Page 63 of The Second Death of Locke

But this was it, the real thing, the trappings of her life on Locke and those of her family before. She pulled out a moth-eaten tapestry from a trunk mottled with dust, rubbing her fingers into her family’s sigil stitched into the cloth.

Would you give it all up for Kier’s freedom?

Who would she be without her power, her birthright?

“This might be our lucky trunk,” Kier said across the room, going through another one of them.

They were heavy and wooden, ancient, so much nicer than any of the trunks they’d been assigned on duty, or the inherited one Imarta kept in Grey’s childhood bedroom.

They were light wood, possibly cut from the Ghostwood or stock from the Barrens, carved with motifs from folklore that no one but Grey remembered.

He pulled out clothes much too big for her.

She considered the shirts and trousers and socks and suspenders and leather armor as Kier cast off his own clothes and pulled on the replacements—she could not look at him, because if she did, she would see the scars and the bruises she had not yet healed, and she could not bear it right now—and said quietly, “There are clothes in my mother’s room. ”

“Do you think…” He didn’t finish the sentence, so she wasn’t sure if he meant Do you think you’re ready for that? or Do you think you can handle the remnants of her? or Do you think that’s a good idea? All of it faded, and he just looked at her with an expression of open, plaintive care.

She chewed the nail of her thumb. “I’ll put on a new shirt. And there will be coats and cloaks downstairs. Then maybe we can investigate the rest later.”

He nodded, tossing her a shirt. She exchanged her sodden, bloody one for the old, soft, dry fabric.

They left their wet things hanging over the railing and went downstairs.

She felt like a child exploring a ruin, even though, despite sixteen years of separation, she knew the place like Kier knew every structure of her beating heart.

She hesitated on each landing, the rooms running through her head like the recitation of saints’ names on the prayer beads in the ruin of the abbey that crowned the edge of the Ghostwood, the place where Kitalma’s bones were laid to rest.

On the ground floor, she went to the cloakroom under the stairs and pulled out two of her father’s big coats and waiting swords, handing one of each to Kier.

“I imagine we’ll have to dispose of Eprain’s bodies, too,” she said, strapping the sword to her belt, mostly out of habit.

“I don’t want them buried with mine, but we should give them a respectful rest all the same. ”

Kier nodded, looking at one of the tapestries over her shoulder. “In Eprain, they burn their dead.”

Grey swallowed hard. She could remember, on their assignments on the coast, watching the smoke in the distance after the battles as the pyres were lit.

“Then we’ll burn them,” she said. “The tradition is similar for those on Locke who are not Lockes themselves. Their ashes are to be spread over the sea, reunited with the gods.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

She nodded. It was the least she could offer, to follow the traditions of her own nation.

“Are there bedsheets to spare? To move the bones?”

“Probably,” Grey said, peering back into the dining room. “Yes. First and third floors. There are linen closets by the stairs.”

She heard his boots on the stairs, his progress, a pause as he sorted through the linens.

She pressed her face to the window in the dining room, but she could still not see past the misty white fog.

The Isle remained cloaked. She could not see if warships waited for the Isle unveiled, nor what nations surrounded them.

Her fingers dug into the wood of the windowsill—despite the fact she’d been raised in Scaela, fought under Torrin’s banner for nearly a decade and was his goddaughter, this Isle and all its power still instilled in her a sense of distrust. It would be easy for him and Cleoc to betray her, kill her or Kier or both, take the power for themselves and set the Isle ablaze again.

Perhaps she was a fool to trust anyone at all with this power ripping anew within her.

“Grey?”

She turned to see him, linens piled high in his arms, and those thoughts crumbled. Perhaps she could not trust Scaelas or Cleoc, just as she could not trust the sovereigns of Eprain and Luthar and Nestria, but she could trust Kier.

She felt that echo inside of her, the acknowledgment of a devotion in the tether between them.

“Do you know how many there were, on the Isle?” he asked, setting the pile of sheets on the dining table.

She nodded, unable to speak. Her father’s coat smelled of woodsmoke and sea air and the faint hint of sweat, and it was too much for her. She was a girl again. She was dying. She had never left.

Something flickered across Kier’s face—she wondered if, on Locke, the emotions through the tether were that much stronger—and then he was in front of her, taking her hands in his.

He did not say anything. He studied her like she was one of his maps, one of his diagrams of enemy movements, instructions handed down from higher command to be followed to the letter.

“You are here,” he said slowly, “because you survived.”

Grey nodded. Forced herself to breathe. But you didn’t .

She could not think it, or else she would lose any grip she had left on her sanity.

They found gloves and a cart in one of the work sheds outside, to avoid touching the rot with bare skin.

Grey led the way down the little path toward Osar, avoiding the wider road that skirted around the Ghostwood—with the fresh memory of her ghostly family and Kitalma’s bargain, she could not bear it yet.

Osar was not a big town. The entire population of Locke was less than five thousand: she hadn’t understood the smallness of it until she’d arrived in Scaela, with a population in the hundreds of thousands.

There had been more than five thousand soldiers at Mecketer alone.

But now, faced with the reality of disposing of that many bodies, the number seemed staggering.

They reached the first of the empty streets. Grey did not look in the windows; she passed by all shadows without a second glance, focusing only on reaching the great hall at the far side, perched on the cliff.

It used to be a place of worship, an abbey to Retarik, Kitalma’s bride.

When worship of the old gods fell out of fashion, it became a ruin, much like its twin abbey across the Isle.

Grey’s great-great-grandfather revitalized it for use as a meeting place when the entire Isle was called to celebrate, like on the high holy days, to divert the crowds and better preserve the wards that protected the fortress itself.

Kier left the cart at the bottom of the steps and brought some of the linens with him. He followed her up the stairs, the pat of their boots on the stone the only sound. The gulls were still absent; with the thick fog, Grey couldn’t even hear the sea crashing below.

The heavy doors were closed. Behind them, she knew, she would find carnage. She stopped at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, her heart pounding.

“We don’t have to,” Kier said very quietly behind her. “ You don’t have to.”

The motto of her family, her house and her isle was Power in bravery . She did not feel brave, even with all the power of Idistra crackling in the air around her.

“I do,” she said.

Kier said nothing. He only put his hand on her shoulder.

Grey opened the door.