Page 73 of Tending the Ache

Indrie is not concentrating.

He has re-labeled the same jar twice, once as chamomile and once as comfrey, and it is neither. It is yarrow. He has been staring at the yarrow for the better part of a minute with the charcoal pencil poised above the label and his mind somewhere in the eastern mountains with a man who carries three swords and left without saying goodbye.

He peels the incorrect label off, writes yarrow in careful bilingual script, affixes it to the jar, and tells himself to focus.

He cannot focus.

It has been a day since Eskil rode out with the war party. One day since Indrie walked home from the library on legs that trembled, with a tenderness between his thighs that made him flush every time he shifted, and found the city buzzing with news of the mobilization. One day of seeing patients and teaching Ermin and grinding herbs and labeling jars and pretending that the hollow pit in his stomach is concern for the kingdom's security and not the anxiety of a man whose–

His what? His lover? His king? The man who held him in the air and whispered filthy beautiful things into his ear and then rode off to fight before the sweat had dried?

He does not have a word for what Eskil is to him. Not in Rengaran. Not in Kalkoan that anyone here would understand. The word he needs is a gap in his vocabulary that aches like a missing tooth.

He puts the yarrow on the shelf. Picks up the next jar. Stares at it.

Elderflower. He knows it is elderflower. He can smell it. He labels it correctly on the first try and this small victory does nothing for the knot in his chest.

The door opens and Morgan enters.

There is something different in his bearing today. A tightness around the eyes. A set to his jaw that Indrie recognizes, because he has seen it on the face of the other brother, the one who wears it like mail.

"Eskil said to tell you he will be back," Morgan says.

The words land with weight. The idea that Eskil thought of him before leaving, that he paused in the chaos of a mobilization and sought out his brother and said tell Indrie, sits in the middle of Indrie's chest and glows. He turns away to compose himself, busying his hands with the elderflower jar, adjusting its position on the shelf with a precision the jar does not require.

"Thank you," he says. His voice is steady. The rest of him is not.

Morgan settles onto the stool beside the examination table, the one that has become, through repetition, his stool. He folds his hands in his lap and watches Indrie with those light sharp eyes, and Indrie can feel the weight of the gaze between his shoulder blades.

"I also wanted to talk to you about the library," Morgan says. "When Eskil sent me out of the room."

Indrie's hands still on the jar.

"I'm not asking for details," Morgan adds quickly, reading the flush already climbing Indrie's neck. "What happened between you and my brother is between you and my brother, and I have no desire whatsoever to know more than I already—" He pauses. Recalibrates. "—suspect."

Indrie's flush deepens. He keeps his back to Morgan and adjusts the elderflower jar again, moving it approximately one quarter of an inch to the left, and then one quarter of an inch back to where it was.

"What I'm asking," Morgan says, "is whether you are all right."

"Yes," Indrie says. Too fast.

Morgan does not accept it. He sits on his stool with his hands folded and his legs crossed at the ankle and waits, with the patience of somebody accustomed to waiting out diplomats and council members and a brother who communicates primarily through silence and violence.

"I'm not asking as the prince," Morgan says quietly.

"I know." Indrie picks up another jar. "I've been working on a tincture for the winter coughs. Thyme and marshmallow root and a little honey, though the honey is really only for the children, it does nothing medically. Ingrid's comfrey has taken. The valerian is spreading faster than I expected and I may have to move it before spring or it will take the whole bed."

"Indrie."

"Ermin's splint wrapping is much better. His tension is even now. I let him do a wrist unsupervised on Tuesday and it held."

"Indrie."

Indrie sets the jar down and does not turn around.

Morgan waits.

The waiting is patient and relentless and Indrie recognizes the technique because he uses it himself, on patients who insist their wound is nothing while the blood seeps through the bandage.