"Someone should say it plainly."
"I said it plainly to Mirelle. She told me to take it up with the lord himself."
Then, dryly: "I have not done that."
I set down the instrument I'm holding, and feel the familiar pull of being talked about like I'm a problem to be managed. Beneath that, something more complicated. They're not wrong. A lord placing a human woman under his protection is a political liability.
I think about Draekir's expression in the corridor on my first day. The complete absence of explanation.
I have no idea what to do with that. So I go back to the instruments. Then his voice arrives behind them. Not raised. Not rushed. Just — present, in the way a sudden drop in temperature is present.
"Repeat that."
The in depth silence that follows is different from the ones before it. I move, without deciding to, until I can see through the gap in the doorframe. Two nobles stand upright. Both, very still. Draekir, in front of them — hands at his sides, and the whole shape of him carries the stillness of settled intent.
Neither of them speak.
"She is my responsibility, and under my care." He remarks — without emphasis, which makes it worse. "The next person in this manor who treats that as a point of discussion rather than a fact will leave Mournhold without a conversation first. That is not a warning. It is a threat."
He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to. The nobles incline their heads, and leave. He watches them go, then turnsback the way he came. I pull my head back from the doorframe, and my pulse is doing something I don't plan to examine closely. The ease of it unsettles me more than shouting would have. There is also — and I record this with some irritation — something else underneath. I go back to the instruments. I am very thorough about cleaning the last one.
When I finally get back to my room, everything is where I left it. The candles have burned low. I sit on the bed for a moment and let the tiredness arrive, now that there is nothing else for it to wait behind.
The knock, when it comes, is quiet enough that I almost miss it. I stare at the door. It comes again. Twice, even-spaced.
"Come in," I call.
Draekir opens the door the width of a person and stops there. He's still dressed, coat still on, which means he hasn't slept either. His eyes glance at my hands first — the bandaged palm, the arm — and then to my face.
"You were in the treatment room," he asks.
"Yes."
He goes quiet. Then: "The rib injury. You used compression before closure."
"The bleed was internal. Surface work first would've been decorative."
He looks at me. Something about it is different from the other versions of the same look — those are assessment, categorization. This is neither. It is just — looking.
"You're in pain," he inquires.
"I'm tired."
"Your shoulder."
I don't respond to him. He crosses to the table without asking, picks up the small ceramic pot of salve Nyssara left, and sets it beside me. He doesn't open it. He doesn't offer to apply it. He just puts it where I can reach it and then stands there.
"Sit," I instruct him for a change. Because the alternative is him looming over me while I'm exhausted, which I find unreasonable.
He sits, but at the chair next to the window, slightly toward me, and folds his hands and glances at them for a moment.
"The guards," he starts. "The ones you treated."
"What about them?"
"Vuldren will hear about it by morning. He'll say nothing about it."
"That's a very Mournhold way of saying thank you."
