Page 6 of Setting the Break

So perhaps it isn't the clinic at all. Perhaps it's only the dark, and the dark has become a thing he no longer knows how to be alone in.

He isn't certain when that happened. He slept alone most of his life and made no great fuss about it. But Eskil sleeps on the outside of the bed every night, between Indrie and the door, and has never once mentioned doing it. He has never given Indrie any opportunity to thank him for it either. There are nights when Indrie surfaces for no reason at all, heart going too quickly, and finds a heavy arm slung across his ribs and a heartbeat under his ear. He's asleep again before he has properly finished waking. He doesn't lie there afraid and wait for it to pass. It doesn't get the chance to start.

He isn't sure how he feels about that. He has spent his whole life being the steady thing in somebody else's worst hour, and he would like to be his own. There's a stubborn part of him that resents needing an arm across his ribs to get through until morning. But he doesn't think steadiness borrowed is the same as steadiness lost. He's no less himself in Eskil's arms. He's only, for those hours, not braced for anything. It turns out a body can carry a great deal more in the daylight if it's been allowed to put everything down at night.

It's a thing to think about later, preferably at a time when he doesn't have a bleeding stranger occupying his bed.

And it isn't dark now. The sun is high and the fire is warm and the door is open and there's a man in the next room who needs him, and that is what matters.

Ermin returns with the basket, slightly out of breath, with a leaf in his hair that Indrie reaches up and plucks free without comment. Ermin looks toward the back room and asks, quietly, "Did he wake up?"

"Briefly," Indrie says. "He's resting now."

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No."

"Did you ask?"

Indrie shakes his head and begins transferring the herbs from the basket to the drying rack above the fire. "He'll tell me when he's ready."

Ermin is quiet for a long moment, turning a sprig of feverfew over in his hands. Then he says, "I'm sorry I hesitated earlier. At the door."

Indrie looks up. Ermin isn't meeting his eyes.

"Don't be sorry," Indrie tells him. "You were right to be concerned."

Ermin sets the feverfew on the rack and reaches for the next bundle. "I just keep thinking about what happened the last time."

He doesn't finish the thought and Indrie doesn't make him.

"I know," Indrie says. "I think about it too."

3

MORGAN

The clinic smells of honey and calendula and the sharp green bite of freshly ground herbs. Bohdi smells of leather and incense. Indrie smells of this, and both have become shorthand in Morgan's head for safety, which is a thing he has not examined too closely. Indrie is steady and kind and insists on seeing the best in a world that has not earned it, and Morgan has started relying on him to hold things level while the rest of his life comes apart at the seams.

For the last month he has spent most of his free hours at the clinic, which is a reversal, because Indrie used to spend his time in the Keep library. They passed late nights arguing about the usefulness of the appendixes in the herbology texts, and about whether the uptick in training injuries was due to the uptick in warriors or the increase in ale available after the last harvest, and a plethora of other worthless trains of thought that benefited no one but the two men avoiding trauma. Morgan needed someone who wanted nothing from him, someone who understood that at night the shadows creep in and cannot be stopped, and there is no one more acquainted with that problem than Indrie.

He has not told Indrie about Bohdi. He suspects Indrie knows he is seeing someone, because Indrie handed over an ointment for the marks on his neck without comment, but he is fairly certain Indrie does not know who. He is equally certain Indrie will not ask, and Morgan is grateful for that daily. He wants to tell him. Telling Eskil's lover what he and Bohdi do in the dark would put Bohdi in an early grave, so he doesn't.

He comes through the front door with a box balanced on one arm, the weight of it distributed carefully so he doesn't upend the glass vials packed on top. Clean linen, three rolls of suturing thread Indrie has been asking after since last week, a set of small glass vials for his tinctures that Ingrid sent along with a note. Morgan has not read the note, because Ingrid's handwriting is atrocious and he is not going to squint his way through it when he can deliver the contents and let Indrie decipher the instructions himself.

The front room is empty, and the door was unlocked, which is not unusual. Indrie leaves it unlocked during clinic hours and often forgets to lock it after. It is a habit that makes Bohdi twitch and that Morgan has stopped remarking upon, because Indrie's response is always the same patient, gentle, immovable assertion that a healer's door should always be open. Morgan sets the box on the counter and looks around. The examination table is clean, the shelves are orderly, the stove is warm. That is Ermin's work. Ermin keeps the front room in a state of readiness that would impress a military quartermaster, and Morgan suspects it is compensation for the fact that his mentor routinely forgets to eat lunch.

He hears a cough from the back room and assumes it is Indrie, probably sorting herbs across the bed he does not sleep in. Indrie's organizational method involves spreading things over every flat surface available and then being genuinely surprised when he runs out of space.

"Indrie," he calls, already moving toward the back room. "Ingrid sent your vials. I haven't the faintest idea what her note says but I'm sure you'll manage. Also, the council has been moved to afternoon, which means I have two hours I didn't expect to have, so if you need help with anything that doesn't involve touching anything alive, I'm at your disposal."

He comes through the doorway talking, and then he stops talking.

There is a man in Indrie's bed who is not Indrie, sitting up against the pillows with a bandage wrapped around his chest and his trousers on and nothing else. He is watching Morgan with an alert, guarded expression, and he looks just as surprised to find Morgan there as Morgan is to find him.

Morgan makes a sound he will deny is a scream and turns on his heel to leave, almost losing his footing in his haste. His body decides before his brain has finished processing the visual information, feet already pointed at the door and weight already shifting. Because this is a man he knows and had hoped never to see again within arm's reach, and Morgan's body has opinions about that which override everything else.

Even injured, Garrik is fast. He has Morgan by the forearm before Morgan has cleared the doorway, grip firm but not crushing. Morgan spins on instinct and swings his free hand at the man's injured chest, because if he cannot run then he will fight and the wound is the obvious target. Garrik catches his wrist before the strike lands. He catches it cleanly, fingers closing around the joint without apparent effort, and now Morgan is standing in Indrie's back room with both arms held by a shirtless Wolfe warrior and his heart slamming against his ribs hard enough that he can hear it.