Chapter 13
Indrie
The mortar scrapes against the pestle in a steady rhythm, and Indrie focuses on the sound of it, on the grain of dried yarrow breaking down beneath his hands, because if he focuses on something concrete then he does not have to think about the other thing.
The other thing being the man chained in the cells beneath the keep.
He heard about it from Ermin, who heard it from a guard, who heard it from another guard. News in Valen travels like fire through dry grass, and by midday the whole city knows there is a Jakadi spy in the cells and that the king has been interrogating him personally.
Ermin delivers the details with breathless energy, leaning against the examination table with his arms folded and his eyes wide, the way he does when something has captured the full force of his attention and he cannot contain it.
"They found documents on him," Ermin says. "Maps of the keep. Guard rotations. Civilian movements, Indrie. He was watching people."
Indrie nods and grinds the yarrow finer. "Hand me the cheesecloth, please."
"Did you hear what I said? He was mapping the city."
"I heard you. Cheesecloth."
Ermin hands it over, but he does not stop.
He tells Indrie about the arrest, how a sharp-eyed guard at the lumber mill noticed the man sketching things a hired hand had no reason to sketch.
How they searched his lodgings and found the documents.
How Bohdi hauled him to the cells and the king went down within the hour.
Indrie listens. He does not stop working, he is grinding the poultice for a farmer's rash, a man named Alvin whose hands are cracked and weeping from something in his grain stores, but something in him goes very quiet.
He thinks about the man in the cell. About what interrogation means when the person doing it is Eskil, who carries three blades and has hands strong enough to snap bone.
About the screams that must have echoed off stone walls.
He thinks, unwillingly, about the stowaway on the ship. About the sound the whip made. About the cheers of the men. About the splash.
He sets the mortar down and stretches his fingers, which have gone white around the pestle. Ermin is still talking, something about the Jakadi and their tactics, and Indrie hears him distantly, the way one hears rain against a window.
"Are you listening?" Ermin asks.
"Yes," Indrie says. "The Jakadi gave false intelligence to draw Eskil to Kalkoa while they attacked Askarte. I know. Morgan told me about it."
Ermin blinks. "Oh. Right." He shifts on his feet. "Do you think the spy talked?"
Indrie's hands still on the cheesecloth. He looks at Ermin, at the bright inquisitive face, the leather journal tucked under his arm, the boy who wants to be a healer and is learning what that means, and says, carefully, "I imagine the king is persuasive."
Ermin hears something in Indrie's tone that gives him pause. His brow furrows slightly and he opens his mouth, then closes it again. He has the good instinct, an instinct Indrie is proud of, to recognize when a topic has reached its end.
"I finished labeling the tinctures on the second shelf," Ermin says instead, and Indrie nods and thanks him and goes back to his work.
But his hands are not steady, and the quiet in him does not lift.
***
He sends Ermin home when the last patient leaves. The boy lingers, as he always does, reluctant to go while there might still be something to learn. Indrie tells him to eat supper and rest. "You've been here since dawn. Even apprentices need to sleep."
"I slept," Ermin protests. "Mostly."
"Go. I mean it."
Ermin goes, but not without a backward glance that says he knows Indrie is thinking about something and is too polite, or too wise, to push.
Alone in the clinic, Indrie cleans the examination table and puts away the last of his supplies and stands for a long time at the window, looking out at the narrow alley behind the building.
The evening light slants gold through the glass.
He can hear the city settling into its rhythms, someone hammering at the forge, children playing, the low murmur of conversation from the street.
He can't stop thinking about the prisoner.
He thinks about the fact that thinking about it turns his stomach, and that the turning is not new.
It is the same turning he felt on the ship, watching a man flogged and thrown into the sea.
Violence lives in this kingdom the way weather lives in the sky.
Inevitable. Elemental. Part of the fabric of what these people are.
And Indrie is a healer. He took a vow. The vow did not come with conditions.
He takes off his work apron, folds it neatly over the back of the chair, and puts on his coat. He checks his reflection in the small mirror Morgan gave him, the scarf from the woman wound around his neck against the chill, and then he leaves the clinic and walks to the keep.
***
The keep is quieter than it usually is at this hour.
The servants move with a subdued energy that Indrie has come to recognize as the tension that descends when the king is in a certain mood.
He passes a maid carrying a tray of food that has not been touched, and their eyes meet briefly, and she gives him a tight sympathetic smile that he does not fully understand.
He finds Eskil's study. The door is open.
The king is at his desk, a quill in one hand, poised over a document he does not seem to be reading. The scowl etched into his brow is deep enough to cast shadows, and there is a tension in his shoulders, the set of them rigid beneath his tunic.
He looks up when Indrie appears in the doorway, and his expression shifts.
Surprise first, the brows lifting, the quill pausing mid-air.
Then something softer, warm and involuntary, and he banks it immediately, the way he always does, as though being glad to see someone were a weakness he cannot afford.
"Indrie."
The sound of his name in Eskil's voice does something to him every single time. He swallows around it and steps into the room.
"Are you busy?" Indrie asks. His Rengaran is smoother now than it was even a week ago, the sounds rounder in his mouth, the grammar less halting. Morgan's tutoring and his own relentless studying are bearing fruit, even if complex ideas still tangle on his tongue.
Eskil sets the quill down and leans back in his chair. "Nothing that won't keep. Come in."
Indrie comes in. He does not sit. He stands on the other side of the desk with his hands at his sides and his spine straight and tries to order his thoughts in a language that is not his own.
"I heard about the prisoner," he says.
Eskil's expression guards. Not dramatically.
To someone who did not know him the change would be imperceptible.
But Indrie has spent a month learning the topography of this man's face, and he sees the jaw tighten a fraction, sees the gaze steady into something more deliberate.
The openness that was there a moment ago retreats behind stone.
"What have you heard?" Eskil asks, carefully.
"That he is Jakadi. That he was embedded in the city. That he was documenting our defenses." Indrie pauses. The word our came out without him planning it, and he notices, distantly, that it felt natural. "That you have been interrogating him."
Eskil watches him. He is waiting for the question.
Indrie gives it to him.
"I want to see him. I want to tend to him."
The silence that follows is not comfortable. It has weight and edges. Eskil does not move. His fingers are still resting on the desk beside the quill, and Indrie watches one of them tap, once, twice, against the wood.
"No," Eskil says.
The word is flat. Not angry, not yet. But final, in the way that kings' words are final. Indrie has heard this tone before. Standing in Armond's room, while Eskil addressed Erlan like he'd overstepped. There's a line being drawn.
Indrie crosses it.
"He needs medical attention. Whatever his crimes, he is still a man, and he is injured, and I—"
"The man is dangerous," Eskil cuts in. He has not raised his voice, but there is an edge to it now, a blade sliding from its sheath.
"He was embedded in our city for weeks, evaluating our defenses for an attack on civilians.
He had documents on the clinic's location.
" His eyes hold Indrie's. "On your location. In his possession."
Indrie absorbs this. The knowledge settles into him with a cold weight, the understanding that the spy had not merely been watching the city but watching him.
That somewhere in those documents there was a note about the healer's clinic, about where Indrie worked and when, about how to find him.
It makes his skin prickle with something that is not quite fear but lives close to it.
It does not change what he knows to be true.
"He is in a cell," Indrie says. "Chained. He is no threat to anyone right now. And he needs—"
"He is exactly where he should be."
"He needs care, Eskil." Indrie's voice firms. The conviction rises in him from a place deeper than opinion, deeper than argument, from the bedrock of everything he has been taught and everything he believes.
"I took a vow. I swore to tend anyone in need, regardless of who they are or what they have done.
I cannot stand by and let someone suffer. "
Eskil's jaw works. The muscle in his temple tightens and releases. He is quiet for a long moment, and Indrie can see him choosing his words, can see the effort it takes to keep the edge filed down.
"I understand your vow," Eskil says. "And I respect it. But I will not send you into a cell with a man who would kill you the moment he had the opportunity."
"Then chain him more securely. Post a guard inside the door. I am not asking to be alone with him. I am asking to do my work."
"Your work does not include tending enemy combatants in underground cells."