Page 39 of Tending the Ache

The poke is absurd. The sentiment behind it is not.

Indrie's expression softens. The irritation and the embarrassment and the bone-deep weariness melt away, and what is left beneath them is something raw and grateful and fragile. Something that looks, from a certain angle, like a man who has never been told he matters and is hearing it for the first time.

"Thank you, Ermin," he says. Quietly.

Ermin seems to realize he is not going to win tonight. The recognition crosses his face, a flicker of frustration followed by acceptance followed by the specific expression of a young man filing this conversation under unfinished business with the full intention of reopening it at the earliest opportunity.

He squeezes Indrie's arm. The grip is warm and firm and holds a moment longer than casual.

"Get some sleep," Ermin says. "You look terrible."

"You sound like Morgan."

"Good. Morgan is smart." Ermin releases his arm and moves toward the door. He pauses on the threshold and looks back, and the backward glance says, as clearly as any words, this conversation is not over.

Then he is gone. The door closes behind him. The clinic settles back into quiet.

Chapter 12

Eskil

Eskil is in a foul mood.

It has been a foul mood for several days running, a persistent and deepening weather pattern that shows no sign of lifting, and his servants have learned to approach him with the caution one extends to a wounded animal. Slowly, from the front, with no sudden movements and an exit route clearly identified. The kitchen maid who brought his breakfast this morning entered the study sideways, set the tray on the edge of the desk, and retreated without turning her back, which would have been impressive if it were not also a damning commentary on the quality of his temperament.

He is not sleeping well. He is not eating well. He is spending too many hours at his desk staring at documents he cannot focus on and too many hours in the training yard hitting things that cannot hit back. He's completely occupied by both the documents on his desk that reduce the boy he raised to an expendable pawn and a man four streets over who does not know–cannot know, must never know–that the king of Rengara is aching for him with a ferocity that borders on pathological.

He has not seen Indrie since the night he walked him home. Four days. He has reasons. Good reasons. Reasons that are sound and moral and protect Indrie from the catastrophic weight of Eskil's wanting.

The reasons are becoming less convincing by the hour.

Bohdi comes to him mid-afternoon. Eskil is in his study, staring at a supply requisition that might as well be written in a language he does not speak for all the sense it is making, when his second-in-command enters without knocking and closes the door behind him with a deliberateness that tells Eskil this is not a social call.

Bohdi's face is serious. Not the playful-serious he adopts when delivering bad news he finds personally entertaining, and not the grim-serious of battlefield reports. This is the flat, controlled expression Bohdi wears when something has happened that requires action, and the action is going to be unpleasant.

"We have a problem," Bohdi says.

He sits across from Eskil without invitation and leans forward with his forearms on his knees. His tattooed hands are clean but there is road dust on his boots and his braids are windblown, which means he has been outside the walls recently. Checking patrols, probably, or inspecting the watchtowers on the eastern road.

"One of the lumber workers at the mill was detained this morning by the eastern gate patrol," Bohdi says. "Except he's not a lumber worker."

Eskil sets down his quill. "Who is he?"

"Don't have a name." Bohdi clicks his tongue. "He was caught with detailed documentation of guard rotations. Shift changes, patrol routes, the gap in coverage at the south gate during the evening turnover. Civilian activity patterns. Sightings of the prince moving through the city. Where he goes, when, how often, with whom."

Eskil's hand has gone still on the desk. His body is very quiet, the stillness that Bohdi knows, that everyone who has served under Eskil knows, as the stillness that comes before violence.

"And," Bohdi says, and his voice drops half a register, "the location of the healer's clinic."

The stillness deepens.

Eskil does not move. He does not blink. He sits behind his desk with his hand flat on the surface and his jaw locked and his eyes fixed on Bohdi's face, and the temperature in the room drops by several perceptible degrees.

"He's Jakadi," Eskil says. Not a question.

"Without a doubt," Bohdi confirms. "He's been living in Valen for weeks. Came in with a trade caravan, got hired at the mill, kept his head down. Unremarkable. The kind of face that disappears in a crowd."

Eskil stands. The chair scrapes back. He reaches for his coat on the hook beside the desk and shrugs it on.