by Kim Fielding
I responded the only way I could think of. I yanked him against me and kissed his self-satisfied mouth. It wasn’t a logical thing to do. But we were standing in a wraith-haunted warehouse, bickering about nothing of substance while we waited to be killed. A kiss made as much sense as anything else.
He responded beautifully, parting his lips and letting in my tongue. At the same time, he clutched my cloak as if to make it clear that he was demanding this as much as I was. I knew my cheeks were bristly and my lips chapped, stark contrasts to his softness, yet he didn’t complain.
We kissed for a long time. I didn’t forget our problems, not even for a second, but those problems seemed very far away in the moment.
And then I let him go. “What have you figured out?” I asked.
“That you are skilled with your mouth.”
“You knew that already.”
“Indeed I did.” He sighed. “All right. You won’t leave the city because you need to learn why. You have most of the answer already, but not all. You want to validate my story, and if I am telling the truth, you want to find out why Uren involved you. You even want to discover precisely why he murdered Arthyen.”
“And this information is so important to me I’d die to obtain it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I lied.
“Yes, it is. But true. And I even know why you need these answers so badly.”
I waited for him to go on, but he danced away from me and pretended to be fascinated by a rotted rope hanging from the rafters. When I approached him—possibly to shake some sense into him—he grabbed me and kissed me as ravenously as a starving man.
“The guard,” he said when we separated.
I spun around, hands on my hilts. “Where?”
“Not here. Sorry.” He tried to calm me with a hand on my shoulder. “The roots of your tenacity lie in what happened to you in the guard. You were unjustly accused of a crime, and you saw your hopes crumble along with your pride. And nobody paid for it, did they?”
“No,” I growled. “Trying to place blame on someone would only have got me killed. But that was years ago. It has nothing to do with—”
“It has everything to do with today. We grow within the skins of our pasts, Daveth! I still hear the echoes of my parents’ voices as they cast me out. You still feel the sting of your losses. I don’t mean we can’t move on, because I think such a thing is possible, but we can’t move away. Not entirely.”
“I still don’t see what this—”
“Think!” He gave me a shake, although lightly. “You were robbed of everything that mattered to you, and that crime was never solved. So now you do what you can to solve other crimes. It’s the closest you can come to finality.”
“Nobody is going to be judged for what they’ve done to either of us, Jory. There will be no justice.”
He shook his head. “You don’t want justice. You want the uncertainty to end.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Even though you’re well aware there cannot be a good outcome.”
All right. It’s true I’ve never expected a good outcome. When I tried so hard to join the guard, I didn’t think I’d make it. And when I did make it, I assumed something bad would end it. Which it did. But even if I knew my life would be shit, I guess I liked that shit organized in neat little boxes, each one exactly where it ought to be. I wanted answers. And yes, I wanted endings, whether they were happy ones or not.
“I need to talk to Uren,” I said. “Even though he’ll kill me.”
“Kill us, you mean.” Stubborn, yes. And somehow a hint of humor danced in his eyes, as if this were all a jolly little game. Perhaps it was a game. But the dice were loaded, and we would surely lose.
“We’ll have to wait until dark,” I said.
Jory smiled at the we.
Chapter Eleven
WE HAD several hours before nightfall and few ways to fill them. We’d already eaten, and neither of us felt sleepy. The old warehouse offered few entertainment possibilities. I’d spent plenty of time with nothing to do. Actually, most of my time I’d had nothing to do. But it was easier to do nothing alone than with Jory.
I sat on the crate for a while. Then I paced. I would have liked to throw my knives—extra practice never hurts—but I didn’t want to dull the blades when I had no way to resharpen them. I thought about the stolen knife, the one discovered among my belongings in the barracks. The salesman had told me it was enchanted to never lose its edge. That would come in handy. I sat again.
Jory moved around the edges of the large space, picking up bits of rubbish as he encountered them. His foot broke through a rotted plank at one point, causing him to swear, but he wasn’t injured and so continued his circuits unabated.
Eventually he wandered over to me. “Can people hear us when we’re in here?”
“Unlikely. Everyone avoids the place. If anyone did hear us, they’d probably assume it was the wraiths.”
“Good.”
He moved several paces away, until he stood near the center. “The acoustics in here are interesting,” he said. And then he began to sing.
The first time I’d heard him sing was in Two Gray Cats, where he’d enchanted me. The second time had been the previous night in Branok’s attic, where he’d lulled me. But when it came to magic, the third time always sealed the deal, and now he captured me. I could feel it happening with every one of his plaintive yet beautiful notes—it was a ballad about a woman whose children all died. Every sound from his throat cast a tendril my way, fine as spider’s silk but strong as steel, and those tendrils wrapped around me until I was fully trussed.
That song made me his.
It didn’t matter that he’d lied to me before and would probably continue to do so. Or that neither of us was likely to see another dawn. It didn’t even matter that he’d attached himself to me out of desperation and a lack of anywhere else to turn. Today, for just these few hours, I belonged to someone. And if I was bound to him, he was equally bound to me. Today, someone belonged to me.
I hadn’t thought I’d wanted such a thing. It turned out I burned for it.
After Jory finished his song, he wiped his eyes and smiled softly. “Come here.”
“I’m not going to sing.”
“No need to. Come here.”
As soon as I was within reach, he wrapped me in his arms and began to hum. I didn’t recognize the tune at first. But then he began to sing the words, and I knew them. It was another ballad, this one about a young girl whose husband goes off to war wearing a necklace she gave him. She waits for him until word arrives that he died on a battlefield. Then, unable to support herself any other way, she sells herself. Every time a man fucks her, she pretends it’s her lover—the only way she remains sane. And one day a terribly disfigured man arrives and pays to sleep with her. But he’s rough with her, angry at her for being a whore. Furious at him and unable to withstand her grief, she stabs him in the chest. As he lies dying on the floor, he calls her name and she spies the familiar necklace he wears.
It’s a terribly sad song, the kind that sentimental types ask for when they’re a little drunk so they have an excuse to break down in tears.
I always thought it was stupid. Why in all hells didn’t the husband identify himself immediately, and what gave him the right to resent the job she needed for survival? And why didn’t she recognize his voice or notice the damned necklace earlier? Maybe she was too far gone on trance-drops, which meant she was doomed in any case.
But when Jory sang it, the song wasn’t stupid, but instead made my heart ache. And when he began to sway our bodies to the music, I let him, even though I’d never danced. I assumed I’d be clumsy at it, but I wasn’t. It was like fighting or having sex, as intense as the one and as sweet as the other, and Jory’s voice never faltered as we slowly rocked and spun. When he ran out of words, he hummed instead.
At some point I became aware that the room was dark. Perhaps the sun had set long before and my e
yes had been closed.
I leaned in against Jory, bringing the dance to an end, and kissed his cheek. “It’s nighttime.”
“Are you so eager to die?”
“No. But I can’t put this off much longer.”
He rested his head on my shoulder. “You feel so strong. I wish we’d met sooner.”
“And how would that have profited either of us?”
“I don’t know. I’m being greedy, I guess. Wishing for more time. Did you ever hear the story of the wizard Ederna?”
I well knew he was trying to delay our departure, but I indulged him. I didn’t truly want to leave either. “No.”
“Well. This was hundreds of years ago. Ederna was walking around the city, and she noticed something strange. In some parts of town, like the Smiths, everyone rushed around all the time trying to get things done. And in others, like the Low and the Royal, some people spent most of their days sitting around doing not much at all. Drinking, perhaps, or playing dice, or gossiping about the latest fashions.”
“I don’t think we worry much about fashion in the Low,” I teased.
“Shh. Telling a story.” He pushed on my shoulders until I sat on the floor, and then he draped himself sideways across my lap and leaned his head against the crook of my neck. “Ederna also noticed that small children would whine about being bored, while—”
“I never did.”
He kissed my cheek quickly. “I know. You were too busy staying alive. But I did more than my share of whining, such as during lessons or when I was expected to sit through an endless formal dinner. Ederna saw spoiled brats like me. And she saw adults who came home from work exhausted, did their chores, and fell into bed, sad at being unable to spend time with their families. Or old people avidly savoring their final years.”
Realizing I was missing an important opportunity, I threaded my fingers through his hair and toyed with his curls. “Ederna was an observant woman.”
“Wizards often are. She also had expensive tastes in clothes, food, and women, and her purse was feeling rather empty. So she went to her workshop, which I imagine was a small but beautiful space in the Silver, and she worked for ages. Finally she found a way to bottle time.
“She went first to the bored and unoccupied and offered to take time off their hands. She didn’t even have to pay for it—they were thrilled to be rid of it. And of course then she went to the harried residents and sold them that time. Business was brisk. More than! Soon the city folk were mobbing her, demanding more of her wares.”
“It didn’t turn out well for her, did it?”
He swatted my knee. “Let me finish. Her problem was that demand soon outpaced supply. It turns out that while some people waste time, far more don’t have enough of it. Her greed overcame her and she began to steal it. She’d creep into rooms while people were sleeping and take it from them. Not much, just an hour here, an hour there. She didn’t think anyone would notice. They did, though, because they were tired the next day and did their jobs poorly.”
He was a good storyteller. His voice was wonderful, of course, and he put as much feeling into it as he did when singing. I wondered how many tales he knew and how many evenings he could keep me enthralled with them. If we weren’t both about to be killed, of course.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“The king had her dragged to the castle. He was—oh, I don’t remember which king. One of the cruel ones. He took her down to the dungeons and demanded she take time from all the prisoners. Take all their time and give it to him so he could rule for centuries.”
“What would happen to the prisoners if she did that? I mean, I expect they’d die, but would they age very quickly first? Or just keel over?”
“You are overthinking this,” Jory said, squirming a little in my lap. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It mattered to them. To the prisoners.”
“No, because she didn’t do it. She refused. And when the king had a tantrum, she stole all of his time and that of his guards besides, and she freed the prisoners, and then she fled the castle. She vowed never to transfer time again. She ran to the west, to the Dragonback Mountains and beyond, and that was that.”
“What about the king’s time?” I asked.
“Oh, see? When I was told this story the first time, that question didn’t occur to me. But you thought of it because that’s how you are.”
I grunted a reply, which made him laugh.
“Nobody knows what she did with the time,” he said. “Perhaps she took it with her over the mountains. Perhaps she threw it into the sea. But some people think she hid it somewhere in Tangye, and one day a lucky person will find it. Too bad it can’t be us.”
“I’ve never been lucky. Anyway, it isn’t time we need, it’s an ally.”
For a moment or two, he was silent, apparently enjoying the petting of his hair. “What would you do with an ally? Hope he or she is good at fighting? Because we’d need more than one of those to overcome Uren’s men and the entire city guard.”
“We’d need an army for that,” I said with a sigh. “No, we could get by with just a single person if he could force Uren to admit what he’s done. In front of witnesses, of course, and before he had us run through with swords.” And I might as well wish for gold to shower from the sky, because that was far more likely.
Jory went very still. “Daveth? What’s today?”
I had to think about it before answering. “Branchday,” I finally announced.
“And tomorrow’s Leafday.”
“That’s how it works—Roots, Trunk, Branch, Leaf, Bud, Flower, Fruit. Even a Lowler knows that.”
He leapt from my lap—gracefully, damn him—and resumed his pacing. I couldn’t see him, but I followed his progress via his bootsteps.
“A Finch would make a good witness, wouldn’t she?” he asked, nearly breathless with excitement.
“I suppose.” The Finches were gossips but known for their honesty.
“Uren visits a Finch every Leafday morning. His wife got him in the habit. She won’t sleep with him at all, you know? She just visits the Finches.”
“Do you expect him to show up tomorrow and pour out his heart to the Finch? Perhaps he’ll have a sudden attack of remorse.” I stood and brushed my hands on my chausses as if wiping away such a ridiculous idea.
“I don’t think he has a conscience. Which is a terrible thing, really, like being born without a heart. But what if we could somehow persuade him to confess?”
“The only way I know how to persuade is with the tips of my blades.”
“Precisely.”
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.”