Chapter 6 #2
His integration is partly due to Dagny, who has apparently appointed herself Indrie's personal ambassador and defender and has made it quietly but unmistakably clear that anyone who gives the healer trouble will answer to her.
Part of it is Indrie himself. There's a gentleness to him that disarms people.
A willingness to help that doesn't feel performative.
He's not trying to win them over. He's just this way.
Kind by nature, helpful by instinct, and so fucking earnest about everything that even the most guarded members of Eskil's crew have started nodding at him in the corridors.
Eskil lingers near the helm after the evening meal, hands on the railing, watching the deck below.
He's not watching Indrie. He's surveying his ship. Assessing the state of his crew. Performing the routine observation that any competent captain performs at the end of the day, taking stock of morale and readiness and the general condition of his vessel and the people on it.
He is, however, specifically surveying the portion of the deck where Indrie is sitting with Dagny and Ermin.
They're near the bow, settled on coils of rope and spare canvas, the remains of their meal on a shared plate between them.
Dagny is teaching Indrie words, pointing at objects and saying them in their tongue with the exaggerated enunciation of a woman who has thrown herself wholly into the role of instructor.
Each word is delivered with a patience that Eskil has rarely seen Dagny apply to anything that doesn't involve swordwork, and Indrie is repeating them back with an earnestness that makes something shift in Eskil's chest.
Every now and then Indrie laughs at his own mispronunciation.
It happens when he mangles a word so badly that even he can hear the error, a vowel swapped, a consonant dropped, a sound that comes out resembling a sneeze more than speech, and the laugh is quiet, surprised out of him, a sound he'd clearly forgotten he could make.
It makes his chest feel too tight, something in there shifting and refusing to settle back into place.
Dagny corrects him with exaggerated gestures, miming the shape of the word with her hands, demonstrating with her whole body when necessary, once climbing up onto the coil of rope to act out a word that Eskil is fairly certain is wave but ends up looking more drowning than anything else, and Ermin is beside them offering his own unhelpful contributions that seem to confuse more than clarify.
He interjects with alternate pronunciations that are, as far as Eskil can tell, entirely wrong, and provides context sentences that include sound effects and dramatic reenactments of events that may or may not have actually happened.
Indrie listens to all of it, Dagny's instruction, Ermin's chaos, his dark eyes moving between them, his head tilted slightly to one side in a way that means he's concentrating.
And then Ermin says something that's apparently so incorrect it loops back around to being funny, and Indrie laughs again, harder this time, a sound that carries across the deck and reaches Eskil at the helm, and then Indrie looks up.
His eyes find Eskil's across the length of the ship.
It's not furtive this time. Not the stolen glance from beneath lowered lashes that Eskil has caught before, the quick flicker followed by an immediate retreat.
Indrie looks at him and holds his gaze, openly, for a full breath.
The laughter is still on his face, softening the corners of his mouth and crinkling the skin at the edges of his eyes, and he looks at Eskil with that expression still in place.
Warm and unguarded and so startlingly open that it cuts through Eskil's ribs and lodges somewhere he can't reach.
One second. Maybe two.
Then Indrie blinks, seems to realize what he's doing, and looks away. Back to Dagny, back to the lesson. He tucks his hair behind his ear with a hand that trembles, just slightly, and says something to Dagny that makes her laugh and point at the next object on the deck.
Eskil's hands tighten on the railing until the wood bites into his palms.
"Fuck," he breathes, barely audible, and pushes off the railing and heads for his cabin.
He retreats below with the manifest and the trade documents he's been putting off.
The numbers aren't going to improve no matter how many times he reviews them, but the act of working through them is preferable to standing at the helm watching a beautiful young man learn to speak his language while looking at him with eyes that make Eskil want to do something profoundly unwise.
He's poring over the documents, a detailed accounting of what they took from Kalkoa's treasury cross-referenced against their outgoing expenses, when Bohdi comes in with a skein of wine and a mischievous look on his face.
Eskil looks up from the manifest. Bohdi is leaning against the doorframe, one arm propped overhead, the skein dangling from his other hand, and grinning the way he grins when he's done something he considers clever and is waiting for someone to ask about it.
"What are you scheming?" Eskil asks, because it's faster than waiting.
Bohdi crosses the cabin, drops into the chair opposite the desk, and props his feet up, entirely at home in Eskil's space the way he has been since they were children. He takes a drink from the skein, swallows, and says, with considerable satisfaction, "I'm celebrating."
"Celebrating what?"
"The fact that I have singlehandedly solved our rat problem."
Eskil sets his charcoal down. "I didn't know we had a rat problem."
"That's probably because it's what Gunnar has been feeding us for the past two days."
Eskil stares at him. Bohdi takes another drink, entirely unperturbed.