9. Chapter 9 #2
And then Bohdi is there, materializing out of the smoke and shadow, and his fist connects with the side of the stowaway's face with a crack that Indrie feels through the floor.
The impact snaps the man's head sideways and his grip breaks, not loosens, breaks, his hands wrenching free of Indrie's throat as Bohdi grabs him by the collar and the arm and wrenches him bodily off of Indrie with a force that sends the man skidding across the wet floor.
Indrie gasps.
The air rushes in, agonizing and beautiful, tearing through his bruised throat, raw and sharp.
He rolls onto his side, hands going to his own neck, and the sound he makes is animal, a wheeze, a sob, something in between that he has no control over.
His vision swims. The hold tilts. He can hear the stowaway struggling, can hear Bohdi's voice, low and deadly and utterly unlike the warm, joking tone Indrie has grown accustomed to, but it's distant, underwater, filtered through the ringing in his ears.
Dagny falls at his side. He didn't see her arrive, doesn't know when she came, but she's there, on her knees beside him, her hands on his shoulders, her face close to his and her voice saying his name.
Indrie. Indrie. Over and over, frantic and frightened and fierce, and her hands are checking him, his throat, his face, his chest, with a desperation that speaks of genuine terror.
He clings to her arm. His fingers close around her wrist and he holds on and he breathes. Each breath hurts. Each breath is a victory. He breathes and he holds on and Dagny's hand moves to the back of his head and she pulls him close and he presses his forehead against her shoulder and breathes.
The sounds around him slowly sharpen. Bohdi's voice, issuing orders.
The scuffle of the stowaway being restrained.
Footsteps on the ladder, more people coming, drawn by the commotion.
Ermin's voice, high and alarmed, asking what happened.
Dagny responding over Indrie's head, her words clipped and furious, her hand still cradling the back of his skull.
Bohdi grabs the man by the neck and the arm and bodily hauls him out of the hold.
Indrie hears the stowaway's boots dragging across the floor, hears the grunt of effort as Bohdi maneuvers him toward the ladder, hears the man start to struggle again and Bohdi's response, a single, sharp word that silences him.
After a few minutes, Indrie scrambles to his feet. The hold tilts dangerously and Dagny grabs his arm to steady him, her face tight with worry.
"You should sit..." she starts.
He shakes his head. He doesn't know why, but he needs to see. He needs to know what happens next.
He follows Dagny up the ladder, her hand on his back, her body positioned behind him, ready to catch him if he falls. His legs are unsteady and his throat is on fire and his burned palms scream when they close around the rungs, but he climbs.
He gets on deck to see Bohdi kick the man's feet out from under him so he's kneeling on the planks.
The stowaway hits the deck hard, knees cracking against the wood, and Bohdi's hand stays on the back of his neck, holding him down with an ease that speaks of long practice.
The man is disheveled, gaunt, his clothes stained with soot and sea damp, and in the lamplight Indrie can see the wild desperation in his eyes has curdled into something uglier.
Cornered. Defiant. Caught, and determined to make it everyone's problem.
Eskil is there.
He's standing on deck, dressed but unsettled, clearly pulled from sleep by alarm, shirt untucked, hair unbraided, boots unlaced.
He had helped put out the fire, Indrie realizes.
He'd been in the hold. He'd come and gone and returned above deck to ensure they were still on course, and now he stands before the kneeling stowaway with a flat, cold expression, an assessment already reached, a conclusion already drawn.
Bohdi speaks first. His voice is steady, professional, but Indrie can hear the undercurrent of anger beneath it, controlled, channeled, nothing resembling the explosive rage Indrie grew up fearing. This is precise. This is disciplined anger, anger with rules about how it gets deployed.
"Stowaway," Bohdi says, and that word Indrie knows.
"Found him in the hold. Near where the fire...
" The rest dissolves into sounds Indrie can't parse, the cadence of a report being delivered, details he doesn't have the vocabulary to follow.
He catches fragments. Fire. He knows that one.
Crate. He knows that one too. The rest is a current he can't swim in, words tumbling past him while Bohdi gestures at the hold below, at the stowaway, at the evidence.
Then Bohdi says Indrie's name. Says it clearly, pointing at him, and the next words come slower, weighted with something that makes Eskil's entire body change.
Indrie catches found and him and then a word he doesn't recognize, but Bohdi's hand goes to his own throat when he says it, fingers pressing against his neck in unmistakable demonstration, and Indrie doesn't need the translation.
He tried to strangle him.
Eskil's gaze moves to Indrie. It's brief, a fraction of a second, a flicker of those pale eyes, but Indrie feels the weight of it in his chest. He sees the king's jaw tighten.
Sees the muscle in his temple flex. Sees his gaze drop to Indrie's throat, where the bruises must already be forming, and then return to the stowaway with something in them that makes the hair on Indrie's arms stand up.
Eskil steps forward. He crouches, bringing himself to the stowaway's level, and the stillness in him is terrifying. When he speaks, his voice is low, dangerously level, the kind of calm that Indrie has learned to fear more than shouting because shouting is an expenditure and calm is a decision.
"Did you start the fire?"
Indrie understands every word. Fire he learned from Dagny on his first day.
Start and you came in the days after. The sentence is simple, short, spoken with deliberate clarity, and Indrie wonders if Eskil chose those words knowing he was listening, or if he always speaks to the condemned in language they can understand.
The man doesn't answer. He rears up against Bohdi's grip and yells, and the words that come pouring out of him are in Indrie's native tongue, and Indrie understands them with perfect, horrible clarity.
"Savages! You're all savages, every one of you!
Animals, barbarians, heathens who are going to rot in the deepest hell for what you've done!
You came to our kingdom and took what wasn't yours and destroyed what was left and I hope your ship sinks and every last one of you drowns in the cold dark sea! "
The crew doesn't understand the words, but they understand the tone. The deck goes taut with it, bodies shifting, hands finding weapons. Indrie can feel Dagny's arm tighten around him.
Eskil grabs his face. One hand, fingers digging into the man's jaw, wrenching his head up so their eyes meet. The stowaway's tirade cuts off mid-word, swallowed by the grip and the proximity and the look on Eskil's face, which is not anger, Indrie realizes. It's worse than anger. It's certainty.
Eskil says something to the man, quiet enough that only those closest can hear. Indrie catches two words. Only two. But he knows them both, learned them from Dagny in a lesson about directions and locations, and together they form a sentence that needs no context.
See you there.
The king's voice is low and deep and final, and the stowaway's defiance crumbles behind his eyes.
Eskil releases the man's jaw and straightens. He turns to the crew and gives an order, a full sentence that moves too fast for Indrie to follow, but the meaning becomes clear when two of the crew come forward and drag the stowaway to his feet and haul him toward the mast.
They tie him there. Arms wrenched around the thick wooden column, rope binding his wrists, his chest pressed against the mast with his back exposed.
Someone tears his shirt open. Someone else produces a whip, a nine-tailed lash, the leather strands knotted at the ends, the kind of weapon Indrie has seen hanging on the walls of Armond's punishment room but has never seen used because Armond preferred his fists.
Indrie's hand goes to his mouth.
The first strike lands and the sound is not what he expected.
It's wet. Heavy. A thick, meaty crack that echoes across the deck and is followed, a heartbeat later, by a scream that tears from the stowaway's throat, raw and wrenched free.
The man's body convulses against the mast, his fingers clawing at the wood, and the second strike follows before the echo of the first has faded.
Indrie watches in horror. His hand is pressed over his mouth, his eyes are wide, and he cannot look away.
He wants to. Every part of him wants to turn, to close his eyes, to block out the sound and the sight and the smell of blood that's beginning to mist the air.
But he can't. His body won't obey him. He stands on the deck of the ship and watches the whip rise and fall, rise and fall, and the screams blend together into a continuous sound that he will hear in his sleep for weeks.
It lasts no more than a minute, though it feels longer, feels endless, before he starts forward.