Page 24 of The Second Death of Locke

eleven

“L UTHRITE TRACKERS DOWNSTAIRS,” SHE said as she burst through the door, spilling water all down her shirt. Brit looked up from their blade, brow furrowed.

“What?”

“Move fast,” Grey said. She locked the door, then started to drag the flimsy wardrobe over in front of it. She wished it was heavier, sturdier—there was no chance it would hold. “If we can’t get out, we’ll have to fight them.”

Brit jumped to help her. “How do you know?” they asked.

“How they spoke. Coin. Innkeeper tipped me off,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Doesn’t matter if I’m being paranoid—I’m not taking any fucking chances.

” She examined the window, the drop below, but the garden was fenced all along, and there was no sign of a gate.

Plus, if they ran, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to lead them back to Kier.

It was better to fight. Leave no survivors.

“Are they here for us?” Sela asked. She stood uselessly on the other side of the room, her hands fluttering like she didn’t know what to do with them.

She’s a kid , Grey chided herself. For all her annoyance, that fact still hung heavy in her stomach. Whoever Sela was, what ever Sela was, she was just a kid.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll deal with it. Now get down. Away from the window. In that corner, under the desk.”

Sela nodded, but Grey could see the panic in her face.

Grey flipped the desk so the top protected Sela’s body, so she could curl up in the middle of it and be safe on all sides.

She dumped the weapons they wouldn’t use with the girl.

Those cool blue eyes peered up at her, devoid of any of the arrogance she’d had in camp. This time, Sela was scared.

It was only because she was listening very carefully that she heard the boots on the stairs.

“Captain?” Brit murmured.

“Tether to Ola,” she instructed.

Brit looked away. “She’s not reaching, and I can’t initiate the tether myself at this range. I have to tether to you.”

Grey swore—she couldn’t tether to Brit. She threw open the window and shouted Ola’s name. There was no response. She swore again.

“Swords,” she said. They both drew, and Grey grabbed a dagger for good measure—the room wasn’t that big, and swords weren’t always great in proximity. Brit armed themselves with some assortment of metal; Grey didn’t question it.

Someone knocked on the door. “Ma’am?” a voice said. Not the innkeeper.

Brit and Grey exchanged a long look. Brit, too, drew their knife.

Another knock. Someone tried the doorknob. “We’d like to compare routes, if you please. We think we’re going in the same direction.” Their tone was silk over glass, tension clear in every word as they tried to smooth out their accent, to sound Scaelan.

“No thank you,” Grey called back firmly.

“I’m reaching a tether,” Brit said, and Grey felt a strange sense of prodding, like her stomach was the closed door of the room Brit was knocking at. An odd expression flickered across Brit’s face.

Something rammed the door—it held. Muted voices conversed on the other side.

“Hand Captain?” Brit asked.

Grey’s terror was cold and even. “I… can’t,” she said.

“I won’t use—”

“No,” Grey said, facing the truth of it—the truth of what they’d done. “Brit, Kier and I are bound. I can’t lend my power to another.”

Brit’s eyes were blank for a terrible time. “Well, fuck ,” they murmured. “I had a thought when you wouldn’t let Ola… Fuck .”

Something hit the door again, and Grey heard the cracking of wood. She thought again of calling for Ola and dismissed it. “Hope you’re just as good with your sword,” she muttered, sinking into position. “We’ve got to get out of here without your magic.”

“When the captain gets back,” Brit seethed, “we are going to have a long discussion about trust.”

“If we’re still alive, I look forward to it.”

Grey didn’t need a tether to know Brit was furious. It wasn’t that they couldn’t fight—but mages liked the edge of magic, and they were taught to fight with it as another limb. It would be awkward and uncomfortable for Brit to go without it.

But there wasn’t time. Something else hit the door, cracking it fully. Brit jumped back as a boot kicked down the dresser, and managed to get in the first hit, stabbing out as someone tried to enter. There was a howl of pain in the hall.

“You have two minutes,” a voice called. “Surrender the girl or die.”

“What girl?” Grey shouted.

There was another murmur from the hall. Grey felt the swell of magic building, and before she could warn Brit, the door and wardrobe exploded in a shatter of wood. Grey threw a hand in front of her face to protect her eyes.

“Fucking materialists ,” Brit groaned—ironic, because Brit too was a fucking materialist.

Grey only had time to bring her hand down and duck out of the swing of a blade.

The air was heavy with the sound of metal on metal and the ashy smell of magic—there were four of them, probably two mages and two wells, and she was so incandescently angry that she hadn’t forced Ola to stay inside, that she had been so preoccupied with being separated from Kier that she hadn’t kept the other pairing together, that she hadn’t thought .

Just past her own fight, Brit dodged a hit, rolled over the bed, and took a lunging swing at one of their opponents that caught them in the shoulder.

Grey gritted her teeth, leaning into the blow she blocked, swinging forward with her off-hand.

She caught the man in the ribs, a deep hit that made him suck a breath through his teeth.

He withdrew, stumbling back. Grey lunged forward again, driving lower than he expected, getting him in the stomach—he fell to his knees, that flash of disaster clear in his eyes, and she felt the fizzle of a snapped tether.

“ Flynn .”

She turned just in time to catch the slash on her arm instead of her back, which hurt like a bitch but wouldn’t kill her.

“This would be so much fucking easier,” Brit seethed, bleeding from their forehead, “with magic .”

Grey blocked another blow and hazarded a glance at the mage, who’d been forced into a corner.

“Tether!”

The small voice caught them both off guard enough that Grey nearly missed a block and Brit did—but it didn’t matter, because Grey felt the new strand of magic as Sela pushed her power forward and Brit latched on.

“Drop!” they shouted, and then the metal shavings they had clenched in one fist went flying through the room at a killing speed. Grey hit the floor, face-down, covering her head with both hands as the metal pattered around her and at least two more bodies thudded to the ground.

Silence rang in the air. She smelled blood, and felt the sweet aftermath of worn-out power even as her own well brimmed overfull with adrenaline.

She opened her eyes. One of the Luthrite soldiers was on the ground next to her, their face half obliterated by metal. For that force of an explosion, that much projection, Sela was probably spent.

Grey sat up, wiping the blood away from her face, taking careful stock. The four soldiers were dead. The desk Sela had hidden behind was a mess of wood splinters, but she could hear the girl crying, so at least she was alive. It was Brit she focused on, slumped over the bed, breathing hard.

“Brit?” She pushed herself up, stepping over a body. She pulled the mage over onto their back—their eyes were wild with pain. Blood dripped down their forehead; another wound soaked their sleeve, and there was one more that Grey couldn’t see across their ribs.

“You didn’t tell us,” Brit said, staring straight up at the ceiling.

Grey did not cry—she’d lost that instinct to cry in the face of danger years ago—but she did curse fantastically under her breath.

She opened Brit’s shirt, slicing through buttons with her bloody knife, and took in the injuries.

The one across Brit’s ribs was deep but she didn’t think it had punctured anything important; there was another just to the side of their navel, not deep enough to pierce the gut, but she could not fully tell without inspecting further.

“Sela,” she said very carefully. “Are you okay?”

“Um.” The girl sniffled, trying to breathe through sobs that racked her body. “I don’t… I’m not… I’m not bleeding.”

“Good. Sela, dear heart, can you do something for me?” Grey had a choice to make: concentrate on Brit or worry about Sela.

If the girl wanted to run—well. She was more trouble than she was worth.

And though her own retirement hung in the balance, though Kier might actually kill her if she lost the prisoner, she wasn’t going to let Brit die.

She pressed a firm hand to the worst of their wounds to staunch the bleeding.

“I think,” Sela said. Grey glanced over at her. She was standing now, breathing heavily, probably in the middle of a panic attack. When her eyes landed on Brit, half unconscious under Grey, then on the body of a soldier close to her on the ground, the blood drained from her face.

Grey held out a key. “Don’t look at them. Sela, next door, my bag is on the bed. I need my kit from it. The one with salves and herbs and antidotes—you’ll know it when you see it. It’s okay to bring the whole bag. I’ll need you to do a few other things and then I’ll send you for Ola, okay?”

“Okay,” Sela said. She took the key. Grey wondered, her thoughts fuzzy with adrenaline and the pain of the fight, if she would regret this.

She couldn’t think of that now.