Page 16 of The Second Death of Locke

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I F GREY EVER HAD to see Attis’s office again, it would be too soon.

This time, they both sat at the desk, Grey across from Mare, Kier across from the master.

The map from the other day was replaced with a new, even smaller one—they were always replacing maps on this assignment.

With the constant push and pull of territory between the port and the encampment, it was a necessary evil.

According to Kier, cartographers were the best bedmates.

Grey had never tested that theory herself.

The map itself focused on eastern Scaela, showing the routes from the southernmost point, where they were, all the way up and across the mountain passes, between Luthar and Cleoc Strata, toward the Bay of Locke.

She scanned over the path, trying to recall places they’d been along the way.

Moving north, back toward the village where they grew up, the land turned from dense forests to scrubby volcanic cliffs and thin trees, then sparse mountains speckled with gorse.

By the sea, it became brown-green cliff grass and pebbled beaches rising up toward slate cliffs that looked out at the bay.

Scaela was a kinder place than Locke, she always thought, though the terrain was not so far removed.

Sometimes, when she was at home in Leota, the seaside village where she and Kier had grown up, she looked at the dark cliffs of the shore and imagined them even rockier, sharper, like the place where she was born.

They called Locke “the Obsidian Isle” for the way its sheer black cliffs rose against the sea, and there was nowhere else like it in the world.

“You were previously in Grislar, is that correct?” Attis was saying, running her fingertip along Scaela’s indented coastline. Grislar was the base twinned with Scaela’s capital city, Easlar, but it was still perilously close to Luthar’s border—and also their closest assignment to Leota.

“For nearly a year,” Kier said. He frowned down at the map. “It’s a little late in the season to be crossing the mountains.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Attis said drily. “Can’t control the weather.

” She paused, rubbing her eyes, and Grey glanced at her.

Attis looked exhausted. Whatever they were doing, she’d been up all night preparing.

It was lucky she hadn’t caught Grey in the middle of the night, out on her way to threaten the prisoner.

“It’ll take you two weeks to get from here to Grislar on foot, three if the weather turns. ”

“On foot?” Grey asked. She didn’t care about walking one bit—but. She scanned the area on the map. She had been all over the country, had fought by Kier’s side on every coast, but she’d never been asked to walk across it.

Attis pressed her lips together. “Carriages are too conspicuous. And it’s the last push of the harvest—civilians on horses are bound to look suspicious.

” Grey found herself nodding at this; Attis had a point.

Horses at this time of year were either doing farm work or requisitioned by the military; any others belonged to nobles, who wouldn’t be safe on the roads without a retinue of guards anyway, and would still fall into the realm of “conspicuous.”

“We can send you with enough funds for travel and to alleviate the journey of the mountain passes, but we need you to be as low-profile as possible. Merchants, or even better, pilgrims traveling to the abbey at Pontille. We don’t have time—Luthos already knows the prisoner is missing and that her body was not found among the dead.

They could suspect another nation, but the easiest explanation is that we have her. ”

Kier looked up. “Another nation?”

Attis’s smile thinned. “We must operate on the assumption that Cleoc Strata, Eprain, and Nestria already have the same information about the girl’s existence—with the possibilities of her power, I’m certain they will be looking too.

That’s why you need to go straight across, through the mountains, and stay as inconspicuous as possible. ”

Kier leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t shaved this morning and his cheek bristled with the first sign of a beard. Grey held her tongue from telling Attis outright that she was sending them to the slaughter.

“And how many of us will go? With the prisoner?”

“We’ve planned for you and one other.”

“Give me three.”

“Captain.”

Kier gazed at Attis, hazel eyes unyielding, and these were the times Grey knew him best. He was so goddam stubborn and, when it wasn’t directed at her, she fucking adored it.

“I’m not doing this without another mage-and-well pairing, and I want a typic too.

If this is as precarious as you say it is, I need to be sure we’re not going to die exhausted in the mountains.

I need to know that we can have consistent sleep patterns.

I need to know that my team is being protected just as much as your prisoner, and if you put my Hand at risk—”

“No one is asking you to put your Hand at risk,” Attis snapped. “Fine. Three. Your choices.”

Grey did not answer Kier’s look. Attis would not defer to Mare, like she had any stake in the master’s choices; Kier ought to do the same in public, even if he asked her opinion on everything in private.

He sighed, reading her avoidance. “Okay. But hold on. What happens when we get to Grislar, when we deliver the prisoner? Will we be reassigned?”

Attis held his gaze, unflinching. “If you and your team do what is required of you,” she said, “you will get six months of leave. For everyone.”

Grey drew a breath. They hadn’t had more than a month of leave in all the time they’d been in Scaelas’s army—six months was an impossible amount of time. She couldn’t imagine how they could be spared for that long.

Her heart nearly stopped when Kier said, “I want a break in contract. Honorable retirement. For me and Hand Captain Flynn. If we reach Grislar alive and with the prisoner intact, I want to hand her over to Scaelas and receive our commendations within the same hour.”

“Captain?” Grey had never seen Attis so thoroughly caught off guard. The answering silence was opaque, unbreakable, and Grey herself wasn’t even sure she was breathing…

And he was still, staring right at her with that insouciant curve to his mouth that was more scar than attitude.

Her heart leaped to her throat—if they were given honorable retirement, it would come with wages.

They wouldn’t have to fight anymore. They wouldn’t have to go day after day, waking at first light, putting their bodies through torture.

There would be no logical physical reason for them to remain together.

If she was not his Hand, what was she? Had she pushed too far? Hurt him too much? Perhaps this was betrayal disguised as liberation; perhaps Kier would rather never do magic again instead of enduring more time by her side.

She caught herself before she could spiral too far.

No matter what he had in mind, she had every belief it somehow included her.

If he got his way—and this was the danger of it, her mind racing over the possibilities, skipping toward a joy that set her chest aflame—then she could imagine it.

Maybe they’d find a little house on the southwest coast, far from the battlefield, and she’d work as a healer in a village, or they’d run away to the continent.

He could bed all the cartographers he wanted—she wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t matter .

They’d never speak the name of Locke again. She’d never again feel the burned-out match of another well dying next to her on the battlefield, her hand and sword dripping with blood, out of her mind with terror.

Maybe, alone, together, he would finally see her as something more than his friend, his Hand, his sword.

“Could I interest you in a promotion instead?” Attis asked, a little desperately.

She felt the doubt in the tether—he was posing her a question. She sent back certainty, and with it, the tiniest thread of joy.

“No.”

“Captain Seward, I… You know you are valued. You know that you have been recommended for promotions, that you are very nearly a master yourself. If you complete this mission, you will have command of any post you require. You could even request a transfer to Scaelas’s personal guard, or serve directly under Commander Reggin, I’m sure. ”

“I don’t care,” Kier said. “Based on what you’re saying, this mission is a death trap.

We have a target on our backs. Luthar, Cleoc Strata, Eprain, all after us?

Nestria will be there too, I imagine. They’ll all be just as savvy as we think we are.

For all I know, there are soldiers waiting for the minute we set out from camp.

If I make it—if we make it—we’re not coming back. ”

He was so good at this, but under the table, he gripped Grey’s hand. His was clammy with sweat, and she realized that despite his posturing, he was terrified.

Attis stared him down, grim-faced, for another full minute. Finally, she opened one of her desk drawers with an angry clatter. Mare’s eyebrows were drawn together, furrowed, her thin-lipped mouth twisted in a pucker of surprise.

Grey watched as Attis conspicuously wrote a note on fresh parchment. She finished, read it over twice, folded it, and sealed it with wax and the stamp of her office.

“If you live through this,” she said, holding it out to Kier, “you are free to go.”

Kier squeezed Grey’s hand hard enough to bruise. With his other hand, easy as anything, he took the missive and handed it to her. She tucked it serenely in the inner pocket of her cloak.

“Pick your team,” Attis said. She was an unusual shade of red—and Grey almost felt bad for her. If she wasn’t sending the pair of them on a suicide mission with a girl who’d just stabbed Kier (and who was also pretending to be Grey), she would find some measure of sympathy in herself.