The corpse pulled itself upright, gasping, head cradled between those fine hands.
Something dark and liquid trickled slowly down the left hand.
He backed away, wrapping the bag’s drawstring around his wrist, the only possible weapon he had, trying to think of the best alternate route home, cursing himself for a fool for rousing this stranger before extracting his cloak, knowing even as he cursed that he’d have returned it anyway. He wasn’t, and never would be, a thief.
A whisper of sound reached him, more words that made no sense, and the man’s head lifted, his hand reaching toward him. Asking for help, that much was obvious to the most stupid of fools.
And fool that he was, Kadithe answered.
“Kadithe? Is that you?” Grandfather’s voice, filled with worry.
Kadithe’s fingers went numb, his hold on the man’s wrist gave, and the stranger slipped, bonelessly, to the wooden floor. Kadithe followed, at least as far as his knees, and he knelt there, eyes closed, fighting for breath. The last few steps had been the longest of his life, the stranger a dead weight against him.
He heard the tap of Grandfather’s cane, felt its light touch first, and Grandfather’s sure, knowing hand second, searching him for wounds. He tipped his head into that touch, silent signal that he was unharmed, and Grandfather’s lips brushed his forehead. A moment later, the soft folds of his new blanket surrounded him, and from the glow beyond his eyelids, Grandfather had brought their new oil lamp as well. He huddled in the unfamiliar warmth and light, soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, following his grandfather by sound as the old man closed and barred (such as they could) the door.
“What’s this you’ve brought home? Has fortune struck twice in one week? I send you out after cheese and you bring home an entire cow?”
Grandfather’s voice rippled with the gentle humor that had kept them both sane for fourteen years. His own breath caught on a chuckle and he forced his eyes open, found Grandfather kneeling beside the stranger, straightening his limbs, easing the ties on the cloak that threatened to choke him, his hands telling him more than most eyes saw.
“Is he dead?” he asked, singularly indifferent to the answer.
“Not yet. Come here, child. Be my eyes.”
He pulled himself to his feet, froze as he got his first good look at the stranger, at the hair spilling across their floor, pooling around his head. “That’s not—” His voice failed him.
“Kadithe? Not what?”
It had to be the same man.
“His hair. It was dark—” But that meant nothing to Grandfather. Grandfather couldn’t see …
“Was?”
“It’s silver now.” He knelt beside the stranger, and unable to stop himself, lifted those strands, so like the bright metal in color, despite the warm light from the lamp, but liquid soft to the touch. Damp, but not soaked and dripping, like his own. And clean, not a knot or hint of dirt marred the perfection.
Wizardry. He let the strands drop. Or sorcery—that devious, bastard craft no mage or priest would pursue. Kadithe tucked his hands around his ribs. Whatever it was, beautiful as it was, it was unnatural.
Grandfather’s own hands, more finely attuned than his, examined that hair, but, “Curious,” was his only comment. Suddenly, his nose twitched. He fingered the cloak, lifted the frayed edge to his face, then dropped it, frowning.
“The Broken Mast,” he said, without a hint of doubt, and with a voice suddenly hard. “Who is this person, Kadithe? Where did you find him? Why bring him here?”
Fear filled him. Anonymity. He’d broken their most sacred house rule. Again. Worse, he’d broken it with a denizen of the Broken Mast, the drain-hole of the cesspool of Sanctuary’s scum, source of ships’ crew (willing and not), boy whores (willing and not), and any drug known to man.
Grandfather’s hand caught his arm, demanded his attention. “You didn’t go near there, did you, boy?”
Go there? He shook his head, slowly at first, then so hard it made his brain rattle between his ears. “No! I wouldn’t, Grandfather. Never. I came Red Clay and Shadow, like always. I don’t know who he is. I—I was almost home, ‘tween here and the ’Unicorn, he just … fell out of the shadows.”
“Fell.”
He couldn’t lie, not about something this important. “Well, I thought at first he jumped. He grabbed me. Held my leg. His touch burned, but he didn’t fight, didn’t do anything but hold on. Then he went limp. I thought he was dead. I—” His face went hot, and he mumbled the next words. “I wanted his cloak.”
Grandfather squeezed his hand, and his voice, when he answered, had lost the harsh edge. “Only sensible, child. If not you, someone else. Did he say anything?”
He shook his head, remembering those strange sounds, wondering now if they’d been some spell he was casting. “Nothing so you’d understand.”
“Well, done is done. You can tell me the whole later. He has no weapons, not much left to his clothes, for that matter. I wonder they stayed together long enough for him to pull them on. If he survives the night, he’ll have to kill us with his bare hands, for all the good it might do him. Now tell me: What do you see?”
“Cuts. Bruises. Nothing obvious.”
“He’s had a bad blow to the head, washed clean; one, maybe even two days healed. Look more closely, boy.”
Shamed, he did and found the wound in question beneath its mask of silver hair, and felt the great lump. His hand, when he pulled it away, shone with fresh blood. Holding the lamp over the body, he began a more detailed inspection. Bruises, yes, but nothing compared to the’ discoloration at his throat. Deep bruises there that spread up the lean jaw and around the ears.
“Strangled,” Grandfather said in a voice that said what he saw, confirmed what his fingers had suspected. “Someone tried to kill him with nothing more than bare hands for a weapon.”
Strangled. Unusual way to settle an argument in Sanctuary. He wondered whose hands had made those bruises and whether the silver-haired stranger’s long-fingered hands, strong and burning, had been more, or less, effective.
“Help me get him over to the fire.”
The stranger weighed more than his slight frame would suggest, as Kadithe knew only too well, for all he’d swear they shed a quarter of his weight when they freed him of the water-soaked cloak. He was taller than Grandfather had ever been, and the body increasingly evident beneath the shredding clothing was lean, but well-muscled and well-fed.
They had worn straw pallets for sleeping, and the fire in the brazier, but little else to offer in the way of comfort. He set his new pillow beneath that silver head, and reluctantly sacrificed his blanket as well.
“Keep your blanket,” Grandfather advised.
“But—”
“Get the cloak. It’s good wool and will only be the warmer for the soaking.”
How Grandfather knew these things, he never said, but he’d also learned never to question that tone. He fetched the cloak, which had, at least, ceased dripping and was surprisingly dry on the underside, and spread it across the stranger.
Grandfather had the new skillet heating on the brazier, waiting for him to get home, and not two but three perfect rounds of dough ready for it. Sometimes Kadithe believed Grandfather must have eyes in his fingers.
“Three, Grandfather?”
“I had a feeling you might come home hungry.”
A second pan simmered aromatically. If the stranger woke, there’d be mint tea (another gift from Bezul’s good wife), flat bread, and cheese. If he didn’t waken … well, he and Grandfather would just split that third portion.