Chapter 30
Indrie
Indrie is teaching Ermin to blend a sleep tonic when he looks up and sees Morgan in the doorway, watching quietly.
The prince is leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and his mouth curved in the half-smile he wears when he is observing something that pleases him but does not wish to interrupt.
His long blond hair is tied back with a leather cord and there are ink stains on his fingers, as always, and he looks, Indrie searches for the word and lands on it with a pang, he looks young.
"Ermin," Indrie says, keeping his voice even. "Keep going on your own. Two parts valerian root to one part chamomile, steeped, not boiled. I'll be back."
Ermin nods without looking up, his tongue caught between his teeth, his leather journal open beside the mortar and pestle.
He has taken to recording every ratio Indrie gives him with the fervent dedication of a monk transcribing scripture.
Indrie trusts him with this much. Ermin has steady hands and a good instinct for proportions and he will not make it stronger than it should be.
Indrie wipes his palms on his apron and crosses to the doorway.
Morgan straightens when he approaches. Up close, the half-smile is thinner than it appeared from across the room.
There is something beneath it, a tautness in his jaw, a brightness in his eyes that is not entirely composed, and Indrie reads it the way he reads a patient's face: the presentation is fine, but the vitals are not.
"Walk with me?" Morgan asks. His tone is light, the way it always is when he is about to say something that is not light at all.
Indrie unties his apron and hangs it on the hook by the door. "Ermin. If anyone comes in bleeding—"
"Apply pressure, send someone to find you, don't do anything stupid," Ermin recites without lifting his head. "I know."
"And don't boil the valerian."
"I am not going to boil the valerian, Indrie."
Indrie gives him a last look, the look of a teacher who has learned through bitter experience that the moment he turns his back is the moment his apprentice decides to improvise, and then follows Morgan out into the afternoon.
They walk side by side in silence for a stretch.
Morgan's stride is longer than Indrie's, but he has learned to shorten it, the way Eskil has learned, the way Dagny learned on the ship.
Indrie is quietly moved by the accumulation of these small adjustments.
All these tall people making room for him without being asked.
Morgan leads them away from the main thoroughfare and toward the quieter streets near the western wall, where the timber houses are older and the gardens are overgrown with late-blooming wildflowers.
It is not a route Indrie has walked before.
The cobblestones are uneven here, moss creeping between them, and their footsteps echo differently, softer, more private.
"I know Eskil has probably already told you everything about the mission south," Morgan says, the words arriving as though he has been holding them in his mouth since the doorway. "But I wanted to make sure you heard it from me as well."
Indrie nods. He has heard it from Eskil.
He has heard the careful, measured version, the one delivered with Eskil's jaw tight and his hands very still and his voice pitched in the register he uses when he is keeping something leashed.
The version that included strategic objectives and timelines and contingency plans and did not include the fact that Eskil had gone to the window afterward and stood there for a long time without speaking.
"Is this about the betrothal?" Indrie asks.
Morgan nods but does not answer. Not right away. He seems to be choosing his words, or perhaps discarding them, his mouth opening and closing once before he presses his lips together and looks at the cobblestones.
Indrie takes his hands.
His fingers are cold and soft and they curl around Indrie's and hold.
"Is this the best course of action?" Indrie asks quietly. "Is there not another path that can be taken?"
Morgan's jaw works. "The council thinks this is our best chance at cutting off the head of the Wolfe clan before things escalate beyond our control.
" The words come out practiced. Rehearsed.
The voice of a diplomat delivering a briefing, not a boy talking about his own life.
"If the chieftain secures an alliance through the Jakadi and we do nothing, Rengara faces a war on two fronts before spring.
This way, we dismantle it from the inside. "
"And you are comfortable with this plan?"
Morgan laughs. It is a small, hollow sound. "If my brother asks, then tell him yes. But comfortable is a strong word. Let us say I am resigned to its necessity."
Indrie pauses. "Is Bohdi accompanying you?"
"Yes. The council wants him as my escort."
Indrie relaxes slightly. It is involuntary, a loosening in his shoulders, a release of breath he did not realize he was holding, and he sees Morgan notice it.
"Good," Indrie says. He lets go of one of Morgan's hands and touches the prince's arm, the way he touches patients who need grounding. "You may have heard, but I was attacked by a stowaway on the ship. On the crossing. A Kalkoan man who I caught trying to light the ship aflame."
Morgan's expression sharpens. "I did hear."
"If it hadn't been for Bohdi—" Indrie cuts himself off.
The memory rises unbidden. The dark of the ship's hold, the iron grip on his throat, the choking blind terror of it.
And then Bohdi, appearing when Indrie thought he was going to die.
He swallows and continues. "I know you are already aware.
But if there is anyone who can keep you safe, it is Bohdi. "
Morgan smiles. It is a small, honest smile, not the sharp, guarded one he deploys in council chambers or the dry, self-deprecating one he uses with his brother.
This one reaches his eyes and softens them, and for a moment the composed young diplomat disappears and what is left is someone who has been carrying fear in both hands and is grateful to set one handful down.
"Bohdi has been protecting me since I came up to his hip," Morgan says.
"I remember…I was ten years old and I climbed up into a tree, one of the old pines behind the keep, the ones with the branches that start impossibly high, and I could not get down.
I sat up there for an hour, terrified, too proud to shout for help, and then Bohdi climbed up after me.
" He laughs, and this time the sound has warmth in it.
"He sat on the branch next to me and said, The view is better from the ground, little prince, and carried me down on his back. "
Indrie smiles. The image is vivid and achingly sweet. A small blond boy clinging to the tattooed shoulders of a man who has never, as far as Indrie can tell, refused to carry what needs carrying.
"Perhaps I haven't had much need of protecting since I came of age," Morgan adds, his voice evening out. "But I know I'm in good hands."
They have reached the end of the quiet street, where the western wall rises above the rooftops and the wildflowers grow thick in the cracks between the stones.
Morgan stops walking and turns to face Indrie, and the lightness of the tree story has faded from his face. What is left is direct and serious.
"I need to ask something of you," he says.
"Anything."
"Look after Eskil while I'm gone."
Indrie opens his mouth to say of course, but Morgan is not finished.
"He is terrible at taking care of himself.
You already know this." Morgan's mouth twitches.
"He will not rest when he should rest. He will not eat when he should eat.
He will stand in his study for eight hours reading reports and forget that his body requires maintenance, and if anyone suggests he sit down he will take it as a personal insult.
" He pauses. "You may be the only person stubborn enough to make him actually listen. "
"I am not stubborn," Indrie says.
Morgan gives him a look. The look is so thoroughly and completely disbelieving that Indrie cannot keep a straight face.
"All right," Indrie concedes. "Perhaps a little."
"You threatened to strap a soldier bodily to your examination table."
"He was going to tear his stitches."
"You told Bohdi to leave the king's bedroom."
"Bohdi was getting in the way."
"You walked into the king's study and argued with him about a prisoner."
"That was—" Indrie falters, the memory surfacing with its sharp edges.
The way he had stood in Eskil's study with his healer's conviction blazing and his hands steady at his sides.
The way the conviction had crumbled at a single command.
The way he had said yes, your majesty in a voice that did not sound like his own.
"That was different," he finishes, quietly.
Morgan watches him. Then nods. "I know it was. And I know what it cost you." A pause. "But you did it. You stood in front of a man twice your size who has killed without flinching, and you challenged him. Because you believed you were right."
"I was right."
"You usually are." Morgan smiles. "That's why I'm asking you to look after him. Because you're one of the only people in this kingdom who will tell him the truth whether he wants to hear it or not."
Indrie's throat tightens. He nods. "I promise."
Morgan embraces him before he can prepare for it.
Morgan's arms are surprisingly strong for someone built from books and ink, and Indrie can feel the fine tremor running through him, the thing Morgan has not let anyone see, the fear he has been folding smaller and smaller and tucking behind his composure.
Indrie holds him back. He wraps both arms around the prince's larger frame and holds on and says, into the wool of Morgan's coat, "Be safe."
Morgan pulls back. He smiles.
It doesn't quite reach his eyes.
***
That evening, Indrie goes to Eskil's chambers.