Chapter 29 #2
Eskil has been noticing for weeks. He has filed every observation in the same place he files everything to do with his brother and this man, which is the room behind his ribs, and he has not once opened the door.
"I did not ask Morgan whether he was willing before I volunteered him," Eskil says.
"He will say yes. He has been saying yes to this since the first letter came. He would gift-wrap himself and walk south barefoot if he thought it would help." Bohdi's jaw tightens. The drumming stops. "That does not mean he wants to."
The honesty of it sits between them. Eskil does not prod it.
He does not ask what, specifically, about Morgan's willingness concerns him, because the answer to that question lives behind the door and Eskil is not going to open it today.
Not with Bohdi about to ride south with his brother and a plan that needs both of them alive at the end of it.
"I am entrusting you with Morgan," Eskil says.
Bohdi nods. Slowly.
"I understand."
"I do not want that man's hands anywhere near him." Eskil turns his head. Meets his eyes. "Do you understand?"
Bohdi holds the look. The levity is gone. The grin is gone. What is left is something Eskil has seen perhaps four times in all of their years together, underneath the humor and the irreverence and the easy charm, and it is fierce and absolute and does not negotiate.
"As you say," Bohdi says.
It is not agreement. It is a vow, and both of them know it.
Eskil holds the look a moment longer than he needs to. Then he nods, once, and they both turn back to the map, and the silence between them is full of things neither of them is going to say and both of them already understand.
***
Morgan is in the study, poring over trade documents.
He looks up when Eskil enters. His brow furrows and his mouth opens and the first thing out of it is not a greeting or a question about the council but a medical assessment, delivered with the authority of a younger brother who has been monitoring his older brother's physical condition since he was old enough to notice.
"Should you be out of bed?"
"I'm walking through the keep, not attempting to scale it," Eskil says.
He takes a seat across from Morgan. Props his feet on the desk, carefully, the motion calibrated to avoid pulling the stitches. Settles back in the chair with the studied nonchalance of somebody pretending he has not been dreading this conversation.
"Indrie's language has improved considerably," Eskil says. "In areas I wouldn't have thought proper for herbology textbooks."
Morgan flushes. The color is sudden and vivid, a bloom of pink across pale cheeks, remarkable both for its intensity and for appearing on a face that has spent years cultivating an immunity to embarrassment. He sets down his quill.
"Some of the words Indrie has asked me to translate would make a sailor blush," Morgan says. His voice is carefully level. "I would rather not learn what my brother whispers in his ear from the person being whispered to."
Eskil's expression remains perfectly calm. "I'll be sure to think about that next time."
Morgan chokes. The sound is somewhere between a cough and a protest, produced by a respiratory system ambushed by information it did not want. "I do not want to know about next time."
The banter settles between them, the familiar rhythm, the cadence two brothers fall into when they are expressing affection through verbal combat.
It is comfortable and it is deliberate and it serves a purpose, because the purpose is to arrive at the difficult thing through the easy thing, and the easy thing is almost over.
Eskil explains what Bohdi found. The Jakadi encampment. The Wolfe connection. The scheme to take Morgan south and install him as a figurehead. He lays it out the way he laid it out for the council, factually and completely and without softening the edges.
Morgan listens. His face does not change as the scope of it unfolds, the chieftain's real intentions, the danger he will be walking into, the role he will be expected to play. He absorbs it completely, filing each piece into the structure of his understanding.
When Eskil finishes, Morgan says, without hesitation, "Of course I'll do it."
The words are simple. Unsurprising. Morgan has been volunteering for this since the day the proposal arrived, back when the proposal appeared to be genuine.
Learning that it is a trap has not changed his willingness.
If anything it has sharpened it, because the diplomatic mission has become an intelligence operation and intelligence operations are Morgan's native ground.
"Bohdi goes with you," Eskil says. "And you defer to his judgment in all things pertaining to your safety. That is not negotiable."
Morgan purses his lips. The pursing is precise, a compression of the mouth that communicates with elegant efficiency the full spectrum of his feelings about taking orders from a man whose primary problem-solving methodology involves a large axe.
"Bohdi has no regard for innocent lives caught in the crossfire," Morgan says.
"Soldiers following orders are not innocent."
"Things are not that simple, Eskil."
"That is exactly why you need Bohdi," Eskil says. "Because Bohdi will make the hard choice when you hesitate."
Morgan holds up his hands in concession. Palms raised, fingers spread, the signal of a negotiator who has recognized an immovable object and is declining to waste further effort on it. He will listen. The concession is genuine even if the reluctance is visible.
Eskil leans forward. Takes his feet off the desk. The casualness goes out of him all at once and what is left is the brother. Not the king. The brother, whose voice is a weapon in its own right, whose eyes carry the weight of years of decisions that have kept Morgan breathing.
"If you do not come back safely," Eskil says, low and absolute, "I will go south and raze the Wolfe stronghold to the ground."
The words are not a threat. They are not rhetoric.
They are not the hyperbole of a worried brother or the posturing of an angry king.
They are a statement of intent, delivered with the same flat certainty a man uses to say that winter follows autumn.
It is what will happen. It is the consequence that will unfold if the condition is met, and there is no more argument in it than there is in weather.
Morgan sighs. It is deep and patient. He has heard declarations of this kind before, and twenty years of being loved by a man who expresses love through contingency plans for the destruction of enemy fortifications has taught him that his brother means every word and that arguing is pointless.
"I'll be fine," Morgan says. "Don't worry."
"I'm not worried," Eskil says. "I'm planning."
He reaches across the desk and grips his brother's shoulder. Hard. The grip he has used a thousand times, the one that stands in for the words he cannot produce, and Morgan puts his hand over Eskil's and squeezes, and for a moment they are not king and prince.
They are two brothers in a room, one of them about to ride into danger and the other unable to follow.