Page 2 of Tending the Ache

Indrie does not mean to watch. He has been not-watching Eskil since his journey began. He has perfected the art of tracking the king from the corner of his eye while appearing to study the horizon, or the rigging, or the backs of his own hands. He has gotten very good at it. He is not good at it now. Now he watches openly, because there is a crowd between them and he is certain he is invisible in it. The sight of Eskil on solid ground, in his homeland, among his people, does something terrible to the ache he has been carrying since the cabin.

Eskil does not look for him.

Not once. Not a glance back toward the ship, not a sweep of the dock, not the smallest turn of his head. Indrie stands in a strange city holding a stranger's arms and watches the king walk past him into a life that was always waiting, whether Indrie existed or not.

Eskil is halfway down the dock when a slender young man with long blond hair half in braids breaks away from the crowd and throws himself at the king hard enough that even Eskil staggers back a step.

Indrie's heart stops.

The young man hugs him fiercely, face buried in Eskil's chest, fingers gripping the back of his tunic. Eskil's arms come around him and hold him close. One large hand cradles the back of the young man's head. The other wraps around his shoulders. His eyes close and his jaw softens, and for a moment the ruthless king looks like nothing more than a man who has been desperately missed.

Indrie is struck with a clean, sharp pain, as though something has been slipped between his ribs.

Of course. Of course Eskil did not want him. Of course there was no space for him. The king already has someone waiting, beautiful and golden and clinging to him with the kind of intimacy that speaks of years, not weeks. A lover. A partner. Someone who belongs in those arms in a way Indrie never will.

He watches Eskil press his lips to the top of the young man's head, and something inside him folds like wet parchment.

But then the young man pulls back, and Indrie sees his face properly for the first time, and the resemblance is immediate and unmistakable.

The same strong jaw. The same blue eyes, though lighter, pale as ice water where Eskil's are deep. The same stubborn set to the mouth. The same proud line of the nose, softened by youth but carved from the same stone.

A brother, Indrie thinks. The relief is so sharp and so sudden that it embarrasses him. His knees nearly go out from under him.

His second thought is: the brother is near his own age.

He realizes with a flush of mortification that he has never once thought about the years between himself and Eskil. He doesn’t know how many there are, but he knows they exist. In Kalkoa it would be unremarkable. Marriages with wide gaps were arranged without comment, brides traded between houses like livestock, age a consideration only insofar as it affected breeding. But looking at the young man in Eskil's arms, who could easily be Indrie's own age, bright-eyed and sharp-jawed and so clearly young, Indrie is forced to consider something that makes his face heat.

Eskil probably sees him as an adolescent. A naive, damaged boy from a ruined kingdom who does not even speak his language properly. A body that happened to be convenient when the fruit was killing him. A mouth that asked do I belong to you and was gently, firmly told no.

He has been foolish. Profoundly, achingly foolish to think this man would ever want him.

"Indrie?"

He blinks. Dagny is tugging his arm, her brow creased, and he realizes he has been standing motionless in the middle of a crowd staring at the king for a conspicuously long time.

"Sorry," he says. "I was looking at the mountains. They're very large."

Dagny follows his gaze, which is aimed nowhere near the mountains.

"They are," she says. "Famously."

She does not press. She pulls him gently and he turns away from the sight of the king and his golden companion and lets himself be led up through the streets of Valen with Ingrid at his other side, pointing out landmarks and chattering in a slow, careful Rengaran that washes over him like water.

The city is even more remarkable up close than it was from the harbor. The streets are wide and paved with flat stones worn smooth by generations of feet. The buildings lean companionably against one another, their dark timber frames interlocked, their turf roofs thick with autumn wildflowers in deep gold and rust-red and a stubborn violet that grows in every crack and crevice. There are shop fronts with painted signs and a blacksmith's forge belching sparks and children chasing a spotted dog through an alley. A woman hangs laundry from a second-story window and sings while she does it.

Indrie tries to absorb all of it and cannot. There is too much color, too much life, too much noise. Not the clanging, hostile noise of Armond's court. The buzzing, humming noise of a place where people are simply living.

Ingrid points out the mill where she buys their flour, and the well with the best water, and the corner where Dagny once tripped over a goat and broke her wrist.

"The goat was banished from the district," Ingrid tells him, entirely serious. "For its crimes."

"As it should have been," Indrie says solemnly, and Dagny laughs so hard she has to stop walking.

The chatter carries him through the unfamiliar streets until they reach a small house on a sloping lane near the western edge of the city.

Dagny and Ingrid's home is modest and warm, built of dark timber with a turf roof and a front garden already beginning to turn gold with autumn. A trellis of some climbing vine Indrie does not recognize frames the doorway, its leaves curling inward with the season. Someone has swept the stone path from the lane to the door and lined it with small white rocks.

Inside, the house opens into one large room divided by furniture and purpose rather than walls. A loom sits in the corner with half-finished cloth still threaded through it in a repeating wave of blue and grey. Dried herbs hang from the kitchen rafters in neat bundles, filling the house with something green and faintly sweet. On top of a bookshelf near the window, a grey cat regards Indrie with supreme disinterest.