Page 61 of Tending the Ache

"Tell me how." Indrie sets the list down. "There were no horns until after he was already loose. There was nothing to hear. Nothing to see. You were asleep in your bed, which is where you were supposed to be, and so was I." He softens it. "You are not a sentry posted on my door. You are my apprentice. You cannot stand watch over me at night and be any use to me in the morning, and I need you in the morning."

"You could have died."

"So could you, if you had been here." Indrie holds his eyes. "There would have been two of us at knifepoint instead of one, and I would not have forgiven myself for it. Not ever."

Ermin's jaw clenches. He looks very young, despite the set of his shoulders and the fierceness in his face, and the protectiveness coming off him is so earnest and so futile that it aches to witness.

"I hate this," he says.

"I know."

"I am good, Indrie. I am good with a blade and it did not matter at all."

"No," Indrie agrees. "It did not. That is not your failing. That is only how it happened."

Ermin does not look convinced. But he nods, once, and allows himself to be steered toward the supply shelf, and they spend the next hour taking inventory together and Indrie corrects his list-making and Ermin writes in his leather journal and the normalcy of it, the routine, the rhythm, the teacher and the student and the work between them, settles over Indrie and steadies him.

He teaches. He checks the stock. He puts the clinic back together jar by jar and shelf by shelf, the way he has put himself back together every time something breaks. Patiently. With steady hands and no wasted motion.

***

In the late afternoon, after Ermin has gone and the last of the daylight is fading, Indrie sits on the edge of the examination table and lets himself be still.

The clinic is quiet. The new door is solid in its frame. The shelves are filled, the instruments are clean, and the pot of tea Ingrid left has gone cold on the windowsill.

Then he gets off the table and goes into the back room and straightens the cot and folds the blanket and stands there considering whether he can sleep here tonight.

Morgan had said something earlier, while sitting on the floor with his basket of food. He mentioned, almost as an aside, that he spends most evenings in the library and would welcome the company. He said it casually, offhandedly, the way Morgan says things that are not casual or offhand at all. Beneath it Indrie heard what was actually being offered. A place to be, after dark, that is not this one. A safe harbor for a man who is not ready to be alone in the room where a stranger held a blade to his throat.

"I would love to see the library," Indrie tells the empty clinic, practicing the sentence, hearing how it sounds.

He says it again, quieter.

Then he closes the windows and locks the new door from the outside with the key that was left on a nail beside the frame, and walks toward the keep in the fading light, wearing the king's shirt, carrying nothing but his satchel and the memory of a kiss he is not yet certain was a rejection.

Chapter 18

Eskil

Eskil has a weakness and it is apparently the slow blossoming of a nervous, terrified young man into a physician who knows exactly what he is worth.

He is overseeing drills in the training yard, or attempting to, because his mind has been a fractured useless thing all day, when one of his men shows up at the fence with a bandaged arm and a sheepish expression that Eskil has seen on soldiers dressed down by their commanding officers but never by somebody who weighs as much as a wet coat.

The man reports, in the resigned tone of a soldier delivering news he expects to be doubted, that he has been given strict orders by the healer not to aggravate the damage.

"He said if I so much as lift a shield before the stitches are out, he'll strap me bodily to his examination table and I won't see daylight for a week."

For a long moment Eskil does not register who the man is talking about.

The idea of Indrie, who comes to his chin, who is gentle and soft-spoken, giving a battle hardened soldier a tongue lashing takes a moment to land. He pictures it. The dark eyes blazing. The jaw set. The slim hands on narrow hips, or more likely crossed over his chest. The voice that is usually quiet and careful and apologetic going firm and brooking no argument, because when it comes to the wellbeing of his patients Indrie does not hedge and does not bend and does not give a single solitary damn whether the man in front of him carries a sword or a crown.

That is going to be a problem, is it not?

He dismisses the soldier and tries not to grin and fails entirely.

Bohdi joins him at the fence and they fall into the rhythm of review. Border patrols, supply lines, the aftermath of the escape. The northern lumber shipments are delayed, weather and road conditions rather than enemy action, but it needs watching. Two watchtowers on the eastern road need repair before winter, and the passes will close in six weeks if the frost comes early.

Eskil listens and nods and files the information.