The Second Death of Locke — Chapter no 8

eight

F GREY EVER HAD to see Attis’s office again, it would be too soon. ThisI time, they both sat at the desk, Grey across from Mare, Kier across from the master. The map from the other day was replaced with a new, even smaller one—they were always replacing maps on this assignment. With the constant push and pull of territory between the port and the encampment, it was a necessary evil. According to Kier, cartographers were the best bedmates. Grey had never tested that theory herself.

The map itself focused on eastern Scaela, showing the routes from the southernmost point, where they were, all the way up and across the mountain passes, between Luthar and Cleoc Strata, toward the Bay of Locke. She scanned over the path, trying to recall places they’d been along the way. Moving north, back toward the village where they grew up, the land turned from dense forests to scrubby volcanic cliffs and thin trees, then sparse mountains speckled with gorse. By the sea, it became brown-green cliff grass and pebbled beaches rising up toward slate cliffs that looked out at the bay.

Scaela was a kinder place than Locke, she always thought, though the terrain was not so far removed. Sometimes, when she was at home in Leota, the seaside village where she and Kier had grown up, she looked at the dark cliffs of the shore and imagined them even rockier, sharper, like the place where she was born. They called Locke “the Obsidian Isle” for the way its sheer black cliffs rose against the sea, and there was nowhere else like it in the world.

“You were previously in Grislar, is that correct?” Attis was saying, running her fingertip along Scaela’s indented coastline. Grislar was the base

twinned with Scaela’s capital city, Easlar, but it was still perilously close to Luthar’s border—and also their closest assignment to Leota.

“For nearly a year,” Kier said. He frowned down at the map. “It’s a little late in the season to be crossing the mountains.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Attis said drily. “Can’t control the weather.” She paused, rubbing her eyes, and Grey glanced at her. Attis looked exhausted.

Whatever they were doing, she’d been up all night preparing. It was lucky she hadn’t caught Grey in the middle of the night, out on her way to threaten the prisoner. “It’ll take you two weeks to get from here to Grislar on foot, three if the weather turns.”

“On foot?” Grey asked. She didn’t care about walking one bit—but. She scanned the area on the map. She had been all over the country, had fought by Kier’s side on every coast, but she’d never been asked to walk across it.

Attis pressed her lips together. “Carriages are too conspicuous. And it’s the last push of the harvest—civilians on horses are bound to look suspicious.” Grey found herself nodding at this; Attis had a point. Horses at this time of year were either doing farm work or requisitioned by the military; any others belonged to nobles, who wouldn’t be safe on the roads without a retinue of guards anyway, and would still fall into the realm of “conspicuous.”

“We can send you with enough funds for travel and to alleviate the journey of the mountain passes, but we need you to be as low-profile as possible. Merchants, or even better, pilgrims traveling to the abbey at Pontille. We don’t have time—Luthos already knows the prisoner is missing and that her body was not found among the dead. They could suspect another nation, but the easiest explanation is that we have her.”

Kier looked up. “Another nation?”

Attis’s smile thinned. “We must operate on the assumption that Cleoc Strata, Eprain, and Nestria already have the same information about the girl’s existence—with the possibilities of her power, I’m certain they will be looking too. That’s why you need to go straight across, through the mountains, and stay as inconspicuous as possible.”

Kier leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t shaved this morning and his cheek bristled with the first sign of a beard. Grey held her tongue from telling Attis outright that she was sending them to the slaughter.

“And how many of us will go? With the prisoner?”

“We’ve planned for you and one other.”

“Give me three.”

“Captain.”

Kier gazed at Attis, hazel eyes unyielding, and these were the times Grey knew him best. He was so goddam stubborn and, when it wasn’t directed at her, she fucking adored it.

“I’m not doing this without another mage-and-well pairing, and I want a typic too. If this is as precarious as you say it is, I need to be sure we’re not going to die exhausted in the mountains. I need to know that we can have consistent sleep patterns. I need to know that my team is being protected just as much as your prisoner, and if you put my Hand at risk—”

“No one is asking you to put your Hand at risk,” Attis snapped. “Fine.

Three. Your choices.”

Grey did not answer Kier’s look. Attis would not defer to Mare, like she had any stake in the master’s choices; Kier ought to do the same in public, even if he asked her opinion on everything in private.

He sighed, reading her avoidance. “Okay. But hold on. What happens when we get to Grislar, when we deliver the prisoner? Will we be reassigned?”

Attis held his gaze, unflinching. “If you and your team do what is required of you,” she said, “you will get six months of leave. For everyone.”

Grey drew a breath. They hadn’t had more than a month of leave in all the time they’d been in Scaelas’s army—six months was an impossible amount of time. She couldn’t imagine how they could be spared for that long.

Her heart nearly stopped when Kier said, “I want a break in contract.

Honorable retirement. For me and Hand Captain Flynn. If we reach Grislar alive and with the prisoner intact, I want to hand her over to Scaelas and receive our commendations within the same hour.”

“Captain?” Grey had never seen Attis so thoroughly caught off guard.

The answering silence was opaque, unbreakable, and Grey herself wasn’t even sure she was breathing… And he was still, staring right at her with that insouciant curve to his mouth that was more scar than attitude. Her heart leaped to her throat—if

they were given honorable retirement, it would come with wages. They wouldn’t have to fight anymore. They wouldn’t have to go day after day, waking at first light, putting their bodies through torture.

There would be no logical physical reason for them to remain together.

If she was not his Hand, what was she? Had she pushed too far? Hurt him too much? Perhaps this was betrayal disguised as liberation; perhaps Kier would rather never do magic again instead of enduring more time by her side.

She caught herself before she could spiral too far. No matter what he had in mind, she had every belief it somehow included her. If he got his way— and this was the danger of it, her mind racing over the possibilities, skipping toward a joy that set her chest aflame—then she could imagine it.

Maybe they’d find a little house on the southwest coast, far from the battlefield, and she’d work as a healer in a village, or they’d run away to the continent. He could bed all the cartographers he wanted—she wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t matter.

They’d never speak the name of Locke again. She’d never again feel the burned-out match of another well dying next to her on the battlefield, her hand and sword dripping with blood, out of her mind with terror.

Maybe, alone, together, he would finally see her as something more than his friend, his Hand, his sword.

“Could I interest you in a promotion instead?” Attis asked, a little desperately.

She felt the doubt in the tether—he was posing her a question. She sent back certainty, and with it, the tiniest thread of joy.

“No.”

“Captain Seward, I… You know you are valued. You know that you have been recommended for promotions, that you are very nearly a master yourself. If you complete this mission, you will have command of any post you require. You could even request a transfer to Scaelas’s personal guard, or serve directly under Commander Reggin, I’m sure.”

“I don’t care,” Kier said. “Based on what you’re saying, this mission is a death trap. We have a target on our backs. Luthar, Cleoc Strata, Eprain, all after us? Nestria will be there too, I imagine. They’ll all be just as savvy as we think we are. For all I know, there are soldiers waiting for the minute we set out from camp. If I make it—if we make it—we’re not coming back.”

He was so good at this, but under the table, he gripped Grey’s hand. His was clammy with sweat, and she realized that despite his posturing, he was terrified.

Attis stared him down, grim-faced, for another full minute. Finally, she opened one of her desk drawers with an angry clatter. Mare’s eyebrows were drawn together, furrowed, her thin-lipped mouth twisted in a pucker of surprise.

Grey watched as Attis conspicuously wrote a note on fresh parchment.

She finished, read it over twice, folded it, and sealed it with wax and the stamp of her office.

“If you live through this,” she said, holding it out to Kier, “you are free to go.”

Kier squeezed Grey’s hand hard enough to bruise. With his other hand, easy as anything, he took the missive and handed it to her. She tucked it serenely in the inner pocket of her cloak.

“Pick your team,” Attis said. She was an unusual shade of red—and Grey almost felt bad for her. If she wasn’t sending the pair of them on a suicide mission with a girl who’d just stabbed Kier (and who was also pretending to be Grey), she would find some measure of sympathy in herself.

But Kier was right. Attis was only agreeing because the likelihood of them coming out of it alive or fit for service on the other side was… slim.

“Hand Ola Et-Kiltar. Brit Wyvern. Officer Eron Fastria.” Grey sent a wave of approval for choosing Brit and Ola—they were a strong pairing, and they’d seen the blood. They knew what the girl was capable of. Grey had figured Kier would want Chappelle over Fastria, but Chappelle would probably take over command in his absence.

Mare noted the names, chewing on her lip. Grey resisted the urge to stick out her tongue and shout, I told you so. I told you we were different.

“I will notify them. You leave as soon as preparations are finalized.

Report to the infirmary for assessment.”

Kier nodded, thanked the master and finished with a salute. They were halfway out when Attis called, “Seward.”

He turned, one hand gripping the cloth to hold it aside. Grey lurked in the shadowy path between tents.

“It’s not always easier,” she said, “to be free of duty.”

“Not everything is about duty,” Kier said. Something odd flickered across Mare’s face—maybe she disagreed. Grey had one fixed image of them, the two women who’d spent more time together than any Hand and mage she had ever met, who she could never really understand.

“Freedom does not guarantee you the world,” Attis said mildly.

Kier smiled, the move not quite reaching his eyes. “I would choose freedom over anything, Master.”

Attis inclined her head, both allowing for Kier’s words and dismissing them.

Grey waited until they were halfway to the infirmary before she said, “You didn’t have to do this for me.”

Kier didn’t look at her, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Who said you had anything to do with it? Each assignment chisels away more of my beauty.”

“You were never beautiful to start with.”

“That is a bold-faced lie, Flynn.”

It was. She didn’t care. There was something clawing up inside of her, and it felt an awful lot like happiness. She pushed power toward him, a blaring supernova of it, so much that he stumbled and nearly took a knee in the mud.

“Gods and seas,” he muttered, rubbing idly at his chest. “I can feel every heartbeat in the camp when you do that.”

She pushed him a bit more, just to be an ass.

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” he said. “We’ve got to survive this first. And figure out some way to keep our hand firmly concealed.”

“With your unchiseled beauty on the line,” Grey said, “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

They entered the infirmary to find three assistants and a healer Grey didn’t know manning the ward. “Where’s Leonie?” she asked before she could stop herself, earning a sly grin from Kier, who knew nothing about anything.

The healer stood, curtsied and said, “Doing paperwork in the back. She

asked for a moment undisturbed.”

“But—”

“Send them in,” Leonie said, poking her head out from behind a curtain.

Grey made her way through the beds to the room where Leonie waited,

sitting on a little stool, reading a recipe for an herbal concoction. She patted the nearby bed without looking up when they came in. “Who’s first?”

“Don’t you need to know what we’re doing?” Kier asked, pulling off his cloak and folding it neatly over a chair.

“Chappelle got word he’s taking the company. You’re moving?”

“Something like that,” Grey said, folding her arms over her chest, leaning against a cabinet of medication. God, how she missed leaning.

Solid walls. A floor that wasn’t constructed from packed dirt, waterproof padding, scratchy rugs, and the tears of those who came before.

Leonie poked and prodded at Kier, checking inside his mouth and ears, looking at his eyes, listening to his heartbeat and the sound of his lungs as he breathed, testing his reflexes. She also examined his mostly healed wound, blowing a low whistle. “That’s some Hand of yours,” she said.

“She’s too good for me by half,” Kier confirmed.

“At least you know it. You’re good to go, Seward. Flynn?”

Grey hated these examinations, even though nothing ever came up. She endured Leonie’s prodding. “When was your last monthly bleed?” Leonie asked while she checked on an old wound on Grey’s right arm, a slash from

a skirmish weeks before.

“Uh…”

Leonie sighed. “Have you had recent relations of a sexual nature with anyone with the ability to produce semen?”

“That depends on your—” Kier started.

“Gods, no,” Grey said, cutting him off before she could think better of it.

“Interesting,” Leonie said clinically, very careful not to look at Kier.

Grey kicked her shin and pretended it was a reflex.

“Can’t say the same for the captain,” Grey said, because if he was going to tease her about Leonie, she was more than capable of firing back. Kier only shrugged.

“That is none of my business,” Leonie said. “Presumably you’ll be due for your monthlies during your travels—I’ll grab you a pack.”

She disappeared through the thin corridor that went between supply rooms.

“She is pretty,” Kier said with a glint in his eye that Grey couldn’t quite read.

“And too good for me by half,” Grey said, repeating his earlier words so

she didn’t say, So are you—by chance, are you interested in relations of a sexual nature?

“Doubtful,” Kier said. “I can leave, if you want to say goodbye to her properly.”

Grey rolled her eyes at his wink. “What, so you can go say goodbye to the dozen paramours you’ve acquired at this camp?”

“You wound me, Flynn.”

“I know you, Seward. There’s a difference.”

“If only any of them were enough to steal my heart, but I fear I’m too much a fool for that,” he lamented, his gaze lingering on her for a moment too long. The words sent a pang to her stomach, but she had no idea how to respond. Then, quieter, “I didn’t speak for you, back with Attis, did I? Make an assumption? I know I do that sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

He moved across the room, draping his cloak over her shoulders—he must’ve seen the goosebumps rising on her arms. “I’m not forcing you into an early retirement against your will?”

The laugh that bubbled out of her was half hysteria, half exhaustion.

“Me? Stay here? Without you? Not a chance.”

But that uncertainty hadn’t gone. He picked up the little hammer Leonie had used to check their reflexes and fiddled with it, his thumb rubbing at a ridge in the metal. “Six months would’ve been nice,” he said doubtfully.

She laid a hand over his, releasing another pulse of power that made his eyes flick shut. “Forever will be nicer.”

His eyes opened, hazy and indistinct. “Grey, when I said—”

The supply pack hit Grey in the arm. Kier jumped back. Grey grabbed the pack, flipped through it and nodded. “Thanks,” she said to Leonie, sliding down from the exam table as the other woman came back into the room.

“Can I have a moment with you, Hand?” Leonie asked. “I have a med kit for your travels, things to run through. Attis sent a brief—you’ll be the

healer?”

“You know more than me,” Kier said.

“Go on,” Grey said. “I’ll be along.”

He looked at her for a second, and she remembered that he’d been in the middle of saying something—possibly something important. But he didn’t

protest. He took his cloak back, pushing hers toward her. “I’ll start packing up,” he said.

Leonie didn’t move until they were alone. When Kier was gone and enough time had passed that he was safely out of earshot, she leaned her good hip against the exam table.

“It’s not a reassignment, is it?” she asked. She set the healer’s bag on the table and opened it. Grey took a cursory glance, taking in the sachets of

herbs, the tiny jars of salve.

“I can’t say.”

Leonie made a small noise in her throat. “They had me check the prisoner for injuries.”

That caught Grey’s attention. “And? Is she in good health?”

“Yes, mostly. A few cuts and bruises, and her shoulder was dislocated when she arrived—whatever Luthar did to her, they didn’t do it kindly. She has had dental work done. Looks like it was performed on the continent.”

“The continent?”

“Mm. They use different materials. It’s easy to see, if you know what to look for.”

Grey turned this over. It wouldn’t be unexpected for the lost daughter of Locke to seek refuge in the continent—it just wasn’t what happened.

“A few other inconsistencies. I left you notes.”

She chewed her lip. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because we’re friends,” Leonie said, with no hint of irony. She hesitated, looking up at Grey with a solemn expression. “And I hope,

someday, if you have need of me—”

“Leonie…”

But Leonie only raised a hand to Grey’s cheek. “You’re not a normal well either, Hand Captain.”

Six years of serving Kier across nearly a dozen assignments, and no one had discovered her—yet in this camp, it felt everyone was suspicious. What had changed? What had slipped? Or was it only that she’d let her guard down, that she’d let others get close to her?

Grey smiled sadly, catching Leonie’s hand. “I’m obviously far better- looking.”

Leonie rolled her eyes, the moment broken. “You spend too much time with the captain. Now, stop your flirting, and come here and say goodbye.”

It was not often appropriate, in the army, to depart with a hug. But Grey so rarely found others on assignments that she cared for, that she liked. So when Leonie opened her arms, Grey didn’t hesitate to tuck herself against the other woman, to let herself be embraced.

“Write to me, if you can,” Leonie said.

“If I can,” Grey said instead of a smart-ass retort, which she thought was very noble of her.

“And be safe,” Leonie added against her hair. Grey did not bother to respond to that, because on this mission, safety was very much outside of her control.

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