Tending the Ache (Rengara #2)

Chapter 1

Indrie

The ship rounds the final headland and Valen opens in front of them.

Indrie stands at the prow with his hands curled around the railing, fingers white-knuckled against salt-bleached wood, and watches the harbor unfold from behind the cliffs.

Everything Dagny described to him during the long weeks at sea is here, and more besides.

The harbor sits in the curved palm of a wide fjord.

The water is a deep blue-green, clear enough that he can see the shadows of rocks beneath the surface, nothing like the grey silted harbors of Kalkoa where the water was the color of old iron and smelled of rot.

Beyond the docks the city climbs the hillside in tiers of timber and stone, the rooftops patched with turf and wildflowers, so that the buildings look as though they have grown up out of the ground.

Behind the city the land opens into a vast sweep of green. Meadows. Dense pine forest. Farmland stitched together by rivers that flash silver in the afternoon light. Past all of it, distant and enormous, snow-capped mountains saw across the sky.

More greenery than Indrie has ever seen in his life. More life in a single hillside than in the whole of Kalkoa's withered countryside.

He has seen drawings of places like this in the margins of old texts, lush kingdoms rendered in faded ink by scholars who had traveled farther than Indrie ever dreamed he would.

He used to trace those illustrations with one fingertip, late at night in his closet-sized room, and try to imagine standing somewhere green and growing and alive.

Now he is here. It is better than any drawing.

There is a host of people waiting on the dock.

Dozens of families and friends and children, pressing forward and calling out names as the ship glides into the harbor.

The noise is overwhelming after weeks of ocean silence.

Indrie can hear laughter and weeping and someone playing a hand drum, the thump of it carrying across the water, and the sheer volume of joy makes his throat tight.

These people have been waiting. These people have been missed.

Women run along the dock edge to keep pace with the ship, waving scarves above their heads.

Children bounce on their toes to see over the crowd.

Indrie has never been waited for in his life.

"Ready?" Dagny says at his elbow.

He turns to find her practically vibrating beside him, red hair wild around her face, her grin wide enough to split her in two.

"I think so," he says, and is surprised to find that it's mostly true.

The ship shudders against the dock. The gangplank drops. The noise swells.

Indrie leaves the ship with Dagny's arm linked firmly in his, her grip warm and steadying as they navigate the gangplank together.

She is bouncing on the balls of her feet, her chatter devolving into a stream of Rengaran too fast for him to follow.

He catches the words home and Ingrid and finally, and holds onto her arm and lets himself be carried along by her happiness, because it is large enough for both of them and he has none of his own to spare.

They make it approximately four steps onto the dock before they are separated.

A slight woman with long blonde hair breaks through the crowd at a dead run, shoving past a fisherman, ducking under someone's outstretched arm, and Dagny releases Indrie and catches her with both hands.

She spins her around, one full revolution, boots leaving the dock, laughing so loudly it echoes off the harbor walls.

The blonde woman is crying. Openly, unashamedly, her face crumpled with weeks of worry dissolving all at once, and she clings to Dagny's neck with both arms and will not let go.

Dagny murmurs into her hair and presses kisses against her temple, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth.

The blonde pulls back just enough to cup Dagny's face in both hands and say something fierce and tearful that Indrie cannot hear over the crowd.

He watches them. Something in him goes tight and small.

Then the woman's eyes find Indrie over Dagny's shoulder. She blinks, startled, tear tracks still wet on her cheeks. Dagny follows her gaze and grins.

"This is my dear friend, Indrie," she says, in the slow, careful Rengaran she uses when she wants him to follow. "Indrie, this is Ingrid."

Friend. He knows that word now. Dagny taught it to him on the ship, and hearing it spoken about him in an introduction makes his eyes sting.

Ingrid releases Dagny and crosses to him and embraces him as though they have known each other for years.

She is soft and warm and smells of lavender and bread flour, and she holds him properly, with both arms, the way you hold family.

"Welcome home," Ingrid says, in Rengaran. Then something else, slower, watching his face to see whether it lands. “I’m so happy to meet you.”

He gets perhaps half of it. He does not need the other half.

"Thank you," he says carefully, in Rengaran, and her whole face lights up at the effort.

He hugs her back and feels warm.

Over Ingrid's shoulder, through the press of bodies and the chaos of reunion, Indrie sees Eskil come down the gangplank.

The crowd parts for him without being asked.

People step aside. They clap his arms and call greetings that Eskil answers with nods and brief clasps of hands, his blond hair catching the pale sunlight, the tattoos on his bare forearms dark against sun-browned skin.

He is taller than almost everyone around him and broader than all of them, and he moves through the joy of the homecoming solid and unhurried while the current of it breaks around him.

Indrie does not mean to watch. He has been not-watching Eskil since his journey began.

He has perfected the art of tracking the king from the corner of his eye while appearing to study the horizon, or the rigging, or the backs of his own hands.

He has gotten very good at it. He is not good at it now.

Now he watches openly, because there is a crowd between them and he is certain he is invisible in it.

The sight of Eskil on solid ground, in his homeland, among his people, does something terrible to the ache he has been carrying since the cabin.

Eskil does not look for him.

Not once. Not a glance back toward the ship, not a sweep of the dock, not the smallest turn of his head. Indrie stands in a strange city holding a stranger's arms and watches the king walk past him into a life that was always waiting, whether Indrie existed or not.

Eskil is halfway down the dock when a slender young man with long blond hair half in braids breaks away from the crowd and throws himself at the king hard enough that even Eskil staggers back a step.

Indrie's heart stops.

The young man hugs him fiercely, face buried in Eskil's chest, fingers gripping the back of his tunic.

Eskil's arms come around him and hold him close.

One large hand cradles the back of the young man's head.

The other wraps around his shoulders. His eyes close and his jaw softens, and for a moment the ruthless king looks like nothing more than a man who has been desperately missed.

Indrie is struck with a clean, sharp pain, as though something has been slipped between his ribs.

Of course. Of course Eskil did not want him.

Of course there was no space for him. The king already has someone waiting, beautiful and golden and clinging to him with the kind of intimacy that speaks of years, not weeks.

A lover. A partner. Someone who belongs in those arms in a way Indrie never will.

He watches Eskil press his lips to the top of the young man's head, and something inside him folds like wet parchment.

But then the young man pulls back, and Indrie sees his face properly for the first time, and the resemblance is immediate and unmistakable.

The same strong jaw. The same blue eyes, though lighter, pale as ice water where Eskil's are deep. The same stubborn set to the mouth. The same proud line of the nose, softened by youth but carved from the same stone.

A brother, Indrie thinks. The relief is so sharp and so sudden that it embarrasses him. His knees nearly go out from under him.

His second thought is: the brother is near his own age.

He realizes with a flush of mortification that he has never once thought about the years between himself and Eskil.

He doesn’t know how many there are, but he knows they exist. In Kalkoa it would be unremarkable.

Marriages with wide gaps were arranged without comment, brides traded between houses like livestock, age a consideration only insofar as it affected breeding.

But looking at the young man in Eskil's arms, who could easily be Indrie's own age, bright-eyed and sharp-jawed and so clearly young, Indrie is forced to consider something that makes his face heat.

Eskil probably sees him as an adolescent. A naive, damaged boy from a ruined kingdom who does not even speak his language properly. A body that happened to be convenient when the fruit was killing him. A mouth that asked do I belong to you and was gently, firmly told no.

He has been foolish. Profoundly, achingly foolish to think this man would ever want him.

"Indrie?"

He blinks. Dagny is tugging his arm, her brow creased, and he realizes he has been standing motionless in the middle of a crowd staring at the king for a conspicuously long time.

"Sorry," he says. "I was looking at the mountains. They're very large."

Dagny follows his gaze, which is aimed nowhere near the mountains.

"They are," she says. "Famously."

She does not press. She pulls him gently and he turns away from the sight of the king and his golden companion and lets himself be led up through the streets of Valen with Ingrid at his other side, pointing out landmarks and chattering in a slow, careful Rengaran that washes over him like water.