Truths, Lies and Bilgesnipes [Complete]

Chapter 6

A/N: Big apologies about how late this update is! I went off on holidays, thinking I'd have plenty of time to write and it didn't really turn out that way. Plus the airline lost my luggage for like a week and a bunch of my hand-written drafts for this story were inside, so that was a whole thing. Anyway, I promise, the next chapter will be out within the next fortnight.

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Eir's face was impenetrable as she watched Loki walk back and forth across the breadth of his bedroom. 'I don't much like how you're favouring your right leg.'

Loki glanced down. 'I am?'

'Afraid so, darling. There is a pronounced limp,' she replied. 'But don't fret, it's nothing we can't work on. Could you please pop back up on the bed and lie down on your back for me. I want to get a better look at what's going on.'

Sighing, Loki did as asked. Eir took off the splints and pressed her hands over the various points on his lower limbs. He stared up at the ceiling, trying not to react, but Eir remained unsatisfied. She lifted up his left leg and trailed her long fingers along the lines of the muscles under his skin.

'Is there any pain?' she asked as she nudged him to bend his knee and continued her examination. 'You're awfully tense.'

'Sorry. Just nervous I suppose.'

'There's nothing to be nervous about, Loki.'

'Really?' He made a conscious effort to purge the tension from his shoulders and tilted his head. 'So I can go back to lessons with the rest of my class then?'

Eir gently set his leg back down on the mattress, but she offered him no reply as her attention shifted to his other leg. Loki clambered up and propped himself up on his elbows. Perhaps he had been overly optimistic after all.

'Please? It's really boring to be stuck here all day,' he tried again. Sometimes this sort of thing worked on his mother, so seemed worth a try.

'How's your appetite?' Eir asked.

'Don't know? It's fine? It's the way it always was.'

That answer didn't impress; Eir turned her attention to her data tablet. Caunas had one just like it, except one edge of his was mashed in as if the tablet was a survivor of some violent calamity. She flicked through the screens of what Loki could only assume were notes Caunas and other healers had made about Loki since he was injured.

'Allfather give me strength.' Eir pursed her lips. 'There's no record of a temperature reading for this morning.'

'Caunas must've forgotten to note it down. He definitely took it.'

Loki's persistent low-grade fever was proving to be the most difficult thing to get around. This morning Loki had to make himself trip and fall flat on his face in order to distract Caunas from taking a measure of his temperature. The previous day, Caunas did get around to taking it and tutted at the result — one degree above the baseline was still one degree more than was acceptable. Loki had to talk circles around Caunas to get him distracted enough to write down the wrong thing in his records.

He leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the tablet's screen. 'Is there one for the day before? He took my temperature then too and he said it was fine.'

Eir flicked through the records. Loki used the moment to his advantage. He could see the temperature reader peeking out of Eir's bag. It was the same recently updated, but peculiarly primitive-looking model Caunas had in his healer's kit. A minute twitch of Loki's hand and it was gone. It was only a precaution, of course. Loki certainly didn't feel like he had a fever.