Page 37 of Salt in the Wound

And he knows what comes after it.

Eskil sucks in a breath and Indrie shuts his eyes and braces himself.

His shoulders come up. His chin drops. His hands release the sheet and cross over his chest, forearms pressed together, creating a barrier between his body and the blow that's coming. It's a posture earned from being hit enough times to develop a standardized response, efficient and automatic, every vulnerable part shielded as much as possible. He waits. The seconds stretch. His breath is held behind his teeth and his body is coiled and ready and he can feel the blood draining from his face.

But the strike does not come.

When the strong, warm hand touches his face it is as gentle as before.

It cups his cheek, palm against his jaw, fingers curving behind his ear, thumb resting on the ridge of his cheekbone, and turns his face toward Eskil. The touch is so at odds with what Indrie was expecting that his eyes open out of surprise more than anything, the reflex of a mind that has received contradictory information and needs visual confirmation to reconcile it.

Eskil's expression is still severe. The anger hasn't left, it's there, in the hard line of his mouth and the tension in his brow and the muscle that works in his jaw. But Indrie looks into his eyes, those pale, storm-grey eyes, and realizes that the anger is not directed at him.

It's at what he said. Yes. But because of what the words meant. Because of what they revealed, about what Indrie believes, about what he's been taught to believe, about the world that shaped him and broke him and sent him into Eskil's path with the certainty that his worth is measured in usefulness and his life is currency to be traded.

Eskil is angry at the people who made Indrie think this way.

"I do not own you, Indrie." Eskil's voice is low and deep and very serious. Each word is placed with precision, deliberate, weighted, meant to build something that will hold. "No one owns you. Not me. Not anyone."

Indrie stares back. Shocked. The hand on his face is warm and steady and his name in Eskil's mouth sounds different than it's ever sounded in anyone else's. It sounds important.

"They gave me to you," Indrie reiterates. "To serve you."

"They gave you away because they're fools who couldn't see what they had." Eskil's jaw is tight, the words coming through his teeth. "But giving you away doesn't make you mine. You are not something to be given. You are not a crate of iron or a barrel of salt or a, a..." He breaks off, frustrated, reaching for simpler vocabulary that Indrie will understand. He's speaking faster now, the careful pacing abandoned. "You are a person. A free person. You were free the moment you stepped onto my ship, and you will be free when you step off it, and no one in my kingdom will ever..."

He stops. His hand is still on Indrie's face. He can see that Indrie is watching his mouth, trying to follow, catching fragments and losing the rest, and the frustration that crosses his features is not anger now, it is helplessness, the inability to say something critically important in a language that won't cooperate.

Eskil's jaw works. The tendons in his neck stand taut. He drops his hand from Indrie's face and presses both fists into the mattress and leans forward and tries again, slower, simpler, reaching for Indrie's understanding.

"You. Are. Free." Three words. Spoken with the finality of a door closing on everything that came before. "Not mine. Not anyone's. Free."

Indrie still doesn't fully understand. Not the scope of it, not the shape of the world Eskil is describing, a world wherea person can simply be free, unconditioned, unowned, and the incomprehension must show on his face because Eskil's frustration builds visibly, the tension climbing through his shoulders and into his jaw, and Indrie grows anxious watching it, the old spiral engaging, anger building, patience thinning, the breaking point approaching.

Stop being stupid, he tells himself. Understand. Just understand.

But he can't. Not because the words are beyond him but because the concept is, and every second that passes without comprehension is another second of tension in the room, and the tension is familiar, the same compression of air as Armond's chambers before the hand came down, and Indrie's body doesn't know the difference between frustration and fury.

Eskil lets go. He stands. The bed shifts with the removal of his weight and the absence is immediate, the warmth, the proximity, the hand on his face, all of it withdrawn in a single motion as the king rises to his full height and turns away. He pulls on the shirt with sharp, jerky movements, fabric yanked over his head and tugged down his torso, and Indrie watches from the bed and feels both bereft and relieved in equal measure. Bereft because the warmth is gone. Relieved because the anger is moving away from him.

Eskil leaves the cabin. The door shuts hard behind him, not a slam, not quite, but firm enough that the frame rattles and the lamp swings and the sound echoes through the small space.

Indrie flinches.

He sits in the king's bed, clutching the king's sheets, wearing nothing, and the sound of the door reverberates through him and settles in the place where his hope was just starting to rebuild.

He doesn't understand what he did. He doesn't understand why the king is angry. He said what was true, that he belongsto Eskil, that he was given, that he serves, and the truth made the king furious. But why? If Eskil doesn't want his service, doesn't want him, and the thought slips between his ribs and twists, then what does he want? Why pull him from the ocean? Why hold him through the night? Why touch his face with such devastating gentleness and then leave with anger in every line of his body?

He doesn't want to stay here a moment longer. The sheets smell of the king, something Indrie's body responds to with a yearning so acute it borders on pain, and the scent is everywhere, in the pillow, in the wool, in the air itself, and he cannot be surrounded by it right now. He cannot lie in the imprint of Eskil's body and think about Eskil's arms around him and Eskil's skin against his and Eskil's anger that he caused and doesn't understand.

There are dry clothes folded by the bed for him to wear. A shirt, trousers, wool socks. Indrie picks up the shirt and recognizes, with a flutter behind his ribs, that it's Eskil's. The fabric is soft, well-worn, and far too large. The trousers are Eskil's too, he can tell by the length, by the width of the waist, by the way they'll hang off his frame.

Part of him wars for a minute about wearing the man's clothes. It feels intimate, which is absurd given what's already happened in this bed, but the idea of wrapping himself in Eskil's shirt, of walking through the ship wearing something that carries his scent and his warmth and the shape of him, is closer to the thing he wants and can't have than he can comfortably bear.

But he can't exactly leave naked.

He pulls the shirt on. It falls past his hips, the collar wide enough to slip off one shoulder, the sleeves hanging past his fingertips until he rolls them. The trousers require a length of rope cinched tight at his waist, and even then they pool at his ankles and he has to roll the cuffs twice. He looks, he is certain,ridiculous. Swallowed by someone else's wardrobe, the fabric surrounding him with the scent of cedar and iron and Eskil.

He pulls his hair back with unsteady fingers, tying it with a strip of cloth. He takes one last look at the bed, the rumpled sheets, the dented pillow, the impression of two bodies in a mattress meant for one, and leaves as quietly and unnoticeably as he can.