The Second Death of Locke — Chapter no 10

ten

OR THREE DAYS, THEY followed Kier and Ola’s bickering negotiationsF through the forest. Grey found herself mildly amazed. She herself had the directional awareness of a blindfolded toddler dropped mapless into the middle of Nestria at all times, without exception. She didn’t know how either managed (though she couldn’t fully discount some odd magical transference from the number of cartographers Kier had reportedly fucked).

After the first day of monotonous walking and night of watch shifts, no one seemed keen on talking, so they passed the time in relative silence, with the occasional remark from Ola or Eron about a nice bird or plant.

If Sela spoke at all, Grey did not hear it.

“Be on guard,” was all Kier said to the group.

When they stopped to eat the first of their mid-morning rations, he showed Grey their location on the map. The distance between them and the encampment was miserably short, the distance between their location and Grislar frustratingly far, and they still had the mountains to worry about.

“We’ll have to pick up the pace,” he murmured to her.

Out of the woods, they kept carefully alert for signs of other travelers.

They were on an infrequently used supply road, so it was hours before they saw anyone else; even then, only a handful of travelers shared the road with them, and all traveled in the opposite direction. Few were going to the mountains at this time of year, when the shepherds were leading their flocks down from the hills, which made them more conspicuous than Kier liked, and on the morning of the fourth day, he directed them back to the wood, parallel to the road, until the trees ran out.

Grey’s back ached so much that Kier kept eying her, clearly feeling her

discomfort through the tether. When their afternoon rest came, he insisted on shouldering her pack. On the next bladder relief break, Grey was grimly unsurprised to find the onset of her monthly and instantly annoyed she’d given Kier her pack.

“Need something?” Eron asked, catching her grimace. He unshouldered his own pack and dug around in it for his pouch of supplies. “Take what you need. Mine is finished.”

Grey thanked him with all the gratitude she could manage when caught with her trousers down.

When they rejoined the group, she allowed Kier to re-tether, cursing the sluggishness of her power and her craggy irritability, which possibly had more to do with the fact that she’d spent the better part of the week sleeping on the dirt and hadn’t changed her clothes in as many days. Kier took one look at her face and sighed.

“I think,” he said, “we need a supply run. A night in an inn, if we can.

We’ll be starting on the hills tomorrow—I want everyone rested.”

No one actively cheered, but the slackened shoulders and tired smiles were just as clear as any sign of relief. After Kier’s declaration, he and Ola bent over the map, tracing along the path once more until he said, “That’ll do. There should be somewhere for travelers on the road to Pista.”

Grey had never heard of Pista. It wasn’t a surprise—they were in the middle of the country, in the nowhere of farmers’ fields, the exhausted recovery zone for those who couldn’t be bothered with the fighting or who’d left the army years before but still grew the food and paid the taxes to support them.

They found an inn by late afternoon. It was alone, not even in a village, which was probably why Kier had chosen it.

“Will we be noticed here?” Grey asked.

He sighed. “Hopefully not. It seems to only be travelers.” He didn’t tell her that they were stopping because she was tired, grumpy, and in pain and he wanted her to rest—he didn’t have to.

She sighed, knocking her shoulder against his arm.

The windows of the tavern glowed with warmth, and the smell of roasting meat and grain was enough to send Grey’s stomach grumbling the instant it hit her nose. The other four dragged two tables together while Grey and Kier went to the counter to inquire about rooms. There were a few

others in the tavern, and Grey regarded them carefully as they waited: a pair of sunburned farmers with pints of ale in the corner and a woman and a child eating dinner near the door. Grey kept her eyes open, but she did not feel as if they were threatening.

The tavern keeper, when she appeared, was a bracing woman with a crooked nose and three fingers missing on her left hand. Ex-soldier, Grey surmised, based on both the missing fingers and the sword bolted to the wall behind the keeper’s head, a twin to the ones Grey and Kier wore across their backs, except hers was mutilated and bent out of shape from some long-over battle.

“My companions and I are passing through. Do you have any rooms?”

Kier asked in his soft, pleasant voice, the one Grey internally referred to as his “charm the pants off your mother” tone. It had worked, unfortunately, on more than one mother and at least one father, though she could not confirm or deny if all had affinities for mapmaking.

The keeper eyed them shrewdly. “What’s the nature of your journey?” she asked in a voice sharp enough to cut glass.

Kier doubled down, leaning his arm against the counter, that smirk working up on his mouth. “I’ve just been honorably released,” he said, not clarifying—there was only one profession that someone could be released from in Scaela. And though Kier was too young by far for release unless he’d been seriously injured, not all career-ending ailments were visible.

“My wife”—he put an arm around Grey and dragged her against him, and she ignored both the way her heart tripped at the title and the way he said it —“and her sisters and their families—we’re resettling. Looking for a patch of family land left in the mountains.”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. Many a family estate had been abandoned when the children were sent to fight. Not all of them lived to return.

The innkeeper regarded them for a long moment. It made Grey uncomfortable, but the woman probably just didn’t want to rent rooms to bandits, only for them to steal anything not bolted to the floor. She supposed this place had few other travelers.

She tried to look as innocent as possible, leaning further into Kier. His arm tightened around her.

The innkeeper nodded and opened a drawer full of keys. “How many rooms?”

“Two will do,” Kier said, probably because he couldn’t say one without her asking questions about how six adults would fit into a bed. “We’re not rife with resources at the moment.”

Another lie. Grey had seen the bulging mass of coin Attis had given Kier before their journey. They certainly had enough for three rooms—they had enough for each to have their own room, Sela included, but Sela had to be watched at all times, and someone had to stand guard, which would not work if they were split up.

Grey sighed, because Kier was a liar. Two rooms or not, she doubted he was going to let them split up: they were going to squeeze six adults into one bed and she just fucking knew it.

Once they had their keys and the tavern keeper was getting food and drink for everyone, Grey looked up, letting her nose skim the stubble of his jaw—he didn’t usually like to go unshaven, and seeing him like this now, five days into an almost beard, was positively novel. “Thrilling plans for the evening, husband?”

When he laughed, the sound hit her right in the stomach. He adjusted his arm around her waist, slipping it under her coat to pull her fast against him.

He pressed a kiss to her temple that was mostly the vibration of his mirth against her skin, and because she had no sense at all, a shiver of excitement fluttered down her spine. “I suppose you could tempt me.”

She rolled her eyes, pulling away before she could let her bruised, crumpled little heart believe him.

The tavern keeper returned with two pitchers of ale and a stack of glasses, saving Grey. She took the drinks back to the others and distributed them while Kier stayed behind to ask about the best places to get supplies, listening as the woman described the path to the next village over. Grey tried her best not to look at him as she settled into her seat, pretending to be interested in Eron and Ola as they debated the relative merits of knuckle guards over gloves.

She sat back, one hand around her ale, and forced herself back into sense.

Flirting wasn’t new. They always flirted. And Kier was the kind of person who required affection for everything: when they were alone, he was always catching her hand or pulling her feet into his lap or rubbing her shoulders or sitting at her feet with his head on her thigh, and they barely

went to sleep at night without him pressing his lips to her hand or her forehead or her temple. But that’s how he was. How he always had been.

Beyond that? Nothing. He had always been her right hand, the other half of her, her best friend, the person she knew better physically and mentally than anyone else, and it was clear in every waking moment that he was just as dedicated to her. This was just… this was the line they didn’t cross.

It wasn’t as if they spoke at length about their other dalliances or the nights they spent away from one another. It was just, sometimes he went out after sparring or a late-night patrol and came back in the small hours of the morning, hair wet from washing, and she forced herself not to say anything and was careful not to tether to him then in case any jealous emotions slipped through. She kept it for the light of morning, when it was easier to heckle him without her true feelings escaping.

It was just, she couldn’t fault him. It was so good to feel alive, to feel someone else alive with them when they were so often staring death in the face. Between his rank and his annoyingly undeniable handsomeness, he was never short on offers. And she’d done the same, though not as often, sneaking off with someone like Leonie or a Hand from another company in the brief spans of time when she was certain Kier wouldn’t need her, infrequent as those were. She just couldn’t separate her heart from it unless she was desperate, but when she was desperate, it was almost easy. There happened to be, to her surprise and horror at sixteen, a lot of fucking in the army.

It was just, she wondered. He knew every single thing about her except for that clawing, desperate want. He knew the span of her power, the feeling of her vulnerability, her true name. And she wondered sometimes (more often than she’d ever admit to anyone, let alone herself) what it would be like to be with him.

And Grey was a liar too, because she longed for him. Endlessly, immeasurably, ceaselessly.

She pushed those thoughts away as Kier came closer, but it was like trying to beat back the rising tide. When he sat next to her, his leg casually pressed to hers, she actively considered death as an alternative.

Usually, it was easier to bear. It was the retirement looming, she decided; once they were no longer forced to be together, where would that leave them?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of food, and silence settled over the group as they ate their first non-beige meal in days. Grey was rather proud of herself for not making any noises of contentment over the thick stew and warm bread, even though the tender meat and potatoes seemed to melt against her tongue. It was far superior to their diet on the road of Eron’s gruel and Grey’s sneakily ingested dried fruit and strips of salted fish.

“I’m a disaster,” Eron announced, sighing.

Ola said, “Generally, or…?”

He sat back, groaning, hands on his stomach. Grey had also eaten too much too quickly. She adjusted, but that just pushed her further into Kier’s side, so she decided it was easier to settle with the discomfort for now.

“Give me a new task. Reassign me,” Eron was saying. “I can’t cook for you.”

“That’s why you’re a soldier, not a cook,” Brit said. Grey kicked them under the table—they were not soldiers, not here.

“You didn’t give us much of a choice,” Ola muttered.

“… Didn’t you volunteer for the responsibility?” Kier asked around a

sip of ale.

“I like feeling useful,” Eron lamented.

“You do a good job,” Sela said, “with what you’re given.”

That silenced whatever words were forming on Grey’s tongue. She looked at the girl—they all were looking at her—as she ate delicately, in a way that made some alarm go off in Grey’s brain. But she’d spoken. She’d spoken without prompting, and she’d been nice about it.

Sela looked up from her plate, saw their eyes on her and blushed deep red. “Sorry, Captain,” she murmured, ducking her head.

“No, no, it’s a good observation,” Kier said, taking another sip of ale.

Grey knew the look in his eyes: he was calculating. She nearly kicked him under the table too.

Though they hadn’t been able to speak in private beyond a few passed notes on their watch shifts, Grey knew the curiosity was killing him. They couldn’t just announce that they knew Sela wasn’t who she said she was, not without revealing that they knew something about Maryse of Locke that they shouldn’t.

His eyes flicked to Grey’s, brows arched. She sighed, but nodded. For

now, for this moment, she could play nice.

“Speaking of responsibilities,” she said. “After we finish here. Who is doing what?”

“Like, for the quest?” Brit asked, eyes sparkling.

“Absolutely not,” Grey said, because she still refused to consider this a quest. “Replenishing our supplies.”

“Can you and Brit stay?” Eron asked. “I can acquire the food—thank you for the encouragement, Sela—and Ola can get new clothing, if we can find it. Kier, you can be our devilishly handsome patron.”

“Kind way of asking me to throw my money around,” Kier said. “And accepted.”

Grey swallowed hard. “Ola should stay,” she said. “I can go, if you need

another set of hands.”

“Grey,” Kier said, “you need to rest.”

She glanced up at him, betrayed. Even though he knew her exhaustion— she had not been hiding it, through the tether—she could not bear the idea

of him going. “Kier—”

“Please,” he said, a touch quieter.

The others looked at her. Kier’s face was carefully blank, but of course he knew what she meant. She hated undermining his authority in public, even though he deferred to her in private more often than not. But if something went wrong, he wouldn’t be able to pull power from Ola any more than he’d be able to pull it from a rock.

Grey swallowed. “It’s only,” she said, “we should have enough here to fully guard our… friend.”

“As always, my Hand is quite right,” Kier said smoothly. “Ola, you stay.

Grey, you’re in charge.”

Grey thought about protesting further, but at Kier’s look, her words died on her lips. Any more wrangling would cause suspicion.

But she didn’t like letting him out of her sight, and though Eron was a good fighter—no, a great fighter—she wasn’t sure how safe she felt about this.

“Any medical supplies?” Kier asked, sending a warm rush down the tether. I’ll be fine.

“Bandages, probably,” Grey said, conceding. Because, after all, he was right. She was exhausted, and cramping, and irritable. “Just in case.”

After they finished eating, they made their way up to the two rooms, and Grey was annoyingly grateful when Kier told them the plan: “I want two on guard in the room with Sela, one in the bed with her—sorry, Sela, nothing

personal…”

“It absolutely is,” she muttered.

“You stabbed Kier,” Grey reminded her, in case anyone had forgotten, which earned her an exasperated look from her mage.

“… and two off-duty sleeping in the other room. Sleeping. This is not the goddam army.”

Ola said, “It very much is the goddam army.”

“I’m leaving all of you,” Kier announced, separating some of the coin into a smaller pouch, “and walking directly into the sea.”

“That can be arranged,” Brit said from the corner, where they’d sat against the wall and gotten straight to oiling their sword.

Grey did her best not to smile. After days traveling, it was getting more and more difficult to remain distant from the retinue, as she usually did with other soldiers in her command—it was getting more and more difficult not to like them.

Liking them, caring about them—it was a vulnerability she could not afford.

Kier gave one more withering look before he went into the other room to put his pack down and lock up, and Grey was following before she could stop herself. She hesitated in the doorway.

“We’ll take first watch again tonight,” he said, “if that suits.”

“Will you be careful?”

There was something in her voice that made him look up at her, pausing in his search for something in his bag. “Of course,” he said. “I’m always careful.”

Another lie, but she swallowed this one.

He came close to her on his way out of the room, touching her hand with the barest brush of his fingertips. “Two more weeks,” he promised, “and then we’re done. Wherever we want to go. Whatever we want to do.”

She nodded, ignoring all the questions that rose up in her heart at that statement.

He nodded back, the corner of his mouth tugging up, and then he was gone.

There were only so many blades to oil and sharpen, but Grey and Brit did them all, checking the edges on the clothes they planned to burn when they left this place. Ola got the innkeeper’s permission to do the washing, and she went back and forth from upstairs to the wash house across the yard, paying for the use of it by doing some of the inn’s linens alongside their clothing. Sela sat on a chair in the corner, watching them, then watching Ola through the window, but her gaze always returned to linger on Grey.

“How old are you?” she asked suddenly when they were halfway

through.

“Who?” Brit asked.

“Both. Either?”

“Classified,” Grey said.

“Twenty-nine,” Brit said with only a small, withering look at Grey.

“This is the knife you stuck in Kier’s intestines,” Grey said cheerfully, holding up one of the short blades, letting it glimmer in the light.

Sela blushed, chewing on her lip. “I don’t think it is,” she said, voice small. “I seem to recall the handle was black, and that one is navy.”

“My mistake. Perhaps this is the one intended for your intestines.”

“Hand… Grey,” Brit chided.

Grey set the blade aside, leaning back against the bed. They were all sitting on the far side of the room, away from the door, Sela in the furthest corner. It was hard not to feel restless with Kier gone, but Grey really had been trying even as she counted the minutes in her head: it was meant to be less than an hour to Pista, then an hour for purchases and errands, and the return journey home. Eron and Kier were trained soldiers, deadly, armed and aware.

“I’m going to check on Ola and get a pitcher of water,” she announced.

“Will you be okay in the meantime?”

Brit, another trained, deadly, armed, aware soldier, rolled their eyes.

“Yes,” they snapped.

Grey strapped on her sword out of muscle memory, then locked them in just in case and took the key with her. She felt… odd. Uncomfortable.

Uncertain why. Sure, she’d been tethered to Kier for the better part of a week, even if he wasn’t pulling power from her, and that was longer than they usually went without a break. But she thought the absence of the tether had more to do with it. Their range, though much larger than other pairs,

spanned about the size of Mecketer; a half-mile at most. Kier was on his own, and so was she.

She found Ola sweating over the crank-operated washbasin. It was so loud that Grey had to shout to ask the other woman if she wanted help or needed anything, and Ola only waved her away with a half-smirk. Grey made her way back across the yard, now understanding perfectly the distance between the wash house and the tavern.

She went back to the dining area and leaned against the counter. There were two men there, too, leaning further down, squabbling over a little bag.

Grey sighed, digging her nails into the wood. She wished there was water out that she could just take, so she could hurry and return upstairs and away from the men and the coins they were laying out on the counter… Accents. The little group arguing next to her spoke common Idistran, the language shared by all nations on the island, but they spoke it in Luthrite accents.

Grey froze. Inconspicuously, she tried to look harder, cursing herself for not paying closer attention.

The coins on the counter were auros—gold Luthrite coins. Back when the nations were allied, auros would be accepted here just as easily as Scaelan ornen, with a direct one-to-one exchange rate. But since the wars, no one in Scaela would accept Luthrite auros. No one in Scaela would even carry auros, let alone take them out in a public place. They must’ve brought them from Luthar directly.

And by her calculations, by the place Kier had pointed to on the map, they were many days’ walk from Luthar. Perhaps they were merchants, but this was a sleepy inn with no village, and there was no reason for them to be here… unless.

Unless someone else had evaluated all paths from Mecketer to Grislar and sent packs out to hunt.

Unless they had noticed that Pista was the last large market village before one reached the easiest of the mountain passes, and decided that a retinue moving quickly would aim for it, too.

One of the men was looking at her, taking in the tension of her jaw, the grip of her hands on the counter. She knew what they were seeing immediately: her age, her bearing, her scars. Her hand went to her hip unconsciously—and she realized she wore her sword there, like a soldier,

instead of across her back like a merchant or traveler. Muscle memory.

So much for being undercover.

The tavern keeper returned with two glasses of ale and took the men’s Scaelan money—Grey didn’t miss how one of them shuffled out all the Luthrite, stuffing it in his pockets.

“Your husband left a tab open,” the woman said cheerfully, turning to Grey. “Can I get you anything?”

One of the men said something to the other. They made their way to a third and fourth, sitting at the back table.

“Just water,” Grey said, her voice small and awkward. “If you please.”

The innkeeper nodded, turning back to get glasses. “Busy day we’re having,” she said to Grey, maybe to no one. “Not often so many travelers rolling through at this time of year. Where did your husband say you were going? Coastal, right?”

Grey’s fingers dug into the counter. The men were clearly listening. She itched, above all, to run. “No,” she said, smiling as the woman offered her the pitcher and glasses.

The innkeeper grabbed her wrist. “Ah, well these folks said they’re heading to Grislar. They were asking around if there was anyone here heading to the coast, looking to share resources. Wasn’t sure if you were going that way, too.”

There was something in her voice. She’d noticed Grey’s sword, and probably Kier’s. Perhaps she’d even heard Sela call Kier Captain. Whatever she’d observed, she did not trust the men in the corner, and neither did Grey.

Behind her, she felt a shift, a fizzle, a change as one of the mages tethered to their well.

“Thanks,” she said. She turned on her heel and headed back through the doors that led to the rooms. There was no time to warn Ola, let alone retrieve her. As soon as the door swung shut behind her, Grey dashed up the stairs.

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Lesson one of protecting your mage: you have no natural advantages. Train to fight as if there is no difference between you and a typic. In a battle situation, even with your mage’s abilities, you have only your own blade, your own body’s strength, your own combat skills. Do not shirk this training.

Wielding Power, Volume 1: Third Edition, revised PD

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