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"I want to ally with Rengara and give my people peace, not war," Garrik says. "But I can't do anything with Dade in power. I came here because the only person with the resources and the motivation to remove him is your brother."

"You came to ask the king for help."

Garrik nods. "I came to ask the king for help. And to tell him everything I know about what's happening in the south, because right now he's operating on outdated intelligence and the situation is worse than he thinks."

Morgan crosses his arms. He realizes he has been standing in this room for several minutes without running or hitting anything, and the fear has receded into a manageable background hum rather than the static that consumed him when he first walked through the door. He files that away as either progress or adrenaline fatigue and resolves to sort out which on his own time.

From the front room he hears the door open and close, and then Indrie's voice calling out, "Ermin? Are you here?"

Indrie appears in the doorway of the back room and stops. His dark eyes move from Morgan to Garrik and back to Morgan. His expression travels from surprise to assessment and settles into the calm he wears when he is deciding how to manage a situation. Morgan has seen that calm directed at belligerent patients and panicking mothers and once, memorably, at Eskil himself. His brother had responded to it the way everyone responds to it, which is by immediately doing what Indrie wants.

"What's going on?" Indrie asks.

"Your injured patient," Morgan says, "is the ward of the assassinated chieftain of the Wolfe clan."

Indrie does not look alarmed, which strikes Morgan as deeply unreasonable. He looks at Garrik, and then at Morgan, and goes quiet. It is not the clinical quiet he uses over a wound or the diplomatic quiet he uses in the Keep. It is softer than either of those, and more careful.

"Morgan," Indrie says. His voice has dropped. "Is he one of the men who hurt you?"

Indrie knows more about what happened in the south than he probably should. When he was mending Morgan's ribs after the return, he had not commented on the way Morgan's hands shook or the way his jokes landed flat. He had taken those hands and held them until they went still, and then pulled Morgan into a hug fierce enough that his ribs protested every movement, and it was the restraint of that silence that undid him. Morgan had talked until all of it lay out between them.

He does not know of Garrik, because, and Morgan realizes this is telling all on its own, there had been nothing to tell. Garrik had been a side note in Morgan’s recount of the south and hadn’t warranted part of his traumatic retelling to Indrie. Because the truth is that Garrik never once threatened him. Stripped of the war paint and the bearing, what is left is a man certainly capable of being a threat and currently a danger to no one.

"No," Morgan says. The last of the fire in him is slowly burning out. "Garrik never laid a hand on me."

Something in Indrie's posture eases, though not all of it, because Indrie is careful and observant and has been watching Morgan's face since he walked in. The tension around his mouth and eyes lets go, and when he turns back to Garrik his expression has settled into something closer to his usual composure.

"I'm aware he's from the south," Indrie says, and his tone shifts into the even register he uses when he suspects someone is about to do something he disagrees with. "I found him on the mountain road this morning. He was unconscious on his horse and bleeding through his bandages. I brought him here and treated his wound."

"You brought an unknown southern warrior into your clinic and put him in your bed."

"I brought an injured man into my clinic and put him somewhere comfortable," Indrie says. "That is what a clinic is for, Morgan."

Morgan opens his mouth and Indrie lifts his chin, barely, and Morgan's mouth closes. He knows this Indrie. This is the Indrie who runs the clinic with gentle, immovable authority, who has decided what is right and files every objection under administrative noise. This is the Indrie who has chastised warriors twice his size for failing to follow his care instructions, who somehow kept Morgan's stubborn mule of a brother from tearing open his own stitches the entire time Morgan was gone. Morgan has watched diplomats and chieftains and members of his own council fold under pressure applied far less effectively than Indrie applies it while smiling.

"He has been perfectly civil," Indrie says, with a firmness that makes Morgan feel approximately twelve years old and in trouble for something he has not technically done yet. "He has been a model patient, which is more than I can say for some people." The slight emphasis on some people is unmistakable and probably blond and ruling a country. "I would like for you to extend the same courtesy."

Morgan looks at the ceiling for a moment, because it is the only surface in the room that is not judging him. Then he looks at Garrik, who is sitting on the bed watching this exchange with an expression hovering between amusement and something that might be respect. Then he looks at Indrie, who has his hands clasped in front of him and his spine straight and his dark eyes steady and unwavering.

"Fine," Morgan says. “As long as he continues to behave, I will be civil.” He turns to Garrik. "You said you want to speak with the king."

Garrik pushes himself up off the bed, slowly, his jaw tightening as the movement pulls at his stitches. He braces a hand on the wall and straightens to his full height, which is considerable.

"Why do you think I came all this way?" Garrik says. "Yes, I need to speak with the king."

Morgan regards him for a long moment, thinking about logistics, about how to present this to Eskil, about the council's reaction when they learn a Wolfe warrior is inside their walls, about the fact that Garrik arrived alone and wounded and that there are exactly two explanations for it. Either this is genuine, or it is the most elaborate and painful ruse Morgan has ever encountered. If it is a ruse then the man has committed to it with a dedication Morgan can only envy.

"Let’s find you a shirt," Morgan tells him. "I'm taking you to the Keep myself, and you're not meeting the king looking like that."

4

BOHDI

Bohdi is coming back from the yard with his shoulders loose and his blood warm from three hours of putting recruits on their backs when he sees his lover and Indrie walking through the keep corridor with Garrik of the fucking Wolfe clan.

His southern clothes are half covered by a cloak that is probably Indrie's, given the size of it. The man is keeping his head down and his stride measured and doing his level best to look as though he belongs here. A decent effort, and it would fool most people. It does not fool Bohdi, because Bohdi has spent his entire life paying attention. A Wolfe warrior in a borrowed cloak walking the halls of the Rengaran keep is the sort of detail he could pick out of a crowd at fifty paces in the dark.

Morgan is on Garrik's left and Indrie is on his right and neither of them appears to be under duress, which is the only reason Bohdi does not take the man's head off his shoulders on the spot. He closes the distance in three strides and gets a hand around the back of Garrik's neck and wrenches him sideways, putting himself between the chieftain's ward and the two people he cares more about than the rest of Valen combined.