Work Text:
They sit on a hillside, the grass swaying in the breeze. It is dusk and there is a glowing orange line right at the horizon, but the sky is shades of hazy purple and deepest blue. Qifrey is laughing, and the sound of it is bright as flame in Olruggio’s chest. A brilliant streak of light darts above them. Olruggio cranes his head back to look and his hat tumbles from his head. Stars fling themselves across the sky in blazing trails of light.
He turns to Qifrey, a smile already on his face, but what he sees when he looks at his friend makes him pause. The starlight is falling in glittering strands towards Qifrey, wreathing itself around his head. Olruggio blinks in surprise, trying to make sense of the image. No, not his head, he realizes slowly. His hat. For one moment, the piercing ice blue of Qifrey’s eye meets his, and then it is obstructed by the star-brimmed hat.
“Qifrey?” Olruggio says warily, reaching for him.
Qifrey’s hand shoots out, catching his wrist and pulling him off balance. Olruggio stumbles and suddenly there is no ground beneath him. Only Qifrey, standing over him, his laugh as cold as starlight.
Olruggio sits up with a gasp, panting. His blankets are tangled around his legs. Already he is forgetting the dream that woke him. He remembers the cold gleam of starlight, the sensation of falling, a brimmed hat. He shakes his head, grasping at the gossamer threads of the dream as he tries to remember, but the details elude him.
He flops back on his pillows and stares up at the ceiling waiting for his heart to slow. Unfortunately, this has become something of a regular occurrence. Why can’t I remember? He thinks, frustrated. But then, dreams are like that, he supposes. All he knows is they’re getting worse.
*
Qifrey is in the kitchen when he catches sight of Olly standing out in the living room lost in thought. He and the girls had finished dinner hours ago, but Olly hadn’t joined them. Distracted by his tinkering, Qifrey assumed, or meeting with a client. Either way, he surely hasn’t eaten.
Qifrey spoons out some leftover stew into a bowl and heats it with a quick spell before bringing it out to his friend. “Olly! We missed you at dinner. Would you care for some stew? The girls helped me make it.”
Olly startles, and then his face settles into a weary smile. “You’re too good to me,” he says, taking the bowl. Qifrey pours them both a glass of wine and settles into a chair to keep him company.
“What were you thinking about? Your face looked quite serious.”
“Did it?” Olly asks vaguely.
Qifrey assures him that it did. Now that he is looking at him more closely, he thinks that the bags under his eyes are a shade darker than usual. He must be working himself too hard.
Olly waves vaguely with his spoon. “I was just trying to remember.”
Qifrey tilts his head when it becomes apparent his friend won’t elaborate and prompts him. “Remember what?”
“Oh, a dream I had.” Olruggio laughs, trying to put Qifrey at ease, but it sounds strained.
“What kind of dream?”
Olruggio stares into the flames, avoiding Qifrey’s gaze, and something in his face makes a small tide of worry rise in Qifrey’s gut. They sit in silence so long that Qifrey almost wonders whether Olruggio hadn’t heard him, but then he says quietly, “Any dream.” He turns his dark eyes on Qifrey. “Do you remember yours?”
Qifrey tucks his hands into his robes. “Some,” he admits. Olly is looking at him beseechingly, so he relents. “I often have one about the day Beldaruit found me. More of a nightmare, really.” Olruggio’s face immediately looks guilty and Qifrey takes pity on him. “I also recall having one where Agott turned Coco into a duck.” Olruggio snorts a startled laugh and almost chokes on his stew. Emboldened by Olly’s laughter, Qifrey pounds him on the back and, feeling playful, adds, “Sometimes I dream about that firelight festival you took me to when we finished our apprenticeships.”
“Oh?” Olruggio asks curiously. “What happens in that dream?”
Qifrey blushes. “Nothing in particular.” But he knows he’s said it too quickly as soon as the words leave his mouth. Olly’s eyes narrow, and he decides to redirect before Olly can ask any more questions along that line. “You really don’t remember any of yours?”
For a second, something knowing flashes in Olly’s eyes and Qifrey thinks that he will point out that Qifrey is changing the subject. But he doesn’t. He just sighs.
“No,” Olly confesses. “None. I’m sure I used to, when we were younger. But now, they’re like ghosts. They linger, but I can never see ‘em clearly. I’ll wake up and remember vividly how they felt, but not why they felt that way or what happened in ‘em.” He glances at Qifrey with something sly in his deep blue eyes. “None of ‘em were about the firelight festival though. I think I would remember that one.”
Clever Olly. Qifrey smiles down into his cup. “That’s a shame. It’s a good dream.”
“Yeah?” Olruggio blushes.
“Well,” Qifrey allows with a smile, “not as good as the real thing.”
*
“Damn it, Qifrey, let me help you! Why do you think you have to do everything alone?”
“Because they will take your magic, Olruggio!” Qifrey shouts back, and Olruggio is startled by his vehemence. “Your magic,” Qifrey continues, a note of pleading in his voice, “which brings light and warmth to the world and helps so many people. Don’t you see, Oru? I can’t be the reason you lose that, or that the world loses you. You’re too important and I am only my secrets.”
“Qifrey, you idiot—you—our atelier—that is my world! So let me help you. Let my magic help you. Don’t you trust me?”
“More than anything,” Qifrey says sadly, taking off his hat to twist it anxiously in his hands. “You’re always looking out for me. Can’t you let me do the same for you?”
“Not if it means putting yourself in danger,” Olruggio says slowly, shaking his head.
“I’m not afraid,” Qifrey says, smiling ruefully at him. “I know you’ll be there looking out for me.”
Olruggio relaxes. “You’ll let me help?”
Qifrey lunges forward, pulling his hat down over Olruggio’s head. Closes the circle. Olruggio collapses forward, slumping into his arms. He is floating disembodied somewhere over his own shoulder, watching Qifrey lower his body gently to the ground.
“Please understand, Olly. I only want to protect you.”
He wakes with a suffocating feeling in his chest. He gasps, struggling to sit up.
“Oru?” Qifrey mumbles sleepily. “Oru!” Sharper now as he comes more fully awake. He makes soothing sounds and rubs circles on Olruggio’s shaking back.
Olruggio rests his head on his curled knees, trying to catch his breath. “Sorry,” he gasps when he can breathe again. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Nonsense,” Qifrey says gently. “I’m here. Do you want to talk about it?”
Olruggio shakes his head. “It was just another dream. I don’t—” he swallows thickly, grateful for the darkness. “I don’t even remember what it was about.”
This is the fifth time this week that he has woken Qifrey with his dreams, and he looks guiltily at the beginnings of shadows carving their way beneath Qifrey’s eye in reflections of Olruggio’s own. At least he manages to fall back asleep, Olly notes, as Qifrey’s hand slips from where he continued tracing it in soothing circles over Olly’s back as he returns to dreaming. Olruggio does not. He lays awake, trying to remember what he’d been dreaming of, but all he can recall is the crushing blow of betrayal. The sleepless circles weighing on Qifrey’s face. As the first gray light of dawn stains the horizon, he guiltily slips from Qifrey’s bed and quietly makes his way to his workshop.
Between one dream and the next, he forgets he was ever there.
*
Qifrey is making breakfast, his movements mechanical, unthinking, most of his mental energy occupied with the puzzle of Olruggio. It is not unusual for them to spend time apart, for Qifrey to seek nights of solitude or for Olruggio to be swept up in his contraptions. Even so, this is one of the longer stretches they have slept apart, and Qifrey has found himself reaching in the night for an expected warmth only to wake cold and alone. It troubles him, this reaching. This expectation rooted deep in his unconscious mind that Olly will always be there.
As if summoned by his thoughts alone, Olruggio stumbles into the kitchen, looking around the space blankly.
Qifrey’s fingers twitch, aching to reach for him, but he holds them in check. “Good morning, Olly!” he says brightly. “Looking for something?”
“I—” Olly looks around the kitchen again, then down at his hands, uncomprehending. He looks…lost.
Qifrey frowns and puts down the batter he was preparing. “Are you alright?” He steps closer to his friend, and now he sees that the circles beneath Olly’s eyes, while perpetually present, are darker than usual and bruised looking. His skin sallow. His eyes red and unfocused.
“Olruggio!” Qifrey exclaims. “Have you been sleeping at all? Sit down.” He guides him to a seat at the kitchen table.
“I—I can’t remember…” Olly trails off.
Qifrey snorts. “No wonder. It’s a good thing your head is attached to your body, or you’d forget where that was too in this state. When was the last time you slept?”
Olly mumbles something about a nap the day before, or maybe the day before that.
“You can’t go on like this Olly,” Qifrey scolds. “No project is worth your health. You must go to bed at once. I’ll make you a broth and bring it up to you later. No, I won’t hear any protests from you,” Qifrey insists, hauling him up and leading him by his arm back towards his workshop. The girls have drifted out of their rooms at the commotion and at the prospect of breakfast, and they peer curiously at them as they rub the sleep from their eyes.
“What’s the matter with Master Olly?” Tetia asks.
“Nothin’, I’m fine,” Olruggio protests, but Qifrey gives him a stern look and speaks over him.
“He’s just overworked himself. He needs sleep. We’ll take our lessons outside today so that Olruggio can get some nice, quiet rest.” He punctuates this with a meaningful glare at Olruggio.
“Feel better soon Master Olly!” the girls chorus as Qifrey drags him away.
“You don’t have to do that,” Olly mumbles, “about the lessons, I mean. I’m fine.”
“Nonsense. Besides, it’s shaping up to be a lovely day and the girls will enjoy the fresh air.”
“I’m your Watchful Eye, ya know, not another apprentice for you to boss around,” Olly gripes.
“I do not boss my apprentices,” Qifrey sniffs petulantly.
“No,” Olly agrees, “just your Watchful Eye.”
“Well maybe if my Watchful Eye could keep his open, I wouldn’t have to be so bossy. Really Oru, you should take better care of yourself.”
Qifrey fusses over him, adjusting blankets and pillows until Olruggio threatens to hit him with one if he doesn’t stop being a mother hen.
“I have to look out for you,” Qifrey protests as he adjusts the blankets minutely around Olruggio’s shoulders, “since you insist on wearing yourself down like this.”
The words tug at something in his memory, but he is already half asleep. Olruggio smiles faintly, his eyes closed. “Thank you for looking out for me. Now git outta here.”
Qifrey smiles, pausing at the door on his way out to look back at his sleeping friend. “I am trying Oru,” he says quietly. “I want to look out for you as faithfully as you always do for me.”
He waits until he hears gentle snores emanating from the pile of blankets and pillows, then he quietly shuts the door and leaves.
*
Qifrey has been particularly attentive of late. Sometimes, Olruggio catches him watching him, his gaze lingering. Longing. It makes Olly’s skin burn, makes him feel like he is forgetting something. Is he forgetting something? He must be. At this point, he has known Qifrey for more years than he has not. He should know what that look means. He doesn’t.
He is making tea in the kitchen when he pulls up short. His hand hovers uncertainly over the spread of mark teas trying to recall which Qifrey likes best. The dragonflower? Or is it maidencrown? He must have made tea for Qifrey ten thousand times, at least. This is something that should come to him as naturally as the color of Qifrey’s eye, or the sound of his teaching voice. He racks his brain, trying to remember which his friend prefers, but every memory draws a blank.
Anxiety washes through him. He thinks of the look he cannot place. The tea he can’t pick out. It’s not just the dreams I’m forgetting, he realizes.
“Olruggio? Do you need help?” Qifrey calls from his seat before the fire.
In a panic, he chooses a dragonflower, watches it steep and breathes in its fruity aroma curling up in whisps of steam. He hesitates. This isn’t right.
“Olly?”
“I’m comin’” Olruggio huffs, and with a shake of his head goes out to join his friend.
He hands Qifrey the tea. Qifrey smiles up at him in thanks and takes a sip. He sees the moment Qifrey freezes, the corners of his lips twitching just slightly before he presses them firmly back into line. Qifrey has always been a good liar, but Olruggio has always been better at seeing the truth.
“You don’t like it,” he says, heart falling. He knew he’d guessed wrong. He feels betrayed. Even if his mind had forgotten, surely his hand should have known well enough to reach for the right tea without thought. How could he forget?
“Of course I do!” Qifrey objects, lifting the cup to his lips again and taking a dainty sip. Olruggio narrows his eyes at the other witch. Maybe he’d been wrong, had misread Qifrey’s expression and it had been the heat or something else making him wince. His shoulders relax a little. Qifrey and his damn secrets.
“It’s delightful, really. Thank you, Oru,” Qifrey smiles. He places the teacup down on the arm of the sofa and motions for Olruggio to join him, so he does. The girls have long since gone to bed and the night stretches quietly out before them. Qifrey asks him about the projects he’s been working on. He knows it’s a distraction, but even knowing that, the light in Qifrey’s eyes as he looks at him is real, and he had just worked out a complex spell…and it is easy to talk to Qifrey. The hours melt away like candlewax, warm and golden. Somehow Qifrey has drifted closer, and he can feel the warmth of the other witch pressed against his side through his robes.
His eyes are drooping shut when he gets a sharp nudge against his knee. The once-warm presence beside him is gone. Olruggio pouts at its absence.
“Oru,” Qifrey sounds amused and half-asleep himself. “Go to bed.”
“Hmmm,” he agrees, but can’t find it in himself to open his eyes, much less pull himself from the couch.
“What will the girls think if they find you out here in the morning?”
“Nuthin’ more ‘n the usual, I ‘spect,” Olruggio mumbles.
“Olruggio,” Qifrey sighs, exasperated, and the sound of his name said in such a tone brings a smile to his lips.
“A’right, a’right, I’m goin’,” he relents and peels his eyes open. Qifrey is standing between his knees, looking down at him fondly. He holds out a hand and Olly takes it, letting Qifrey heave him up. He always forgets how strong Qifrey is, waifish though he looks. His hand is cold, Olly notices, and absently runs a thumb over Qifrey’s knuckles. Something in Qifrey’s face stills at the motion and Olruggio, feeling bold or perhaps just too tired for caution, does it again. Well. If he just tweaked the snugstone a little…
“No, I know that look. Bed,” Qifrey chides, shooing him towards his room. “It’s much too late to be inventing things.”
Olruggio huffs a laugh and shoves his hands into his pockets to keep them from doing something stupid, like brushing back the hair that falls over Qifrey’s missing eye. “I’m goin, I’m goin,” he repeats, and heads back towards his room.
His gaze drifts to the abandoned teacup where it still perches on the sofa arm as he passes, its now-cold contents staining a circle halfway up the cup. Only then does he realize Qifrey hadn’t taken another sip.
*
Memories slip like embers into the night, extinguishing one by one before Olly even realizes they are drifting away. The first time he met Qifrey. How they chose this spot for their atelier. Why he sometimes finds himself walking towards Qifrey’s room as if he belongs there.
When this last happens, he awkwardly aborts, always coming to his senses before he can do something truly stupid like knock on Qifrey’s door. Qifrey has always valued privacy—space for his secrets—and for the most part, Olly doesn’t press this. He takes what he can get, recognizing it as a gift, and doesn’t ask for more. Even as part of him aches for it.
Currently, he is doing his best to memorize the look Qifrey gets before he kisses him. Something hungry. Something uncertain. Something that looks a little bit like guilt. Olruggio’s heart leaps, recognizing it even before Qifrey leans in and places his cool lips to the fluttering pulse at Olruggio’s throat. Please, don’t let me forget this, he thinks, letting his eyes fall shut as Qifrey presses him back against the wall. He runs his hands up and down Qifrey’s back, his waist, his chest, trying to memorize the shape of him. There are so many things he’s forgetting.
He pulls his head back just a fraction, breaking the kiss, and Qifrey makes a disappointed sound.
“I love you,” Olruggio blurts, and Qifrey freezes. “I want you to know. In case I ever forget. To say it, I mean,” he stammers, knowing he sounds crazy. “I’m sorry, I’m probably doing this wrong—”
Qifrey laughs. Olly can feel the reverberations of it in his own chest, they are pressed so close. Qifrey kisses him softly, once. Twice. Olruggio tries to memorize the press of his lips. “I know I don’t always…speak freely of my feelings.” He twists his fingers in the hair at the nape of Olruggio’s neck. Tugs just a fraction. “But you know I love you too, right?”
Olruggio leans his forehead in and breathes in deeply. Oak and fresh linen and the hint of something dark and earthy. Qifrey. He tries to catalogue each moment of tenderness between them. There are too many to count. Too many to know if any of their number are missing. “Remind me?” he asks hoarsely.
So Qifrey does.
*
He is an apprentice again, standing on the edge of a lake. The Tower of Tomes rises out of the mists at its center.
“We can make it!” he tells Qifrey. “Together!”
The boys clasp hands, foreheads bent forward until they touch. The dream shifts, grows darker. They are in a shadowed space, surrounded by stacks of books stretching out into the darkness. He is bent over a tome trying to read it, but the words shift and change on the page. A soft step and he looks up, relaxing as he recognizes Qifrey.
“Did you find it?” Olruggio asks him. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Qifrey’s head is bowed, his eye covered by his mop of hair. “Yes.”
“What—you did?!” Olruggio stumbles in his rush to stand. A wind picks up, riffling through the books and tearing pages from the spines. Qifrey holds out a hand and Olruggio takes it, letting his best friend haul him to his feet, but even when he’s standing, Qifrey doesn’t let go. His grip is tight. Pages whirl through the air, swirling around the boys, catching on Qifrey’s hat.
“What--?” More pages catch, until Olruggio recognizes with a sinking feeling the shape of a brim. “Qifrey--!”
“You’re too good to me, Olly. Do you know that? I can’t let you take these kinds of risks for me. It’s not safe for you.”
Olly grips Qifrey’s hand back, squeezing tight, needing the other boy to look at him. Just look at him. “If you think it’s too dangerous for me, then it’s too dangerous for you to do alone. Let me help you!”
Qifrey raises his head to look at him from beneath the brim of his hat, finally look at him, and tears are spilling down his face. Olruggio feels absurdly relieved. Qifrey will give in and let him help. Qifrey is his best friend. He squeezes Qifrey’s hand and tugs at it, pulling him forward. Something flashes in Qifrey’s eyes. Understanding, he thinks. They pull each other in until their foreheads are touching. Then Qifrey reaches up with his other hand and removes his hat. Plunges it down over Olruggio’s head. It is impossibly large, swallowing him until he is falling through darkness.
He bolts up, the grass damp beneath him, his heart racing. “Qifrey!”
“I’m here,” his friend says soothingly, and he realizes that Qifrey is gripping his hand, tight. “I made it back from the library.”
“Back?” Olruggio asks, confused. “But we were….”
“You sacrificed yourself so that I would make it to the tower,” Qifrey says, and wipes the back of his free hand across his cheek, smearing away tears. Olly stares. He can’t remember ever seeing Qifrey cry before. “Don’t you remember?”
“Uhh—not really?” Olly says, and Qifrey sniffles a laugh.
“You took on two of the lake monsters all by yourself. I’m so sorry—I shouldn’t have left you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Hey, I’m fine, aren’t I?” Olruggio insists, puffing out his chest even as his head pounds and he scrambles desperately to try and remember what exactly had happened. He thinks there had been lake monsters…but he doesn’t remember fighting them. Maybe he had hit his head. “You can count on me. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No,” Qifrey says, not meeting Olly’s eye but staring out over the lake. “I think…I think I’m done looking. It’s time to put this behind me.”
Olly lets out a relieved sigh. “Well, at least you finished the challenge! I’m going to have to do this again, aren’t I?”
Qifrey looks at him guiltily. “I’m really sorr—”
“Hey! It was my decision,” he says, taking the hand Qifrey offers him, “and I would do it again. That’s what best friends do. They look out for each other, right?”
Qifrey’s eye is blue and still as the lake with its hidden monsters. He squeezes Olruggio’s hand. “They look out for each other,” he agrees.
Olruggio wakes up crying, the dream already forgotten. His cheeks are wet, his eyes gritty. He is so tired. He cannot remember the last time he slept through the night, and his waking hours have taken on a hazy dream-like quality to them.
He has started turning down commissions, afraid of missing deadlines, of disappointing clients. His number of ‘incidents’—the whole reason he insisted on building a separate atelier for himself—has increased ten-fold. This week alone, he has set fire to his robes more often than not, created a plume of noxious gas, and experienced a slight explosion.
If it gets much worse, he’ll need to tell Qifrey. The witch deserves to know that his Watchful Eye is unfit for duty. But he can’t quite bring himself to do it.
I just need to sleep, he thinks, but even as he longs for it, he dreads it. He wipes at the tackiness of his eyes, haunted by dreams he can’t remember. I’ll tell Qifrey if it gets worse, he reasons with himself. I would tell him if it became a real problem. He repeats it like a mantra, his sleepless, burning eyes staring holes into the ceiling. I would tell him.
After all, who can they trust if not each other?
*
The dreams get worse.
Olruggio stays up late most nights tinkering to avoid them. Snatches sleep in meagre handfuls and wakes up distressed, the fingerprints of dreams he can’t remember smeared across his mind. At times, he catches himself staring absently into space, or worse, Qifrey does. In such cases, Qifrey will ask him what he’s thinking about and he’s disquieted to find he can’t remember. He grunts and waves vaguely, and Qifrey is familiar enough with his gruffness to take this affably.
He goes through the motions mechanically, joining the girls’ lessons occasionally, watching them practice their magic. He sends their progress reports to the Hall and fulfills orders for contraptions. In the evenings, he plays card games with the girls, and Tetia has to remind him it’s his turn twice before he remembers to play a card.
Always, Qifrey watches him with an eye that is clear and steady. For some reason, it makes him think of the lake at the base of the Tower of Tomes.
And always, beneath it all, there is the nagging sensation that he is forgetting something.
*
He is up late working on a new spell, avoiding sleep. It is so far past late that it has circled back to being early. He is trying to keep his hand steady, his eyes focused, but they keep drifting shut when he’s not paying attention. A soft rap alerts him to Qifrey standing in his doorway. He’d thought Qifrey had gone to bed hours ago.
“Come to bed, Oru,” Qifrey says gently.
Olruggio squints down at his quire until the lines stop blurring. “I’ll go to bed in a minute, I’m just…” but he realizes suddenly that he can’t remember what the spell he’s working on is supposed to do.
“Don’t go to bed,” Qifrey whispers in his ear, his breath warm against Olruggio’s neck. “Come to bed.”
He hadn’t noticed Qifrey stepping into his room. Time is strange and incomprehensible around him. Has been for days. “Come to bed…” Olruggio repeats, trying to make sense of the words. He tilts his head back to look up at Qifrey. His eye is clear and close and bright. He has never gone to bed with Qifrey. He is almost sure of it. Almost.
This is a dream, he thinks. It’s the only logical explanation, though he didn’t realize he could be so tired dreaming.
Qifrey takes his hand and pulls him from his chair. There is a pang in Olly’s chest as he follows him up the short set of stairs to Olly’s loft bed. If this is a dream, I won’t remember any of it.
“Wait…” Olruggio says, dragging his feet, and Qifrey stops and looks at him inquisitively. Olly reaches up a hand to cup his cheek and with the other gives in to the age-old urge to brush the hair back from Qifrey’s missing eye. Afterall, this is only a dream. Dream-Qifrey shivers with his touch. “I want to remember,” Olruggio murmurs.
“Remember what?” Qifrey asks, voice hoarse.
Olruggio kisses him slowly, deeply, noting every touch and sense and sound of it. He pulls away just a hair’s breadth, brushing his thumb across Qifrey’s cheekbone as he looks into that brilliant eye.
“Everything.”
When he wakes, it is long past noon and the bed beside him is empty. He runs a hand over the cushions, trying to feel the trace of body heat, the indent of presence. Results are inconclusive. He bites back a sigh. Did he expect anything else?
He presses his face into a pillow and breathes in deeply, trying to catch a whiff of Qifrey’s scent. He thinks he catches the barest tinge of something dark and earthy, but then, that might just be wishful thinking. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. If he remembers, had it really happened? Or is he dreaming still? Lately, it felt like his whole life has become a series of sleep-deprived hallucinations.
I’m losing my mind, he thinks. I should tell Qifrey. He deserves to know. If I’m not fit to be his Watchful Eye, he’ll need a new one…His chest aches at the thought of it. He tries to imagine who they would send in his place. The thought of someone else in the atelier feels wrong. Would they learn to stand on Qifrey’s left, so he could see them better? Would they be sure to pretend to be absorbed in tasks so Richeh felt more comfortable talking openly to them when giving her reports, without the weight of a judgmental gaze bearing down on her? How could he know that they would embrace Tetia’s enthusiasm and not try to dampen her exuberant spirit? Or draw Agott out of her shell and encourage her to form connections? Would they treat Coco fairly, even though she was an outsider? Would they make sure that Qifrey didn’t work himself to the bone? That he took care of himself, as well as the girls?
The questions swirl through his head, their answers as unknowable as his dreams. I can’t leave, he thinks desperately. Who will look after them?
Some things were too precious to leave to others.
*
He does not say anything about their maybe-night together. He tries to take his ques from Qifrey, but the other man is damnably unreadable in this regard. Perhaps it had all been a dream. Maybe he is well and truly mad.
He finds he is hypersensitive to Qifrey’s attention on him. Somehow it makes everything worse. He feels guilty for the bruises growing darker under his eyes. For the way he has to ask the girls to repeat themselves when they’re telling him what they’ve learned so he can write his reports. For the way he finds his pen trailing off in smears of ink when he’s drawing sigils and the mountains of paper scrapped in piles on the floor of his workroom. And though he never catches Qifrey staring, he can feel the lingering weight of Qifrey’s eye on him, as though it had only flitted away moments before Olruggio turned. Or maybe he only imagines he does.
His head has felt stuffed with brushbugs for days. He can barely string together coherent thoughts. When he wakes, gasping and panting, for the third time in an hour, unable to sleep and unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he decides enough’s enough. He needs help.
“Where are you off to?” Qifrey asks as Olruggio dons his cloak and nearly crosses his eyes trying to focus on the sigil he is completing for the window-way.
“Meeting a client,” Olruggio lies, and is surprised by how easily it rolls off his tongue. Of the two of them, he has never been the liar.
Qifrey rests a hand on his shoulder, making him jump. He hadn’t noticed Qifrey moving. Qifrey gives him a meaningful look. “Don’t overtax yourself.”
“I won’t. Promise,” Olruggio says gruffly. Qifrey withdraws his hand, but Olruggio feels him watching him even as he steps through the window-way and out the other side.
Once in the Hall, he heads to the Healing Spire. Maybe he should have told Qifrey that this was where he was going, but he didn’t want to worry him more than he already has. Sinochia smiles when she sees him and then immediately frowns and guides him into an exam room.
“You look awful, Olruggio,” she says sternly.
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m serious, when was the last time you slept?”
“I…haven’t been sleeping well.”
“No shit,” she says, and Olruggio barks a humorless laugh. He tells her about the dreams he can’t remember, the way his mind trails off mid-thought, the forgetting of things he never needed to think about before.
She worries her lip between her teeth. “I’ll make you a sleeping draught. We’ll see if that helps and in the meantime I’ll do some research.”
Olruggio’s hopes sink. “No easy cure then?”
Sinochia pats his knee kindly. “Medicine isn’t magic,” she says gently. “Let me do some research and see what I can come up with.”
“Thanks, Sinochia.”
*
The sleeping draught makes everything fuzzy. His dreams become vivid, life-like things that shatter into sharp-edged shards the moment he wakes. He no longer knows if he is waking or dreaming. He concludes he must be awake, since he remembers, but a moment later he will doubt, wondering if he might wake up at any moment and forget any of this has happened at all.
He kisses Qifrey for the first time.
And he kisses Qifrey for the first time.
And he kisses Qifrey for the first time.
And he forgets.
*
Two weeks later, he gets a letter from Sinochia. Come see me.
He slips away while Qifrey has the girls out on an excursion and makes his way to the Healing Spire. Sinochia’s face is serious, worried, as she ushers him into an exam room and shuts the door.
“What is it?” Olruggio asks with dread.
She guides him to sit and holds his hand comfortingly as she tells him the only thing she has found in her research are similar accounts from Adanlee.
“The Isle of Oblivion?” Olruggio asks skeptically, “But that’s where they send…”
Sinochia looks at him sharply. “You haven’t been tampering with memory spells have you?”
“Of course not! That’s forbidden magic. Only the Knights Moralis deal in memory spells.”
Sinochia raises an eyebrow. “And you haven’t run into any of them recently?”
“No! Not that I…remember…” Olruggio puts his face in his hands. “But I can still do magic!” he protests. “I’m a witch! If the Knights Moralis had wiped my memory, they would have already sent me to Adanlee, not left me like this,” he gestures vaguely to himself.
Sinochia hums skeptically but concedes his point. “Maybe Qifrey remembers something? You two have always been thick as thieves. I’m sure if something like that had happened to you, he would have noticed something.”
“Yeah…yeah, you’re right. I’ll ask him when I get home.”
Sinochia gives him a hug and another sleeping draught. “Be careful, Olruggio.”
Olruggio smiles at her. “Don’t worry, Qifrey’ll look out for me.”
*
He meant to talk to Qifrey. Really, he did. The moment just never seems right. Take right now, for instance. They are seated on cushions by the low light of the fire, and Olly has been working himself up to trying to broach the topic. But how do you casually ask your best friend if they thought you might have done something to cause the Knights Moralis to wipe your memory? What could he have done? The not-knowing has been tying his guts into knots. Qifrey’s close proximity hasn’t been helping.
His friend has been nursing a glass of wine, shooting looks at Olruggio when he thinks the other man won’t notice. He notices. The noticing is making working out the puzzle of this non-existent conversation very difficult.
Then Qifrey sets aside his wine and turns decisively to face him. The look changes.
The look in Qifrey’s eye now steals the breath from Olruggio’s lungs. He’s never looked at him that way before. Something hungry. Something uncertain. Something that looks a little bit like guilt.
When he kisses Olruggio, Olly thinks, yes, this is right. Of all the things he has forgotten, he could never forget this. He kisses back. Lets his hands fall to Qifrey’s waist. Shivers as Qifrey’s long fingers reach up to tangle in Olruggio’s hair, drawing him closer.
“The way you look in the firelight right now…” Qifrey murmurs into his lips. “Do you remember Lumrey?”
“What?” Olruggio asks, dazed.
Qifrey nuzzles Olly’s neck, slips a hand beneath the plunging collar of his shirt. “Lumrey. The firelight festival. Where we first…” his other hand drifts lower, fliting across his abdomen and coyly stoking up his thigh.
Olruggio’s heart pounds in his chest. His head feels dizzy. Where we first…Have they done this before? More?
I don’t remember, he thinks wildly. I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember.
“Olly?” Qifrey asks with concern, drawing back as he realizes something is wrong.
“I’m sorry—I—” but his head is spinning, and he can’t find the words.
“Olruggio,” Qifrey says, alarmed, reaching to grasp his arm, steadying him. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, stumbling back and away. “I just—I need—I’m sorry.” He flees back to his workshop.
Qifrey stares after him, listening to his hastily retreating footsteps and the careful closing of his door. He considers following after him, but the look on Olly’s face…he’d been afraid. Afraid of him, or afraid of hurting his feelings? Either possibility drops a heavy stone into the pit of Qifrey’s stomach. Not that you wouldn’t deserve the first, he thinks darkly. But somehow he’d never prepared himself for Olly to be afraid of him. Furious and betrayed, yes, but never afraid. It cracks something in Qifrey’s chest to think about. He runs back through the evening, trying to remember precisely what had transpired. Olly had seemed distracted, but then, so was Qifrey, lost in the way the firelight had glowed warm and enticing against the dark-haired witch’s skin, turning the shadows of his throat stark and inviting. And he had kissed him back, hadn’t he? Soft and reverent as Olly ever was.
And then he had mentioned Lumrey, and Olly had frozen up. He couldn’t fathom why. Unless…unless he’d decided he wanted less of Qifrey. Less of his secrets, less of his closed doors and distant smiles. He thinks of the empty space in his bed that Olruggio has not occupied for months. That he seems to have no interest in reclaiming. But he had kissed him back, hadn’t he?
He tries to think of the handful of kisses they’d shared, who had initiated them. He counts with growing dread as the tallies add up in his favor. Qifrey has been the one to seek him out, to initiate. Perhaps he had fled because he hadn’t wanted to embarrass Qifrey with an outright rejection. Olruggio was kind unto a fault. He cared, deeply and whole-heartedly, and they had been friends for a long time. He would never want to do anything to harm Qifrey.
Qifrey’s lips trembled and he pressed them into a firm line and pressed his hand hard against his face until he had them under control again. If Olruggio no longer wanted Qifrey in that way, he would not inflict himself upon him unwillingly. He had already imposed on Olruggio unforgivably; he would not add this to his list of sins. He only wishes Olruggio had told him. He smirks self-deprecatingly at the irony.
He stays staring into the dying flames until they gutter and gasp and extinguish.
*
Qifrey is distant, though unfailingly polite and friendly. Something is troubling him. Olruggio can see it in the way he catches Qifrey looking at him, in the way that he avoids finding himself alone with him. Always, Qifrey is surrounded by the girls and after dinner, when he might usually join Olly in a glass of wine or a midnight snack, he begs off to bed and leaves Olly standing alone.
Had Olly done something to offend him? When he tries to recall, he comes up empty. All that surfaces is a hazy recollection of firelight, a deep, glowing warmth simmering in his belly. A dream? A memory?
He finds himself staring after Qifrey, his fingers twitching, desperate to reach out, to hold him. That’s something they used to do, isn’t it? He couldn’t swear it with conviction.
Qifrey is in the garden. The girls are out on the downs, and Olruggio takes the opportunity to confront his friend. He leans for a moment in the doorway, watching Qifrey kneel in the garden bed, the shifting of his muscles as he pulls weeds. Olly catches himself staring, swallowing against the dryness of his throat.
He shuffles over to where his friend is working, and when he doesn’t look up, he says his name.
“Qifrey.”
He shifts, rocking back on his heels and tilting his head up to look at Olruggio with that clear blue eye. “Yes, Olly?” Perfectly easy. Mildly inquisitive. Lying. Olruggio can see it in the lines at the corners of his mouth, the way his piercing gaze is fixed not quite on his face, but to a point just to the side of him.
“You’ve been avoiding me?” It was meant to come out as a statement. A simple, objective observation. He is not sure that he is capable of those anymore. He can hear his own uncertainty in the upward lilt of his voice.
Now Qifrey’s eye does focus on his face. “I haven’t.” A downward tilt to his lips. Lie.
“You have,” Olly presses, more confident. “Keeping the girls with you, refusing to let me help in the kitchen, darting off to bed as soon as the girls go to sleep—”
“I assure you, Olly, I didn’t mean to cause any offence—”
Olly rakes a hand through his hair. “Did I do something? I don’t know what I—I can’t recall--”
Now Qifrey looks pained. “You didn’t do anything, Oru. I was just—I thought perhaps you’d had a change of heart. I didn’t want to burden you.”
“A change of heart?”
“The other night. I mentioned the firelight festival and you…you seemed quite upset. You left. I thought…”
Olruggio closes his eyes. Tries desperately to remember. The warmth of the fire. The weight of Qifrey’s eye on him. A memory? A dream? He wishes he still remembered how to tell them apart.
When he opens his eyes again, Qifrey is standing closer, hovering uncertainly. “Olruggio, I—”
But he doesn’t finish. Olruggio closes the distance between them, pressing his lips to Qifrey’s own. He knows it is a bad idea, even as he thrills with the surprised gasp Qifrey makes against his mouth. Qifrey hesitates, and Olruggio just has time enough to wonder if it had been not just bad, but a truly awful idea, and whether he might mercifully forget Qifrey’s gentle rejection along with all of his other memories, but then Qifrey is kissing him back. Olly sighs and leans into it, until Qifrey gently pulls away.
“I don’t understand,” Qifrey says, confused.
Olly doesn’t know how to explain it to him, barely understands it himself. He runs his thumbs along the sharp planes of Qifrey’s cheekbones. He has everything he has ever wanted in his hands. Has had it all along, apparently. He hadn’t remembered. He will forget again.
Their first kiss. Their last.
He feels it with a certainty he had thought beyond him at this point. He will forget, and it will cause Qifrey pain. Over and over again.
Slowly, he drops his hands.
There is a question in Qifrey’s eye as he looks at him. “I love you,” Olly says, because it’s true, because he can’t remember if he’s said it before, because he wants Qifrey to know. Something like hope blooms in Qifrey’s brilliant eye, making what he has to say next so much harder. “But you were right,” Olruggio says heavily. “I’m sorry. I—I don’t want to cause you pain.”
Hurt flashes across Qifrey’s face, smothering the hope with a vicious savagery Olly recognizes from their childhood. He’s quickly tucked the hurt away again behind the mask he usually reserves for other people. Olruggio’s heart shatters to see it turned on himself.
“I’m sorry,” Olly repeats, devastated. “I don’t want to hurt you—”
Qifrey takes a step back, out of reach. “I understand, Oru. I am not offended.” His voice is mechanical, impassive. Horribly, horribly blank.
“Qifrey—”
“I need to prepare lunch for the girls. Excuse me.”
The pale witch disappears back into the atelier, leaving Olruggio standing alone in the garden. It was the right thing to do, he tells himself, even as his heart is breaking. You have to look out for him. You swore you always would. We both did.
He remembers that at least. Clings to it with everything he has left.
Take care of Qifrey. Take care of the girls. These things, at least, are so ingrained that they are beyond forgetting.
Aren’t they?
*
He forgets and forgets and forgets.
And he keeps forgetting.
*
Alaira comes to visit. She blows in one day with Euini and stays for a week.
“It’s good for the children to have an opportunity to learn from one another,” Alaira says as Richeh and the other girls drag Euini off to show him the spells they’ve been learning. “I think Euini gets lonely.”
She leans up to kiss Olruggio’s cheek. “And I thought it would be a good idea to check in with a Watchful Eye, to make sure Euini’s apprenticeship is above board once we clear up—well, everything,” she adds with an encompassing wave of her hand.
“You both are always welcome here,” Qifrey says warmly, accepting a kiss to his own cheek as he takes her cloak.
It is nice to have Alaira there. Nice to have another person to serve as a buffer between him and Qifrey, who has grown strangely distant of late. He’d been worried, at first, that it would be two more people to try and remember. And while Euini’s face sometimes swims before his eyes, Alaira stands out with a startling clarity. He remembers the salt and spice smell of her, and the low pitch of her laugh, and the fire-starter contraption he’d gifted to her which she still wears as a pendant around her neck. He can recall exactly how they met and the last time he’d seen her, and the familiarity of her eases something in his chest.
It is late on the second to last day of her visit, and the three adults are lounging on cushions by the fire now that the apprentices have all gone to bed. They’ve been drinking, and the warm flush of it courses through Olly’s veins, and when the latest bottle runs empty, Qifrey goes to fetch another from the cellar.
Olruggio is staring into the flames, his mind drifting, when Alaira nudges his leg with her foot.
“What’s going on with you two?” she asks.
Olly lolls his head to look at her. “Whaddayamean?” he asks, his words slurring together with drink and sleeplessness, which always make his accent stronger. He struggles to draw himself back to the present, to wring meaning from her words.
“You and Qifrey. Did you two fight?”
Olruggio chooses his words carefully, since he can’t precisely remember. “Why would you think that?”
Alaira makes a thoughtful sound and drains the last of the wine in her glass. “The way he looks at you when you’re not watching. Like he’s afraid you’ll wake up and realize you’re too good for him, or like you already have.” She waves her glass emphatically. “And you look at him like you’re trying to etch his face on the insides of your eyelids. I thought you two sorted this out years ago, after that firelight festival. I’m not sure I can stand listening to you both pining after one another again.” She cocks her head thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. “What did he do?”
Olruggio blushes. “He didn’t do anything. We’re friends. We’re not—we don’t—"
Alaira’s eyebrows shoot up. “Olly,” she says skeptically. “You’ve been kissing since you were teenagers. I’ve caught you at it enough times to know.”
Olruggio blinks. He thinks of the looks Qifrey gives him. Cool. Distant. A little sad. Almost…longing. He thinks of the way he aches to reach out, sometimes, the effort it takes to still his wanting hands. He is sure that holding Qifrey, kissing him, would feel comforting, familiar. Like coming home. You’ve been kissing since you were teenagers. It feels right, but he can’t—he doesn’t….remember.
He groans and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Alaira sits up, a frown creasing her eyebrows. “Olruggio, what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry. I just—” his breath hitches. He thinks about lying. He thinks, hysterically, that it won’t matter either way, because he’ll forget what he’s told her, and someone ought to know. And she has been such a steady, solid presence these last few days. He takes a steadying breath.
“Truth is, I’ve had a hard time…remembering, lately.” He tells her about the dreams and the forgetting and the way the line between dreaming and waking is almost impossible to discern. “I went to see Sinochia. She—” he swallows past a sudden lump in his throat. Alaira reaches out and squeezes his hand. “She said the only similar cases she found were from Adanlee.”
“Adanlee? But—” Alaira’s eyes grew wide at the implication. “You think the Knights--?”
Olruggio shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
She looks at him steadily, understanding sparking in her warm eyes. “You haven’t told Qifrey.”
It isn’t a question. He shakes his head and risks a look at Alaira. Her face is deeply concerned.
“Olruggio, you’re his Watchful Eye. He deserves to know if you can’t complete your duties. And,” she presses before he can protest, “you’re his best friend. He’d want to know if something was wrong. Just like you would want him to tell you if your places were reversed,”she adds meaningfully.
Olruggio sighs. It has always been pointless to argue with Alaira. “Maybe I have told him,” he tries hopelessly, “maybe I just don’t remember.”
“In that case, I would need to have a word with Qifrey,” she says archly, and tries to take another sip of her wine, only to find the glass empty.
Olly groans, dropping his face into his hands. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. I promise.”
“If you remember,” Alaira says, and Olly shoots her a dark look. “Sorry. Too soon?”
“Yes,” Olly growls.
A humming drifts up from the cellar as Qifrey returns with two more bottles. Alaira laughs. “Qifrey! Are you trying to get us drunk?”
Qifrey grins as he refills their glasses. “I’m sure Euini isn’t the only one who missed having company.”
Alaira’s smile softens. “I did miss you two,” she sighs. “Though it’s not like you two ever came to visit when I was in the Great Hall. Just this one,” she says, nudging Olly again with her foot so that he almost falls over, more than a little tipsy himself, “and only when he was on business.”
Olly grins sheepishly. “But visiting with you was the best part?” he tries.
Alaira laughs again and raises her newly filled glass in a toast. “Nice try. But I suppose I can’t begrudge the young Dissident of the Great Hall avoiding the place, huh Qif?” She smiles at him and takes a sip of her wine. “The place is boring without you two.”
Qifrey snorts. “I doubt that. All those machinations?”
Alaira concedes this with a nod. They stay up far too late, reminiscing, and Olly does his best to laugh in the right places. To keep the confusion from his face when Qifrey recalls memories lost to him. To savor the way Qifrey smiles at him, warm and familiar, and the way Alaira covers for him when he stumbles, unable to complete a story Qifrey can’t finish telling because he is laughing too hard.
The evening is warm and bright and familiar, wrapping itself around Olruggio with the comforting weight of familiarity and warm haze of alcohol. Amid all the tension and worry he has been feeling, it is almost too good to be real.
Almost, he thinks, a dream.
*
“What’s happening to Olruggio, Qifrey?” Alaira asks, eyes narrowed over her steaming cup of coffee. It is early, the apprentices not yet awake, the man in question still locked away in his workshop. They are alone together in the comforting quite of the early-morning kitchen sitting at the table.
Qifrey tilts his head inquiringly. “What do you mean? He’s confessed he hasn’t been sleeping well, lately. I’ve tried to convince him to take better care of himself, but you know how he gets—"
“It’s more than that, Qifrey,” Alaira insists, “and if you haven’t seen it before now, it’s either because you’ve been too wrapped up in your own shit to notice or you’ve been willfully ignoring it.”
Qifrey narrows his eyes. He has always appreciated Alaira’s blunt honesty. “What do you mean?”
“He said he’s forgetting things,” Alaira tells him. “Things he never had to think about before. You really haven’t noticed?”
“Forgetting things?” Qifrey repeats faintly. He carefully puts down his teacup to hide the way his hands have started to tremble. “He’s been a little distant lately, but I had thought—” Qifrey blushes. “He’s always so busy with his inventions. I thought he wanted space. A…a cooling of our relationship. He told me as much.”
“Did he?” Alaira puts a hand to her head and takes in a slow, deep breath. “Men,” she mutters, then takes another deep breath and drops her hand. “Have you been experiencing anything similar? Forgetting things?”
Qifrey considers this. He sleeps less easily without Olruggio beside him. Finds himself restless and agitated with the stagnation of his investigation into the brimmed hats. And lately, he has spent an undue amount of willpower stilling his hand from reaching for Olruggio. But none of this is unusual. He thinks of the girls and their lessons, but aside from Olruggio’s increasingly disheveled state, they all seem in perfect health.
“No, the girls and I are all fine as far as I can tell. I’ll check in with them later today, just to be sure.”
Alaira nods and takes a thoughtful sip of her coffee, considering. “Maybe one of the projects he’s been working on?”
Qifrey makes a helpless gesture, indicating his ignorance of such things, and Alaira groans in frustration. “I swear, it’s like you two haven’t been living together for years!”
Qifrey looks down into his teacup. He thinks suddenly of the fruity, bitter flavor of dragonflower tea. I didn’t want to see it, he thinks.
“You haven’t had any more run ins with the Knights have you?”
Qifrey scowls. “As you know, they have…concerns about our Coco. We’ve had a handful of encounters with them in the past few months, but nothing drastic.”
Alaira raises an eyebrow. “Any chance Olly had a confrontation with them on his own?”
Qifrey blinks. “You think they could have wiped his memory?” He tucks his hands into his sleeves to hide their shaking. He could picture it easily. Olly, on one of his trips to the Great Hall, confronted by the Knights. Perhaps they had threatened his Watchful Eye position. Threatened Coco or himself. A constriction in his chest. Olly would never stand for it. He feels his breath growing wild. “But he’s still a witch,” he protests, trying to remain calm, to think logically. “I’ve seen him do magic. Unless they’ve figured out a way to target specific memories—” Qifrey cuts himself off, feeling the breath knocked out of him as he drains of color.
Alaira narrows her eyes at him. “The Knights are the last people I’d expect to experiment with forbidden magic like that.”
A breath. “Then who?” Qifrey murmurs. He needs to give her a believable culprit. “The brim hats?”
Somewhere deep inside himself, a part of him is screaming, and another part is roiling with disgust. He shoves them both down further and hates himself a little more. He needs to maintain a believable façade of confusion and worry. To protect Alaira. To ensure his apprentices remain with him. To keep his secret safe. The only saving grace is that Olly is not here. Olruggio would have seen through him in an instant.
Alaira appears to consider it. “Perhaps. But for what purpose?” Qifrey makes a helpless gesture and hopes that she believes him. She is not as observant as Olly, could never read him with as much ease, but she has always been terribly shrewd. She gazes at him with a calculating look in her steady, warm eyes. “You were always rather intrigued by forbidden magic, weren’t you, Qifrey?”
She says it casually. Mildly. But Qifrey can hear the implication. He stiffens. “Intrigued isn’t the word I would use,” he says coldly. He tilts his head in allowance, “Compelled, perhaps.” Alaira’s gaze goes to the flash of light reflected off the shaded lens of his glasses, as he had intended. Reminding her of his origins, as if anyone in the Great Hall had ever forgotten. Reminding her—he hoped—that he could never be aligned with those who had taken so greatly from him. She presses her lips into a thin line.
From the corner of his eye, Qifrey notes the placement of his hat where it rests on the table, not far from Alaira. Slowly, he reaches to pick it up, caressing the long black ribbon attached to its point. “Olrguggio’s friendship is the greatest gift to be bestowed upon me since I was taken from that coffin.” He shudders at the mention of it, even after all these years. “I value it more than the gift of magic itself,” he tells her truthfully. Meets her eyes. “As I value yours.”
Alaira softens, just a fraction. But that calculating look never leaves her eyes. “We do awful things to protect that which we love,” she says carefully.
Qifrey’s mouth hardens. She suspects. He could not allow her suspicions to risk the life he has built, the mission to which he has devoted himself so wholly. Without looking, he completes the circle around the sigil on his hat where it sits on his lap. He lunges forward awkwardly, the table between them. Alaira’s eyes widen at the sudden motion, at the rattle of dishes, at the spilled coffee seeping across the wood between them, but it is too late. Qifrey sags as she slumps forward, the sleeve of her robe soaking up the spilled liquid.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers a moment later as he removes his hat. “Truly, I did not want it to come to this.”
He has time. Experience has taught him that much. It’s not much, but enough for a reasonable excuse to come to him. He stands and begins to tidy up the worst of the mess.
“Wha—?” Alaira mumbles a few minutes later, blearily lifting her head.
Qifrey smiles, warm and concerned. “Oh dear. Still a bit hungover? You could barely keep your eyes open. You even spilled your coffee.” He tsks as he hands her a towel for her sleeve. “Here, let me make you another.”
Alaira winces and puts a hand to her head. “Hungover…?”
“We did have quite a bit to drink last night. I’m feeling it myself. Hair of the dog?” he asks, pausing as he reaches for a bottle of amber liquid kept on a high shelf.
“Please,” Alaira groans as she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Gods, I don’t think I’ve been this hungover since we graduated.”
Qifrey smiles as he pours a generous dash of rum into her coffee and hands it to her. “We had to roll Olly back to the Hall in a wheelbarrow,” he reminisces.
“You and I weren’t much better,” Alaira laughs. “Neither of us could see straight enough to draw any functional spells.”
“We always looked out for each other, though. The three of us,” Qifrey says.
Alaira takes a swig of her coffee and winces. “Still are.”
“Still are,” Qifrey agrees, with a sip of his own tea.
A thump from above as one of the apprentices drops something. Alaira glances to the ceiling, distracted. “Euini and I should leave soon. It’s safer for all of us if we stay on the move.” She looks at him again, her smile warm and genuine, and Qifrey feels wretched. He takes another sip of his tea to drown the feeling. “Thank you for letting us visit. Euini needed it.” Her smile turns vulnerable. “I needed it.”
Qifrey feels, impossibly, worse. Alaira has never been overly open about her feelings. They’d always been alike in that regard.
“You were right, about taking an apprentice,” she continues. “It’s the best thing I’ve done with my magic, to teach it to someone else.” She reaches out and squeezes Qifrey’s hand as the rumble of excited apprentice feet thunder down the stairs. “We’ll leave after breakfast. Give the kids a chance to say goodbye.”
Qifrey nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“Take care, Qifrey. Look after our Olruggio.”
Qifrey looks down at their interlaced hands. “I’m trying to.”
*
It is night in the atelier. Peaceful. Or it would be, if they weren’t having an intense whisper-argument, trying to keep their voices low enough not to wake the girls.
“You’re looking into the brim hats again,” Olruggio accuses. Guilt flashes across Qifrey’s face and realization follows. “You never stopped. You lied to me?” Olly asks, wounded.
Qifrey’s shoulders are tense. “I’m trying to protect you, Oru!” he hisses.
“We swore an oath!” Olruggio snaps, and winces at his volume. Both men guiltily glance towards the stairs towards the girls’ bedrooms. “We swore an oath,” Olruggio repeats lower. “Does that ribbon on the end of your hat mean so little to you?”
Reflexively, Qifrey reaches for the length of black ribbon. “Olruggio—” he starts and sounds genuinely pained.
“We swore we would face our troubles together,” Olruggio presses, and his voice is rough with unshed tears.
“I can’t let you do this with me!” Qifrey whispers emphatically. “We swore that oath when we were children. I didn’t realize—I didn’t think of the consequences.” He takes his hat from his head, fingering the ribbon nervously. “I have done unforgiveable things, Olruggio.” He glances up to meet Olly’s gaze. “I’m willing to do more. I won’t drag you down with me. I won’t be the reason your magic gets taken from the world.”
“And what about you?” Olruggio insists. “Your magic?”
Qifrey laughs, low and bleak. “I was never meant to be a witch.”
Olruggio rocks back, stunned, and then steps forward to grip Qifrey’s arm as he turns away. “Don’t say that. You are a witch, no matter what lies in your past. Would you say the same to Coco? To any of the girls? You are a great witch and an excellent teacher. They need you.”
Qifrey looks at him seriously. “I’ll be here for them as long as I am able, but that’s why I need you to stay away from this, Oru. I need to know someone will be there to look after the girls as fiercely as I would.” He twists his arm in Olly’s grip so that he can clasp his arm in return. “You are the only one I trust with this.”
Olruggio balks, shaking his head. “I can’t teach. I’m not even qualified to take apprentices! I was only ever supposed to be your Watchful Eye. Let me be that, Qifrey. Let me look out for you.”
Qifrey smiles sadly. “Not this time, Olly. It’s my turn to look out for you.”
Faster than Olruggio can react, Qifrey pulls him forward and plunges his hat over Olly’s head.
He forgets.
Olruggio is standing near the fireplace, his mind filled with a dull buzzing. It has been a month since Alaira and Euini left, taking any shred of clarity he thought he possessed with them. He thinks, idly, that maybe he was going to the kitchen for something. Or possibly he was leaving the kitchen? He inspects his hands to see if they are holding a plate or a drink or covered in the sticky residue of crumbs. What he sees instead is a small, worried face framed by golden-green hair light as corn silk looking worriedly up at him. He stares blankly at her face, trying to place her.
Looking at her, he feels a fierce sort of fondness. An unaccountably vague sense of pride. He cannot for the life of him recall her name.
“Master Olruggio?” the girl asks, and he can tell by the tone of her voice that she’s said his name more than once.
He knows her—or at least, she knows him. He should know her. That much is clear to him. But who was she? And what on earth was her name?
“Uh, yes?” he answers, trying desperately to place her.
“Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to get Professor Qifrey?”
“No, no, I’m fine. I’ll be right as rain in a minute. Just a bit…foggy is all.”
“Coco?” Agott’s voice drifts from the direction of her room as she descends the stairs. “You forgot your palm quire…” She trails off at the sight of them. “What’s wrong with Master Olruggio?”
Coco. Olruggio grasps at the name with relief. For now, he does not think about what he must look like to spur Agott’s second question. And if Coco had a quire and was staying at the atelier, she was almost certainly one of Qifrey’s apprentices. How long has she been with them? How could he have forgotten her?
It’s getting worse. The thought terrifies him.
“Excuse me girls, I just have to…” but he can’t think of a reasonable excuse, so he just flees back to his own workshop. He locks his door and throws himself into his chair by his desk and starts sketching.
It is late when he finally sits back and releases his pen, his hand a stiff claw around it. He rubs at his drawing hand and inspects the fruits of his labors. Five portraits, each reasonably recognizable and neatly labelled. Agott; Qifrey’s apprentice. Richeh; Qifrey’s apprentice. Tetia; Qifrey’s apprentice. Coco; Qifrey’s apprentice. Qifrey.
Satisfied, he pins them up on the wall above his desk where he would see them each morning. A reminder. He trails a finger over the inked planes of Qifrey’s face and gives himself a single rule: don’t forget.
*
He starts keeping lists. Everything he can remember. Personal histories of each of the girls. Food preferences for all the inhabitants of the atelier. Lessons they’ve studied. Places they’ve travelled. If Qifrey notices the growing collection of notes pinned to Olruggio’s walls like last season’s shed of a scalewolf, he doesn’t say anything.
He makes other lists too but finds he doesn’t need them. He’s perfectly able to recall deadlines for contraption contracts, remembers the name of every client, knows his way through the twisting paths of the Great Hall without consulting a map.
It’s something about the atelier, he thinks later that night as he lies stretched across the sofa watching Qifrey read. But if it was a spell, wouldn’t it affect the others too?
He tears his eyes from Qifrey to observe the girls. Richeh is laying on her stomach on the floor, admiring the way the firelight scatters through her glittering crystal ribbons and idly kicking her feet back and forth. Tetia and the green-haired girl whose name slips from his mind as soon as he reads it each morning are talking animatedly while they attempt to fold squares of colored paper into various animals. Agott is sitting nearby, curled up with a book and pretending not to be invested, even as she offers suggestions and critique.
The evening passes languid and dream-like. First Agott then Richeh get drawn into the origami, and Olruggio alternates between watching them and sneaking glances at Qifrey, or staring trance-like into the dancing flames, until eventually the green-haired girl can’t stifle a yawn and Agott insists they all go to bed.
“Oh my, you’re quite right Agott,” Qifrey frets as he sets aside his book. “It is terribly late.” He ushers the girls off to bed and is about to follow after them to his own room, but Olruggio catches his wrist as he walks past.
“Qifrey…” he starts but isn’t sure how to continue. He is distracted by the fact that he can feel Qifrey’s pulse in his wrist, and it seems unusually fast.
If this were a dream, he would tug Qifrey down, pull him into an embrace, or a kiss. If this were a dream, the couch would eat him and Qifrey would look on impassively. If this were a dream, he would lay here, tongue-tied, until Qifrey pulled his arm free and walked away forever. If this were a dream, it would go just like this. If this were a dream, at least he would be able to wake up.
He does not pull Qifrey down into a kiss, and the couch does not swallow him, and Qifrey does not pull away. He just looks inquisitively down at Olruggio, his expression cordial. Inquisitive. Distant. “Yes?” he asks, once the sounds of the girls preparing for bed have faded away.
“How’ve you been feeling lately?” Olruggio hazards and then wishes the couch would swallow him for settling on something so damnably vague.
Qifrey looks at him for a long moment, then carefully leans over to sweep a thumb gently across the deep crevices shadowed beneath Olruggio’s eyes. “I feel I should be asking you that.”
Olly’s pulse jumps at the contact, but he forces himself not to be distracted. “Humor me,” he insists.
Qifrey pulls his hand back and hums thoughtfully, looking at him with a sharp eye. Olruggio realizes he can’t tell what color it is. He has looked at Qifrey’s eye for years. He should know what color it is. It seems to shift and blur in his vision even as he looks at it. Blue? Gray? Hazel? He feels hysteria rising in his throat. Another memory slipping like smoke between his fingers, even as the answer should be clear before him.
“I feel well, Oru, thank you for asking. There’s no reason for you to be concerned about me.”
“You haven’t been…I don’t know, forgetting?”
For the merest fleeting moment, Qifrey looks panicked, but it is gone so quickly that Olruggio believes he must have imagined it. His friend furrows his brows politely. “Forgetting what?”
Olruggio pulls a hand through his hair in frustration. “Oh, I don’t know. Anything, really.”
Qifrey’s colorless eye is unwavering as he meets his gaze. “I suppose one is always forgetting some little thing,” he says carefully. “What’s this about?”
“I—” the words are there. He nearly says them. I’ve been forgetting. The girls. You. I can’t tell when I’m waking or sleeping. I’m going insane. I thought it was the atelier but…it’s just me. I can’t be your Watchful Eye any longer. You can’t let me be your Watchful Eye. It isn’t fair to the girls. I can’t look out for you all, not the way that I swore I would. I can’t look after you the way I promised.
“Nothin’,” he blushes. “I suppose I’ve just been…a little foggy, here ‘n there. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t catching.” He hates that he lied. Why did he lie?
Qifrey reaches out again and cups Olruggio’s cheek in an uncharacteristic display of affection. This is a dream, Olruggio realizes. Wake up. Wake up.
But he doesn’t.
“That’s kind of you, Olly,” Qifrey says gently. “I promise I’m perfectly well. You should try to get more sleep.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles up Olruggio’s throat, but he catches it and turns it into a gruff cough before Qifrey can become truly alarmed. Dream-Qifrey or not, he doesn’t want him to worry. “Yer probably right,” he mumbles. “G’night then.” He releases Qifrey’s wrist and immediately longs for its warmth.
Qifrey hesitates a moment longer, then nods once like Olruggio has said something he agrees with and whisks away towards his room.
Olruggio lays on the couch watching the shadows dance on the ceiling and waits to fall asleep or wake up.
*
It takes a letter from the Knights Moralis demanding three month’s backlog of reports on the green-haired girl’s progress—apparently her name is Coco, yet another thing he forgot, along with her reports—before he finally comes clean to Qifrey.
You are remiss in your duties as Watchful Eye, the letter had informed him. Report at once or we will initiate procedures to remove you from your position.
But how could he write reports for a girl he keeps forgetting exists? It is a doomed endeavor. It’s time to come clean to Qifrey.
He finds his best friend sitting outside in the garden and groans as he lowers himself down next to him.
“Qifrey, I need to tell you something.” Qifrey turns to look at him, curious. There’s nothing for it. “I went to see Sinochia.”
Now Qifrey looks concerned. “Sinochia? Are you well?”
“Well—no,” Olruggio admits, rubbing at the back of his head with embarrassment. “It’s…my memory. I went a couple months back. You’ve noticed I haven’t been sleeping? Well, I’ve been—forgetting. Not just my dreams. I don’t remember when I became your Watchful Eye, or who the green-haired girl is in the atelier. I read notes every morning to remind myself of things I should know, but even as I’m reading hers the words seem to slip off my mind.” His voice has gotten progressively rougher and he swipes at a sudden tear. “I’m not fit to be your Watchful Eye. The Knights are going to remove me. They sent me a letter.”
Qifrey looks stricken. “You forgot Coco? I didn’t realize…how did I not realize?”
“I never told you,” Olly says heavily. “I was hopin’—well, that it would get better on it’s own I guess,” he laughed humorlessly. “It’s not just Coco,” he says, hesitating over the unfamiliar name. “I can’t remember your favorite tea, or the color of your eye even as I’m looking at it.” He hovers at the edge of a precipice, and because the Knights are about to remove him anyway, because he’s not sure if he’ll remember saying it, he confesses, “I can’t remember how many times we’ve kissed, or if it’s just that I’ve always wanted to.”
“Olly—” Qifrey says, voice softening.
But Olruggio can’t stop now, or he might not have the courage to continue. “I don’t remember how you lost your eye, or how exactly we met, or how we got the atelier. I’m forgetting you and I—” Olruggio looks at him, eyes wide.
Qifrey is white as a sheet.
He thinks suddenly of the sharp clarity he had felt around Alaira when she visited, the way he had never yet forgotten a deadline for a contraption, or lost his way around the Great Hall.
“It’s not just my memories,” Olruggio realizes, the connection illuminating only now that he’s spoken it aloud, “it’s my memories connected to you.”
“Olruggio…”
“Sinochia couldn’t find a cure,” he tells Qifrey slowly. “But in her research, she found similar cases from Adanlee. She said she thought—” he swallows, “she thought it might be the side effects of a memory spell. She thought I should ask you if you noticed anything strange about me, if you might know how I came into contact with such a spell.”
He looks at Qifrey. He is usually so accomplished at keeping his emotions in check, but Olruggio has had a lifetime to decipher his minutest expressions and guilt is written all over his face.
“It was you,” he says, and the words fall with grave surety. “You’ve been erasing my memory.” He stumbles to his feet. “Why?”
“Olruggio, wait—” Qifrey surges up after him, snatching at Olruggio’s cloak.
Olruggio grips Qifrey’s arms hard enough to hurt. “The girls. Have you been--?”
“No!” Qifrey protests. “I would never do that to a child—”
“Just me, then,” Olruggio spits, voicing the unspoken words. “Why?”
“Because you’re the only one I can’t lie to, Olruggio,” Qifrey confesses, a note of desperation to his voice. “You always see through me.”
“I didn’t this time.”
Qifrey laughs miserably, the sound falling hollowly into the night. “You did. Over and over again. You always see through me. You just don’t remember.” Qifrey chokes on the word.
Olruggio shoves him away with disgust. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend,” Qifrey pleads. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Yourself! Myself! Us. You always want to help me, and I am always going to be your undoing. Your magic is a gift to this world, Olruggio. You are a gift.” He holds his hands out in entreaty, as if approaching a wild animal. “You use your magic for great kindness which shines brighter than any torch. I was never meant to be a witch at all. I won’t let them snuff out your magic for shining a bit of your light on me. I couldn’t bear that—you can understand that, can’t you?”
It made a twisted sort of sense.
“And what will you do now?” Olruggio asks heavily. But he doesn’t need to ask. He knows.
Qifrey takes his hat from his head. We have been here before, Olruggio thinks, and for once, he is grateful that he can’t remember.
*
It has been a trying week. He had had to forge Olruggio’s report on Coco’s progress to keep the Knights at bay—he’d had no idea how detailed and thorough Olruggio’s reports were and found an even deeper admiration for his dearest friend. Olruggio had confessed his memory loss at least once a day, and Qifrey didn’t know what to do anymore. He found himself, over and over, in a panic with his hat in his hands, plunging it over Olruggio’s disheveled head.
Since Alaira’s visit, he’d spent sleepless nights trying to find a spell to counter the memory wipe to no avail. Eventually, he’d stopped looking. If anyone knew of such a spell, the knowledge lay with the brim hats. He simply had to find them. Doubly so, now.
He looks down at his friend where he lays in the grass on the side of the road. Qifrey sits with his arms wrapped around his knees next to him, his hat in his hands. Because he is a weak and selfish man, he gives in to the urge to card his fingers through Oru’s hair while he is still unconscious from the memory spell. It’s an action he has done innumerable times. With the soft brush of dark hair against his fingers come a thousand memories. Placing Olruggio’s hat on his head with lingering touches as a child. Their first kiss. A hundred kisses littered across the shadowed corridors and forgotten corners of the Great Hall, his hands always tangled in his hair. The way the firelight clung to those dark locks. How they looked, wind-tossed and care-free, when Olly took the girls out on the Downs. The way they curled in post-coital bliss across Qifrey’s pillows. He doubted he would ever see them there again. Not now.
He pulled his hand back as Olruggio began to stir.
“Wha--? What happened?” Olruggio asks groggily as he pulls himself up.
Qifrey forces his face into a smile. “Are you alright, Oru?”
Olruggio frowns at him. “Why’d you call me that?”
Qifrey tilts his head in confusion. “Call you what?”
“Oru. Olruggio. How do you know my name?”
Something terrible stirs in Qifrey’s stomach, dark and churning. An awful suspicion that he can’t yet bring himself to name. “What do you mean?”
Olruggio rubs the back of his head, clearly embarrassed. “Sorry, I—have we met?”
The terrible black tide in his stomach is rising, threatening to swallow him. You will only forget that which pertains to my secret. He has said it so many times. A promise. A plea. But where did Qifrey end and his secret begin? Oh, Oru, what have I done?
All that has ever been steady and certain beneath his feet has fallen away. Qifrey’s hands tremble, so he tucks them into the folds of his robes and clenches them into fists. His face, he is certain, is unreadable. Or at least, unreadable to anyone but Olruggio.
“Are you okay?” Olruggio asks, concern furrowing his brow.
He doesn’t even remember me, Qifrey thinks wildly, and he still worries over me, still cares.
Qifrey smooths out his face, pastes on an easy smile. Hates how naturally it comes to him. This is what comes of being a coward, he tells himself firmly. Oru deserves better. Has always deserved better. You must finally give him this.
He has always known there was only ever one way to keep Olruggio truly safe. Only one thing he could never bring himself to do. A clean break. An honest forgetting.
Qifrey turns his face away, so Olruggio won’t see his heart breaking. “Perfectly fine. My apologies, I-I didn’t think you’d forget meeting me. I should have realized you hit your head rather hard.”
“My head?” Olruggio asks, reaching up to feel for a gash or a bump.
“Yes. I just met you on the road. You were on your way to the Great Hall to set up a new atelier. You were just telling me about it when you tripped and took a bit of a fall. You don’t appear to be bleeding but—but perhaps you should visit the Healing Spire, when you arrive, just to be sure. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you further.”
“Thank you---” Olly looks at him hesitantly, expectantly, and Qifrey realizes he is waiting for a name.
“Tartah” Qifrey lies.
Olruggio looks at him for a moment, and Qifrey’s heart speeds in his chest, thinking maybe he recognized the lie for what it was.
But Olly just groans as he heaves himself up. “Sorry ‘bout all this. Can’t even really remember falling.” He laughs with embarrassment and holds out his hand to Qifrey. “Thanks again for your help, Tartah. I ‘preciate it.”
Qifrey remembers every time they have done this. Knows with perfect clarity how their hands will fit together, the roughness of calluses on Olruggio’s palm, the strength of his grip. A thousand shared moments left in his keeping alone. It is with great effort that he does not tremble as he reaches out to shake Olly’s hand like a stranger.
“It was my privilege, truly. Goodbye, Olruggio.”
Qifrey watches the golden tassel swing from the point of Olruggio’s hat as he stumbles away down the hill—the last small part of himself the witch would keep, unwittingly, of their shared past.
The long black ribbon at the point of his own hat flutters in the breeze, reaching out towards the retreating figure. Qifrey brushes it back and twines it around his fingers. If he is lucky, perhaps he will have the opportunity to fix this, one day.
But he does not expect to be lucky.