Page 78 of Tending the Ache

The maid returns with the water and the towels and Indrie gets to work. He cleans the wound first, irrigating the ragged edges with hot water and then the antiseptic wash, flushing out dirt and debris and dried blood. Eskil hisses at the sting and does not move. His hand grips the edge of the mattress and his jaw tightens and he breathes through it with the control of someone who is long accustomed to pain.

Bohdi is hovering. He is at Indrie's shoulder, shifting his weight, craning his neck, radiating the useless energy of somebody who cares a great deal and can do nothing at all. He keeps reaching, for the towels, for the bandaging, for anything, and at one point his arm crosses into Indrie's line of sight while Indrie is positioning the needle, and Indrie catches his wrist without looking up.

"He is not dying," Indrie says, from the bedrock of his own competence. "So please get out of the bedroom until I call you back in."

The silence that follows is profound. Bohdi, who takes orders from nobody except the king and then only when it suits him, withdraws his hand. Steps back.

"Call if you need anything," Bohdi says, and there is a roughness in his voice that was not there before. The door opens and closes.

The room is quieter. The fire crackles low in the grate. The only sounds are Indrie's breathing and Eskil's and the soft splash of water when Indrie rinses his hands.

He picks up the curved needle. Threads it. Positions it at the lower edge of the wound where the bleeding is worst.

"Bohdi listens to you better than he listens to me," Eskil says.

Indrie smiles at Eskil's stomach and not his face. "Your second-in-command is worried about you."

"Bohdi always worries too much. But I'm not dead yet." A breath that costs him something. "Although that's mostly thanks to you."

Indrie sets the first suture. The needle passes through the wound edge, in and out, a quick clean motion, and he ties it off with a knot so small it is nearly invisible. His fingers find the rhythm. In, through, tie, cut. In, through, tie, cut.

"That is what you brought me here for, is it not?" Indrie says. His voice is light. Steady. The healer's voice, the one that fills a room with calm. "To stitch you up when you have been reckless."

"It was a thought." Eskil's eyes track his hands. "But mostly I couldn't bear to leave you in the care of those barbarians."

Indrie's hands do not falter. The needle moves. The thread follows.

"Before I came onto the ship," he says quietly, "I thought the Northmen were barbarians. Monsters from the north who burned and pillaged and left nothing standing. That is what we were taught in Kalkoa. What everybody believed." He ties off a suture. Cuts the thread. Repositions. "I was wrong. I have never met anyone like you. The violence frightens me, I will not lie about that. But I understand it does not come without cause. The men you fight are trying to kill the people you protect."

Eskil is quiet for a time. Indrie sets three more sutures in the silence, each one placed with exacting care.

"There are many things you would find distasteful about our way of life," Eskil says. His voice is low and raw with exhaustion. "About what I do as king to keep this kingdom standing. I make no excuses for it. I would never expect a man who preserves life and treasures it above all else to forgive me for taking it so freely."

Indrie's hands pause on the needle. He looks up. Meets his eyes.

"I will not pretend to understand the cost of ruling," he says. "I know I would not be capable of it. If the choice were to take one life to protect another, it is a choice I could not make. That is why you are king and I am a healer."

"Morgan has never taken a life," Eskil says.

The words sit between them. Indrie waits.

"Killing a man does not make you a better one. Or a better ruler. Morgan is perfectly capable without the savagery. But when threats come to our doors I will do what my brother cannot. I will meet them with force." He holds Indrie's gaze. "It's balance. You need both kinds of people."

Indrie nods slowly. He bends to his work and places the next suture.

The stitching takes a long time. The laceration is wide and the edges are ragged and every stitch must be set with precision, close enough to hold, small enough to heal cleanly, even enough that the scar will be tight and smooth rather than knotted and pulled.

By the time Indrie ties off the last suture his fingers are stiff and cramping and the lamp has burned low and his eyes ache with fatigue. The stitching is tiny and even, a line of small perfect knots running the length of the wound, each one identical, the work of hands that have never been more certain of anything.

Eskil is asleep.

Indrie does not know when it happened. He was too deep in the rhythm of the needle and too focused on the wound, and by the time he looked up the king was gone. Not gone. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere his body can do the work of mending without his stubborn relentless mind interfering with it.

A testament to his pain tolerance. Or proof that he trusts Indrie enough to be unconscious and defenseless in his hands.

Indrie cleans up. He puts the bloodied towels in the basin by the door. He lays his instruments on a clean cloth to be scoured in the morning. He applies a fresh bandage over the stitching, light, not too tight, enough to protect the wound without binding the tissue. He draws the blanket over Eskil's chest, easing it around the bandaging, careful not to snag the fresh sutures.

He stands beside the bed.