Page 81 of Tending the Ache

He does not finish. He does not need to. They both know which direction the thought runs. South. To the forests. To a stronghold that has been making increasingly aggressive overtures about a marriage alliance.

"I will do the reconnaissance myself," Bohdi says. "Go out, track them, find where they are regrouping. It may take a few days."

"Take what you need."

Bohdi grunts. He glances past Eskil again, toward the bed. "I would feel better about leaving if I thought you would stay out of trouble while I was gone."

"I have no intention of engaging in anything while you are gone. I have an injury to mend and I am in no shape to lead anyone."

"We will see how long that lasts."

The maid arrives with food. She comes through the door with a tray, bread and porridge and something that might be sausage and a pot of tea. The sound of her entering, or the smell of the food, or some combination of the two, causes movement on the bed.

Indrie sits up.

The blanket slides off his shoulder. His hair is wild, tangled from sleep, sticking up at angles that defy the natural behaviour of hair. His eyes are blurry and blinking and confused. He looks around the room, the fire, the table, the window, the grey morning light, reassembling the world piece by piece.

Then his eyes find Eskil and Bohdi at the table. Watching him.

The flush begins at his collarbones. It rises up his throat, across his jaw, blooming over his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and it is spectacular. An entire body's worth of blood relocating to the face.

He starts to stammer. "I — I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep, I should not have — I was just checking the stitching and I —"

He was not checking the stitching. They all know he was not checking the stitching. The wound is on Eskil's right side and Indrie was sleeping on his left, curled into the warmest spot in the house, and the fiction that he was conducting a medical evaluation would not survive a strong breeze.

"— and I only meant to rest for a moment, I'm so sorry for the imposition —"

And then he registers what he is looking at. The king. Out of bed. Sitting at a table. Eating.

The colour drains. The stammering stops. The blurry, embarrassed, sleep-soft young man disappears and what snaps into place with a speed that makes Eskil blink is the healer.

Indrie is off the bed in a moment. The blanket is abandoned. He crosses the room with one foot bare and his hair still wild, and there is nothing soft or flustered about him now. His eyes are sharp. His jaw is set. His shoulders are square, and his gaze has the focused intensity Eskil has seen him direct at soldiers who disobeyed medical orders and found the experience educational.

"What are you doing out of bed?"

"I'm —"

"You are not healed. You are stitched. That is not the same thing." He reaches Eskil and takes his arm. Not gently. He is accustomed to moving patients who outweigh him and he has no patience for resistance. "You need to be lying down. You need to be resting."

"Indrie —"

"You have a laceration six inches long that goes to the bone, and you have been upright for —" He glances at the food, at the steam still rising from the tea, calculates. "— at least ten minutes, which is ten minutes longer than you should have been. The sutures are under tension when you sit up. If you tear them I will have to redo them and I will not be gentle about it."

Eskil lets himself be pulled from the chair. He lets the small, fierce man drag him by the arm across the room toward the bed, and he lets it happen for two reasons. The first is that Indrie is right. The wound is throbbing and the stitches are pulling and the brief excursion to the table has left him lightheaded in a way he would not admit to anyone except, possibly, the man currently manhandling him.

The second reason is that Indrie fretting over him is the most endearing thing he has ever witnessed.

Dishevelled, hair like a nest, half the size of the man he's hauling. And utterly, completely, unshakeably commanding. Directing the king of Rengara back to bed with the authority of a general marshalling troops and the tolerance for argument of a stone wall.

Eskil lets Indrie push him onto the mattress. Lets him arrange the pillows. Lets him pull the blanket up and tuck it around his chest with brisk, efficient movements that brook no debate. He catches Bohdi's face over Indrie's shoulder.

His second-in-command is biting his lip hard enough to appear to be in physical pain. His eyes are streaming. One hand is pressed over his mouth. The other is gripping the arm of the chair with white knuckles. His whole body vibrates with the suppressed force of it, and the expression on his face is sheer radiant barely-contained delight. He has waited decades to watch his king herded by somebody and he intends to savor every second of it.

Eskil fixes him with a look. Bohdi does not combust, but it is a near thing.

Indrie straightens up from the bed, apparently satisfied that the king is horizontal again, and turns to survey the situation with his hands on his hips. His gaze moves from Eskil to the table to the food to Bohdi, and his expression shifts, the sharp authority softening, just slightly, into something still firm with warmth underneath it.

"You can eat in bed," Indrie tells Eskil. "I'll bring the tray. But you are not to get up again until I have checked the stitching and I am satisfied you haven't undone my work."