Page 22 of The Second Death of Locke

ten

F OR THREE DAYS, THEY followed Kier and Ola’s bickering negotiations through the forest. Grey found herself mildly amazed.

She herself had the directional awareness of a blindfolded toddler dropped mapless into the middle of Nestria at all times, without exception.

She didn’t know how either managed (though she couldn’t fully discount some odd magical transference from the number of cartographers Kier had reportedly fucked).

After the first day of monotonous walking and night of watch shifts, no one seemed keen on talking, so they passed the time in relative silence, with the occasional remark from Ola or Eron about a nice bird or plant.

If Sela spoke at all, Grey did not hear it.

“Be on guard,” was all Kier said to the group.

When they stopped to eat the first of their mid-morning rations, he showed Grey their location on the map. The distance between them and the encampment was miserably short, the distance between their location and Grislar frustratingly far, and they still had the mountains to worry about.

“We’ll have to pick up the pace,” he murmured to her.

Out of the woods, they kept carefully alert for signs of other travelers.

They were on an infrequently used supply road, so it was hours before they saw anyone else; even then, only a handful of travelers shared the road with them, and all traveled in the opposite direction.

Few were going to the mountains at this time of year, when the shepherds were leading their flocks down from the hills, which made them more conspicuous than Kier liked, and on the morning of the fourth day, he directed them back to the wood, parallel to the road, until the trees ran out.

Grey’s back ached so much that Kier kept eying her, clearly feeling her discomfort through the tether.

When their afternoon rest came, he insisted on shouldering her pack.

On the next bladder relief break, Grey was grimly unsurprised to find the onset of her monthly and instantly annoyed she’d given Kier her pack.

“Need something?” Eron asked, catching her grimace. He unshouldered his own pack and dug around in it for his pouch of supplies. “Take what you need. Mine is finished.”

Grey thanked him with all the gratitude she could manage when caught with her trousers down.

When they rejoined the group, she allowed Kier to re-tether, cursing the sluggishness of her power and her craggy irritability, which possibly had more to do with the fact that she’d spent the better part of the week sleeping on the dirt and hadn’t changed her clothes in as many days.

Kier took one look at her face and sighed.

“I think,” he said, “we need a supply run. A night in an inn, if we can. We’ll be starting on the hills tomorrow—I want everyone rested.”

No one actively cheered, but the slackened shoulders and tired smiles were just as clear as any sign of relief. After Kier’s declaration, he and Ola bent over the map, tracing along the path once more until he said, “That’ll do. There should be somewhere for travelers on the road to Pista.”

Grey had never heard of Pista. It wasn’t a surprise—they were in the middle of the country, in the nowhere of farmers’ fields, the exhausted recovery zone for those who couldn’t be bothered with the fighting or who’d left the army years before but still grew the food and paid the taxes to support them.

They found an inn by late afternoon. It was alone, not even in a village, which was probably why Kier had chosen it.

“Will we be noticed here?” Grey asked.

He sighed. “Hopefully not. It seems to only be travelers.” He didn’t tell her that they were stopping because she was tired, grumpy, and in pain and he wanted her to rest—he didn’t have to.

She sighed, knocking her shoulder against his arm.

The windows of the tavern glowed with warmth, and the smell of roasting meat and grain was enough to send Grey’s stomach grumbling the instant it hit her nose.

The other four dragged two tables together while Grey and Kier went to the counter to inquire about rooms. There were a few others in the tavern, and Grey regarded them carefully as they waited: a pair of sunburned farmers with pints of ale in the corner and a woman and a child eating dinner near the door.

Grey kept her eyes open, but she did not feel as if they were threatening.

The tavern keeper, when she appeared, was a bracing woman with a crooked nose and three fingers missing on her left hand.

Ex-soldier, Grey surmised, based on both the missing fingers and the sword bolted to the wall behind the keeper’s head, a twin to the ones Grey and Kier wore across their backs, except hers was mutilated and bent out of shape from some long-over battle.

“My companions and I are passing through. Do you have any rooms?” Kier asked in his soft, pleasant voice, the one Grey internally referred to as his “charm the pants off your mother” tone.

It had worked, unfortunately, on more than one mother and at least one father, though she could not confirm or deny if all had affinities for mapmaking.

The keeper eyed them shrewdly. “What’s the nature of your journey?” she asked in a voice sharp enough to cut glass.

Kier doubled down, leaning his arm against the counter, that smirk working up on his mouth.

“I’ve just been honorably released,” he said, not clarifying—there was only one profession that someone could be released from in Scaela.

And though Kier was too young by far for release unless he’d been seriously injured, not all career-ending ailments were visible.

“My wife”—he put an arm around Grey and dragged her against him, and she ignored both the way her heart tripped at the title and the way he said it—“and her sisters and their families—we’re resettling.

Looking for a patch of family land left in the mountains. ”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. Many a family estate had been abandoned when the children were sent to fight. Not all of them lived to return.

The innkeeper regarded them for a long moment. It made Grey uncomfortable, but the woman probably just didn’t want to rent rooms to bandits, only for them to steal anything not bolted to the floor. She supposed this place had few other travelers.

She tried to look as innocent as possible, leaning further into Kier. His arm tightened around her.

The innkeeper nodded and opened a drawer full of keys. “How many rooms?”

“Two will do,” Kier said, probably because he couldn’t say one without her asking questions about how six adults would fit into a bed. “We’re not rife with resources at the moment.”

Another lie. Grey had seen the bulging mass of coin Attis had given Kier before their journey.

They certainly had enough for three rooms—they had enough for each to have their own room, Sela included, but Sela had to be watched at all times, and someone had to stand guard, which would not work if they were split up.

Grey sighed, because Kier was a liar. Two rooms or not, she doubted he was going to let them split up: they were going to squeeze six adults into one bed and she just fucking knew it.

Once they had their keys and the tavern keeper was getting food and drink for everyone, Grey looked up, letting her nose skim the stubble of his jaw—he didn’t usually like to go unshaven, and seeing him like this now, five days into an almost beard, was positively novel.

“Thrilling plans for the evening, husband?”

When he laughed, the sound hit her right in the stomach.

He adjusted his arm around her waist, slipping it under her coat to pull her fast against him.

He pressed a kiss to her temple that was mostly the vibration of his mirth against her skin, and because she had no sense at all, a shiver of excitement fluttered down her spine. “I suppose you could tempt me.”

She rolled her eyes, pulling away before she could let her bruised, crumpled little heart believe him.

The tavern keeper returned with two pitchers of ale and a stack of glasses, saving Grey.

She took the drinks back to the others and distributed them while Kier stayed behind to ask about the best places to get supplies, listening as the woman described the path to the next village over.

Grey tried her best not to look at him as she settled into her seat, pretending to be interested in Eron and Ola as they debated the relative merits of knuckle guards over gloves.

She sat back, one hand around her ale, and forced herself back into sense.

Flirting wasn’t new. They always flirted.

And Kier was the kind of person who required affection for everything: when they were alone, he was always catching her hand or pulling her feet into his lap or rubbing her shoulders or sitting at her feet with his head on her thigh, and they barely went to sleep at night without him pressing his lips to her hand or her forehead or her temple.

But that’s how he was. How he always had been.

Beyond that? Nothing. He had always been her right hand, the other half of her, her best friend, the person she knew better physically and mentally than anyone else, and it was clear in every waking moment that he was just as dedicated to her. This was just… this was the line they didn’t cross.

It wasn’t as if they spoke at length about their other dalliances or the nights they spent away from one another.

It was just, sometimes he went out after sparring or a late-night patrol and came back in the small hours of the morning, hair wet from washing, and she forced herself not to say anything and was careful not to tether to him then in case any jealous emotions slipped through.

She kept it for the light of morning, when it was easier to heckle him without her true feelings escaping.