Page 40 of Salt in the Wound

Eskil stares back. The rebuttal is on his tongue, something sharp and deflecting, something that would push Bohdi away and give Eskil space to stew in his own frustration without interference. But the fire in him dies at the conviction in Bohdi's eyes. There's no humor there. No teasing. Just the steady, unflinching certainty of his oldest friend, who has watched himcircle this problem for two weeks and has decided, with the patience of someone who loves him, to stop letting him.

Eskil nods.

It's small. Barely a movement. But it's an agreement, and Bohdi sees it and accepts it and releases his shoulder.

Bohdi turns and walks away. His boots are quiet on the deck, his posture easy, his step unhurried. He doesn't look back. He doesn't add a parting comment or a final word of advice or one of his characteristic grins. He just leaves.

Eskil turns back to the helm. The horizon stretches before him, flat and blue and empty, offering nothing, demanding nothing. The wind fills the repaired sail above him. The ship moves forward.

He stands at the wheel and lets Bohdi's words settle into the place where his anger was, and he begins, slowly and painfully, to think about what it means to show someone you're not the thing they fear.

Chapter 17

Indrie avoids the king.

It's not a conscious strategy, not at first. It's instinct, the same deep-rooted survival mechanism that kept him alive for five years under Armond's unpredictable temper. When the king is angry, you make yourself small. When the king is displeased, you disappear. You fold yourself into the routines and the corners and the tasks that don't require his attention, and you stay there, quiet and useful and invisible, until the storm passes. Until it's safe.

He keeps his head down. He does his work. He focuses on the tasks at hand.

One of the men has a sprained ankle, Erik again, the same ankle, because the man apparently has a personal vendetta against his own joints. Indrie unwraps the old bandage, examines the swelling that's returned after what was undoubtedly some reckless activity during the storm, and re-wraps it with fresh poultice and a firmer binding. Erik winces but holds still and thanks him when it's done, and Indrie nods and moves on.

Another sailor is seasick. Not from the normal rocking, the post-storm swells are gentler than what they've been through, but from something he ate, or something he drank, or some combination of the two that has left him grey-faced and retching over the side of the ship at regular intervals. Indrie prepares a tincture of ginger root and peppermint, the last of his stores, and coaxes the man to drink it in small sips. He sits with him while the nausea passes, a quiet presence at his side, because he's learned that sometimes the medicine is less important than the company.

The third is the most frustrating. A grizzled veteran named Olver who has scurvy because he refuses to eat the fruit he's given with breakfast. Indrie has seen the signs building for days, the fatigue, the swollen gums, the small bruises appearing on his arms without cause, and when he examines the man and confirms it, Olver has the audacity to look offended.

"Fruit is not food," Olver tells him, arms crossed, chin set. "Fruit is what food eats. I am a warrior of the north and I will sustain myself on meat and bread and ale as my father did and his father's father did. I will not be reduced to eating berries as though I'm some sort of forest creature."

"Eat the orange, Olver."

Olver eats the orange.

It's while treating this man, sitting across from him in the medical bay, watching him chew each segment with the enthusiasm of a prisoner eating his last meal, that Indrie learns how unprecedented Eskil diving overboard for him was.

Olver calls him sir.

The word catches Indrie off-guard. He's been called boy for as long as he can remember, by Armond, by Erlan, by the castle guards and the kitchen staff and everyone else who outranked him, which was everyone. The Northern crew calls him by his name, mostly, or healer when they're being formal. Dagnycalls him a word in her language that he's fairly certain is an endearment, though she won't confirm it. Gunnar calls him little chef, which Indrie suspects is not entirely a compliment.

No one has called him sir.

Olver says it without emphasis, naturally, and follows it with a statement that Indrie has to ask him to repeat twice before he understands it fully.

"I don't want to disrespect someone so important to our king."

Indrie's hands still on the orange peel. He looks at Olver and finds the man looking back with an expression that is, beneath the gruffness and the resentment about the fruit, entirely sincere. He's not flattering Indrie. He's not performing. He's stating what he perceives to be a fact, that Indrie holds a position of importance in Eskil's regard, and that this position warrants a form of respect Olver doesn't extend lightly.

Indrie manages a nod and a quiet thank-you and moves the conversation forward, but the words lodge themselves under his skin and will not leave.

Someone so important to their king.

He tries not to dwell on it. He tries not to dwell on any of it, on the fact that he apparently spent the night naked in the king's bed, pressed against the king's body, surrounded by the king's warmth. That the king had stripped him down and climbed in beside him and held him through the storm with a tenderness Indrie can only reconstruct from fragments of unconscious memory. That this morning the king had brushed the hair from his eyes and cupped his face and told him I do not own you with a ferocity that Indrie still doesn't fully understand.

It's impossible to push aside. He's wearing the king's clothes. The shirt hangs off his shoulder no matter how many times he adjusts it, and the fabric carries the scent of cedar and iron, and every time he moves he's reminded of the body that usually fills these garments, broader, taller, stronger, so warm that Indriecan still feel the ghost of that warmth against his spine if he closes his eyes.

He doesn't close his eyes. He works.

Dagny corners him in the hold while he's sorting through medical supplies.

He's on his knees beside an open crate, pulling out bundles of dried herbs and checking each one for water damage. The storm soaked some of the stores, and several of his carefully prepared medicines are ruined, the yarrow is black with mold, two of his tinctures have been diluted beyond use, and the sleeping draught he'd made for Kael is gone entirely, the clay vessel shattered somewhere in the hold during the rough seas. He's cataloguing losses with grim efficiency, unable to afford grieving supplies he might not be able to replace, when Dagny appears.