Page 5 of The Second Death of Locke

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G REY WAS FOUR WHEN she learned what it meant to be a well. There was no magic without wells: mages had to draw power from them, tether into a well and siphon to perform any action. It was like a water wheel, generating power. As a well, she was the river, the source that made the magic move.

She remembered sitting on her mother’s lap, their hands linked, heads bowed together.

It was one of her father’s guards she tethered to first, when she was just a child: his name was Iowain, and he had a boisterous laugh and a sheet of silver hair and a beard down to his stomach.

He crouched next to them, his face open and earnest, his hands palms-up on his knees as if to prove himself harmless.

“It’ll hurt, at first,” Alma, her mother, murmured into her hair, “but only because it feels like a loss—your body doesn’t know yet what it’s doing.”

“Push away as much as you need, child,” Iowain said.

Grey sucked in a breath. She felt the reach of the tether and she wanted to recoil, but more than that, she wanted to make her mother proud.

So she felt the thread of magic within her, warm and endless and unfurling, and something inside of her felt like it was cracked right open.

She felt the moment the tether took, the stomach-ache pain of it, then felt it dissolve.

“See?” Alma said, stroking Grey’s hair back from her face. Grey felt the presence of her brother behind her, waiting in case she needed more support, his hand pressed to her back. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Iowain put his hands together, and Grey sensed that tugging.

Alma nodded to her, and Grey let the tiniest thread of power slip into the tether.

When Iowain opened his hands, smile growing, he held a luminous opal in his palm.

Iowain was a materialist, and after that day he was constantly making her opals and pearls, sapphires and rubies, presenting them to her like a magician from a children’s play.

She still thought of him every time she caught the glimmer of a fine jewel on some nobleperson’s skin.

Only a few years after that, the rest of them were dead, and Grey was not. She sat on a hillside with a boy she’d only met days before; she hadn’t spoken in nearly as long. But he was kind, and he didn’t ask her any questions, and he was just as comfortable in silence as she was.

They sat on the hill and looked out at the sea, the flatness of it stretching still unfamiliar to her.

When she reached out her hand, he took it without hesitation.

When she offered a tether, he took that too.

She already knew he was a mage. It was obvious: the energy of unfulfilled magic fizzled around him.

It only took a moment for the boy’s brows to draw together. Another moment, and he drew a tiny flame between them, the earliest kind of standard magic they taught mages. He pulled back and said, “ Oh .” Kier looked at her hand, then at her. “What are you?”

Grey only looked at him. It was the first question he’d asked her, and she felt compelled to answer.

She could not remember why she’d opened up her power.

She only knew she trusted him, the kind dimples that carved into his cheeks, knees and elbows always scraped from playing too hard with his brother and now her, his eyes green on the outside and brown on the inside. Hazel, but only just.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Kier stammered. “I’m sorry I asked.” He was always like that, back then—full of doubt, uncertain of himself. It was an imperfection that years of fighting and leading had long since taken from him.

Sometimes, now, she still looked at him and missed his imperfections. She even missed his doubt, because that meant room for mistakes without the consequence of death.

“It’s okay,” she said, and she meant it. She looked out to the open sea where the Isle once was. “It’s only, I don’t know.”

The mud was thick and cold, soaking the crest of Scaela she wore on her chest. Grey barely felt it, armored as she was for battle.

She’d shifted her baldric and most of her blades to her back when they’d gotten down, to avoid the mud.

It was still utter misery, lying between Kier and Eron Fastria, one of their typic officers, eyes trained on the road at the bottom of the hill.

Further down the road, the Iolis was swollen with the rainfall, nearly spilling over its banks.

Their company was divided into four groups of fifteen, half scattered over this ridge and half on the other side of the road, hidden among the scrabbling weeds and underbrush, blending with the barren trees of the woods.

Intelligence delivered to Attis and then to Kier estimated the convoy of carriages would be rolling through two hours after sunrise.

They’d been here waiting for three already, just to be safe, in position for an ambush.

She was comforted by the familiar weight of steel on her back—it was gauche to be armed to the teeth walking around camp, but she liked the presence of her weapons, and she was always most comfortable when she had her sword at easy reach.

It reminded her of her father, who had taught her to wield a sword as soon as she was steady enough to stand on two feet and strong enough to lift a wooden practice blade.

She liked knowing she could protect herself. And Kier, if needed. In return, he did everything in his power to keep her safe.

She risked a glance down the line. The sun shimmered, murky through the clouds, as the rain picked up from a drizzle to a patter.

She was already soaked to the bone, rain seeping through the gaps in her leather armor, through her padded shirt and plain cloth undershirt.

Next to her, Eron offered her a tight smile.

He was not usually a smiler, so he must’ve felt the tension rolling off her.

Grey only grimaced back. Fastria sighed, his dark eyes losing some of their glimmer.

It was hard for Grey not to lose focus when they were like this.

She tried to keep herself present by running through muscle groups, then organs, then bones.

When she was younger, fresh out of her extra training as a healer, out of those years spent up to her elbows in blood, she used to imagine viscera in diagrams and memories of injuries she’d treated.

Now, years separated, she imagined all manner of it on Kier.

Open his chest, split the pectoralis major down the middle.

Count the ribs. She imagined the pinkish white of his manubrium, the ridges of his xiphoid process.

It was impossible not to imagine all bodies as Kier’s, all parts as Kier’s.

She’d seen too much of him, opened him up too many times and sealed him shut, felt the nodules of his bones and the slick heat of his bare muscles.

That was what it meant to be a Hand. To be just as comfortable, just as capable with the inside of him as she was with the outside.

Before she finished her recall of bones, a small noise like birdsong sounded from the field down the road to their right, just loud enough to be heard over the river. Grey drew her sword in the quiet before the storm. On her left, Kier stiffened.

“Captain?” a muffled voice asked in the near silence.

“Prepare for attack,” Kier said, his own voice barely above a whisper.

It didn’t matter—Grey heard the gentle shift of the soldiers-at-arms tensing, taking position.

The signal meant that dust from the road had been spotted in the distance, that the convoy was in sight.

In her veins, she felt the pre-battle tension.

She tightened her fingers around the sword, flexing her hands in her leather gauntlets.

Her hands were bare, ungloved, in case Kier needed direct contact with her skin in the heat of battle.

She focused on the shuffle of boots on the packed road.

Soon enough, she too could see the dust cloud in the distance, the four carriages surrounded by tidy lines of soldiers.

On her right, Fastria drew a quick breath and murmured a prayer in Arkunish, probably to one of their gods.

“Approaching the first marker, Captain,” he muttered in the moment after he finished his prayer.

“Keep holding,” Kier said. “I’ll give the signal when the time comes.”

The convoy came closer, and every muscle in Grey’s body was wire-tense.

They were entering the danger zone—if any of the mages in that convoy had an affinity like Kier’s and a strong enough well, they’d be able to sense other life forces, other magic waiting up ahead.

If that happened, if their cover was blown—well, they wouldn’t be totally ruined, but it would be a fairer fight than she wanted.

The first of the carriages passed the next marker. Grey didn’t usually second-guess Kier, but she did give him a look, judging his face. His jaw was tight, anxious.

“Approaching the third marker, Captain,” Fastria said.

“Kier?” Grey murmured.

He whistled twice, sharp, through his teeth.

That was all it took—Grey spotted movement in the group closest to the convoy as they sprang to action, then the second team raced down the hill.

Kier shifted a hand to her shoulder, gripping the edge of her pauldron, as Fastria and the others surrounding them leaped into a run.

Their job was not with the first wave. Though Kier was unnervingly eager to throw himself into battle, he and Grey had a more specialized task for this particular skirmish.