Page 60 of Tending the Ache

"It's shallow. It doesn't even need stitching. I'm fine."

Dagny's jaw works. She looks as though she wants to argue, and then as though she wants to hit something, and then she pulls him into a hug tight enough that his ribs creak. He lets her. He wraps his arms around her and holds on and breathes in leather and weapon oil and Dagny, and the tightness in him eases, fractionally.

Ingrid is beside them then, her hand finding Indrie's arm, and when Dagny releases him Ingrid takes her place, softer, gentler, her arms around his neck and her wet cheek against his temple. She does not say anything. She holds him, and the lavender in her hair and the warmth of her and the quiet steady sound of her breathing are a kindness so simple and so complete that Indrie has to blink very hard.

Ingrid makes him sit leaves briefly to return with a basket. She unpacks bread and cheese and a jar of preserves and a small pot of tea wrapped in cloth to keep it warm. She pours him a cup and puts it in his hands and tells him to drink. Indrie drinks. The tea is mint and honey and it is the best thing he has ever tasted.

"We heard the horns," Dagny says. "And then we heard what happened. Harrak told us."

"Harrak?"

"He was at the gate. He saw all of it." Dagny's voice goes tight. "He told us the king killed the man himself."

The silence that follows has a quality to it. Dagny is watching him closely and Indrie can feel the shape of the question she is not asking. Not are you all right, because she has already asked. Not what happened, because Harrak has already told her. The question she is not asking is where did you go afterward, and the answer is written across Indrie in a shirt that hangs to his thighs and smells of somebody else.

Dagny does not ask. Indrie is grateful beyond measure.

He eats. The bread is fresh and still slightly warm and the cheese is sharp and good and the preserves are blackberry, his favorite, and he does not know whether this is coincidence or whether Ingrid noticed. He eats and the food settles and the tea warms him from the inside, and by the time he has finished the cup and Ingrid has refilled it, the last of the tremor in his hands has gone.

"This is why you can't save everyone," Dagny says. Her voice is tight with anger. Not at him. At the situation, at the man who came through his door, at a world that keeps putting her gentle friend in the path of sharp things. "Some people are not worth the risk."

Indrie shakes his head. "It's not that simple, Dagny. I don't regret wanting to help him."

Dagny opens her mouth to argue, eyes blazing, and Ingrid catches her gaze and holds it, and something passes between them, the silent calibrated communication of two people who have loved each other long enough to speak without words. Dagny subsides. Her mouth presses into a thin line and her arm tightens around Indrie's shoulders instead, and the force of it says everything her voice does not.

Morgan arrives later in the morning.

He comes through the new door wearing quiet concern under the veneer of his usual composure. He takes in the clinic, the repaired door, the missing jars, the scrubbed floor, and then his gaze finds Indrie and moves over him with the careful directness Morgan employs when he is worried and does not want to overwhelm.

He sits with them. Cross-legged on the clinic floor, because all the chairs are occupied. He does not fuss. He does not exclaim or grasp Indrie's arms or demand details. He asks after him with a gentleness so controlled it must be costing him something, and Indrie holds his hand and squeezes and watches the tension in Morgan's jaw ease.

Morgan gets a smile out of him. A small unexpected thing, drawn out by a dry observation about the state of the clinic's defenses.

"I notice the door has been replaced," Morgan says, examining it with scholarly interest. "Perhaps we should consider one that locks from the inside as well as the outside. Revolutionary concept, I know."

Indrie laughs. It surprises him, the sound coming out rough and startled, as though his body had forgotten it could do that and is remembering in real time. Morgan's expression softens and he looks pleased.

Nobody brings up Eskil.

Nobody mentions the king saving his life, or taking him to the keep, or the fact that Indrie spent the night in the king's quarters. Ingrid and Dagny do not comment on the shirt. The omission is so careful and so coordinated that it must be deliberate, and Indrie is so grateful he could weep.

***

That afternoon, he goes through his restock list of things he can request from Morgan and things he cannot. The valerian is gone entirely and the chamomile is halved and he is running low on the antiseptic wash he makes from pine resin and alcohol. He will need to go up into the hills for valerian, it grows wild along the stream banks above the city, and the walking will be good for him. He will need to send Ermin to the weaver for more linen.

He is writing this out in careful Rengaran when the door opens and his heart lurches, a stupid involuntary spasm, and then Ermin comes through it and Indrie is both relieved and disappointed in a ratio he refuses to examine.

Ermin crosses the room in three steps and stands in front of him and looks at him. At the bandaged throat, the bruised arm, the too-large shirt. His mouth opens and for a moment nothing comes out.

Then: "I should have been here."

"Ermin—"

"I was three streets away." His voice cracks in the middle of it. "Three streets. I have been in a shield wall, Indrie. I went into Armond's castle with the second party and I have stood a watch every third night since I was fifteen, and I was three streets away asleep in my bed while a man put a knife on you."

"And how would you have known?"

Ermin stops.