Page 24 of Salt in the Wound

So it's not homesickness and it's not seasickness and Eskil knows exactly what it is.

It's the blood that's been washed from the deck. It's the sound of a man being thrown overboard.

Eskil would do it again. He wouldn't change a single stroke. The stowaway had nearly killed them all, set a fire in the hold of a wooden ship in the middle of the ocean, endangering every soul on board, and had then tried to strangle the one person who could heal their wounded if things went worse. The punishment was proportional. The punishment was just. By the laws of his people and the customs of the sea, Eskil had been well within his rights.

But Indrie doesn't know his laws. Doesn't know his customs. Doesn't know the rules that govern life and death on a ship at sea, where mercy is a luxury the waves don't care about. All Indrie knows is what he saw: a man beaten until he couldn't stand and then thrown into the sea to drown. And the man who ordered it is the same man who touched Indrie's chin gently after spilled stew and helped him to his feet and made the healer's eyes go soft.

No wonder the boy is standing on the deck at night staring at the water. He doesn't know which version of Eskil to trust.

Eskil pushes away from the desk and stands. The chair scrapes against the floor, loud in the silent cabin. He paces, two stridesto the wall, two strides back, the cabin too small for a man his size and his agitation, and then stops himself because pacing is what he does when he doesn't have a plan and he needs a fucking plan.

He waits. He tells himself he's waiting for the right moment, but what he's really doing is working up the nerve, which is a thing he will never admit to anyone, least of all Bohdi. He goes through the motions of the evening: checks the heading, reviews the watch schedule, eats the meal Gunnar sends to his cabin without tasting it. He waits until the lamplight has burned low across the ship and the crew has settled into the settled rhythms of night. He waits until the moon is high, a bright crescent hanging in a clear sky, and the only sounds are the creak of the hull and the murmur of the night watch.

Then he goes to the deck.

What he sees is this: Indrie standing at the railing, gazing off into the sea with a look that could only be described as conflicted.

He's positioned near the bow, away from the night watch, away from the lamplight, in a pocket of shadow where the moonlight finds him anyway. One hand is curled around a rope that runs from the railing to the rigging above, his fingers wrapped tight enough that the tendons stand out in the back of his hand. The other rests on the railing, palm down, fingertips just reaching the edge. His dark hair is loose, stirring in the night breeze, and his face in profile is pale and still and very far away.

He looks to be deciding whether or not to jump.

The thought hits Eskil in the chest and he has to physically stop himself from crossing the deck at a run. That would startle him. That might be the thing that tips the balance. He doesn't know how close Indrie is to the edge, not the physical edge, the railing is still between him and the water, but the internal one,where the weight of living exceeds the ability to carry it and the sea below starts to look restful.

Eskil approaches quietly. He controls his footsteps, softening the weight of his tread on the deck planks, moving with a care he usually reserves for stalking prey in the forests of home. He doesn't want to startle the boy. He doesn't want to be the sudden sound that makes him flinch, that tips the scales, that sends him over.

But he announces himself before he's too close. Close enough to reach him if he needs to, far enough that Indrie has space. He keeps his voice low, even, conversational. A chance meeting. Not a deliberate intervention.

"Very late to be stargazing."

Indrie startles regardless.

His body jerks, shoulders snapping up, head turning sharply, and for a moment his eyes are wild, wide and dark and unfocused, pulled abruptly from wherever he'd gone deep inside himself. He turns to Eskil and the wildness resolves into recognition, and then the recognition shifts into something more complicated than fear. He angles his body away, pulling his shoulders in, trying to make himself smaller, and the surprise on his face tells Eskil he wasn't expecting company. Wasn't expecting him.

Indrie stammers an apology. The words come out broken and rushed, tumbling over each other in a mess of both their languages, "Sorry, I should not, I was just, I will go," every syllable soaked in the panic of being caught. Standing on the deck of a ship at night is, apparently, an offense that requires forgiveness. He starts to skirt around Eskil, to slip past him and disappear below and return to the bunk where he'll lie awake staring at the ceiling for another night.

Eskil moves to stand beside him at the railing. "Stay a moment," he says.

Indrie swallows. Eskil can see the motion of his throat, the bob of his Adam's apple, the effort it takes. The bruises from the stowaway's hands are visible even in the moonlight, dark bands across the pale column of his neck, finger-shaped, obscene. Indrie stays. His feet don't move. But he doesn't turn back to the sea, and he doesn't turn away from Eskil. He stands facing the king with his back to the railing and his hands at his sides, and his eyes, those dark, devastating eyes, don't leave Eskil's face.

As though he's afraid of not seeing what Eskil is going to do.

Eskil doesn't follow that thread. He doesn't address it, doesn't acknowledge the fear in Indrie's posture, doesn't try to talk him out of what he's feeling, because he hasn't earned the right to do any of those things yet. Instead, he points to the sky.

"Do you know how to find the north star?"

Indrie blinks. The question is clearly not what he expected. His gaze slowly follows Eskil's finger upward, trailing from the pointing hand to the sky above them, and the stars are bright tonight, vivid and thick, undimmed by any shore light. The whole sky is a map, if you know how to read it.

Indrie shakes his head. No.

Eskil holds out his hand. Palm up, open, steady. An offering, not a demand. He holds it there, between them, and waits.

Indrie stares at it.

Then at Eskil. Then at the hand again. His expression cycles through something complicated, surprise, uncertainty, a flash of something that might be longing, and he stares at the open palm for a long minute. As though it's a question he doesn't know the answer to. As though taking it means something he can't take back.

Eskil nods. A small motion. It's alright.

Indrie slowly places his palm in Eskil's.