Page 17 of Tending the Ache

"But when I'm not among the citizens, I take care of the books. Diplomacy. The trade negotiations. Everything that requires patience and literacy and a willingness to sit in very boring meetings until the other side gives up." He hands over another jar. "Eskil handles everything that requires hitting something or glaring at it until it gives up. Which, to be fair, is a surprising amount of governance."

"Surely not everything requires hitting."

"You would think. And yet here we are, a kingdom sustained in large part by the king's ability to intimidate people into agreement." Morgan pauses, considering. "Although he prefers the term aggressive negotiation."

Indrie's smile widens. He can picture it perfectly. Eskil at a negotiating table, all broad shoulders and tattooed arms and that look he gets when his patience is thinning, the one that makes the air go still around him. He imagines the other party seated across from him, watching the king's hand rest idly on the pommel of his longsword, and deciding very quickly that the trade terms were actually quite reasonable after all.

"He is lucky to have you," Indrie says, and means it. The two of them, the sword and the quill, the force and the finesse, make a whole that neither could be alone. Indrie understands balance. A body needs both its hands.

Morgan looks at him with something that might be surprise, or gratitude, or the plain pleasure of being seen clearly by someone new enough to still be looking.

"He would say the same, though getting him to actually voice it requires a specific alignment of stars that occurs roughly once per decade."

They work in quiet for a stretch after that, the kind of silence that does not need filling, and then Indrie finds himself in a conversation he did not plan.

He says, carefully, "Morgan. On the ship. The crew saw things. Between me and your brother."

He does not look at Morgan when he says it. He looks at the jar in his hands, at his own fingers curled around the clay, and feels the heat start to climb his neck.

Morgan is silent for a beat. Then: "Yes."

"You said they've spoken about it."

"People talk, Indrie. It's what people do."

"I don't want —" He stops. Starts again. "I don't want anyone to have the wrong idea. About Eskil. He has not done anything improper. Whatever people think they saw, it was — he was — kind to me. That's all."

The words are a lie and the truth at once. Eskil was kind to him. Eskil was the kindest person Indrie has ever met. And that is the whole of it and also not remotely the whole of it, and Indrie is standing in the gap between those two truths and cannot figure out how to close it.

Morgan is quiet for long enough that Indrie risks a glance at him. The prince is watching him with those pale eyes, his expression unreadable. Not cold. Not clinical. Careful. He is reading several layers of the conversation at once and choosing which one to answer.

"Indrie," he says, gently. "You don't owe me an explanation for anything that did or didn't happen on that ship."

Indrie swallows. "I know. I just — I don't want you to think less of him."

Something shifts in Morgan's face. A softening. A flicker of understanding deeper than the words warrant.

"I could never think less of my brother for being kind to someone who needed kindness."

The sentence lands in Indrie's chest and sits there, warm and aching. He nods. He does not trust his voice for more, so he goes back to the comfrey, and Morgan goes back to the shelf he is straightening, and neither of them says what is actually being said, which is: I am in love with your brother and I am terrified of what that means and I do not know what to do with it.

Chapter 6

Eskil

Eskil spots the flash of blond hair turning a corner at the far end of the keep's east corridor and knows immediately that his brother is avoiding him.

Morgan is many things. Brilliant, indispensable, infuriatingly composed. Subtle is not one of them when he is trying to escape. He walks too quickly. His stride, normally measured and deliberate, acquires an urgency that betrays him. And he always turns left, because the left corridor leads to the library, which is Morgan's sanctuary, the place he retreats to when he does not want to be found, because he has operated under the delusion since he was twelve years old that Eskil does not know this.

Eskil knows this. Eskil has always known this. He simply hasn't needed to act on the knowledge until now.

He moves fast. His legs are longer and his stride is built for covering ground, and he rounds the corner in time to see Morgan's back disappearing through the next junction. Eskil closes the distance in six steps, catches Morgan by the collar of his shirt, and hauls him sideways into the adjacent library, which is thankfully vacant.

Morgan stumbles, catches himself against a reading table, and turns with an expression that is attempting outrage but achieving something closer to shame.

Eskil closes the door. He does not slam it. He closes it with a controlled, deliberate pressure that is, somehow, worse than slamming. The latch clicks into place and the sound is very quiet. The calm before the storm, so to speak, and his brother knows it.

"Why," Eskil says, turning to face his brother, "did you not deem fit to mention that you received a betrothal offer from the Wolfe chieftain?"