Page 93 of Tending the Ache

Eskil picks up Indrie's trousers from the floor and tosses them onto the bed without looking at him. Then he stands and crosses to the couch where Bohdi has settled, and his body angles so that his back blocks Bohdi's line of sight to the bed, and Indrie feels a rush of gratitude sharp enough to sting.

He dresses under the blanket with desperate contortionist efficiency. He has had practice at this. The closet-sized room in Kalkoa, the narrow bunk on the ship. He emerges clothed and still flushed and marginally more composed.

Bohdi does not comment on his presence. Does not suggest the conversation should be private. Does not glance at Eskil for confirmation that the healer is cleared to hear what is about to be said.

Nobody questions it.

Indrie stays where he is, cross-legged on the bed, and listens.

"The Jakadi and the Wolfe are working together," Bohdi says. “Which we suspected, but I have proof.”

Indrie sees the words hit Eskil. Not in his face, because his face is stone, but in his body. A stillness that deepens. Water going still before it freezes. His hands on his knees have not moved. His breathing has not changed. But something behind his eyes goes cold and flat and very quiet.

"Let's have it then," Eskil says.

"The betrothal offer came nine days after Askarte. A clan that has refused every approach for forty years suddenly wants an alliance, and the week they decide it is the week we take our first real hit in a decade." Bohdi leans forward, elbows on his knees, his axe propped against the armrest. "I thought it was opportunism. I thought they smelled blood and came to bargain. It is not that."

"Go on."

"The Jakadi are not fighting a war. They do not have the men for a war and they have never once behaved like a faction that wants ground. They have been mapping us. Every engagement since spring has been a measurement. How fast we respond, how many we send, which gate we come out of, how long the king is away from his own walls." Bohdi's jaw tightens. "The man in your cells was not gathering intelligence for the Jakadi. He was gathering it for somebody who intends to use it, and the Jakadi cannot use it. They have nothing to use it with."

"The Wolfe can."

"The Wolfe have four thousand fighters who have never lost on their own ground and a stronghold that has never been taken." Bohdi says it flatly. "The Jakadi are the eyes. The Wolfe are the hand."

Eskil does not answer for a long moment.

"The prince's movements," he says.

"That is where it stopped being a theory for me." Bohdi meets his eyes. "That spy wrote down guard rotations and civilian patterns and the location of a physician's clinic. Fine. That is what a spy does. But he also wrote down where the prince goes and when and with whom, for weeks, in detail. Nobody plans an invasion around a twenty-year-old's walking habits."

"They take Morgan south. Not as a husband, whatever the letters call it. As a hostage behind walls we cannot breach." Bohdi does not look away while he says it. "Then they come for you, holding the person you value most. And when you are gone they put your brother on the throne with a ring on his hand and a Wolfe chieftain standing behind the chair, and the people of Rengara accept it, because it is Morgan, and everybody in this city loves Morgan." His voice roughens. "A puppet with a crown on his head and a chain around his throat."

The silence stretches.

And Indrie watches something cross Eskil's face. A recognition. The almost imperceptible shift of a piece turning the right way up.

"He told menas much," Eskil says.

Bohdi frowns. "Who did?"

"The spy. In the cells, near the end, when he had stopped caring what came out of him." Eskil's voice is very level. "He said I would not sit on the throne another winter. I thought it was defiance. A man tied to a chair with nothing left, running his mouth to feel like he still had something."

The fire crackles. Indrie sits on the bed and listens to the shape of a conspiracy designed to destroy the man he loves and imprison the man he has come to think of as a brother, and the fear that moves through him is not the sharp panicked fear of the clinic or the gate. It is slower. Colder. He is understanding for the first time the scale of the thing he is standing in the middle of.

Eskil's hand is on his knee. It has been there the whole time, resting, still, the knuckles white, and as Indrie watches it unclenches. The fingers spread. He lays his palm flat on his own thigh and the motion is deliberate. He has absorbed a killing blow and he is choosing his response.

"This goes to the council immediately," Eskil says. His voice is steady.

"I'll have them assembled within the hour," Bohdi says. "All of them. I will drag Seren out of her bath if I have to."

He stands, retrieves his axe, and slings it onto his back, the motion practiced past thought.

On his way to the door, he turns. His eyes find Indrie on the bed.

He waves. A small cheeky motion, fingers waggling, accompanied by a grin that manages to communicate, in the span of two seconds: I am glad you are here, I am glad he has you, I am never going to let either of you forget that I walked in on this, and you are both welcome.

Indrie smiles into the blanket.