Page 4 of Tending the Ache

He is tired. The kind that lives in the bones and does not lift with sleep, the accumulated weight of weeks at sea and years before that and a lifetime of never being safe enough to rest. Dagny notices before he does, because she has spent years watching soldiers push past their limits.

"Bed," she says. "You're swaying."

"I am just a little tired–"

"You are listing. Like a bad ship."

He stands, dislodging Misty, who gives him a look of profound betrayal and stalks off. He thanks them both, for the room and the food and the welcome, and his voice comes out thick but the words get said.

Ingrid squeezes his hand. Dagny points at him.

"If you thank me one more time I'm throwing something."

"Goodnight, Dagny."

"Goodnight."

He goes to his room. He takes off his boots and pulls back the quilt and lies down on a real mattress he doesn't have to share.

The softness is obscene. He sinks into it and the straw shifts and molds beneath him and the wool gives against his spine, and his body does something it has not done in years. It relaxes. Not the grudging surrender of exhaustion, where he would lie on his mat and wait for sleep to bludgeon him into unconsciousness. This is his shoulders dropping. His hands uncurling. His jaw letting go. His breath coming deep and slow and easy.

The pillow is under his head. The quilt is around his shoulders. Outside the small glass window the last of the light fades behind the mountains and the sky goes the color of a bruise healing, purple and gold and soft at the edges.

He thinks of Eskil on the dock, holding the golden young man in his arms, his eyes closed and his jaw soft. He thinks of what a man of such bearing sees when he looks at someone like Indrie, and then remembers that Eskil did not look at all.

Chapter 2

Eskil

Morgan will not shut up.

This is not a complaint. Eskil has spent six weeks at sea with men who communicate in grunts and creative obscenity, and that included a stint in the saddest excuse for a kingdom he has ever had the displeasure of raiding. It also included two days listening to Gunnar sing the same four verses about a fisherman's wife until Bohdi threatened to put the entire spice stores over the rail. Morgan's voice is the sound of home. Eskil would sooner gut himself than say so out loud.

But the boy has not drawn breath since the dock.

"—the herring tariffs alone took eleven days, and I use the word negotiate generously, because what actually occurred was that I sat in a room with a man who smelled aggressively of fish while he explained, at length and with visual aids, why his herring was superior to all other herring in the northern waters. I told him all herring tastes the same. He was offended, Eskil. You'd have thought I insulted his mother."

"Did you fix it?"

"Of course I fixed it. Five percent off his dock fees for the season. Cost us nothing and he left feeling like a conqueror. I left eleven days older and knowing more about herring than any man should."

They climb through the keep. Dark timber and grey stone built back into the rock face, so that half of it is mountain and the other half only pretends not to be. Eskil could walk it blind. The floor is right under his boots in a way the deck of the Valkyr never managed, and the smell of the place, woodsmoke and pine resin and the mineral tang of the springs below, gets into his lungs and loosens something that has been clenched since they sailed.

Morgan keeps pace at his shoulder with a sheaf of documents already under his arm. He had a briefing prepared on the dock. He has an agenda, itemized, ordered by urgency, and Eskil would bet his sword arm there is a summary page.

Morgan is exactly what he was when Eskil left, slender and sharp and built for a library, hair accented with a single braid and so unlike his own. There's a smear of charcoal on his jaw he has not noticed and would be annoyed to learn about.

"Western wall came down," Morgan says, flipping a page without breaking stride. "Section twelve, by the granary. Mortar gave out after the rain. Repaired within the week. Torben's crew did the stonework and I pulled the lumber from the north gate, which was ahead of schedule anyway."

"Good."

"The dignitary from the northern fishing villages arrived expecting the king and got the prince for three weeks instead."

Eskil glances sideways. "How'd that go?"

Morgan's face goes magnificently flat. "He was deeply offended you weren't here. I told him you were on urgent business. He asked what could possibly be more urgent than his tariffs. I told him I'd let him know when I found out."

Eskil almost laughs, which surprises him, because he has not wanted to laugh in what feels like an eternity.