Chapter 17 #3
"I notice the door has been replaced," Morgan says, examining it with scholarly interest. "Perhaps we should consider one that locks from the inside as well as the outside. Revolutionary concept, I know."
Indrie laughs. It surprises him, the sound coming out rough and startled, as though his body had forgotten it could do that and is remembering in real time. Morgan's expression softens and he looks pleased.
Nobody brings up Eskil.
Nobody mentions the king saving his life, or taking him to the keep, or the fact that Indrie spent the night in the king's quarters. Ingrid and Dagny do not comment on the shirt. The omission is so careful and so coordinated that it must be deliberate, and Indrie is so grateful he could weep.
***
That afternoon, he goes through his restock list of things he can request from Morgan and things he cannot.
The valerian is gone entirely and the chamomile is halved and he is running low on the antiseptic wash he makes from pine resin and alcohol.
He will need to go up into the hills for valerian, it grows wild along the stream banks above the city, and the walking will be good for him.
He will need to send Ermin to the weaver for more linen.
He is writing this out in careful Rengaran when the door opens and his heart lurches, a stupid involuntary spasm, and then Ermin comes through it and Indrie is both relieved and disappointed in a ratio he refuses to examine.
Ermin crosses the room in three steps and stands in front of him and looks at him. At the bandaged throat, the bruised arm, the too-large shirt. His mouth opens and for a moment nothing comes out.
Then: "I should have been here."
"Ermin—"
"I was three streets away." His voice cracks in the middle of it.
"Three streets. I have been in a shield wall, Indrie.
I went into Armond's castle with the second party and I have stood a watch every third night since I was fifteen, and I was three streets away asleep in my bed while a man put a knife on you. "
"And how would you have known?"
Ermin stops.
"Tell me how." Indrie sets the list down.
"There were no horns until after he was already loose.
There was nothing to hear. Nothing to see.
You were asleep in your bed, which is where you were supposed to be, and so was I.
" He softens it. "You are not a sentry posted on my door.
You are my apprentice. You cannot stand watch over me at night and be any use to me in the morning, and I need you in the morning. "
"You could have died."
"So could you, if you had been here." Indrie holds his eyes. "There would have been two of us at knifepoint instead of one, and I would not have forgiven myself for it. Not ever."
Ermin's jaw clenches. He looks very young, despite the set of his shoulders and the fierceness in his face, and the protectiveness coming off him is so earnest and so futile that it aches to witness.
"I hate this," he says.
"I know."
"I am good, Indrie. I am good with a blade and it did not matter at all."
"No," Indrie agrees. "It did not. That is not your failing. That is only how it happened."
Ermin does not look convinced. But he nods, once, and allows himself to be steered toward the supply shelf, and they spend the next hour taking inventory together and Indrie corrects his list-making and Ermin writes in his leather journal and the normalcy of it, the routine, the rhythm, the teacher and the student and the work between them, settles over Indrie and steadies him.
He teaches. He checks the stock. He puts the clinic back together jar by jar and shelf by shelf, the way he has put himself back together every time something breaks. Patiently. With steady hands and no wasted motion.
***
In the late afternoon, after Ermin has gone and the last of the daylight is fading, Indrie sits on the edge of the examination table and lets himself be still.
The clinic is quiet. The new door is solid in its frame. The shelves are filled, the instruments are clean, and the pot of tea Ingrid left has gone cold on the windowsill.
Then he gets off the table and goes into the back room and straightens the cot and folds the blanket and stands there considering whether he can sleep here tonight.
Morgan had said something earlier, while sitting on the floor with his basket of food.
He mentioned, almost as an aside, that he spends most evenings in the library and would welcome the company.
He said it casually, offhandedly, the way Morgan says things that are not casual or offhand at all.
Beneath it Indrie heard what was actually being offered.
A place to be, after dark, that is not this one.
A safe harbor for a man who is not ready to be alone in the room where a stranger held a blade to his throat.
"I would love to see the library," Indrie tells the empty clinic, practicing the sentence, hearing how it sounds.
He says it again, quieter.
Then he closes the windows and locks the new door from the outside with the key that was left on a nail beside the frame, and walks toward the keep in the fading light, wearing the king's shirt, carrying nothing but his satchel and the memory of a kiss he is not yet certain was a rejection.