Page 31 of The Second Death of Locke
“Severin,” she said, finishing. “He was the heir to the Isle. He was a well, too. I was just… the extra. A backup.” She let Lot comfort her as she cried, ignoring the seed of guilt that grew in her stomach. She watched Kier’s face as he heard the lie, believed it, swallowed it down.
Finally, Lot asked, “Do you want to go to Scaelas?”
“No,” she said, voice cracking. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”
He nodded then, a decision made. He was twelve, nearly thirteen, and to Kier and Grey, he was the smartest person they’d ever known.
“Then here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Grape, go and get parchment.Goodparchment. Kier, bring me Ma’s sealing wax. I will write a letter to the High Lord saying I’m your brother, asking him to leave me alone. That way, it looks like Severin survived, and they’ll stop looking for you. Maybe they’ll take the letter to heart and stop searching entirely.”
Grey blinked at him. “How can we be sure they’ll believe it?”
“Do you know your brother’s true name?”
True names are for Hands and husbands. But Severin was dead, so what did it even matter?
“Yes,” she said. Then, chewing her lip, “And diplomatic symbols. I know the one for my mother’s line. It will get the letter to Scaelas faster.”
“Then Scaelas will know it, too, and he’ll believe it.”
“Yes. I can show you how to make it,” Grey allowed. “And Sev’s signature.”
It was the only good option, and they couldn’t think of another. So Grey fetched parchment and writing instruments, and Kier got thesealing wax. Lot wrote the letter, because he was the oldest and his handwriting was the nicest, and Grey taught him Sev’s true name and signature, then drew the lines of Locke’s symbol under the forgery.
After, Lot decided it would be too close to send the letter from Leota, so the trio packed a single bag and slipped out of the Seward house after dark. They walked inland all night, ducking into ditches and behind bushes when they saw others on the road.
An hour after dawn, they reached a minuscule village. Lot went alone to send the letter. When he returned, he took Grey’s hand and they made the long walk back. On their return, they found Pia and Laurella and Imarta angrier than they ever had been before. Imarta left the punishments to Pia and Lo, because she was barely more than a girl herself, and she knew little of raising children.
That night, they went to bed grim-faced and silent, holding their secret, mad at one another and themselves in the way of children caught misbehaving—but it was worth it. The plan worked, in some ways. After that day, no one went looking for Maryse again.
It failed in some ways, too—because they never stopped looking for Severin.
After a few hours, Ola moved up to the front of the group, trading places with Grey, so she and Kier could mutter and argue over the map. They came to a place where the path ran parallel to the wood. Kier turned, finding Grey’s eye, and she nodded. Kier led them into the wood. The route through the underbrush was too narrow to walk three abreast, so Brit and Grey let Eron and the prisoner go ahead and followed behind. Grey waited, tense—she was certain Brit would break the silence between them soon enough.
She was unsurprised when they finally cracked. “What will you do with your six months of leave?” they asked.
So Attis hadn’t told the others about Kier’s proposition, what he and Grey would get. Grey filed that away for later chewing.
“Sleep,” she said. She was still feeling irritable, but also a bit bad about how sharply she had spoken earlier. A conversation with Brit would not kill her—and perhaps it would help her uncover what lay under their humor.
Brit snorted. “That would be something. And then a new assignment… Can’t say I’m sad to go. That place was a shithole.”
Grey wrinkled her nose, stepping delicately over a tree root. The last thing she needed was to sprain her ankle on the first day. “I’m just glad to be out of the mud,” she admitted.
“Where were you before?”
“Karlot. Then Orakey before that. We were at Grislar on our first assignment.”
“Ah. Familiar territory.”
Grey shrugged. She’d never much liked Grislar—it was too close to Locke. She’d grown up near the coast, always aware that Locke was there, but in Grislar she had to look at the place where it had once been. They were higher on the cliffs, with the camp built backing the sea, so sometimes she’d wake up to the smell of phantom smoke in the air. It was a sensation all of the wells claimed to have, looking uneasily over their shoulders as they discussed it over bowls of mealy porridge at breakfast.
The other wells, she realized soon enough, did not hear the screams that came along with the smoke.
That was the assignment when Kier had promised her, after night after night of nightmares, that they wouldn’t go back.
She glanced up, saw the back of his head. She didn’t resent him for it, for the fact that he couldn’t keep his promises. Perhaps she just had to stop asking him for things he couldn’t control.
“It’s also a shithole,” she said apologetically. “Or at least it was when we were there, and I doubt the situation has improved.”
