Chapter Twelve

PLOTTING HAS never been my strong point; I’m more the type to react than to plan. Jory didn’t strike me as a master schemer either. But we talked for an hour or two, playing with the details of our poor little intrigue. It was better than dying right away, even though we recognized we were essentially postponing the inevitable.

It felt odd to conspire with someone. I’d spent most of my life acting alone, except for my brief time in the guard. And even then I hadn’t been anyone’s partner but rather one small cog in the city’s wheel. Discussing plans with someone else turned out to be enjoyable. Exciting. Even though I held no false hopes about the likelihood of our success.

While we talked, we finished off the last of our food and ale, and then we were left in the darkness with a few salvaged hours remaining to us.

“Maybe we found a little of Ederna’s time after all,” I said.

He laughed loudly enough to echo. “A warehouse would be a sensible place to stash something. Hang on.” He stood and walked several paces away.

I heard him moving but had no idea what he was doing until he came to fetch me. He pulled me along and then gently pushed me to the floor, where I discovered he’d spread his cloak to form a makeshift pallet.

“Lie with me,” he said, pulling me down beside him.

But I squirmed away. “Wait.” I took off my boots and set them aside. Then I removed my cloak, lay back down, and spread it over us as a blanket.

“Cozy as a palace,” he murmured, stroking my chest.

My body came alive at once. In truth, I was never completely quiescent when he was near, but his touch in our cocoon of darkness, this unexpected moment of softness, those were enough to make my skin thrum. We allowed our hands to wander, first over clothing and then under, until our tunics were rucked to our chins and our chausses unlaced. We used our mouths as well, delicate tastes by tongue and lips punctuated by sharp little nibbles of teeth.

Jory stripped me of all logic and common sense, leaving me with nothing but need.

But just as he’d settled a palm against my groin, we both began to shiver—and not with want.

“C-cold,” he chattered, burrowing against me.

Oh fuck.

I didn’t want to look over his shoulder, but I did, because life is almost nothing but doing things you dread. And there were the river wraiths.

They glowed like the moon, pale and cold, and I couldn’t tell if they hovered at the far end of the room or within reach. I couldn’t make out their faces, just the vague impression of hollow eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether they wore robes or if their bodies were shaped like billowing curtains.

“Dav—”

“Shh.”

Although Jory went silent, I felt his heart hammering—as was mine—and his chest rapidly rising and falling. He was looking over my shoulder, I assumed, where I suspected more wraiths had appeared.

Strangely, I was not terrified. Why should I be when I’d never expected to survive the night anyway? Besides, I’d known all along that the warehouse belonged to the wraiths. But I was angry. They’d interrupted a tender moment in a life that had held few. And if I died now, I would never get to confront Lord Uren about what he’d done to us.

“Leave us be!” I yelled, making Jory startle. “We’re harming nothing. We’ll be gone in the morning.”

The wraiths floated closer, bringing a bone-deep chill and an odor of rot and decay that made me gag despite my familiarity with the reek of the Low.

They’d caught me in an awkward position, one hardly suited to fighting, but I suspected my blades would be of little use here anyway. I resettled my tunic and, holding my chausses closed with one hand, struggled to my feet.

Jory started to rise, but I hissed, “Stay down!” Miraculously, he obeyed.

I looked around. Five wraiths on Jory’s side and three on mine, none of them distinguishable from the others. All of them moving slowly toward us.

Although I knew it was stupid, I bent quickly to pull a knife from my belt with my free hand. I clutched the hilt tightly. “Leave us be!”

They didn’t listen as well as Jory had. They came nearer and nearer, until I could have touched the closest ones, and still I couldn’t make out any facial features. Perhaps they had nothing but eyes. They hadn’t made any sounds.

When one of them… folded its body—it’s the only way to describe it—and reached a spectral arm toward us, I shouted and threw myself on top of Jory.

The wraiths were upon me at once. They had fingers, cold as ice and hard as bone, that wrapped around my hand until it went numb and I dropped the knife. More fingers traced my face, my scalp. They pulled my hand away from the chausses’ laces and pushed up my tunic, then lightly touched my chest, my belly, my hips, and my cock and balls.

Jory squirmed beneath me, pinned by my weight and, I thought, also held in place by the wraiths.

I tried to shout again, but the wraiths were in me, spreading down my throat like water. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do more than flail weakly against them.

It was a piss-poor way to die, although I wasn’t in pain. I wondered what the wraiths got out of this and wished I could ask them. Not that they’d answer.

They withdrew from my mouth, allowing me to gasp some air, but they continued to roam their fingers over me. They pulled my chausses off completely, leaving me naked save for the tunic bunched around my armpits, and they seemed especially fascinated with my knees and toes and with the juncture of my legs and torso. Then they concentrated on my belly again before moving up to my chest. And gods and goddesses, in.

A frigid hand wrapped around my heart, not tightly enough to still it but clearly there. The cold made my heart stutter, but it didn’t hurt. I had a strange thought: at least I wasn’t dying alone.

As if he realized I was thinking of him, Jory spasmed beneath me. “Daveth? Daveth?”

“Stay still!” I rasped. As if the wraiths wouldn’t notice him underneath me.

“Don’t hurt him!” he yelled. “Leave us alone!”

Too stubborn to give in to river wraiths. Good.

My body warmth leached away, pouring out of me and into the wraiths. I felt too cold even to shiver. And I was tired. It was so tempting to just give in, to let the wraiths do what they wanted with me. Steal my heat, my body. What did I care as long as I could rest?

But no. Jory.

I gathered the last of my strength and screamed.

The wraiths withdrew quickly. As I tried to get my limbs to cooperate, the wraiths floated several feet away, watchful but not touching either of us.

Jory scrambled out from beneath me. Ignoring the wraiths, he blanketed me with his body and pulled my cloak over us both, then cradled my face in his hands. Dear gods and goddesses, his warm hands.

“Daveth? Daveth, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

His answer sounded suspiciously like a sob. I tried to put my arms around him but couldn’t quite manage it. Still, heat crept back into me, bit by bit, and it felt delicious. He felt delicious.

The wraiths hovered. One of them came closer, and I braced myself, knowing I could do nothing to protect Jory or myself. But it didn’t touch us. It watched from the pits of its eyes. For one brief moment only, it glowed nearly bright enough to blind me.

And then they were gone.

The warehouse grew balmier at once. Jory sagged on top of me. “You’re all right?” he asked into my neck.

“I think so.”

“They didn’t kill us.”

“No.”

He was briefly silent before his next question. “Will they be back?”

“Not tonight.” I had no basis to conclude that other than instinct, yet I was quite sure of it.

He rolled to my side, taking care to keep me covered by the cloak. He rested one of his legs over both of mine and softly rubbed my chest. “That was…. I never imagined anything like that,” he said.

“Nor had I.” I’d caught glimpses of wraiths a few times before, on nights when I crossed the river, but they’d been far away. The scavengers stayed out of the water after dark because of the wraiths. I’d never spoken to a scavenger who’d been close to one.

“What did they want?” Jory said.

“I think… they were curious about us. We must seem very strange to them.”

“You almost died.”

I had to laugh at that. “That’s my fate. A thousand almost dies until the day the almost goes away. I feel as if Death has been very unfortunate with me. She must be angry.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want you. Maybe you get to live instead.”

“Death wants all of us. She’s greedy that way.”

Too exhausted for more talk—or passion—and lacking even the energy to pull on my chausses, I sank into a deep sleep.