Page 21 of Salt in the Wound

Indrie reaches out and lifts the lid.

A pair of eyes stare back at him.

He jerks away, a full-body recoil, satchel swinging, his back hitting the wall behind him, but the man inside the crate is faster. He surges forward out of the chest, wild-eyed anddesperate, and tackles Indrie to the floor before Indrie can draw enough breath to do more than gasp.

Indrie screams.

The sound tears out of him, high and sharp and raw, and then there are hands around his neck and the sound stops.

The man is on top of him, knees pinning his hips, weight crushing the air from his chest, and his hands are locked around Indrie's throat with a grip that has nothing measured or careful about it. This is not restraint. This is killing. The fingers dig in, finding the arteries, compressing the windpipe, and the pressure is immediate and absolute and Indrie cannot breathe.

The man's eyes are intense. Crazed. They're wide and bloodshot and fixed on Indrie's face with an unfocused intensity, operating beyond reason, beyond fear, in the animal space where survival overrides everything else. Indrie recognizes his clothes, rough-spun, mud-colored, the same drab fabric the laborers and lower servants wore in Kalkoa, and realizes, in the shrinking space between one heartbeat and the next, that this man is a stowaway. He must have boarded before they set sail, hidden himself in the hold, and stayed there, for days, for over a week, in a crate, surviving on whatever he could reach in the dark.

The fire. The crate, moved from its position. The fire was his. Whether intentional or accidental, a lamp, a candle, something to keep warm in the cold belly of the ship, it doesn't matter. What matters is the hands around Indrie's throat and the fact that his vision is starting to spot.

Indrie fights. He is not trained, not strong, not built for this, but his body fights anyway because the alternative is dying on the floor of a cargo hold with a stranger's hands around his neck. He scrambles against the grip at his throat, fingers clawing at the man's wrists, trying to break the hold, trying to find leverage. He kicks his legs at the body pressing him into the floor, heelsscrabbling against the wet wood, but this man is larger than him and much stronger and Indrie can't move him. The weight on his chest is immovable and the hands on his throat are iron and the spots in his vision are growing, spreading, eating the edges of the world.

He can't breathe. He tries, his mouth is open, his chest is heaving, his lungs are screaming for air that isn't coming, and the man's grip tightens and Indrie's hands start to go weak against the wrists they're clawing at and this is how he dies. Not on the cold stone of Armond's castle. Not in the fire. Not in the sea. Here, in the dark, at the hands of a stranger from a kingdom that never wanted him either.

He sees a flash of red hair.

And then Bohdi is there, materializing out of the smoke and shadow, and his fist connects with the side of the stowaway's face with a crack that Indrie feels through the floor. The impact snaps the man's head sideways and his grip breaks, not loosens, breaks, his hands wrenching free of Indrie's throat as Bohdi grabs him by the collar and the arm and wrenches him bodily off of Indrie with a force that sends the man skidding across the wet floor.

Indrie gasps.

The air rushes in, agonizing and beautiful, tearing through his bruised throat, raw and sharp. He rolls onto his side, hands going to his own neck, and the sound he makes is animal, a wheeze, a sob, something in between that he has no control over. His vision swims. The hold tilts. He can hear the stowaway struggling, can hear Bohdi's voice, low and deadly and utterly unlike the warm, joking tone Indrie has grown accustomed to, but it's distant, underwater, filtered through the ringing in his ears.

Dagny falls at his side. He didn't see her arrive, doesn't know when she came, but she's there, on her knees beside him, herhands on his shoulders, her face close to his and her voice saying his name. Indrie. Indrie. Over and over, frantic and frightened and fierce, and her hands are checking him, his throat, his face, his chest, with a desperation that speaks of genuine terror.

He clings to her arm. His fingers close around her wrist and he holds on and he breathes. Each breath hurts. Each breath is a victory. He breathes and he holds on and Dagny's hand moves to the back of his head and she pulls him close and he presses his forehead against her shoulder and breathes.

The sounds around him slowly sharpen. Bohdi's voice, issuing orders. The scuffle of the stowaway being restrained. Footsteps on the ladder, more people coming, drawn by the commotion. Ermin's voice, high and alarmed, asking what happened. Dagny responding over Indrie's head, her words clipped and furious, her hand still cradling the back of his skull.

Bohdi grabs the man by the neck and the arm and bodily hauls him out of the hold. Indrie hears the stowaway's boots dragging across the floor, hears the grunt of effort as Bohdi maneuvers him toward the ladder, hears the man start to struggle again and Bohdi's response, a single, sharp word that silences him.

After a few minutes, Indrie scrambles to his feet. The hold tilts dangerously and Dagny grabs his arm to steady him, her face tight with worry.

"You should sit..." she starts.

He shakes his head. He doesn't know why, but he needs to see. He needs to know what happens next.

He follows Dagny up the ladder, her hand on his back, her body positioned behind him, ready to catch him if he falls. His legs are unsteady and his throat is on fire and his burned palms scream when they close around the rungs, but he climbs.

He gets on deck to see Bohdi kick the man's feet out from under him so he's kneeling on the planks. The stowaway hits the deck hard, knees cracking against the wood, and Bohdi's handstays on the back of his neck, holding him down with an ease that speaks of long practice. The man is disheveled, gaunt, his clothes stained with soot and sea damp, and in the lamplight Indrie can see the wild desperation in his eyes has curdled into something uglier. Cornered. Defiant. Caught, and determined to make it everyone's problem.

Eskil is there.

He's standing on deck, dressed but unsettled, clearly pulled from sleep by alarm, shirt untucked, hair unbraided, boots unlaced. He had helped put out the fire, Indrie realizes. He'd been in the hold. He'd come and gone and returned above deck to ensure they were still on course, and now he stands before the kneeling stowaway with a flat, cold expression, an assessment already reached, a conclusion already drawn.

Bohdi speaks first. His voice is steady, professional, but Indrie can hear the undercurrent of anger beneath it, controlled, channeled, nothing resembling the explosive rage Indrie grew up fearing. This is precise. This is disciplined anger, anger with rules about how it gets deployed.

"Stowaway," Bohdi says, and that word Indrie knows. "Found him in the hold. Near where the fire..." The rest dissolves into sounds Indrie can't parse, the cadence of a report being delivered, details he doesn't have the vocabulary to follow. He catches fragments. Fire. He knows that one. Crate. He knows that one too. The rest is a current he can't swim in, words tumbling past him while Bohdi gestures at the hold below, at the stowaway, at the evidence.

Then Bohdi says Indrie's name. Says it clearly, pointing at him, and the next words come slower, weighted with something that makes Eskil's entire body change. Indrie catchesfoundandhimand then a word he doesn't recognize, but Bohdi's hand goes to his own throat when he says it, fingers pressing against hisneck in unmistakable demonstration, and Indrie doesn't need the translation.

He tried to strangle him.

Eskil's gaze moves to Indrie. It's brief, a fraction of a second, a flicker of those pale eyes, but Indrie feels the weight of it in his chest. He sees the king's jaw tighten. Sees the muscle in his temple flex. Sees his gaze drop to Indrie's throat, where the bruises must already be forming, and then return to the stowaway with something in them that makes the hair on Indrie's arms stand up.