22. Chapter 22 #2
Indrie sets the first suture. The needle passes through the wound edge, in and out, a quick clean motion, and he ties it off with a knot so small it is nearly invisible. His fingers find the rhythm. In, through, tie, cut. In, through, tie, cut.
"That is what you brought me here for, is it not?" Indrie says. His voice is light. Steady. The healer's voice, the one that fills a room with calm. "To stitch you up when you have been reckless."
"It was a thought." Eskil's eyes track his hands. "But mostly I couldn't bear to leave you in the care of those barbarians."
Indrie's hands do not falter. The needle moves. The thread follows.
"Before I came onto the ship," he says quietly, "I thought the Northmen were barbarians.
Monsters from the north who burned and pillaged and left nothing standing.
That is what we were taught in Kalkoa. What everybody believed.
" He ties off a suture. Cuts the thread.
Repositions. "I was wrong. I have never met anyone like you.
The violence frightens me, I will not lie about that.
But I understand it does not come without cause.
The men you fight are trying to kill the people you protect. "
Eskil is quiet for a time. Indrie sets three more sutures in the silence, each one placed with exacting care.
"There are many things you would find distasteful about our way of life," Eskil says.
His voice is low and raw with exhaustion.
"About what I do as king to keep this kingdom standing.
I make no excuses for it. I would never expect a man who preserves life and treasures it above all else to forgive me for taking it so freely. "
Indrie's hands pause on the needle. He looks up. Meets his eyes.
"I will not pretend to understand the cost of ruling," he says. "I know I would not be capable of it. If the choice were to take one life to protect another, it is a choice I could not make. That is why you are king and I am a healer."
"Morgan has never taken a life," Eskil says.
The words sit between them. Indrie waits.
"Killing a man does not make you a better one. Or a better ruler. Morgan is perfectly capable without the savagery. But when threats come to our doors I will do what my brother cannot. I will meet them with force." He holds Indrie's gaze. "It's balance. You need both kinds of people."
Indrie nods slowly. He bends to his work and places the next suture.
The stitching takes a long time. The laceration is wide and the edges are ragged and every stitch must be set with precision, close enough to hold, small enough to heal cleanly, even enough that the scar will be tight and smooth rather than knotted and pulled.
By the time Indrie ties off the last suture his fingers are stiff and cramping and the lamp has burned low and his eyes ache with fatigue.
The stitching is tiny and even, a line of small perfect knots running the length of the wound, each one identical, the work of hands that have never been more certain of anything.
Eskil is asleep.
Indrie does not know when it happened. He was too deep in the rhythm of the needle and too focused on the wound, and by the time he looked up the king was gone. Not gone. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere his body can do the work of mending without his stubborn relentless mind interfering with it.
A testament to his pain tolerance. Or proof that he trusts Indrie enough to be unconscious and defenseless in his hands.
Indrie cleans up. He puts the bloodied towels in the basin by the door.
He lays his instruments on a clean cloth to be scoured in the morning.
He applies a fresh bandage over the stitching, light, not too tight, enough to protect the wound without binding the tissue.
He draws the blanket over Eskil's chest, easing it around the bandaging, careful not to snag the fresh sutures.
He stands beside the bed.
The king sleeps. His face is softer than Indrie has ever seen it, the tension gone, the furrow between his brows smoothed, the hard set of his mouth eased into something younger.
The tattoos on his arms are dark against skin that is still too pale, but his color is better than it was.
The bleeding has stopped. The stitching will hold.
He will live.
The knowledge arrives with a force that buckles something in Indrie.
He has been holding it together, through Bohdi's fist on the door and the run through the dark streets and the careful precise work of closing a wound that could have killed the man he cares for.
Now it is finished, and Eskil will live, and the holding-together has no purpose anymore.
What is left is the exhaustion and the fear and the vast shaking relief that fills him up and leaves no room for composure.
He should go. He should cross to the couch and put his boots on and walk to Dagny's and sleep and leave the king to rest. He should be professional about this.
He should be measured and composed and appropriate and all the things a healer is supposed to be when the patient is also the man who had him on a desk two days ago and said filthy, tender things into his ear while he did it.
Eskil's arm rests on the blanket and there is space. Enough space for somebody small. Somebody who takes up very little room. Somebody who knows how to make himself compact and unobtrusive.
He is so tired.
He eases onto the bed. Carefully. So carefully that he barely depresses the mattress, distributing his weight in slow increments, watching Eskil's face for any sign of pain.
There is none. The king's breathing does not change.
The steady rhythm continues, in and out, and Indrie settles onto the left side and curls into the space that is there.
He fits. Of course he fits. He has always fit against Eskil, his body finding the hollows and angles of the larger frame and filling them as though they were made to be filled.
He presses his back against Eskil's left arm and draws his knees up and makes himself small, a habit, a reflex, the instinct of a man who spent years making himself invisible.
But here, in this bed, with this man, the smallness does not feel like hiding.
The heat of Eskil's body comes through the blanket and into Indrie's spine.
He can feel the rise and fall of his ribs against his back, the slow expansion of breath, the proof of living.
He can hear the heartbeat, not with his ear but through his body, the deep rhythmic thrum of it carried through mattress and blanket and skin, a percussion that says alive, alive, alive.
His eyes burn. He blinks and the burning does not stop and he lets it happen, lets the tears slip from the corners of his eyes into the pillow, because nobody is awake to see and he has earned this.
He earned the tears the way he earned the right to be in this bed.
Through care and skill and the stubborn refusal to let this man die.
This isn't how I'd hoped to see you again.
Indrie curls closer. His hand finds the edge of the blanket and grips it and he pulls it around himself, wrapping the warmth tighter, and in his sleep Eskil's arm shifts.
Not much. A slight bending of the elbow, the forearm settling heavier against Indrie's back, and the motion is unconscious but the effect is not.
The weight of it pins Indrie gently against the king's side like a bar dropped across a door, and the message, even out of the depths of sleep, is unmistakable.
Stay.
He closes his eyes and listens to Eskil breathe, and the exhaustion takes him down gently, and he does not fight it.
He sleeps with his body curved into the unwounded side of the king and his hand curled in the blanket and his face against a pillow that smells of woodsmoke and iron and warm skin, and for the first time since the night of the escape, he does not dream of anything at all.