Page 43 of Tending the Ache

"They found documents on him," Ermin says. "Maps of the keep. Guard rotations. Civilian movements, Indrie. He was watching people."

Indrie nods and grinds the yarrow finer. "Hand me the cheesecloth, please."

"Did you hear what I said? He was mapping the city."

"I heard you. Cheesecloth."

Ermin hands it over, but he does not stop. He tells Indrie about the arrest, how a sharp-eyed guard at the lumber mill noticed the man sketching things a hired hand had no reason to sketch. How they searched his lodgings and found the documents. How Bohdi hauled him to the cells and the king went down within the hour.

Indrie listens. He does not stop working, he is grinding the poultice for a farmer's rash, a man named Alvin whose hands are cracked and weeping from something in his grain stores, but something in him goes very quiet. He thinks about the man in the cell. About what interrogation means when the person doing it is Eskil, who carries three blades and has hands strong enough to snap bone. About the screams that must have echoed off stone walls.

He thinks, unwillingly, about the stowaway on the ship. About the sound the whip made. About the cheers of the men. About the splash.

He sets the mortar down and stretches his fingers, which have gone white around the pestle. Ermin is still talking, something about the Jakadi and their tactics, and Indrie hears him distantly, the way one hears rain against a window.

"Are you listening?" Ermin asks.

"Yes," Indrie says. "The Jakadi gave false intelligence to draw Eskil to Kalkoa while they attacked Askarte. I know. Morgan told me about it."

Ermin blinks. "Oh. Right." He shifts on his feet. "Do you think the spy talked?"

Indrie's hands still on the cheesecloth. He looks at Ermin, at the bright inquisitive face, the leather journal tucked under his arm, the boy who wants to be a healer and is learning what that means, and says, carefully, "I imagine the king is persuasive."

Ermin hears something in Indrie's tone that gives him pause. His brow furrows slightly and he opens his mouth, then closes it again. He has the good instinct, an instinct Indrie is proud of, to recognize when a topic has reached its end.

"I finished labeling the tinctures on the second shelf," Ermin says instead, and Indrie nods and thanks him and goes back to his work.

But his hands are not steady, and the quiet in him does not lift.

***

He sends Ermin home when the last patient leaves. The boy lingers, as he always does, reluctant to go while there might still be something to learn. Indrie tells him to eat supper and rest. "You've been here since dawn. Even apprentices need to sleep."

"I slept," Ermin protests. "Mostly."

"Go. I mean it."

Ermin goes, but not without a backward glance that says he knows Indrie is thinking about something and is too polite, or too wise, to push.

Alone in the clinic, Indrie cleans the examination table and puts away the last of his supplies and stands for a long time at the window, looking out at the narrow alley behind the building. The evening light slants gold through the glass. He can hear the city settling into its rhythms, someone hammering at the forge, children playing, the low murmur of conversation from the street.

He can't stop thinking about the prisoner.

He thinks about the fact that thinking about it turns his stomach, and that the turning is not new. It is the same turning he felt on the ship, watching a man flogged and thrown into the sea. Violence lives in this kingdom the way weather lives in the sky. Inevitable. Elemental. Part of the fabric of what these people are.

And Indrie is a healer. He took a vow. The vow did not come with conditions.

He takes off his work apron, folds it neatly over the back of the chair, and puts on his coat. He checks his reflection in the small mirror Morgan gave him, the scarf from the woman wound around his neck against the chill, and then he leaves the clinic and walks to the keep.

***

The keep is quieter than it usually is at this hour. The servants move with a subdued energy that Indrie has come to recognize as the tension that descends when the king is in a certain mood. He passes a maid carrying a tray of food that has not been touched, and their eyes meet briefly, and she gives him a tight sympathetic smile that he does not fully understand.

He finds Eskil's study. The door is open.

The king is at his desk, a quill in one hand, poised over a document he does not seem to be reading. The scowl etched into his brow is deep enough to cast shadows, and there is a tension in his shoulders, the set of them rigid beneath his tunic.

He looks up when Indrie appears in the doorway, and his expression shifts. Surprise first, the brows lifting, the quill pausing mid-air. Then something softer, warm and involuntary, and he banks it immediately, the way he always does, as though being glad to see someone were a weakness he cannot afford.