Page 50 of Salt in the Wound

Bohdi, for once, doesn't push. He looks at Eskil with an expression that is not pity and not judgment but something in the vicinity of both, tempered by a compassion that Bohdi has always possessed and Eskil has always relied on even when he couldn't acknowledge it.

He nods. He stands. He heads for the door, and he doesn't add a parting remark or a pointed observation or a grin. He just leaves.

The door clicks shut.

Eskil sits alone in his cabin. The charts are spread before him. The heading is plotted. Three days to Valen, maybe less if the wind holds.

He doesn't have the right words. He doesn't have any words, not in Indrie's language, not in his own, nothing that bridges the gap between what he said and what he meant and what Indrie heard. And going to find Indrie now, tonight, while the wound is fresh and Eskil still can't name what he got wrong, is as liable to make things worse as better. He knows himself. He knows his temper and his tongue and how both fail him when the stakes are highest. Cornering a frightened man in his bunk to fumble through another conversation he doesn't have the vocabulary for is not reaching out. It's proving that Eskil's needs take priority over Indrie's, and that is exactly the dynamic he's trying to dismantle.

But he can't let it sit, either. He can't let the silence between them harden into something permanent, can't let the wall Indrie put back up become too thick to breach, can't let the boy spend night after night in his bunk thinking that the man who pulled him from the ocean doesn't want him near.

He sits with that thought. Turns it over the way he'd turn a chart, looking for the angle he's been missing.

Bohdi's voice, steady and sure:he's been taught that wanting something is the fastest way to have it taken from you.

And Indrie, on the deck, in the sunset, with his hands twisting and his voice assembled from fragments:if I stay, do I belong to you?

Not:will I be your slave. Not: will you own me. Indrie had already heard those answers. Eskil had given them in the cabinthat morning, had saidyou are freewith the finality of a closed door, and Indrie had understood. He'd taken the drawing and folded it into his pocket and understood.

So why ask again?

Unless he wasn't asking again. Unless belong meant something different the second time. Unless the word had changed shape between the morning and the evening, shed its chains and its history and become something Indrie chose rather than something done to him.

Eskil's hand stills on the charcoal.

Were you asking if I wanted you?

Chapter 21

When Gunnar gives him a plate of food to take to the king, Indrie doesn't beg off this time.

He's resigned. Not defeated, not broken, just the quiet, flat acceptance that comes from running out of ways to avoid the inevitable and deciding to walk toward it instead of away. He takes the plate from Gunnar's hands without protest, without pleading, without the desperate look that made Gunnar soften two days ago and nearly give in before placing the plate back in his hands.

He takes the plate and he goes.

The corridor to the king's cabin is the same corridor it's always been. The same length, the same dim lamplight, the same smell of timber and salt. Indrie's feet know the path. They've walked it enough times now that the journey has become muscle memory, a route his body can navigate while his mind occupies itself with more pressing concerns, such as the comprehensive catalogue of everything he's said and done wrong in the past two days and the various ways he might make it worse tonight.

He doesn't knock. The door is ajar, not fully open, but not latched, the gap wide enough to see lamplight within, and he pushes it with his shoulder and enters.

Eskil is sitting on his bed.

Not at the desk. He's on the bed, legs crossed, a leather-bound book open in his hands, and the posture is so unexpected, so domestic, that Indrie falters in the doorway for a half-step before his feet remember their assignment and carry him forward.

The king's hair is half-unbraided, the close plaits loosened on one side where he's been running a hand through them. His boots are off, placed neatly by the trunk. The book is worn, the leather soft from handling, and Eskil holds it with the easy grip of something frequently read. He looks up when Indrie enters, and his eyes, those pale, impossible eyes, track Indrie across the room with an attention that has weight and warmth and a quality Indrie still can't name.

Indrie walks carefully. He crosses the cabin with his back straight and his eyes on the ground, the plate held in front of him. He places it on the desk with care, and it doesn't make a sound against the wood. The stew doesn't slosh. A perfect delivery, flawless in its execution, the kind of small competence that used to be the margin between a quiet night and a bruised one.

He thinks about turning and leaving. The door is behind him, still ajar, and the corridor beyond it is empty and the ship is quiet and he could be back in his bunk in under a minute. He could leave and not have to stand in this room and see the king's face while the king says whatever he's been preparing to say, the gentle let-down, the careful clarification, the kind and measured explanation of why Indrie's heart is not something Eskil has any use for.

But instead he looks at the king.

He doesn't plan to. His eyes move on their own, pulled by the same gravity that has been pulling him since the first day in Armond's chambers, and he finds Eskil watching him. The book is lowered, forgotten, and the king's expression is something Indrie doesn't have a word for. It's not the careful neutrality he usually wears. It's not anger, not frustration, not the controlled displeasure that Indrie has learned to read as Eskil fighting his own tongue. It's something open, something unfinished, something that carries the weight of having waited in this room and not knowing what the waiting has brought.

Indrie swallows. The sound is audible in the quiet cabin. He stays.

Eskil sets the book aside. He places it on the mattress beside him, spine up, pages spread, and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor and he sits on the edge, forearms resting on his knees, and the posture brings him lower, closer to Indrie's height, and the deliberateness of it, the way the king has arranged himself to be less imposing, less towering, is something Indrie notices and files away in the growing collection of evidence that he doesn't know what to do with.

"I need to speak with you," Eskil says.