Page 96 of Tending the Ache

They are right. He has known they were right since Seren opened her mouth and he has been arguing anyway, the way a man argues with a tide. The plan is sound, which is a thing that should be a comfort and is not, because the sound plan requires him to put his brother on a horse and send him south into the hands of a man who wants him behind a wall.

Protected by nothing but Bohdi's axe.

He looks at Bohdi. Bohdi looks back. Decades of shared language, spoken in glances and silences and the angle of a raised eyebrow, and it says: I can do this. Not bravado. Not eagerness. He knows his own capabilities and he is stating them.

It is not enough. Nothing anybody put in front of him today was going to be enough. But it is the only thing in this room he can get his hands around, and he finds that he has got his hands around it.

Eskil nods.

"Fine," he says. "Bohdi goes with the prince. They leave in three days."

The council disperses. Chairs grind back over stone, documents are gathered, voices drop to murmurs as they filter out through the side doors, already spinning the decision into orders and timetables and supply lists. Eskil stays where he is, hands flat on the oak, looking at the map with the Jakadi positions still marked in Bohdi's charcoal.

Bohdi waits until the room is empty. Then he drops into the chair beside Eskil and stretches his legs out and crosses his ankles on the table, which violates approximately six protocols and which Eskil does not care about in the slightest.

"So," Bohdi says. "That's a little unexpected."

"It was decided before I sat down."

Bohdi drums his fingers on his thigh. The rhythm is wrong, scattered rather than steady, and Eskil notes it and says nothing about it.

It occurs to him, and not for the first time, that Bohdi has been unusually quiet on the subject of the Wolfe betrothal. Every other political development gets the full treatment. Commentary, opinion, profanity, the occasional piece of genuine strategic insight buried inside a crude joke. This one gets silence. The weighted, careful kind that means the thoughts behind it are not the kind Bohdi is prepared to say out loud.

Eskil has been noticing for weeks. He has filed every observation in the same place he files everything to do with his brother and this man, which is the room behind his ribs, and he has not once opened the door.

"I did not ask Morgan whether he was willing before I volunteered him," Eskil says.

"He will say yes. He has been saying yes to this since the first letter came. He would gift-wrap himself and walk south barefoot if he thought it would help." Bohdi's jaw tightens. The drumming stops. "That does not mean he wants to."

The honesty of it sits between them. Eskil does not prod it. He does not ask what, specifically, about Morgan's willingness concerns him, because the answer to that question lives behind the door and Eskil is not going to open it today. Not with Bohdi about to ride south with his brother and a plan that needs both of them alive at the end of it.

"I am entrusting you with Morgan," Eskil says.

Bohdi nods. Slowly.

"I understand."

"I do not want that man's hands anywhere near him." Eskil turns his head. Meets his eyes. "Do you understand?"

Bohdi holds the look. The levity is gone. The grin is gone. What is left is something Eskil has seen perhaps four times in all of their years together, underneath the humor and the irreverence and the easy charm, and it is fierce and absolute and does not negotiate.

"As you say," Bohdi says.

It is not agreement. It is a vow, and both of them know it.

Eskil holds the look a moment longer than he needs to. Then he nods, once, and they both turn back to the map, and the silence between them is full of things neither of them is going to say and both of them already understand.

***

Morgan is in the study, poring over trade documents.

He looks up when Eskil enters. His brow furrows and his mouth opens and the first thing out of it is not a greeting or a question about the council but a medical assessment, delivered with the authority of a younger brother who has been monitoring his older brother's physical condition since he was old enough to notice.

"Should you be out of bed?"

"I'm walking through the keep, not attempting to scale it," Eskil says.

He takes a seat across from Morgan. Props his feet on the desk, carefully, the motion calibrated to avoid pulling the stitches. Settles back in the chair with the studied nonchalance of somebody pretending he has not been dreading this conversation.