Page 30 of The Second Death of Locke

thirteen

“B RINE AND BONE,” OLA swore, the first to recover. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

But Kier was already moving. “Look. Let’s chat on the road—we’ve stayed too long. Pack your things. Brit, you and Sela will ride.”

Over the years, Grey had become very good at compartmentalization. That was the only reason she was able to launch herself up, finish tidying the room and pack her bag and Kier’s, don her new gray coat and stand ready at the door without utterly falling to pieces.

The First Daughter of Cleoc Strata. She couldn’t wrap her head around it, couldn’t understand— how ? Why? How had she even ended up as Luthar’s prisoner, and did they also think she was Maryse of Locke, or did they know the truth?

And, uncomfortably, Grey understood better than anyone what it meant to be the lost daughter of a nation. She realized all over again, with a sick sort of desperation, what would happen to her if that secret got out.

She sent a pulse of worry down the tether. Kier answered with his own tentative comfort, but it wasn’t strong enough to be believable.

Her mage actively relaxed when they were back on the road, the inn fading into the distance behind them, the mountains looming ahead. Sela and Brit rode the horse Kier had acquired, Brit’s arms framing the girl in a way that wasn’t fully restraint but wasn’t not restraint.

“Captain,” Ola started, but Kier said quietly, “Wait. There will be time. I want to get out of here.”

They continued in silence, Kier shushing them any time one of them got anywhere close to probing the matter. The captain kept his own counsel, chewing on his lip, clearly preoccupied. Grey glanced up more than once to find him looking at her sideways, his expression unreadable.

But he did not confide in her. Grey did not know what to think of that, of all things.

She focused instead on the walk. The scenery changed as they wound up into the foothills, from forest to grassy hills, then rocky paths with cliffs that rose up and up.

They kept to the trail now, Ola pausing every so often to peer at the map and the compass, sometimes consulting Kier.

It grew colder, too: Grey’s breath came in great puffs, and she was grateful again for her new coat.

She buried her fingers deep in the pockets, thumbs tracing over the bits of lint and coin left behind by the previous owner.

Her sword clinked against one of the straps of her bag, more sensation than sound, and she lost herself in the monotony of it until Kier said, “Okay. Let’s eat and talk. ”

She stopped. Brit pulled the horse to a halt, too; it snuffed gray-white clouds of breath and pawed at the rocky trail. Grey didn’t know its name. She reached to gently run her hand across the beast’s nose, damp with the condensation of cooling breath.

Brit and Sela slid down, and Kier took the reins.

He nodded to a rocky formation to the side of the path.

They sat in a loose circle, waiting, as he tied the horse to another rock near a patch of grass so it could graze.

Eron distributed their afternoon helpings of cheese and dried fish.

Finally, Kier seemed to come to some decision—perhaps he’d been wrestling with it all day.

Grey felt the tug on the tether as he siphoned, the pop of her ears as he shielded them.

“Sela,” he said. “I have two questions. Why does anyone think you’re Maryse of Locke? And how did you end up Luthar’s prisoner?”

The girl kept her head down, chin to chest. Grey remembered the first time she saw her, bundled and tied up in that carriage. She felt an uncomfortable stirring of pity.

“I was staying with nobles in Lindan, getting my education.” Lindan was on the continent, and like all other continental powers, it stayed far out of the warring within Idistra.

They did allow children to journey to the continent for safety, though, particularly those from the noble families.

One of the Lindle universities had offered Severin a place, back when there was peace, but since Grey was still a child, he could not leave the Isle to accept it.

“Nicer than here,” Brit muttered, nudging a rock with the toe of their boot. Grey took in their pallor, even paler than their usual alabaster. She made a mental note to give them a draft for pain relief before they moved again.

“I don’t know why I did it,” Sela conceded. “Homesickness, maybe? I… I feigned illness and slipped out of my lessons, went to the harbor and boarded the first ship I could find that was going to Idistra.”

Despite herself, Grey reached over and took Sela’s hand. The girl looked up at her, eyes big and glassy with tears.

“We all made bad decisions at fifteen,” Grey said evenly.

“Speak for yourself, Flynn,” Ola muttered.

But this seemed to strengthen Sela ever so slightly—or perhaps she, like Grey, was just happy that Ola no longer looked murderous every time Grey spoke. “I wanted to come back. I knew it was foolish. I didn’t care.”

“Does anyone know you left?” Kier asked, arms crossed. That scar on his lip was tugged down, making his frown deeper on one side than the other.

“I don’t know. And if they do, I don’t know if they care. Lindan was never… kind to me.”

“Ah.” Kier glanced at Grey, then away. “So you took a ship back. Then what?”

“I didn’t expect…” Sela trailed off. Grey didn’t know what it was she didn’t expect: that she’d be returning to a nation at war?

That someone would care about one girl coming back from abroad?

She was anxiously ruining a bit of bread with the hand Grey wasn’t holding.

“The ship was trying to land in Scaela, but it was searched and I was not on the manifests, so they knew I was not meant to be there. They asked for papers, and I didn’t have them.

So they…” She stopped, thin lips pressed together.

Grey squeezed her hand. Sela looked away.

“They were going to drown me. I knew if I revealed my identity, they’d kill me. So I said I was Locke.”

Grey pretended to be very interested in her fish to hide any reaction to the story, and immediately regretted it. It tasted like post-battle leather armor. “Why?” she asked finally, saying out loud what everyone else seemed to be thinking.

Sela looked at her, only her; those big eyes were doing their best to appear earnest. But Grey didn’t doubt her for a minute.

She was a kid. Grey herself had run away when she was sixteen, looking for the first place that made her feel something.

It just so happened she actually was the long-lost lady of a dead house in hiding, while Sela was not.

“Because I didn’t want to die, and I know Locke is important,” Sela said. “No one has ever found Severin—so what if he wasn’t the one who survived after all? What if it was me?”

“Because you’re twelve,” Eron said, exasperated.

“Fifteen,” Sela corrected.

Kier had gotten up at some point, and he was now pacing back and forth. “Eat, Captain,” Grey chided, and he grudgingly bit off half of his dried fish and struggled to chew it, wincing the whole time.

“Okay,” he said once he recovered. “The problem with taking you to Cleoc Strata, even if you tell the truth, is it’ll look like we kidnapped you. Plus, it’s much farther than Grislar, and we’d probably be killed at the border. Too many complications.”

“Why take her to Cleoc? Why not bring the High Lady to us?” Grey asked.

Kier looked at her, withering, but she was his Hand, and often, his reason.

She went on. “If we go to Grislar, like we’re supposed to, and send word ahead to get an ensign from Cleoc—we can barter for peace, Kier.

If Sela says we rescued her from Luthar when we’re actually protected… ”

“But our leave,” Brit said sadly. “We’re meant to deliver Maryse of Locke.”

“They only said we had to deliver the prisoner ,” Grey said. “If we get caught on the way, we’re fucked. But if we make it there, if we’re able to arrange it? That will mean something, won’t it? Perhaps it will even lead to an alliance on one front?”

Kier looked at her for a long time, sending something down the tether that she couldn’t quite read. That was the problem with feeling someone else’s emotions, even someone as close to her as Kier: there was not always a direct translation from his heart to hers.

“What if that doesn’t work?” he asked.

Grey shrugged. “Then we’ll figure it out.”

He looked at her, the expression clear on his face: What if they find out about you? She tried to school her own expression into an answering gaze of We will deal with it if it happens .

Ola blew out a long breath, tugging on the end of one of her braids. “It would be nice to have one less border to worry about.”

“I can do it,” Sela said, without anyone asking her.

“I can get the truce—I’ll push for it. I’m supposed to inherit in a few years.

My mother has to listen to me.” She was still squeezing Grey’s hand and ruining the bit of bread, still just a girl who’d run away from safety into something she didn’t understand—but Grey understood better than anyone that little girls grew up, and little girls with titles grew into rulers with power.

Grey looked away, far past the mountains, toward the sea. Something like longing stirred within her.

They made camp that night halfway up one of the rises, in a shallow dip protected by crests on either side. The cliffs above had just begun collecting little drifts of snow. “It will only get colder,” Kier warned as they set out blankets and bedrolls. “Keep close together.”

They sat together as Eron cooked up a new variety of beige.

Grey changed the bandage over her stitches, then inspected Brit’s healing wounds.

Kier was a ways away from them against the cliff, reading a book.

Sela sat near Grey, stroking the horse’s side.

It was called Pigeon, she’d learned, which made absolutely no sense. Horse names rarely did.