concerned. Logically it was a stupid skepticism to hold onto; he was more than aware of the existence of things which had no right existing outside copper-chit novels meant for late night thrill seeker’s entertainment. The quiet thickened a mote, and SsillvrR became aware of his own silence in a single awkward moment. He then offered the last month of his life to whatever deity happened to be interested for something clever to say. The ringing silence earned his half-hearted contempt; it was hard to focus that sort of intensity while having one’s arm sewn shut, even if it were numb.

“My first thought is that you’re absolutely mad, but having said that, I suspect I’ve just said exactly the wrong thing,” SsillvrR improvised. “I’d prefer to believe those sorts of things don’t exist, which is utterly stupid really, given some of the things I’ve seen. Sometimes I think that kind of skepticism is a coping mechanism for those of us who’d rather not play board games with horrors.” There were after all, plenty of human shaped horrors to contend with, never mind the archaic evils in monstrous bodies.

It was far too late for this conversation, and the elf used his free hand to push the hair out of his face while trying to figure how they’d come to this particular place. From healing to conspiracy to enlisting Tourmaline’s help towhat the hell was that about anyway? The elf’s ears twitched even as he tried to hold them level. Accosting people in the middle of the street, under any circumstances was so far out of character, the elf was left wondering if he hadn’t merely imagined all that.

No, libido whined peevishly, you didn’t.

Fingers that were used to busy-work in conjunction with this sort of thinking spread out across the arm of the chair leaving thick slices of shadow between where the light could not reach the weary green fabric.

—–

The silence stretched on and on. Aldridge stared at him as though he’d said exactly the wrong thing–exactly, Celino noted, as a Cockaignese would have done. Here he’d thought Aldridge was ignorant of what was and wasn’t done in Cockaigne. “Of course I wasn’t her protege,” he said, forcing a wry smile. “Quite the opposite. I was what held her back from treating the city as her personal larder.” It occurred to him that with him gone, the city was learning just how much he’d done for it. He wondered exactly how sorry they were now. He turned his face toward the stitches so Aldridge couldn’t see his secret smile. “But if she told the city she was my teacher–well, whose word would they have taken? It would confirm the worst of what they suspected of me.”

“My first thought is that you’re absolutely mad, but having said that, I suspect I’ve just said exactly the wrong thing,” SsillvrR improvised. “I’d prefer to believe those sorts of things don’t exist, which is utterly stupid really, given some of the things I’ve seen. Sometimes I think that kind of skepticism is a coping mechanism for those of us who’d rather not play board games with horrors.”

Celino looked up, the smile wiped from his face and bafflement in its place. “You don’t believe in Old Bloody-Bones?” he said. “Whyever not? Not believing in monsters is like not believing in tables.”

—–

SsillvrR’s fingers stretched and resettled again restlessly. Even candle light could not make them pretty hands. They were neither delicate, nor pale and a number of minute scars from various nicks and scrapes left little pale lines in places, as if bits of coarse threads clung there. Idleness robbed them of the competence that was perhaps their best attribute.

“Nothing about the notoriety of being a monster’s protégé appealed to you?” SsillvrR was smiling somewhat crookedly again, curling the fingers of his free hand until his knuckles cracked. Conversational waters were growing deeper and a dark shape or two sliced easily beneath the surface. There were a few too many boundaries for comfortable discussion to result. Perhaps pettily, the elf sought to avoid being backed into a position where the only sensible questions he could ask were about Celino’s apparent exile. So when Celino looked up fixing him with an incredulous look, he was undeniably relieved.

“I didn’t say that… I said I’d prefer not to believe in them. I’d prefer to believe the fates are a trio of little old ladies who knit slippers and mittens when they’re not baking sugar cookies, all evidence to the contrary. There are enough monsters walking around in daylight that I’d rather not have to think about the ones skulking around in darkness.” His fingers tingled briefly, and he turned his gaze back to the mage’s stitches before the sensation faded again.

“About earlier…” the words were out of his mouth before he knew it, and he trailed off a moment, resisting the urge to gesture that it would ruin Celino’s handiwork. “It might have been a little…rash of me.”

—–

“Notoriety is for dashing highwaymen,” Celino said flatly as he tied off the last surface stitch. He readied a longer length of catgut for the internal stitches. “Old Bloody-Bones eats people. She used to reach in through windows and pull people out of their beds, then people on the edges of the city built their windows smaller and she learned to use a forked stick and pick children who were little enough to fit. There wasn’t any romance to it.” He slid the tip of his longest needle into the end of the wound and started weaving it back and forth, catching first one side of the wound, then the other. “The romance was in being the one who stood between her and the city. And…” He shrugged awkwardly. “…after a while the memories of what she had been faded, and well…” He tried to focus on the wound, feeling faintly ashamed of himself. “She had a certain coarse wit that was hard to find at the time.”

It was too easy to forget that old Bloody-Bones was not only a monster, she was monstrous. Celino preferred not to remember. He pursed his lips uneasily as he worked at the stitches.

Aldridge’s next comment was a welcome diversion. “I thought it was unlike you,” he said, relaxing. “If we’re not going to frame the Cups, what’s your plan for trapping them?”

—–

“And people who like to wear their titles like big feathered hats,” the elf added, his grin tightening only slightly as Celino’s thread pulled taut. Celino arguing against his interest in attention was an indefensible position, but SsillvrR was too tired to point that out. Experience assured him it would only make the mage puff-up like an offended parrot anyway, and you don’t want the person sewing you up going defensive.

Celino ruined what was beginning to feel like a more comfortable discussion with a vivid description of his monstrous chess partner. The teasing grin dropped without ceremony, his lips flattening into a fine line who’s hardness found a momentary equal in his gaze. Their grey was suddenly the grey of a good stone breakwall. SsillvrR blinked mildly and said nothing, not for a change, because he could think of nothing to say.

“Yeah, it was.” The agreement came more easily than he’d expected, and with it the momentarily disorienting feeling that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Rather than name that some kind of disappointment, SsillvrR decided it was merely a sort of surprise at things working out so well. This really was the best case scenario; the less reaction from the mage the better. Why then (he assured himself it was simple curiousity asking) was Celino being so cavalier about it?

“The simpler the better,” he explained distractedly, watching the light behind Celino’s sleeve made the edges of the fabric and his arm both glow. “But I can’t finalize any sort of plan until I talk to Tyr. We’ll all need to talk about this, and shortly. The sooner the better, since the Cups aren’t going to be the sort to take the time to formulate a good solid plan.” SsillvrR frowned and flexed his fingers again, wishing suddenly for Celino to hurry the hell up. The desire for solitude ambushed him, and the dull edge of weariness robe in with it. “If you can manage it, we should aim for tomorrow night. The night after at the latest.”

—–

“Agreed,” Celino said. “Time and complications are the enemies of any good plan. Shall we meet tomorrow at dinnertime–lunchtime, I think you people call it? And then a rousing round of intrigue and skull-cracking.” He snipped the end of the thread, leaving a tail of thread dangling out either side of the wound. Another quick bathe in wine and a swirl of bandages later, the wound was treated and dressed.

“Give me your other hand,” Celino said in the matter-of-fact voice he’d noticed Aldridge obeyed. He lifted it to its lips, noting its scars, its knots, its calluses. Hard hands. Capable hands. Adventurer’s hands, even if Aldridge didn’t recognize it. Celino pressed his lips to the back of Aldridge’s fingers, then smiled mischievously. “Then maybe a night of something even more rousing?”

—–

SsillvrR was more than a little certain Celino was not going to like even the bones of the plan he had thus far. Tyr–well, Tyr would understand it with no explanation needed. The trick would be assuring Celino that it was the best course of action, and not nearly as dangerous as it would sound. While Celino dressed the fresh stitches with an efficiency that spoke of experience, SsillvrR listed the things which would need to be done then arranged them in the proper order.

“I really don’t care for intrigue,” SsillvrR felt compelled to point out. “Tomorrow’s Elrathin,” and because it was Celino, “think harvest festival. A great deal of eating, drinking–heavy emphasis on the drinking– I’ll leave word for you as soon as I know when and where.” Tourmaline would need a timeframe to work with as well; he’d have to go back to her either after that or in the morning. No, strike that, definitely not in the morning. Intrigue made him tired. The weariness was like a great hand pushing him down into the chair. Damn you Tyr.

Extending his hand without a though, the elf flexed the fingers of his bandaged arm. “Is this going to stay numb for much longer?” His efforts were rewarded by a dim tingling, but again it failed no sooner than he’d recognized it. He’d only begun to consider how he was going to explain a fresh wound tomorrow when the mage’s lips pressed against the backs of his fingers.

No, certainly no numbness there. A small, rather down-trodden little voice in the back of his mind made a sound of some excitement; he wasn’t really listening closely but it sounded rather like ‘yay!’. Never mind that three minutes previously he’d been assuring himself this was a poor idea at best, SsillvrR was inclined to echo that sentiment. His ears at least complied. Having exchanged passion for pragmatism earlier, as one might vests, the elf’s interests were buffered by reality. Tomorrow was going to be an exceptionally long day with an uncertain outcome and “A fight can’t break out between two guards two nights in a row.” SsillvrR’s lips curved in a crescent of a grin as he grazed the underside of Celino’s jaw with those fingers.

—–

“Oh indeed,” Celino murmured. He turned Aldridge’s hand over gently and kissed the cup of his palm. It wasn’t the done thing to molest patients the minute you finished stitching them up, but the patient didn’t seem to mind. “Or twice in one night,” he added, grinning.

A work question? Aldridge asked a work question. Oh. “At least another hour,” Celino said, “longer if you like. Stop clenching your hand, you’re pulling the stitches. Here–” He guided Aldridge’s wounded arm down to the table. “Rest it. No tension. Forget about that hand.” He kissed the tips of Aldridge’s other fingers, nipping a finger teasingly. “Concentrate on this hand.”

—–

There were certainly some interesting things going on with that particular hand. Celino#s lips were warm and something about the candle light made his eyes glitter; neither of which was quite enough to negate the fact that a festival day#s dawn was scant hours away. #Celino## SsillvrR hesitated a guilty moment, just long enough to drink in the sensation of a warm mouth against his skin. #Its going to be dawn in a few hours.#

Which was in reality, a more concrete concern than some of the others floating around happier, more enthusiastic thoughts.

—–

“Is it?” Celino lifted his head reluctantly. “I slept that long? What on earth was the fight about that it took most of the night? No, don’t tell me.” He bowed his head over Aldridge’s hand again and pressed his lips to Aldridge’s palm. As he raised his lips, he sighed. Aldridge’s wrist was inches in front of his eyes, all that soft and sensitive skin just begging to be–no. “You have your work, and I have mine,” he said, and opened the hand that was holding Aldridge’s arm still so Aldridge could take his hand back. “Tomorrow, dinner at…? Not the Dog and Bacon.”

—–

SsillvrR wondered if his initial instinct to supress the wave of weariness washing over him was some childish attempt to prolong the simple contact of Celino’s fingers. “Let’s put it this way; there are only two things guards or soldiers fight over, and it wasn’t money.” Celino’s breath feathered ticklishly against his palm, and SsillvrR sighed. “Tomorrow,” he echoed before withdrawing his hand, “I’ll find you when I can.” It was not necessarily a satisfactory solution, but it was better than running headlong into an absolute mire simply for the sake of running. Tomorrow, any lingering doubts about dismissing Celino’s offer would evaporate. And if they didn’t, at least he’d be too damned busy to consider just what he’d said no to.

—–

“Then I’ll be looking for you,” Celino said. Around every corner. “Good night, Al–Silver.” He leaned forward and, hand on Silver’s thigh to brace himself, kissed Silver good night.

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