Page 27 of Tending the Ache

Then Bohdi pushes himself off the weapons rack and says, "I need the yard."

He says it as a suggestion. Casually. The way he has suggested the training yard a thousand times before, when the world is too complicated and the only solution is to hit something until it makes sense. Eskil agrees without examining the request, because he wants the exertion himself, because the journey left him restless and the week of avoiding the healer's street has made it worse. His body is full of energy that has nowhere to go and frustration that has no outlet, and he does not want to keep standing in this armory with whatever he just saw in his best friend's face.

"Fine," Eskil says. "Let's go."

The training yards are at the eastern edge of the keep's grounds, a broad, flat expanse of packed earth bordered by wooden fencing and overlooked by the barracks on three sides. The morning is crisp, autumn settling into Valen the way it always does, gradually and then all at once, the air sharpening, the light turning thin and gold. A handful of soldiers are already running drills along the far fence. They glance up as Eskil and Bohdi enter and then look quickly away, because the king and his second-in-command walking into the yard together with that set to their shoulders means one thing, and it is best observed from a respectful distance.

They spar.

Eskil pulls two practice swords from the rack at the yard's edge, dull-edged and heavy, weighted to punish sloppy form, and tosses one to Bohdi. Bohdi catches it, turns it once in his grip, and makes a face that communicates his opinion of any weapon that isn't his axe. He takes his position anyway.

They face each other across the packed earth and do the thing they have done together since they were young enough to think they were immortal: try to kill each other as convincingly as possible without actually succeeding.

The first round is feeling out. Testing range, testing footwork, reacquainting their bodies with each other's rhythms after weeks at sea where the deck was too unsteady for serious sparring. Bohdi fights with power-first instincts that belong to a man who grew up swinging something heavier, and Eskil circles him carefully, waiting for the opening he knows is coming because it always comes. Bohdi overcommits on the follow-through, just slightly, just enough, a habit Eskil has been exploiting for years and that Bohdi has never fully corrected because correcting it would require him to sacrifice power, and Bohdi would rather die than sacrifice power.

There. The blade swings wide and Eskil steps inside the arc and drives his shoulder into Bohdi's chest and the clash of their bodies shakes the ground under Eskil's boots. Bohdi grunts, recovers, shoves him back, and the first round ends when Eskil's blade finds Bohdi's throat at the same moment Bohdi's pommel presses against Eskil's ribs.

"Dead," Bohdi concedes.

They separate. Reset.

The second round is faster. Harder. Eskil's blood is up now and the frustration that has been sitting in his chest all morning, at the council, at the Jakadi, at Morgan's quiet martyrdom, at himself for a hundred reasons he does not have the vocabulary to articulate, begins to find its way into his arms and his back and the arc of his blade. He presses forward, pushing Bohdi toward the fence, and Bohdi gives ground reluctantly, sword moving in tight defensive sweeps that turn Eskil's strikes aside with jarring efficiency.

The third round, Bohdi wins. He catches Eskil's blade on his crossguard, locks it, and twists, a move Eskil taught him years ago and has regretted ever since, and Eskil's sword goes spinning from his grip and the flat of Bohdi's blade is against his sternum before he can recover.

"You're dropping your left shoulder," Bohdi says.

"I'm aware."

"You always drop it when you're in your head."

"Thank you for the observation."

"Would you like me to keep exploiting it, or would you prefer to fix it?"

Eskil retrieves his sword and gives Bohdi a look that says he would prefer to fix the problem by applying the blade directly to Bohdi's smug face. Bohdi grins, the wide reckless grin that has been getting him into and out of trouble in equal measure since they were boys, and raises his sword.

The fourth round is brutal. The younger soldiers have drifted to the fence to watch, drawn by the sound and the spectacle, their king and his second-in-command going at each other with an intensity that blurs the line between training and violence. Eskil is sweating through his shirt, his muscles burning, his breath coming hard, and it is exactly what he needed. The physical world, simple and honest. The weight of the blade. The sting of impact. The language of the body, which is the only language he has ever been fluent in.

But Bohdi is distracted. Eskil can feel it in the rhythm of the fight, the half-beat delays, the moments where Bohdi's eyes lose focus, where his body performs the motions correctly but his mind is somewhere else. His blade connects with Eskil's and the power behind the strike is good but the precision is off, landing a finger's width from where it should, and for Bohdi that margin is unusual enough to be noticeable.

Eskil presses the advantage. He drives Bohdi back with a series of strikes designed to overwhelm, not to win, but to force his opponent to engage fully, to be here, in the yard, with the steel and the sweat and the dirt, and Bohdi responds but his feet are wrong, his weight is shifted too far back, his guard has a gap that shouldn't be there. Eskil steps into it and puts Bohdi on his back.

The impact sends a cloud of dust billowing around Bohdi's prone form. His sword clatters away. He lies on the packed earth, breathing hard, staring up at the sky with an expression more exhausted than a five-round spar warrants.

Eskil stands over him and holds out his hand. Bohdi takes it and Eskil hauls him to his feet. They stand close, both breathing hard, and the watching soldiers are suddenly very interested in the condition of the fence posts.

"Your head is not in it," Eskil says.

Bohdi meets his eyes. There is a beat, one in which whatever Bohdi is holding behind his teeth pushes forward, straining, nearly breaking loose, and then Bohdi dismisses him with an obscene gesture so creative in its specificity that two of the watching soldiers look away sharply and one appears to be memorizing it for future use.

Eskil snorts. He claps Bohdi on the shoulder, hard, the way they've always done, the impact a language of its own, carrying everything that cannot be said between men who do not say things. Bohdi claps him back, and for a moment they are just two men standing in a dusty yard with the autumn light going gold around them and the weight of the kingdom pressing down on both their shoulders.

"The Wolfe proposal," Bohdi says, and his voice is careful again. Controlled. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I've told the council no. I told Morgan no yesterday, in the library, at some volume."

"And?"