Page 39 of The Second Death of Locke
“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 tolikethem.
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 foryourintestines.”
“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 commonIdistran, 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 evencarryauros, let alone take them out in a public place. They must’ve brought them from Luthar directly.
