Chapter 31
Eskil
Dawn breaks the color of a wound, red and swollen at the horizon, bruising to purple where it meets the retreating dark.
Eskil has not slept. He has been sitting in the chair by the window since early morning, fully dressed, watching the sky bleed itself open over the mountains while the fire dies behind him and the man in his bed breathes soft and even and unaware.
He has sent men to die before. He has held their hands and looked them in the eyes and told them what they were riding toward and watched them go anyway, because that is what kings do.
Kings spend people. They spend them like coin and call it duty and sleep well enough most nights because the reasoning of it, the ones saved against the ones spent, usually comes out in favor of the living.
This is his brother. The reasoning can go fuck itself.
Morgan has never used a blade. He speaks six languages and reads more than that and writes in a hand so precise it looks printed, and he cannot throw a punch without breaking his own thumb.
Eskil knows this because Morgan tried once, at sixteen, during an argument about import tariffs that escalated beyond the bounds of diplomatic discourse, and Eskil had to set the bone himself while Morgan sat white-faced and furious and refused to admit he was crying.
That is the man Eskil is sending into a stronghold full of warriors who want to use him like a chess piece and discard him when the game is won.
He has gone over the contingencies so many times they have worn grooves in his skull.
If communication is cut off. If Bohdi signals the abort.
If Bohdi does not signal anything at all and the silence stretches past the window and into the territory of the unthinkable.
He has a plan for every version of this that ends badly, and not one of those plans will bring his brother back if the worst has already happened.
Behind him, the sheets rustle. A small sleepy sound, half sigh and half murmur, and then silence again.
Eskil does not turn around. If he turns around he will see Indrie in his bed, and he will climb back in beside him and hold on and not let go.
And he cannot do that, because in less than an hour he has to stand on the steps of the keep and watch his brother ride south and he needs to be a king for that and not whatever the fuck he is right now.
Whatever the fuck he is right now is a man who is terrified.
He became king at nineteen. He has been terrified exactly four times since.
The first was the night his mother died and he sat beside her cooling body with a six-year-old asleep in his lap and understood, with the clean and absolute horror of sudden comprehension, that there was no one coming to help.
The second was the night a man came for the throne and Eskil cut his throat in the great hall and cleaned the blood from the stones before Morgan woke and carried the shaking in his hands for three days afterward.
The third was the night Indrie fell overboard and the ocean took him and the world narrowed to a single black point of no, not him, not this one before he threw himself in after.
The fourth is now.
He stands. His knees ache, too many hours in the chair, too many years of absorbing impact through joints that are beginning to lodge their complaints.
He crosses to the basin and splashes cold water on his face and scrubs it dry with a cloth and looks at himself in the small mirror above the stand.
Thirty-three years old. Lines at the corners of his eyes that were not there five years ago. A jaw that has been clenched so often the muscles have thickened visibly at the temples. He looks tired. A man who has carried too much for too long and does not know how to set it down.
He braids his hair. The motions are automatic, grooved into his muscle memory since boyhood.
Separate, cross, tighten. Separate, cross, tighten.
His father taught him this. His father is fourteen years dead and Eskil's fingers still move the way his did, left over right, thumb pressing the plait flat against the scalp, and sometimes this is the only inheritance that feels real.
He secures the braid with a leather tie and reaches for his sword belt.
"You're already dressed."
Eskil turns. Indrie is sitting up in bed, blanket pooled at his waist, dark hair at his shoulders, blinking at the grey light with the unfocused squint of someone who has recently been unconscious and resents being otherwise.
He looks like something Eskil does not deserve and cannot stop reaching for.
"I have to be at the steps soon," Eskil says.
Indrie throws the blanket off and is out of bed in a scramble of bare feet, stumbling as he reaches for his trousers.
Eskil watches him hop on one foot trying to pull them on and feels something crack behind his sternum.
Not pain, not quite. Something more dangerous.
Something tender and absurd and ferociously alive.
"I was going to let you sleep," Eskil says.
"Well, that was foolish." Indrie yanks the trousers up and cinches the waist, still too wide, even the Rengaran ones Morgan had tailored for him, because Rengaran tailors apparently cannot fathom a waist that size on an adult man.
He pulls on a tunic and grabs his coat from the chair and shoves his arms into it.
Then he turns to Eskil with his hair in his face and his laces undone and his boots in his hand because there is no time to put them on.
"I'm ready," he announces.
Eskil wants to press him against the nearest wall and kiss him until neither of them can breathe.
He does not. He holds out his hand instead.
Indrie takes it.
***
The keep steps are cold in the pre-dawn grey.
Frost has crept across the stones overnight, thin and treacherous, and Eskil positions himself at the top and watches the courtyard below where the horses are being saddled and the packs secured and the last preparations made with the efficient, unhurried competence of people who have done this before.
Indrie stands beside him. He has managed to get his boots on somewhere between the bedroom and the front doors. Eskil did not see when, only noticed the absence of bare feet on frozen stone. He notices his coat is buttoned wrong, one side higher than the other.
Eskil's eyes find Morgan in the courtyard below.
His brother is dressed for travel. Good riding leathers, well-fitted, with a heavy cloak over them that Eskil recognizes as one of his own, taken from the wardrobe without asking, which is Morgan's way of saying he wanted something of Eskil's with him without having to form the words.
His long blond hair is tied back with a cord.
His satchel is stuffed with books and documents and the personal cipher journal that contains every code they have shared since Morgan was old enough to encrypt.
He looks like a prince. He looks like their mother.
Eskil swallows against the thing in his throat and goes down the steps.
Morgan sees him coming and straightens. The composure is immaculate. Back straight, chin lifted, expression pleasant and untroubled. The diplomatic mask, perfected over a decade of sitting in rooms full of people who wanted things from him. Eskil has seen through it since Morgan was nine years old.
The boy is terrified.
He stops in front of his brother and looks down at him, because Morgan is tall but Eskil is taller and has a lifetime of looming, and for a moment neither of them speaks.
The courtyard noise continues around them, the sounds of preparation and departure, and it might as well be happening on a different continent.
He grips Morgan's shoulder. His hand is large enough to span from the joint to the base of his neck, and he holds on, and the grip says everything his mouth will not cooperate with.
Then his mouth cooperates after all. Barely.
"Don't do anything stupid," he says. Quiet enough that only his brother hears.
Morgan rolls his eyes. "I'll leave that to Bohdi."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Have you met him? The man's approach to subtlety is to hit things."
Eskil tightens his grip on Morgan's shoulder. Morgan's composure wavers, a hairline fracture visible for a breath, and then holds. His hand comes up and grips Eskil's forearm, fingers pressing hard into the leather bracer, and they stand like that for a moment. Holding on.
Eskil has held this boy through nightmares and fevers and the first broken bone and the aftermath of every loss, from scraped knees to dead parents.
He has been Morgan's brother and father and king and shield, and now he is sending him south with nothing but a man with an axe and the desperate, irrational faith that it will be enough.
"Come home," Eskil says. The words are rough. He does not dress them up. "That is not a request."
Morgan's jaw tightens. His fingers press harder into Eskil's arm. Then he says, with the ghost of a smile, "You could always order it. You are the king."
"As your king, then. Come home."
"I'll see what I can do."
Eskil pulls him forward and embraces him.
It is not the dignified, restrained clasp of a king and his emissary.
It is two arms around his brother, one hand cradling the back of his head, holding him the way he held him when Morgan was six years old and shaking with grief on the night their mother died.
Morgan's arms come around him in return, gripping the back of his coat, and for three seconds neither of them is a king or a prince or a diplomat or a strategist. They are just brothers.
Eskil lets go first, because someone has to, and it is always his job to be the one who does.
Morgan steps back. Clears his throat. Adjusts his satchel strap with hands that are no longer perfectly steady. "Right," he says, and his voice is tight. "Well. Try not to let the kingdom collapse while I'm gone."
"No promises."