9. Chapter 9 #3
He doesn't make a decision to move. His body moves for him, the same way it moved in the hold when the fire was burning and the smoke was thick and his hands were needed.
He is a healer. There is a person in pain.
The equation is simple and absolute and overrides everything else, the fear, the logic, the certain knowledge that stepping between a king's punishment and the man receiving it is the kind of decision that gets you tied to the mast next.
He starts forward and Dagny grabs him by the arm.
She drags him back, wrapping her arm around his chest and holding him close, and he struggles against her, not hard, not with any real strength, because his strength is spent and his hands are burned and his throat is so swollen each breath is a labor, but he tries.
He tries to move toward the screaming man because he took a vow, he took a vow, that he would hurt no living creature and that he would ease suffering wherever he found it, and the sound of the whip against flesh is suffering he can hear and feel and he cannot stand here and do nothing.
Dagny holds him. She is stronger than she looks, or he is weaker than he thinks, and her arm is an iron band across his chest, keeping him against her, keeping him from the mast. She's whispering frantically, her mouth close to his ear, her breath hot against his skin.
"No, Indrie. No."
And Indrie hears the words. He hears them in his language, not hers, she's chosen the words he'll understand, the simplest, most direct command she can give, and the terror in her voice is not for the stowaway.
It's for him. She's terrified of what will happen to Indrie if he interferes, if he steps into the path of the king's justice, if he makes himself a problem.
He knows that terror. He's lived inside it for five years.
He stops struggling. The fight goes out of him all at once, sudden and total, and he sags against Dagny's hold and she takes his weight without complaint.
He clings to her, his burned hands fisting in her shirt, face buried against her shoulder, but he cannot block out the sound of the man's screams.
Indrie has heard of stowaways being put to work or chained in a cell, punished with labor or confinement, measured responses to measured crimes.
But never this. Never the sound of leather on flesh and the sight of blood running down a man's back and the crew standing by watching with faces that range from grim satisfaction to indifference.
It lasts too long. Far too long. Long enough that the screams thin and weaken and eventually stop, not because the whip has stopped but because the man's voice has given out, and the silence where the screams were is somehow worse.
When they're done, the man cannot stand on his own. His back is a ruin, Indrie sees it when they cut him loose and he slumps against the mast, the flesh laid open in overlapping stripes, blood sheeting down and pooling on the deck, and his legs buckle beneath him and he drops to his knees.
Bohdi hauls him back up. Grabs him by the arm and the remnant of his shirt and drags him upright with the same ease he dragged him out of the hold, and the stowaway's head lolls, barely conscious, his feet dragging on the blood-slicked planks.
Eskil looks at the man. Looks at Bohdi.
"Get rid of him."
Indrie's hands tighten on Dagny and he has to bite his own knuckles to keep from making a sound. The taste of his own skin is sharp and grounding and he bites harder, teeth pressing white crescents into his flesh, because if he makes a sound it will be a scream or a sob and he can't afford either.
He hears the man being dragged across the deck. Hears the scuffle of boots and the dead weight of a body being hauled toward the gunwale. Hears Bohdi say something short and final. And then he hears the splash.
The crew cheers.
The sound rises around him, a rough, triumphant roar from the men and women who almost burned alive tonight because of the man now sinking into the black water behind them, and it washes over Indrie and he feels nothing. He feels impossibly, completely, profoundly numb.
Dagny's arm is still around him. She's stopped whispering.
Her hand moves slowly up and down his back, a soothing rhythm that his body registers but his mind can't process.
He's shaking, he can feel it, the tremors running through his frame, his teeth chattering despite the warm night air, and he can't stop.
He doesn't look at the water. He doesn't look at the mast. He doesn't look at Eskil.
He keeps his face pressed against Dagny's shoulder and he bites his knuckles and he shakes.
The cheering fades. The crew disperses. Someone begins cleaning the blood from the deck.
Dagny guides him below, one arm around his waist, and deposits him in his bunk. She sits on the edge of the mattress and holds his hand and says nothing, because there is nothing to say, and Indrie lies on his side with his knees drawn to his chest and stares at the wooden wall and doesn't sleep.