Page 20 of The Second Death of Locke

“Mm.” Brit walked in silence for a few paces, long enough that Grey figured they’d ceased the need to talk and could continue the rest of the day’s journey in relative quiet. “I think I’ve forgotten how to be kind.”

Grey looked at them as if seeing them for the first time, taking in the shorn shimmer of their pale hair, traced through by and growing oddly around scars that had long since healed.

She understood their humor now, despite herself.

It was a mask over the anger they all carried, the fear. It was its own kind of armor.

She glanced at the four ahead, at Ola’s laughing face—she and Kier had finished their argument with some success—and the prisoner’s drawn, angry mouth. She flexed her hand, remembering the feeling of the girl’s hair in her grip. “I don’t think I ever knew,” she confessed.

It was easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, to forget it wasn’t just an adventure, especially now that she had warmed somewhat to Brit’s unfailing optimism and noted how it spread so easily to the others.

The Scaelan south was not much to look at, but in comparison to Grey’s memories of Locke, it was verdant and green.

They would reach the foothills of the Aloducan peaks in a few days’ time, according to Kier’s calculations, but for now, they were cutting through miles of forests interspersed with rolling hills of green grasses and grazing sheep, past stands of closely crowded trees.

They were careful to avoid the villages, choosing farmers’ fields and bits of woodland to travel through instead.

The night came too quickly in the wood, and Kier paused in a small clearing, just big enough for the six of them, and declared, “This will do.”

“No town?” Eron asked. Grey glanced around at the ferns creeping into the clearing, the shady canopy of birch and ash that hung above. It wasn’t muddy, which made it immediately better than Mecketer.

“Not tonight,” Kier said. “I want to stay in the wild a bit longer.”

They unpacked their bedrolls and Eron set to food preparation, using Brit and Ola to heat the pot of thick reconstituted gruel without lighting a fire.

He whistled as he stirred, rifling through the supply kit and adding a mysterious combination of things to the pot.

Grey watched with resignation as the gruel turned a frightening shade of gray, speckled with unknown herbs.

“Are you sure this was a good idea?” she muttered to Kier. “Leaving Eron in charge of feeding us?”

“I refuse to be the one to break his heart,” Kier whispered back. But he did go to his own pack and slipped her a bit of dried fruit when no one was looking.

“We’ll take the first watch,” he said, louder, so the others could hear. Grey turned away, pretending to search through her pack for another knife as she chewed on the leathery strips of apple and apricot. “Ola, can you and Brit handle the cuffs for a while?”

“Of course, Captain,” Ola said.

“Kier,” he corrected. They all paused, glancing at him uneasily. Kier shifted his weight. “We’re not in a position for titles. So, Kier. Just Kier, or Seward, if you have to.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Once she had swallowed the last of her haul, Grey checked that the others were thoroughly occupied as she retrieved her healing kit. “Sela?”

The girl looked up from watching Eron stir. Grey felt Kier’s gaze on her, and the question within it.

“Leonie said you have some injuries in need of care,” she said, clipped as ever. She was investigating, and she would do her job to the letter—it didn’t mean she had to be nice about it. “Ola, could you restrain the girl?”

“Is that necessary?” Ola asked.

Grey stood, kit in one hand, eyes hard as flint. “Need I remind you,” she said, leaning into the authority she so rarely used, “that she nearly killed Kier?” Was she the only one who remembered this?

“ Flynn ,” Kier sighed.

But Grey held firm. Leonie didn’t know who this girl was—and until Grey did, she would not let her guard down. There was no reason for someone to just pretend to be Locke with no reason for it.

“She has the cuffs,” Eron said.

“Doesn’t stop her from attacking me,” Grey pointed out.

“I won’t hurt you,” Sela said quietly. Grey didn’t bother with a response—she’d like to see the girl try.

But Ola only held Grey’s gaze for a moment longer, then went in her bag for a length of rope.

“In front of her, please,” Grey said. Her shoulder was probably still sore, and that was a mercy she could grant her. When Sela was bound, Grey went to her and hauled her up by her good arm. “I’ll take her for some privacy. Kier, a light?”

She felt the thin trickle of power and then the light flared cool and blue in Kier’s hands. “Need backup?” he asked.

She could tell from his look that he was displeased about her tying Sela up, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it in front of the others. She didn’t want to hear it alone, either.

“No.”

She led the prisoner a little ways away to the edge of the clearing, still within open view of the camp. She nodded to a fallen tree trunk thick with moss. “There,” she said, “please.”

The girl lowered herself to the trunk. Kier’s magelight was, as always, a neat piece of work: Grey could see, and the girl probably could too, but no one more than a few feet outside of its warm glow would be able to catch it.

She felt the threads of magic within it, his work tidy as ever.

She set the magelight next to Sela and crouched in front of her.

Leonie had left detailed accounts of her examination.

“I should put you in a sling,” Grey murmured, looking through the notes, then up at the girl.

Sela was small in stature, fine-boned—she looked too breakable to be a soldier.

Grey suspected that she hadn’t been conscripted at all before she was taken captive. “Let me check for swelling.”

She eased the coat off the girl’s shoulders—awkward when Sela’s hands were bound, but she wasn’t compromising on that point just yet—and probed with her fingertips, pausing only for a moment when she heard Sela’s quick indrawn breath.

“It’ll still be tender,” Grey said.

“Can you give me anything for the pain?” Sela asked, surprising Grey with her trust. Grey could just as easily slip her poison. “Polla weed? Something like that?”

Grey blinked, hesitating before she caught herself. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I’ll make you a solution when we get back to the fire.”

She let go of Sela’s shoulder and pulled the coat back up, then worked through the rest of her injuries carefully, applying antiseptic salve and a new dressing to the wound on her shin, rebandaging the broken skin on the knuckles of one hand.

Sela was quiet the whole time, her heart too fast in her chest.

“Done,” Grey said, sitting back on her heels.

Sela’s head snapped up. She was on guard, tense, and probably for good reason. Grey had, after all, threatened to kill her.

Something was shifting inside of her, something she didn’t like at all and would not acknowledge to Kier or any of the others.

Sela’s eyes were wide and blue, her chin sharp, her face round and young.

The severe cut of her hair did nothing to make her appear any older—if anything, she looked like a girl in need of protection.

Grey sighed. She untied the restraints and moved the girl’s arm carefully, refashioning the rope into a sling. She could hold a grudge with the best of them, but cruelty didn’t suit her.

“Do not give me any reason to distrust you,” she said, annoyed with herself. “You’ll be tied right back up again before you can blink.”

“Understood,” Sela said, her voice very small.

Grey nodded and hauled the girl back up.

At camp, Eron had finished cooking the beige abomination and was spooning it into a line of collapsible bowls.

Grey stopped to mix some of Leonie’s pain-reducing solution with water and handed it to Sela.

After, she took the bowl she was given with a quick nod and thanks, then settled against a tree at the edge of camp with her food, the magelight and the stack of Leonie’s notes on all of their previous injuries.

If she was to be the team medic, it was good for her to be informed.

It only took her two mouthfuls to decide that making Eron the cook was a terrible idea, but it was too late to change things now.

Grey leaned back, setting her bowl aside for now, listening to the nighttime sounds of the forest: the rustling of small animals in the ferns and brush, a creek babbling nearby.

Against her tree, the air smelled of autumn: leaves decaying into rich soil, and the barest bite of winter on the wind.

The others chatted idly in soft tones while they ate: Eron and Brit compared notes on previous assignments; Ola held a one-sided conversation with the silent girl about a pastry shop in Grislar.

Kier was off on the perimeter watch, tethered to Grey but not pulling any magic since they’d switched with Brit and Ola for Sela’s cuffs, the connection dormant but still comforting.

She flipped through Leonie’s notes. There was nothing dramatic: Eron had suffered a concussion three months before, so he had an alert for further head wounds.

Ola’s left arm had been nearly cleaved off in a previous assignment and the muscle still ached sometimes; Grey made a note to apply a heat compress when they reached the next town.

Brit had also had a concussion five months ago, a broken ankle two assignments ago, and recurring but treatable kidney stones due to a run-in with an internal mage on the frontline near Nestria.

Then there was Kier: a patchwork of so many injuries over the years that she’d lost count.

There was no point in reading them: she knew them all by memory.