Page 45 of Salt in the Wound

A smile. Hesitant. Grateful. So earnest it makes Eskil's chest cavity feel too small for its contents.

"Thank you," Indrie says. Quiet. Said with a sincerity that transcends pronunciation.

Eskil has to curl his hand into a fist on the desk to keep from reaching for him. The impulse is visceral, immediate, and he counters it with a white-knuckled grip on the desk's edge. Indrie is so sweet, so endearing, standing there drowning in Eskil's clothes and looking at him with that impossible softness, and he doesn't seem to have any idea of the effect it has.

Indrie turns and walks out of the cabin. His steps are a little faster than normal, not quite a flee but adjacent to one, and the door closes behind him with a soft click that is the exact opposite of this morning's hard shut.

The cabin is quiet.

Bohdi raises an eyebrow.

"Sit the fuck down, then," Eskil says, "and tell me what you need."

Bohdi's grin is infuriating. His second-in-command drops into the chair across the desk, props his feet up, and folds his hands behind his head, satisfied, clearly in possession of enough material to last him a decade.

He opens his mouth.

"If you say one word," Eskil warns, "about what you just walked in on, I will throw you overboard and tell your mother you fell."

Bohdi closes his mouth. Opens it again. Closes it. His grin doesn't diminish.

"I was going to discuss the water stores," Bohdi says, every word selected for maximum innocence.

"Then discuss them."

"They're fine. We're well supplied through to Valen." Bohdi pauses. The grin returns. "Much the same as your lap, apparently."

"Bohdi."

"Discussing the water stores. Right." He straightens, barely, and the grin recedes to a manageable level. "We've got enough freshwater for eight days with current rationing. The storm refilled two of the reserve barrels from the rain catches, which gives us a buffer. I'd recommend maintaining the current ration schedule rather than loosening it. We don't know what weather we'll hit between here and home."

Eskil nods. The shift to logistics is jarring, but it's also a relief. This, he knows how to do. This has numbers and variables and solutions that don't involve navigating the emotional landscape of a traumatized healer who was just sitting in his lap looking at a drawing of his new home.

They discuss water, provisions, the repair schedule for the damaged railing. Bohdi reports that the lost cargo was primarilybulk supplies rather than the treasury goods, which remain secure in the lower hold. The sail damage is being addressed. The crew is in good spirits.

"And the healer?" Bohdi asks, the question positioned with transparent casualness, having clearly been waiting to circle back to this since he sat down.

Eskil picks up his charcoal and turns it between his fingers. "I told him he's free and he has a home with us. He seemed to understand."

Bohdi is quiet for a moment. When Eskil glances up, the grin is gone. What's replaced it is warmer, less performative, uncomfortably close to pride.

"Good," Bohdi says. Simply. Without embellishment.

He stands, drops his feet from the desk, and heads for the door. He pauses with his hand on the frame and looks back, and for once there's no joke loading behind his eyes.

"He smiled at you," Bohdi says. "When he left. In case you missed it."

Eskil says nothing.

The door closes. Eskil sits alone at his desk with a cold plate of stew and a drawing of home and the ghost of a smile that he will carry with him, he suspects, for the rest of his life.

Chapter 19

Indrie tries to reconcile what Eskil has told him.

He sits on his bunk with his knees drawn to his chest and the drawing in his hands, the parchment slightly crumpled from where it slid across the desk during his graceless exit from the king's lap, a memory that sends a fresh wave of heat across his face every time it surfaces, and he stares at the charcoal shapes and tries to understand what they mean.

Not what they depict. He understood that immediately, the moment his eyes found the page. The coastline, the mountains, the settlement. The circle of crude figures with one smaller one in the center. He didn't need labels or explanations or awkward pantomime. The drawing said what Eskil's words couldn't, in a language that doesn't require translation: this is where you're going. These are the people who will be around you. You are in the middle of them, not behind them, not beneath them, not outside the circle looking in.