Page 54 of Salt in the Wound

Eskil doesn't know. He's lost track of time. The fever is eating the minutes, compressing and stretching them in turns, and his concept of how long he's been lying here is unreliable at best. "An hour. Maybe less."

Bohdi presses his lips together. He looks at Eskil, at the sweat, the flushed skin, the white-knuckled grip on the sheets, the very obvious erection straining against his trousers that neither of them is going to acknowledge, and the concern in his face deepens into something more serious. More urgent.

"I'm going to get Indrie," he says.

Eskil opens his mouth to argue. To say no, to say he doesn't need the healer, to say he'll sleep it off, to say anything that prevents the beautiful young man who just fled his cabin in terror from being summoned back to tend to the man who terrified him. But the words won't form. The heat is too much. His tongue is thick, his thoughts are scattering, and the edges of the room are doing something unreliable that suggests consciousness is becoming optional.

"Don't —"

"You're sick and this is not up for debate." Bohdi's voice is firm. Final. The voice of a second-in-command who has assessed the situation and made a decision and is not entertaining him today. "Stay here. Don't do anything stupid."

He's gone before Eskil can respond.

Eskil lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling and the ceiling stares back and the heat in his body builds and builds and he cannot for the life of him understand why the universe has decided that tonight, of all nights, after the catastrophe on thedeck and the disaster in the cabin and the look on Indrie's face when he ran,tonightis the night his body chooses to fall apart.

He closes his eyes.

The darkness is not better. In the darkness, the sensations intensify, the sheets beneath him, the air above him, the relentless throb of arousal that is becoming difficult to distinguish from pain. Every heartbeat drives a pulse of heat through his veins. Every breath fans the fire. He is aware of his own body with an acuity that is maddening, the weight of his limbs, the texture of his skin, the precise location of every point of contact between himself and the bed.

He grips the sheets tighter and waits and tries not to think about the fact that the healer is coming and Eskil is laid out here, half-dressed and hard and burning, and there is nothing he can do about any of it.

The lamp swings. The ship rocks. The heat builds.

He waits.

Chapter 23

Bohdi finds him in his bunk.

He's lying on his side, knees drawn up, staring at the wooden wall, when the sound of heavy boots stops beside his bunk and Bohdi's voice, stripped of its usual warmth, says his name.

"Indrie."

The tone brings him upright immediately. He knows that tone. He's heard it once before, in the hold, after the fire, when Bohdi had pulled a man off his throat with a fist that could crack bone and a voice that could draw blood. This is not casual Bohdi. This is not joking Bohdi. This is the voice of a frightened man trying very hard not to show it.

"The king is ill," Bohdi says. "He's getting worse by the minute."

Indrie's stomach drops. He grabs his satchel from the shelf, the motion automatic, his body responding to the word ill before the rest of Bohdi's sentence registers, and he's on his feet and moving.

"What happened?"

Bohdi is already heading toward the corridor, his stride long enough that Indrie has to half-jog to keep up. "I don't know. I found him on the bed, burning up, sweating through his clothes. He says he ate something, a fruit, from the plate, from the Kalkoan stores."

Indrie's mind begins sorting through possibilities. Fever, sweating, rapid onset. Poison is the obvious conclusion, but the specifics matter. Kalkoan plants run the gamut from benign to lethal, and without knowing which fruit Eskil consumed, the treatment could be anything from an emetic to something far worse.

"He's," Bohdi hesitates, which is unusual enough that Indrie looks up at him. The tattooed man's jaw is working, his eyes fixed on the corridor ahead, and there's a tension in his body that goes beyond concern. "It's not just fever. Something else is happening. I've never seen him like this."

Indrie swallows his nerves. Whatever happened between him and the king tonight, the apology, the fear, the running, none of it matters if Eskil is dying. And the cold, practical part of Indrie's brain, the part that kept Armond alive for five years through spite and skill and sheer refusal to let death win, has already taken the helm.

He follows Bohdi to the cabin.

The door is open. The lamplight spills into the corridor, golden and swaying, and Indrie steps inside and the sight of Eskil stops him in his tracks.

The king is laid out on the bed, one arm thrown over his face, the other fisted in the sheets at his side. His shirt is gone, discarded on the floor, a heap of damp fabric, and his chest is bare, slicked with sweat that catches the lamplight and turns his scarred skin to something molten. His hair is loose, half-unbraided, spread across the pillow in damp strands. Hisbreathing is wrong, too fast, too shallow, the rapid panting of a body fighting something it can't beat.

He is flushed from his collarbones to his jaw. The color is deep, vivid, not the pallor of illness but a heated flush that has nothing to do with sickness.

Indrie's mouth goes dry.