“Your wounds refuse to heal for want of it,” Ephraim pointed out.Dr Hitchingham had told him something of scurvy, how starving sailors would find their scars ripping open into fresh wounds for want of food at sea.This seemed to him more similar than otherwise.
“Not long,” Hull repeated.“Merely since the break.”
Too long by half, in Ephraim’s reckoning.“And you would not even consider drawing your strength from me.”
Hull worried his lip between his teeth.“I cannot.”
“Because I’m old,” Ephraim concluded for him.
“No—” Hull raised himself up on his elbows, as if the force of his protest drove him forward.“No, it’s not that.You’re just… delicate.”
“Frail, you mean.”A wan smile plucked at the corner of Ephraim’s mouth.“A common symptom of growing old.”
“You’re angry,” Hull observed.
Ephraim, who’d thought he’d hid that unseemly response tolerably well, baulked.“Not with you.”
Hull did not appear as though he believed him.
Ephraim endeavoured to explain.“I’m not angry that you require something I cannot provide.I’m angry that you didn’t tell me of it, and thus prevented me from assisting you in arranging for the lack—or at the very least, stepping out of your way so you might seek what you needed without undue interference.”
“I don’t want you out of my way,” Hull insisted almost before Ephraim had finished speaking.“My way is much improved for your presence in it.”
No one had ever said anything of the kind to Ephraim in all his days.All his life he had known his presence to be an annoyance or a burden to most everyone of his acquaintance.He counted himself extraordinarily lucky to have even one friend at his age.
Which meant he had no ready reply to his beloved beyond the woefully-inadequate, “Likewise.”
Hull’s smile beamed as beautifully as ever.
“Old and frail and mortal as I may be,” Ephraim began.
“You’re hardly—!”Hull protested.
“Old and frail and mortal as I may be,” Ephraim said again over Hull’s attempts to deny the bald facts, “I think you might grant me a little more credit in myunderstanding, if given the chance.”
Hull was silent long enough that Ephraim feared he’d offended him, until at last, so softly it startled Ephraim to hear, Hull replied, “Yes.Yes, I ought to have done so.”
Ephraim, who had not often had the pleasure of someone agreeing with his assertions outside of a purely legal context, took a moment to fully absorb this apology.
“So,” Ephraim concluded, “you require strength to draw upon.Mine will not suffice, for reasons earlier stated.Nor will the crowds with which you have previously made do.Therefore we must find someone we can trust with our secrets who could come to you here.Have you any friends in the city who might…?”
Hull shook his head.“They’re jolly enough fellows, but none I could trust to see me as I am.”
Ephraim hesitated.“Then… have you any friends in the fae realms…?”
“I do,” Hull admitted with unmistakable and unaccountable reluctance.“Several, in fact.”
“They would assist you in this matter?”
“They would.”Hull’s demeanour relaxed as he spoke, and it was with a rush of something approaching enthusiasm that he added, “Any of whom would be delighted to meet you.”
“Oh!”The startled syllable burst from Ephraim’s lips quite without thought.He hastened to demur.“I hardly imagine?—”
Hull’s freshly-returned smile faded somewhat, much to Ephraim’s growing dismay.“Though if you would prefer not to meet them, I understand.”
“Poppycock!”Another shocking outburst.Ephraim reined in his tongue and tried again to say something more sensible.“Of course I would welcome any friend you chose to introduce.I meant only that it seems rather… well, that is to say…”
Hull took him by the hand.It was a wonderful thing, to have his warmth suffuse his fingertips, the softness of his palm tenderly cradling his knuckles.Ephraim quieted.
