Chapter 6 #2
"Nothing has to be decided today," Morgan says.
"The envoy presented it as an invitation, not an ultimatum, and that distinction matters.
It means there is room in it. We can counter.
We can propose other terms, and there are half a dozen alliance structures that do not involve a marriage at all.
" He does not let go of Eskil's arm. "And if he refuses every one of them, then we have learned something about what he actually wants, which we do not currently know. "
"I know what he wants."
"You know what he asked for. That is not the same thing, and you taught me the difference."
Eskil lets himself be talked down, because the alternative is doing something destructive and Morgan does not deserve to be the target of it. Eventually the rage banks to something that merely smolders instead of blazes. It sits in his chest steady and hot, and he knows it will not go out.
Morgan seems to sense the shift. He releases Eskil's arm and his posture eases, not fully, not to the slouch he adopts when they are alone and unburdened, but enough to signal that the crisis has passed its peak.
"I've been getting Indrie set up in Valen," Morgan says, and the change of subject is so smooth and so intentional that Eskil can see the seams of it. "The clinic is coming together. He has already seen patients. A mother with a feverish child, the first morning he was open."
Eskil tries not to visibly relax at the mention of Indrie.
He fails.
Something in his shoulders drops. Something in his face eases.
It is involuntary, as ungovernable as flinching at a loud sound, and he cannot stop it any more than he can stop the tide.
The mention of Indrie's name loosens a bolt somewhere load-bearing, and the relief that passes through him is so immediate and so transparent that he might as well have announced it with trumpets.
Morgan, who sees everything, does not miss it.
His pale eyes sharpen. The faintest crease appears between his brows, not confusion but calculation.
He is cataloguing. Filing. Storing this piece of information alongside all the other pieces he has been collecting, and Eskil can practically hear the mechanism of his brother's mind clicking the new data into place.
"I noticed," Morgan says, with studied casualness, "that the clothes Indrie was wearing today belonged to you."
Eskil's expression does not change. "The man didn't exactly come with belongings when I found him. And when he fell overboard he had nothing dry to wear."
"You had a crew of men and women aboard that ship. And the best option was to put him in clothes twice his size?"
"It was what was in my cabin at the time. I didn't overthink it."
Morgan raises both eyebrows. "Oh. So he was in your personal cabin."
Eskil fixes him with a look that has ended political careers. A look that has made councilmembers reconsider their positions mid-sentence and border lords rethink the wisdom of their demands. It is a line drawn on the floor with a dare attached.
"We are not discussing Indrie in this manner," he says.
Morgan holds up his hands in mock surrender. The gesture is perfectly executed, palms open, shoulders raised, but his eyes are not backing down at all. His eyes are bright and sharp and deeply, thoroughly unconvinced.
"Very well," Morgan says. "But you should know that I have had to find out from the crew that their king apparently favors the Kalkoan healer." He lowers his hands. "And that Indrie himself seems very reluctant to talk about what he is to the king."
Eskil stiffens.
The mention of Indrie's discomfort, of Indrie being reluctant and uncertain and distressed about whatever it is he thinks they are or aren't, cuts through the defensive anger and finds the thing beneath it, the raw and unprotected thing he has been trying not to look at since the night in the cabin.
Indrie is struggling. Indrie is struggling with something Eskil did or said or failed to say, and the struggle is visible enough that Morgan, who has known the man for two days, has already noticed it.
Morgan's brow furrows. The dry wit is gone. What is left is genuine concern, one friend worried about another, watching someone flinch away from a question he should not have had to ask.
"What happened between you two?" Morgan asks.
The question is quiet. Direct. Not accusatory. Morgan is not asking as a brother defending his king's reputation. He is asking as a friend trying to help someone who is hurting.
Eskil looks at his brother. He sees the concern.
He sees the sharp intelligence working behind it, the pieces being assembled, the picture forming.
He knows that if he answers honestly, if he tells Morgan about what happened on the ship, Morgan will understand.
Morgan will see the full shape of the disaster Eskil has made and he will know, because he speaks the language, exactly where the translation failed and exactly what Indrie heard when Eskil said the wrong thing with the right intention.
Morgan could fix this. Morgan could walk to the clinic tomorrow and sit down with Indrie and explain, in Indrie's own language, what Eskil meant.
He could bridge the gap that Eskil cannot bridge because he does not have the words and has never had the words and will never have the words, because the thing he feels for Indrie is bigger than any language he speaks and he does not know how to make it smaller.
But this is not Morgan's to fix.
"I'm not discussing this with my little brother," Eskil says.
Morgan huffs out an exasperated sigh, a full-bodied, whole-chest exhale.
It's years of managing a sibling who communicates primarily through cursing and violence coming out of him at once.
He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture he has inherited from no one and developed entirely on his own.
"Then will you at least talk to Indrie about it?" Morgan says. "Because it is obvious he's distressed and I cannot help him if I don't understand what's wrong."
Eskil says nothing.
Morgan waits. He is very good at waiting.
He has spent his entire life waiting for his brother to say things he is not going to say, and the patience he brings to it is both admirable and infuriating, because it never breaks.
He will stand here all night if he has to, watching Eskil with those pale, expectant eyes, and Eskil will eventually have to either answer or physically leave the room.
Eskil considers physically leaving the room.
"I'll handle it," he says. He does not say when. He does not say how. He does not make promises, because he has learned, the hard way and repeatedly, in every arena of his life except this one, that promises he is not certain he can keep are worse than silence.
Morgan studies him for a long moment. Whatever he finds must be enough, because he nods. Once. Slowly.
"Alright," Morgan says.
He gathers himself. Straightens his shirt, assumes the composed posture of a prince who has not just been hauled into a library by his collar, and moves toward the door.
He stops with his hand on the latch.
"For what it's worth," Morgan says, without turning around, "he speaks very highly of you. Whatever you think you've ruined may not be as ruined as you believe."
He opens the door and leaves.
Eskil stands alone in the library. The afternoon light falls through the high windows in long, pale shafts, illuminating dust motes and the spines of books and the worn surface of the reading table where Morgan caught himself when Eskil pulled him through the door.
He speaks very highly of you.
Eskil places both hands on the reading table and leans his weight into it and does not move for a long time.