Page 28 of The Second Death of Locke

They were fools when they were young: so often on the edge of death, so desperate for someone else to fall into the chasm alongside them, as if the reaper’s teeth would not gnash them to nothing as long as they remained together.

She kept watch by herself as the sun rose fully over the not-so-distant mountains. No one came down the road by the inn. Eventually, she felt a hand on her ankle, gently rubbing the knob of her bone. She looked down to find Kier’s eyes open.

“We have to keep moving,” he said quietly.

Grey glanced around. No one else was awake yet. “I don’t know if we can move Brit. I need to assess.”

Kier sat up, rubbing his face. “There’s a farm close by. I’ll see if I can buy a horse. The faster we move on, the better.” He didn’t say they’d already been loitering there too long. If one group of spies had already found them, the rest weren’t far behind.

He leaned forward, resting his forehead on her thigh. She stroked his hair. “The innkeeper,” he said quietly. “What would you do with her?”

Her hand paused, his hair like silk against her fingers. She knew what her mother would have done: the last High Lady of Locke had a reputation for ruthlessness, to match the bloodlust of their ancestors. The best option, the safest option, was to kill her.

But right now, Grey’s stomach turned at the thought of more blood. More killing. Another life on their hands, the life of someone who had not done her any harm.

“Drug her again,” she said. “I can make something—it will make her ill for a few days, but it will leave the memory clouded.”

“If you’re sure,” Kier said. He did not say, If you’re sure we can let her live .

“I’m sure,” Grey said.

He woke Ola, who blearily agreed to keep watch but was awake enough to aim another firm glare at Grey.

“This is not going to be a good morning,” Grey muttered as they left the room, padding down the hall in their socks.

Kier sighed. “We’ll have a tactical meeting. Preferably out of town.” Grey’s stomach growled. “And over breakfast.”

“As long as Eron isn’t cooking,” she said.

She found her kit and sorted through the packets of herbs, labeled in Leonie’s hand. She picked out the appropriate ones and ground them together, then added water to make them into a paste. She sniffed it, wincing at the immediate trace of a headache, and handed the concoction to Kier.

“She has to ingest it,” she said.

“I’ll find a way.” He pulled a heavy ring of keys out of his pocket and hesitated outside the doorway. “You are still… Grey, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you nearly lost a battle. I think it’s best if I go in alone.”

Grey pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. “Not pretty enough for you, Captain?”

He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You are a vision, even with blood clots in your hair. But I don’t know if all would share my depraved tastes.”

She sighed, but relented, going into the room with the packs by herself while Kier tried his best to poison the innkeeper.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Kier to work, but to her, it felt like an eternity. She set her medical kit back to rights and tried not to worry. She heard a door shut downstairs, then footsteps. He came back, leaning on the door frame.

“Did it work?” she asked, closing the kit and replacing it in her pack.

“She’s asleep,” Kier said. “We’ll leave her ample pay for damages when we go. Now we need to get moving.”

“After I examine Brit.”

“If Ola lets you close enough. She’s… not happy.”

Grey was not ready to think about that. “Where are the bodies?”

“Burned. In the woods. Eron and I dealt with it.”

“Mm.”

“There’s new clothing for you in there,” Kier said, nodding to a gray-green saddlebag they must’ve bought in the village. “And… not to put too fine a point on it, but it might be a good idea to clean up. I wasn’t kidding about the blood in your hair.”

She flipped him a rude gesture as he shut the door, leaving only his laugh behind, ringing in her ears.

She did not have the luxury of time, so she raced through bathing.

She scrubbed the blood out of her hair and off her skin, careful not to pull her stitches.

The clothes Kier had gotten her were nondescript but softer than what she’d been wearing: a loose black shirt and black breeches, thick woolen socks, her same buckled leather vest. She liked the vest; it reminded her of a similar one her mother used to wear, and it had the close, heavy feel of armor.

He’d gotten her a new coat, too: heavy dark gray fabric, trimmed in black, with wide lapels and deep pockets. It was too big, but she preferred that. She folded it and left it on the bed, retrieving her kit to go check on Brit.

It was only Ola and Brit in the other room when she went in. Ola had moved the mage to the bed and was halfway through changing the bandage on their arm.

“I’ll need to look at those stitches,” Grey said wearily.

“What? Do you care now?”

She was too tired for this. “Of course I care,” she snapped.

“She did her best,” Brit said, eyes closed. “With the stitching, at least.”

“Not to remind you of your station,” Grey said, even though that was exactly what she was doing, “but leave off. And listen. Ola, I need you to tether to Brit—”

“Ah, because you have no power left, do you?”

“Fucking listen to me,” she snarled.

Ola did not respond. She only glared at Grey with a ferocity that made her oddly sad—but she listened.

Grey sensed the tether as it took, felt the flow of magic from the well into the mage.

She could not give Brit her own power, but she was still a Locke, still a daughter of the very place where the power took root.

She sensed the fiber of the tether—like all other times, she found herself wondering idly how other mages and wells could cope with such a slippery, unstable connection; she’d grown so used to the thick knot of her tether to Kier—and nudged it.

She directed the wealth of Ola’s power to the wound in Brit’s stomach, pushing it to bind the meat of them.

Brit clapped a hand over the wound, hissing, “ Brine and bone , Ol, what in Locke’s name—”

“I’m not doing anything!” Ola insisted.

Grey felt the heat of infection starting in Brit—“Focus, Ola, I need more”—and nudged it to the fore.

Pinkish-white pus seeped through Brit’s skin and she wiped it away, then layered on more antiseptic salve.

She probed around the wound, but it was otherwise clean, and much better than it had been yesterday.

“You can detach,” she said.

Brit pushed themself up on their elbows, grunting at the movement.

Ola stared at her, wide-eyed. Kier was used to the itching of her forcing his wounds back together, but Grey didn’t usually do something like that unless the mage was unconscious and beyond notice—but there was no point in hiding.

Ola was right: they had to be honest, and they were relying on one another for survival.

What was she meant to do? She would never get over the guilt of nearly letting Brit die because she couldn’t tether to them.

She’d never forget the agony in Ola’s eyes when she returned to find her mage nearly dead.

If it had been Kier…

She gathered up her things and packed her kit.

Before either of them could stop her, she went downstairs to find Eron and Sela sitting at a table with steaming cups of tea.

Cloth-wrapped bundles sat on the table in front of them: breakfast, Grey surmised.

It was dark in the tavern, the curtains pulled over the windows.

“Where’s Kier?” she asked.

“Seeing a man about a horse,” Eron said. “Close by—don’t get your nerves in a knot, Hand.”

“Impossible not to,” Grey muttered. She glanced at Sela.

Though she knew the girl had slept, her face was still pale and drawn.

“Are you okay?” she asked, softer. She realized Sela wasn’t wearing her cuffs, but with one mage down and Ola untrusting of Grey’s power, she couldn’t find herself surprised by it.

“I think so,” Sela said. It was unconvincing.

Kier returned a short while later, smelling of the cold, and soon Ola was helping Brit down the stairs too. They assembled around the table and… waited.

“We need to go,” Kier said.

Ola crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving until I have answers.”

Grey gritted her teeth. “You’re endangering our mission.”

Ola looked at her. So are you , she didn’t say.

Kier sighed. She felt the tug of him tethering, then her ears popped as he created a sound shield around them.

“You have ten minutes,” he said, his voice sounding like it was underwater for the briefest of moments before it came back into clarity.

“And then we’re leaving. We have food for the road. ”

“A picnic. Quaint,” Ola said, sitting back, arms crossed—but she’d stopped glaring. “Now. Sorry, Captain, we need to talk about your Hand. And you.” She turned on Sela. “You didn’t tether to Brit either, until the very last moment. Isn’t that something you should, I don’t know, control ?”

Grey drew a breath. Ola stared Kier down across the table. Brit, looking pale and caught in the middle of it, said, “If there’s information the captain deems unfit for us to know…”

“That information nearly got you killed,” Ola said. “I have just as strong a memory as your Hand, Captain. Sela might have harmed you, but your well did not tether to my mage in a time of need, and that is, frankly, despicable.”

Grey flinched, but after all, she agreed.

“What Hand Captain Flynn determines to be necessary action would certainly be my call—”

“And you’d let a mage die ?” Ola said at the same time Grey said, “Kier.” He didn’t look at her, but his jaw tightened, pulsing with tension. She wasn’t sure how much she liked the beard anymore—it made his expressions uncanny, harder to read.

At least they’d given up on pretending they weren’t in the army.

Grey folded her hands on top of her reports. “There are a few things we need to discuss.”