Page 6 of The Second Death of Locke

Grey watched the first wave of soldiers crash into the unsuspecting convoy.

She gritted her teeth through the flashing of steel as meat met meat.

A spray of blood flew up from one of the smaller skirmishes closer to them, speckling the side of the first carriage with crimson.

She watched the typics with their steel, the mages and their Hands, all entangling with the thirty-six mages and Hands opposite.

She had to watch, because if she did not, she would panic—and she could not panic.

“Now, Grey,” Kier said, just for her.

She kept a steady pace behind him down the bank.

One dark shape rose to her left, a mage-less Hand, but she cut him down with one swift move of her sword and only vaguely winced at the spray of hot blood that splashed on her face.

She felt Kier’s magic tugging at her middle, power unfurling from her chest. He wasn’t severing any aortas with that trickle of power, but Grey heard a shout to one side and glanced that way just long enough to see a mage fall to his knees with no apparent injury, blood trickling from his gaping mouth.

Kier finished the job with his own sword.

She did not stop. She pushed more power at Kier and kept moving.

It was her job to keep him safe, keep him alive.

As a well, Grey herself was impervious to harm by magical means, but the other mages and typics in their company weren’t.

She kept close to Kier, kept power flowing to him as he strategically targeted their rivals.

With her sword, she fought off anyone else who could do him harm.

She cut through another mage—their swords clanging overhead, her dagger to his side, recovery with her sword, finding a seam in his armor, stabbing through his belly—and pushed forward to the line of carriages.

All around her was the ebb and flow of magic, so thick she could taste it, as a dozen skirmishes were lost and won and recoupled.

It was a sick feeling, how the magic in the air refilled her own personal store even faster.

Kier kicked the door of the first carriage open and Grey stabbed the guard who slid out to protect whatever was inside—which turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. She felt Kier pull from her and turned just in time to see him wince as he blocked some magework.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he insisted.

There was no time to waste. They pushed back into the battle, Grey gasping halfway through slitting a man’s throat as Kier pulled the magic from her in heady ropes.

There was nothing to be found in the next carriage either, and she felt the uncomfortable desperation in her stomach—even though she was good at it, she hated active fighting, hated the vulnerability for both of them.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see the edge of a blade catch Kier’s cheekbone, a hilt smash his nose crooked and bloody—then his slick hand grasped her left hand, skin-to-skin contact drenched in blood.

A great tear opened up inside her middle, power torn away in a torrent.

On Kier’s other side, the offending soldier fell, with another three going beyond him.

“Easy, Captain,” Grey managed through gritted teeth. She caught sight of a well taking a knee, trying to revive their fallen mage, to no avail. Kier’s aim was always true.

She stayed with Kier as they pushed back through the mess of blood and mud, trying to avoid the worst of the fighting.

“Third’s a charm?” he muttered, pushing a body from the end of Grey’s sword.

He turned to slash at another attacker, favoring his blade now rather than his magic as Grey focused on rebuilding her well of power.

Alongside the convoy on both sides, the battle was quieting; she watched with detached, familiar horror as one of her men delivered a blow that nearly decapitated an enemy soldier, but she kept moving.

That was the awfulness of warfare, the fact that kept her up at night staring at the ceiling of every room they’d ever slept in, from the rain-soaked canvas tents to the thick stone fortresses: she had to see it all, watch it all and keep going.

This war wasn’t about winning or losing.

It was about enduring. Watching flesh tear, tasting the blood of strangers in her mouth, taking lives in her hands and pushing forward into a stretching maw of time in which she hoped the killing would end.

Kier kicked down the door of the third carriage.

Grey slipped in first, grabbing the hair of the Hand who lurched forward and slitting his throat in one easy, neat movement before he could raise his blade against her.

This time there was a mage waiting for them too, but Kier dismantled him with some trick that left Grey gasping, feeling like something had been chewed from the middle of her.

There, in the center of the hollowed-out carriage, unmistakable—there was the resource.

It took them both a second to process, blinking down at it, because it wasn’t a rock, or a forgotten aunt, or an elixir.

It was a girl. A scrappy thing, thin to the point of boniness, with pitch-black hair cut jaggedly to her chin, and eyes the blue of ice chips.

Grey couldn’t place her age, but didn’t think she could have been older than eighteen or twenty.

She scowled up at them—it was impossible to do anything else with her wrists and ankles bound, her mouth gagged.

“Captain…?” Grey found herself saying.

But Kier was already moving. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said to the girl, perfunctory, as he dragged her over his shoulder.

“Go,” he urged Grey when the girl was in place, and Grey slipped from the carriage back into the mess of the fight—but at least that had calmed down.

Lieutenant Chappelle had rounded up the wounded from their company behind the convoy.

Anyone still well enough to stand was on clean-up, making sure there were no survivors remaining.

Attis had asked for decimation, and she would have it. Grey swallowed hard, turning her face away. She’d been on clean-up one time too many, and she couldn’t bear to watch it now.

“Resource acquired,” she called to Chappelle, keeping close to Kier’s back. “Grab who you can and we’ll go.”

She kept her sword drawn as the company regrouped, carrying the wounded and dead they were able to. She scanned over them, chewing her lip. “Five dead,” she reported to Kier, unease heavy in her stomach.

But Kier wasn’t next to her. She turned to see that he’d carried the girl over to the bank, separated from the blood and battle, and set her down facing away from the worst of it.

He’d already removed his helm and unbuckled his pauldrons, his fingers quick as he took off his armored leather breastplate.

Grey stalked toward him—over or not, they were still in obvious danger, and it was too risky to be apart.

He was speaking in a low voice that Grey wasn’t close enough to hear.

Her stomach tightened as he pulled the breastplate over the girl’s head, tightening it to her body, offering her protection.

She felt frozen, watching him like that, as he ceded his armor to the girl they had been sent to rescue.

Fool that he was, he cut away the restraints on her hands and was rubbing the blood back into her wrists, the exact same way he’d rub feeling back into Grey’s limbs after a long day.

He was always too prone to tenderness.

She looked away, just for a moment. Down by the carriages, the company was very nearly ready to go.

“On your signal, Captain,” she called to Kier. “Let’s get back.”

Something within her prickled—it wasn’t power, thick in her middle.

There’d been an odd kindness in his face, and she…

she didn’t know. It reminded her too much of when she was just a girl, rescued by some soldier far away from here.

She didn’t want to see it when she was still covered in blood, still aching with the power he’d drained from her.

She didn’t want to accept that she’d become the very type of person she’d had so many nightmares about.

There was no sound behind her, no acknowledgment from Kier. Lieutenant Chappelle turned to say something from the front of the column—she saw the shape of the word on his lips—and then behind her, very clearly, Kier said, “ Hand .”

Grey turned. He had the girl by the wrists, holding her awkwardly as he pushed her down the ridge.

She was sobbing, great breaths shaking her thin shoulders.

In Kier’s armor, she looked like a child play-acting at knighthood.

Kier’s face was twisted oddly, looking almost like shock.

He tethered to Grey, and she felt something strange coming through: pain, guilt, apology, surprise.

Something was very wrong.

“Kearns, Pacet,” she called, and two of the typics from the back of the column detached at her command. “Take the resource.”

It took a moment for them to clear the girl, lead her away, another moment for Kier to take a step, stumble.

He gripped Grey’s arm for stability, clutching the edge of her pauldron.

Grey’s hands went to his upper arms, holding him upright without thought, fingers digging into the bulk of his padded shirt.

“What? What is it?” she asked, searching his face. It was difficult—he was a mess of blood anyway, all drama with very little true injury besides a cut cheek and perhaps a broken nose, but none of that was enough to explain the glassy look in his eyes.

“She stabbed me,” he said. He moved closer to Grey, shielding his body from their company. Very carefully, he pulled up the bottom of his padded shirt, revealing the blooming stain on his undershirt. It was very quickly going red and wet.

“How badly?” Grey asked.

Kier winced.

“I’ll kill her,” Grey gritted, pressing her fingers to Kier’s side. “I’ll fucking kill her.”