“Brother Asht, will you take a look at this sheaf of flimsy? I may need to rest, but I believe the ink’s warped from heat. We may need to have this volume recopied.”
Silas sat hunched over the desk in his study, a fluorescent lamp shining down on his desk in a spotlight so bright that it nearly rivaled the artificial brightness that served as their substitute for Dominicus’s daylight. The knobs of his spine were visible through the thin tunic he wore for his evening study, though that was not what Silas had called Colum to comment on, so Colum trundled over to peer over Silas’s shoulder.
Even in the bright light, Colum had to squint and lean in significantly to see whatever problem Silas currently pondered. His young uncle had a penchant for finding the smallest flaws in things, and condemning them based on the tiniest of blemishes. It was both a blessing, to have a necromancer with such finely tuned senses, and a curse.
Colum leaned even closer, laying his arm on the desk next to where Silas was, their faces hovering beside each other’s. His much older eyes squinted as he tried to quickly examine the flimsy, but he could find no flaw in it. There was just scripture, and sermon, entwined together in a remarkably mundane union for a text created by the Eighth.
“I don’t see what you see, Brother Silas,” Colum murmured, chest rumbling with his speech. The bulk of his chest was pressed awkwardly against both Silas’s ribs and the back of the wooden chair, so Silas must have felt it as well as heard it. “Show me where the flaw is?”
Colum turned, both to see Silas’s expression and to hear him better. The problem was, Silas turned to look at him at the same time he turned to look at Silas.
“Are you entirely blind? It’s clearly—”
They kissed each other as their heads turned—or, more accurately, their lips bumped together, slightly misaligned but still having notable points of contact. Silas’s lips were very soft, which was something Colum had suspected in his weakest moments but never confirmed before now. The last few words of whatever Silas had been saying were caught on Colum’s mouth, half formed and unintelligible, and without even thinking of it Colum’s eyes slid closed.
He missed the way his uncle, who in recent years had grown cold and sharp like ice, distant and faintly luminous like most of the moons which spun around their planet, melted and flushed a red that rivaled a tomato.
It lasted perhaps a total of a second and a half, both of them stunned into freezing, and then Silas squeaked as he hadn’t in years and threw himself to the other side of his chair, nearly tipping the entire thing over in his haste to get away.
Colum grabbed one of the spokes on the back of the chair to stabilize it, and when his eyes opened again, his uncle’s face was drained of all color again, making even his pale silvery hair appear vivid in contrast. His eyes were a dark shock in their sockets, pupils round and large. He took a few shivering, shallow breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Colum said, getting ahead of any impending storm. He was horribly tempted to brush a strand of Silas’s hair behind his ear—his sudden motion had knocked his headband askew, as well. “I came too close.”
He did not mention that they had both been too close. He also did not mention that he didn’t feel the weight of guilt that he probably should—all he felt was a faint strand of confusion, and something tender in him that was so rarely indulged that Colum had thought it died out years ago.
“Don’t—just don’t speak of it again, Brother Asht. Leave me now—your eyes are not as trained as mine, and are of no use at the moment.” Two breaths later, and as Colum stood again, Silas hunched back over the sheaf of flimsy even more, his back bowing like a deceased shrimp’s. His next words were so quiet that Colum wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t hallucinated them. “I don’t need to forgive you.”
The tone was… soft and placid, free of anger. How strange. That sounded less like a refusal to grant mercy and grace, and more like an assertion that forgiveness was unnecessary, which was… surely something. Colum hesitated near the door of Silas’s study.
“I’ll draw your bath in half an hour,” he said. “And set your nightclothes on the counter.”
He got a noncommittal hum in return, and Silas fingered the particular sheet of flimsy he was holding. Silas likely wished he could tear it, so that its worth would be soundly rebutted. Colum knew he did that at times, with kitchen knives and his own ink—he destroyed things that he thought imperfect, even if no one else could see it. Only the most flawless could remain in close proximity to the young Master Templar.
On that thought, Colum retreated from the study, and closed the door behind him. He still had much work to do before either of them could retire for the night, and he had much to think about on top of it all.
