"Mr. Kraft?" The innkeeper pulled his hand back, escaping the icy touch. It reminded him of a drowned man hauled from the sea, his skin pale and wrinkled from soaking, with fine, sandpaper-like grains of salt clinging to the creases. The friction they provided seemed made for grabbing hold of someone and dragging another victim down.
Lucius and Liston looked at Kraft's face. Beneath his golden, tousled hair, his eyes were quietly open. His water-swollen hand blocked the fingers reaching toward him, but he asked no questions about his surroundings, as if still groggy from just waking up.
Yet his gaze wasn't vacant. It fixed on some elusive point in the empty space, behind the others and far above the roof.
Kraft's lips trembled, and he raised his hand, opening it. Lucius thought he wanted help getting up, so he took his hand, but Kraft didn't squeeze back.
His cold, rigid fingers traced a pattern in the air, but his body's limitations thwarted him several times. Lucius couldn't make out what he was trying to draw and let go, bewildered.
The corpse-pale, stiff body gave up trying to trace shapes in the air. Instead, it braced against the floor and peeled its upper half away from the frigid stone.
Like machinery turning gears, his movements felt so inhuman that someone they saw every day seemed like a stranger. Some unfathomable consciousness controlled his body, forcing its uncooperative joints to bend and extend, fold and unfold. It was as though, after an age of disuse, it was recreating its former movements through scattered muscle memories.
It took him several seconds to roll over. He faced the floor with his weight distributed awkwardly, then used his hands and feet to turn into a kneeling position. That movement came more easily.
As the