Page 141 of The Second Death of Locke
Grey ignored Kier’s sigh of relief. “Is he going, then?”
“Soon. Tomorrow, probably.”
Grey straightened slowly, her thoughts a jumble. Though Torrin’s presence made Kier antsy—she knew, though he didn’t admit it to her, that even though it was their fault that Torrin had given up his search for his goddaughter, Kier resented him for it simply because it had hurt her feelings—she would be sad to lose his guidance.
“You can go with him if you want,” she said.
Brit and Leonie only blinked at her. Finally, Brit said, “What?”
Grey paced, struck with new conviction. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. Eron and Ola, too. You’re Scaelan—I don’t want to force you to be here.”
“We’re all here because we want to be here,” Leonie said firmly.
“Speak for yourself,” Kier said, but he was ignored. Grey shot him a dark glare.
“What even are we?” Brit mused. “Lockians? Lockstrian? Keys?”
“Brit,” Leonie murmured, rubbing her temple.
They waved a hand. “And you can ask them, but Ol and Er will tell you the exact same thing. We’re staying, Grey. If it means Scaelas has to sell you our contracts, then so be it. But we’re staying.”
She hesitated, still uncertain. She wondered when, if ever, the worst of the uncertainty would fade.
“But you should pay me,” Brit said. “Just saying.”
Grey sighed, and made a note to herself to review her own treasury, and to have a discussion about salaries with her commander.
In the evening, she and Scaelas dined alone. He imparted as much wisdom as he could to her, but in the end, he just kissed both of her hands and said, “Obsidian born and iron made, Maryse. Gods, they would have been proud of you.”
It took her a long time to swallow the lump of sorrow in her throat.
After dinner, she dressed in a nondescript outfit of black trousers, a blue tunic and a heavy cloak, slipped past her guard and set off forone of the newly reopened pubs in Osar. There was a woman waiting for her in a shadowy back corner, sipping ale, with a frosty second glass waiting at the empty seat. She’d arrived earlier on the ship that came to take Scaelas away and had sent word through Eron.
“Master Attis,” Grey said, slipping into the other side of the booth. “I’m glad you could get away.”
Attis studied her. The space under her eyes was dark and shadowed, as with grief. She opened her mouth to speak, swallowed and looked away. “I just want to know,” she said, “that she wasn’t alone.”
Grey shook her head. “She was not.”
Attis’s eyes slipped shut. She took a long breath, held it, then another. She was trying very hard, Grey could tell, not to cry.
“Will you tell me how it happened?” she asked.
Grey nodded. Though there had been so much horror, so much terror, it was the least she could do to put Mare to rest.
She was too lost in memories to go to bed, so she went to her tower, where the winter wind whipped her hair. She did not look out to sea, but to the harbor, where the ship was being prepared to take Torrin back. She was turning to scan the sea when she noticed a small, dimly golden magelight glowing on one of the cliffs. She squinted down at it.
There was a path that went all the way down the cliffs; when she was a girl, Grey was told it was to receive shipwrecks or retrieve bodies. She and Sev had used it for crabbing. There was a deep ledge halfway down, shielded from view from all but those on this very tower. It was about the size of Grey’s courtyard. Sometimes, when she was younger, she and her father used to sit there to watch the storms roll away from the Isle, protected from the weather with the cliff at their backs.
There, one could sit very quietly, unseen, and look out at the shores of Scaela in the distance, without judgment.
It took her twenty minutes to get down, but Kier was still there when she reached the ledge. He sat with his knees tucked to his chest, his arms around them. She hesitated when she saw that his cheeks were wet.
“You can join me,” he said gruffly—of course he’d known that shewas there.
She stepped carefully and lowered herself to the ground next to him. His magelight glowed dim and golden; his magelights were always golden now.
She did not ask. After an immeasurable moment, the sea crashing on the cliffs below, Kier said, “I was just thinking that I would never see Lot’s grave again, or the tree behind our house, or the village square, or that awful yellow kitchen.”
