Page 2 of The Second Death of Locke

“Decimation might be tricky,” Kier said. “How many am I taking with me?”

“Your full company, Captain.”

He made a small noise. “Everyone?”

“The High Lord’s orders.”

Grey didn’t realize how much her fingers were digging into his shoulder until he subtly dipped it, their signal to let her know she had tensed.

There had always been significantly more wells than mages in Idistra, but with the constant wars and waning power, that was no longer something to count on—even in Scaela, the nation that held the most power when everything changed.

“Based on the last census of wells, it doesn’t seem like good strategy—” Grey started.

“It may be more sensible to leave some of our wells behind,” Kier agreed, taking the fall for her boldness, smoothly covering her misstep.

She felt a tug on the tether between them, a pulse of caution, and pressed her lips together.

Though she and Kier were as balanced as a pairing could be and treated one another as such, not every mage saw the relationship with their power source as one of equals.

And, of course, she knew what else Kier would say to her if they were alone: If you keep calling authority into question, you will draw attention , to which she usually replied, We always draw attention.

It’s your fault, for being so alarmingly grotesque , to which he would almost certainly respond, Alarmingly striking, you mean.

Attis shook her head, aiming a warning glance at Grey before she turned back to Kier. “Not every specialty is as developed as yours. Every mage in your company must be accompanied by their Hand, with enough typics to match and cover, and all will move with you. I am not taking any risks.”

Kier had no protest to that, but Grey knew what he was thinking.

In the time when magic was strong across Idistra’s nations, mages were only limited by the power of their wells.

But now, everything had changed—everything had weakened.

Though mages had always had affinities for flesh and blood, or materials, or natural forces, they were now restricted in what they could do with that magic.

The mages with affinities for flesh and bone all had a specialty, a body part they had an ability to affect within their opponents; materialists could only home in on one type of metal or wood or object.

In her time working as a healer in Scaelas’s army, Grey had seen the whole bloody assortment of it: those with the ability to cut off air to the lungs, leaving the dead blue-lipped and haunted; flesh affinites who could stitch giant ropes of skin over the mouth that Grey had to cut through with narrow blades, covered in sluices of blood; bone mages who could lock jaws and break bones with barely a look.

Though internal affinities were rare, when they occurred, what they were capable of was utterly ghastly.

Perhaps Kier’s affinity with the heart was better.

Clean. They had limits, of course—a full aortal separation took so much of her well of power that they could only do ten an hour, maybe a dozen at a push, but there were other ways to harm the heart.

Other ways to ensure the enemy did not fight back.

And though Kier’s affinity lay with the muscle itself, he had every other benefit of basic magic.

“They’re taking the trade route here. If they take the resource across the river into Luthar, we have no way to recover it. Do you understand, Captain Seward?”

“Perfectly,” Kier said, frowning at the map.

Which was fortunate, because Grey understood very little.

She sent a pulse down the tether—they could not fully form sentences between them, but they had been paired as mage and Hand for long enough that Kier could read her intentions by how she shaped her feelings as she pushed them through the tether of her power, and he could reciprocate in kind.

He caught her curiosity and understood easily.

“And what exactly is the resource?”

“Not for you to know, Captain Seward.”

There was a short pause. Grey wished she could see his face instead of trying to imagine his expression based on the back of his head. Very carefully, Kier said, “Master Attis, surely… you must understand that I cannot retrieve the resource if I do not know what it is .”

Another pause. Grey kept her eyes straight ahead, face blank, trying once again to fit into the picture of a perfect Hand, more befitting of Kier’s station.

Across from her, Attis’s Hand was doing the exact same thing.

Her name was Mare Concord, and she was thirty-eight years old.

She’d been Attis’s Hand for eighteen years, long enough that even her thoughts had become someone else’s.

Grey had learned these facts when Attis had borrowed her two years ago, on another assignment, when Mare was injured in the field and required medical attention.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Attis said, clipped. “That’s all you need to know. You set out before first light. Is that understood?”

A pause, and Grey knew Kier wanted to press. He knew better. That was the difference between them—Kier knew when to stop.

“Yes, Master,” he said.

“Good,” Attis said, already accepting the next paper from her Hand, already turning to the next task. “Dismissed.”

For just the barest of seconds, the Hand Master’s eyes locked on Grey’s.

Grey remembered the skin of Mare’s face, gray with blood loss, her lips cracked and chapped as she’d drunk from the cup in Grey’s hand.

Mare was unconscious while Grey sutured the wound in her liver, but by the time she moved to the external wound, the anesthetic draft had worn off and Mare’s gaze was empty, feeble as Grey stitched up the jagged gash over her ribs.

She remembered what Mare had told her when it was done, the other woman’s bloody hand clenched around her wrist: Get out.

Now. As soon as you can. They never need you as much as you need them .

She’d told Mare then that Kier was different and was rewarded with a pitying gaze so motherly that it made Grey’s heart ache. None of them are different.

Mare made a full recovery without infection, thanks to Grey’s careful action. That night, alone in their quarters, Grey lay awake long after Kier’s breathing evened, studying his face.

We’re going to die in this armor , Mare had told her, gripping her hand, slippery with blood. We’re going to die under Scaelas’s banner, and for what?

For what they did to Locke , Grey did not answer then, even though the truth of it echoed all the way to her bones.

Dismissed, Kier was already moving, and Grey fought her way out of her memories and hurried to follow.

He set off across the room, then through the tunnels and out of the tent.

Grey kept as close behind him as she could—they didn’t match mages and wells based on stride length, but perhaps it should’ve been taken into consideration—as they stepped out into the clamor of the camp.

“Kier—” she started.

“Hold on,” he said, not turning. He didn’t need to. She was so closely attuned to his voice, so firmly aware of him, that she was able to hear it even as a whisper in the middle of battle.

They stopped at one of the fires for hot tea and food, then headed to their tent with wrapped bread and cheese and jerky in their pockets and tea clasped between their hands.

As they passed the infirmary, Grey couldn’t tune out the cries of pain from the injured.

She itched to help, but she did not. Her duty did not lie in that tent or any like it, hadn’t since she was pulled from her post as a healer six years before and assigned as Kier’s Hand.

She still helped in her free time, but they were both already low on sleep, and judging by what she’d heard of the conversation, they would not have much more of it tonight. Onward she pressed.

They cut through the camp, the sea of faces all different but ground down into familiarity through exhaustion and the long-lasting post-battle weariness.

As was the case in the rest of Idistra, Scaela had no uniformity of appearance—a thousand years ago, the whole Isle was uninhabited, until the first ships came, and the magic came with it.

Before its wars, the nation states were known for their fishing, textiles, and northern trade; nearly everyone here had heritage linking somewhere else, and the appearance to match the mix of it.

Grey herself was a mosaic: if anything, she could trace her lineage to Lindan, maybe a bit of Ruskaya; more relevantly, to the older families that had reached the Isle and learned its magic.

The cool steel of her eyes, paleness of her skin and dark brown of her hair blended in here, among the mix of soldiers from all over Scaela, as it never had when she was growing up on the coast, where more were descended from Isbetan and Maroushan traders, who shared Kier’s coloring.

Back in their tent, it was easy. It always was when it was just them, when the trappings fell away and she didn’t have to think .

Calm as always, Kier undid the pin at her throat and helped her out of her cloak, then hung his on top of hers.

He dragged the small brazier over to the space between their bed pallets and grabbed her hand as he lit it.

She felt the siphoning, a pinch and then a trickle of warmth down her spine.

He didn’t have to touch her to use her power, but it was always easier when there was some sort of contact between them: he used less of both of their energy, and when they were alone, there was no point in siphoning without contact. Who would care?