Chapter 28
The ship approaches the harbor and Eskil can't think.
He should be thinking about a hundred things.
The docking procedures, the unloading sequence, the manifest that needs to be reconciled against what they actually brought back versus what they set out for.
He should be thinking about the council he'll need to call within the first day, his brother, the trade advisors, the harbor master who will want an accounting of the voyage's costs and returns.
He should be thinking about the repairs the ship needs, the crew's wages, the depleted stores that will need replenishing before winter.
He should be thinking about the fact that he's about to present his kingdom with a haul so meager it barely justifies the voyage, and that the Jakadi scouts' intelligence was either wrong or deliberately misleading, and that either way he'll need to account for it.
He should be thinking about the political implications of conquering a kingdom and leaving it to its fate, about the message it sends, about the precedent it sets.
He's thinking about Indrie's face in his hands and the young man looking at him with wet eyes.
The harbor of Valen opens before them, a wide, sheltered bay flanked by green hillsides that slope down to the water's edge, the settlement visible along the shore.
Wooden docks stretch out from the land, and beyond them the buildings of the port town rise in tiers, warehouses, homes, the great hall on the hill with its peaked roof and its banner snapping in the coastal wind.
It's home. The sight of it usually hits Eskil in the chest with a warmth that no other place has ever replicated, the bone-deep recognition of belonging, of returning to the place that made him.
Today it hits him with the force of an accusation.
He stands at the helm and watches the harbor grow and his hands are steady on the wheel and his orders are crisp and his voice carries and he is, to all outward appearances, a king returning from a voyage with his attention on his duties and his mind on the work ahead.
His mind is in the hold. His mind is on a pair of dark eyes, wide and burning, looking up at him while a voice that cracked on every other word said I want to stay, I just and then stopped.
Just stopped. Swallowed whatever came after the just and shut his mouth and nodded and the nod was the bravest, saddest thing Eskil has ever seen, because it belonged to someone who has decided that what he wants doesn't matter and has accepted it with the practiced resignation of a lifetime of making that same decision.
Where would I go if not with you?
The question echoes. It's been echoing since the hold, since Indrie said it with a simplicity that was not simple at all, that contained within it a world of meaning Eskil is only beginning to see the edges of.
Not where would I go if not to Valen. Not where would I go if not with your crew.
With you. Specifically. Personally. The man, not the kingdom. The king, not the crown.
Eskil shakes his head.
Indrie is not his. He has said this. He has meant it.
He means it still. One selfless act to save his life, however extraordinary, however intimate, however seared into Eskil's memory in vivid, breathtaking detail, does not make Indrie belong to him.
The Cara fruit, whatever its cultural significance in Kalkoa, does not create ownership.
It does not create obligation. It does not undo the fundamental fact that Indrie came to Eskil's bed not out of desire but out of duty, the duty of a healer to his patient, and that the pleasure Eskil gave him and the sounds he coaxed from him and the words he whispered into his skin were part of the treatment, not part of a courtship.
Indrie is not his. He will never belong to another man as long as Eskil is around to make sure of that.
And if that means watching Indrie flourish in Valen, watching him build a life, find a purpose, heal the sick and teach the young and argue with Gunnar about stew, then Eskil will watch.
He will provide. He will ensure Indrie has everything he needs, a home and a role and the freedom to make choices that are truly his.
And if that means watching Indrie find someone of his own to love, someone without the weight of a crown and the blood on his hands and the temperament of a soldier raised by soldiers, then Eskil will bear that burden as well.
He will bear it because the alternative is staking a claim on a man who has spent his life being claimed, and Eskil will not, will not, be another name on that list.
The thought settles in his chest, heavy and cold and final.
He adjusts the heading. Two degrees starboard.
The ship responds, the bow swinging gently toward the harbor entrance, and the docks grow larger and the buildings resolve into detail and the banner on the great hall shows the colors of his house and somewhere on those docks his brother is probably waiting with that patient, knowing smile he wears when Eskil has been gone too long.
The crew moves around him in the organized chaos of docking.
Lines are prepared. Fenders are hung. Men take their positions along the rail, ready to throw ropes to the dock hands below.
The energy on the ship shifts, the steady rhythm of the open sea giving way to the quickened pulse of arrival, the anticipation of land and home and the end of a journey that has taken more from all of them than any of them expected.
Eskil sees Indrie on the main deck.
He's standing near the bow, slightly apart from the crew, his satchel over one shoulder and his hands at his sides.
He's wearing Eskil's clothes, still, because he hasn't been given his own, and the shirt slips off one shoulder the way it always does and the trousers are cinched at his waist and he looks small and lost and impossibly beautiful against the backdrop of a green land he's never seen.
Dagny is beside him. Her arm is around his shoulders, the way it always is, and she's pointing at the harbor and talking with her usual animation, and Indrie is listening, his dark eyes wide, taking in the sight of mountains and forests and rivers and a coastline lush with a green so vivid it doesn't look real.
He's never seen this. He's never seen any of it.
He comes from a brown, dead kingdom with barren fields and depleted mines, and the world opening before him is so different from everything he's known that Eskil can see the shock of it in the set of his shoulders and the part of his lips.
Indrie turns, just slightly, and his eyes find Eskil at the helm.
Across the length of the ship. Through the bustle of the crew and the noise of the preparations and the distance that has been between them since the beginning.
Those dark eyes find his and hold, and the expression in them is not the fear of the first days or the wariness of the middle weeks or the careful blankness of this morning.
It's something else. Something that looks, from this distance, not like an ending but a beginning.
Eskil holds the gaze for a moment. One breath. Two. And then he turns back to the harbor because the ship needs him and the docks are approaching and there are ropes to be thrown and orders to be given and a kingdom to answer to.
The ship docks.
The hull kisses the dock with a shudder that runs through the timbers and into Eskil's boots.
Lines are made fast. The gangplank is lowered.
The crew begins to disembark, carrying their sea legs onto solid ground with the unsteady enthusiasm of people who have spent too long on water.
Men clap each other on the back. Someone whoops.
Dagny is one of the first down the plank, pulling Ermin by the arm, the two of them practically running toward the shore.
Eskil grips the wheel one last time. The wood is warm beneath his palms, worn smooth by his hands and his father's hands and his grandfather's hands, and the ship that has been his home for three weeks creaks around him in the gentle, patient way of a vessel that knows its journey is done.
He lets go.