Page 94 of Tending the Ache

The door closes. The room settles.

Indrie unfolds himself from the bed. He pulls on his boots, finds his missing shirt, and crosses to the couch where Eskil is still sitting, staring at the cold hearth with an expression that would make most men take a step back.

Indrie does not take a step back. He sits beside him. Close enough that their arms touch. He does not ask whether Eskil is all right, because the answer is obvious and asking would be an insult to both of them. Instead he says, "I need to get back to the clinic. Ermin is bringing in a man with an infected toenail he has been treating with ale and bergamot, and if we wait any longer I will be performing an amputation."

The corner of Eskil's mouth twitches. Not a smile, not yet, but the ghost of one. The hairline fracture in the stone.

"You should go then," Eskil says.

Indrie does not go. He settles deeper into the couch, pressing his arm against Eskil's, and the warmth of him is a counterweight against the cold that came into the room with Bohdi. They sit together for a moment, one breath, two, three, and the quiet between them is not empty.

Then Indrie says, and he is aware while he says it that he is rumpled and flushed and sitting on the king's couch in the king's quarters after spending the night in the king's bed, "Can I stay again tonight?"

Eskil turns his head and looks at him.

He leans forward and kisses both his cheeks. Then his mouth. Soft. Unhurried. The kind of kiss that has no urgency in it, that exists only to say yes in a language that does not require translation.

"You can stay every night," Eskil says.

Indrie smiles. Ducks his head. Pulls away reluctantly and lets himself out.

Chapter 29

Eskil

The council agrees on nothing.

This is the first thing worth knowing about them, and Eskil has built fourteen years of governance around it. They are twelve men and women whose primary function, as far as he has ever been able to determine, is to disagree with him and with one another in the most time-consuming manner available. They could not settle the color of the sky if he held the session outdoors. They are the reason Morgan exists in a diplomatic capacity. They are the reason his jaw aches every third evening.

So when they agree, it means they met without him first.

They agreed about the Kalkoa voyage before he came through the door. They agreed about the Wolfe envoy before he came through the door. Today they are unanimous inside four minutes, and Eskil sits at the head of the war room table with his arms folded and understands that whatever is coming has been rehearsed.

What they want makes his blood go cold.

He listens to Bohdi present the intelligence. His second is thorough. Maps spread across the scarred oak, troop positions marked in charcoal, the timeline of Jakadi movements laid out in order and without flourish, because Bohdi has been briefing this king for fourteen years and knows exactly how much decoration he will tolerate. The council listens. They ask questions, and the questions are good ones, pointed and specific, because whatever else they are they have governed long enough to know the difference between information and implication. Bohdi answers each one with the focused calm he keeps for rooms where his axe is not the most useful thing about him.

When he finishes, Seren leans back in her chair.

She has been on this council since Eskil's father sat where Eskil is sitting. She has held it through two kings and more crises than most people survive, and she says what everyone at the table has already worked out, because that is what Seren is for.

"The alliance proposal is a trap. The betrothal is the mechanism. Send the prince south and we lose our leverage and our heir in one stroke."

"Agreed," says Vigdis. "Which is exactly why we should send him."

Eskil's head turns. Slowly.

"We know what they intend." Vigdis does not soften it and does not look away. She found the fabrication in the Kalkoa intelligence and she has clearly been working this problem since. "They do not know we know. Ivan Wolfe is expecting a compliant diplomat. An unsuspecting prince arriving for his betrothal with a guard escort and a trunk of wedding clothes. He is not expecting us to be three steps ahead of him."

"You are suggesting we play along," Seren says.

"I am suggesting we use their own plan against them. Send Morgan. Let him play the willing bride. Let the chieftain believe the scheme is working, and let him open his own gates to do it."

Nobody speaks.

Eskil leans forward. His arms are on the table and his jaw is set and he has been listening to this thing assemble itself in real time, and every instinct he owns is telling him to put a stop to it. That his brother is not a piece on a board. That the prince of Rengara is not going to be used as bait in a plan that requires him to walk through the gates of a stronghold belonging to a man who executed his last wife for trying to leave.

"No."