Deep Blue

the excruciating, lacerative blue of today's sky
whose incandescence suggests
that its nearest blood kin is neither
violet nor emerald,
but gold.

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...into blue. Not bird’s-egg blue, not navy, nor indigo. Rather, devastation blue, glory-blue, lacerative, eyes of a shade more familiar to him than any other color in the whole of Nosgoth.

The whore’s name was on his lips before he knew it.

“Rahab....”


This tiny human, this... this tavern whore... but the bones of the face were right, and the scent... was too hard to distinguish under the stink of sweat and semen and the layered foulness of humanity. Panic twisted its features. But the eyes....

Kain felt as if he were moving very slowly. There was a burly human nearby, its arm upraised, broken bottle in hand. Kain reached out and, quite without thinking, caught the downward blow.

And snapped the human’s arm. In, if Kain was any judge of injury, and he was, approximately six places.

Time returned with the shrill and unlovely sound of a human in true agony. The ore miner staggered back, its dirty mouth agape, clenching its shattered forearm. The barroom brawl ground to a halt.

“Your best room,” Kain growled, and realized only distantly that the sound from his throat wasn’t even human. “Where is it?” The wretch -- Rahab -- on his table tried to sit up, and Kain laid a long-nailed hand across the center of its chest to hold it in place. The tiny heart fluttered under his hand like a trapped sparrow. Too hard, he realized as the human thumped back down on the wood. Too hard, and Kain could barely touch healthy humans without breaking them. And the stench....

The piggish little innkeeper started from its daze. “Oh it’s... just up the stairs, Lord. There’s nobody in....”

Kain reached out and jerked the innkeeper to him, the use of telekinesis instinctual and very easy. He tore his gaze from the... the whore -- the blue -- and narrowed his eyes at the innkeep. “Send up food. And a bath,” he snarled. “And if you try to poison me again, I will gut you myself.”

He dropped the squirming innkeeper and removed his hand with distaste from the ragged whore’s -- Rahab’s -- thin chest. “Get up,” he commanded the human. It shivered as it looked back, terror writ plain on its starved face. He’d never seen those eyes hold such blank and unthinking fear, such human weakness. Rahab had faced down Kain’s firstborn with arrogance and authority; he expected no less from any of his sons. “Get up now!”

The tiny human scrambled upright, eyes darting as if it intended to run. The room had grown silent, save for faint whispers -- magician and warlock. The whore hung its head and started slowly for the stairs.

“Move!” Kain roared, and the whore tripped over its own feet, scrabbling up the rickety wooden staircase. Kain caught the eyes of the innkeeper, who still clasped its flabby throat. “And see that I am not otherwise disturbed,” he growled. The innkeep nodded frantically, making choking sounds Kain took for agreement.

Kain turned and followed the little human, making sure it never left his sight.


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The hallway was short; only three doors lead off from it. The creature -- Rahab -- darted to the door at the end and shuffled nervously, touching the doorknob and then jerking his hand back. He shuddered and looked to Kain, meeting his eyes only for a moment and then casting them back down, somewhere in the direction of Kain’s knees.

“Go in,” Kain said, and could not keep the harshness from his voice.

The little human struggled with the door and pulled it open, darting through the moment there was space enough. Kain followed, pushing the lightweight wood open on creaking leather hinges. The room was very small, he saw, stepping inside. There was a single small window, and the space contained nothing but a single bed, covered by sheets Kain could never have brought himself to touch, and a small table, no chairs.

“Sit down,” he growled at the whore, and the little human scrambled to the bed where it perched, shaking. Kain pushed the door closed behind him, very carefully, to avoid ripping the planks from their moorings. He closed his eyes briefly. If his memories hadn’t changed, that meant... that meant what? That Rahab would survive? Surely not in the state it -- he -- was in. What did the flow of time demand of Kain?

He opened his eyes and the whore yet sat there, hands fisted in the sheets. Kain folded his arms across his chest. “What is your name?” he demanded. Perhaps Kain was mistaken, perhaps....

The human choked on its lungful of air, its voice breathy and small. “I... if it pleases your Lordship, I can be anyone you....”

“What is your name, boy?”

“Rahab,” gasped the human, tears welling in the perfect, sapphire blue of its eyes.

...and memory came to him, tangible and real. Blood and power filled the corpse as Kain poured in his soul, his strength, flushing through rot and decay. Fluids pulsed once more through dust-dry paths -- Turel had drooled when he’d risen; Rahab shed tears when he’d greeted the night.

The small sounds of the human nearly escaped his notice -- the soft crinkle of sheets, the pad of bare feet on the rough-hewn planks. But he heard the thump as the human went to his knees before Kain, and he looked down... to find the whore reaching for his leather breeches.

“I said sit down,” Kain snarled, and the little human jerked back, nearly falling over, tears spilling down its dirt-smeared cheeks. With a muffled whine, the creature scrambled for the bed. The human’s ankles were tiny -- just tendon, thin bones, raw skin.

A brief, hesitant knock came at the door.

Kain turned and jerked it open, the metal of the knob deforming in his hand. A tavern wench stood just on the other side. It carried a tray with hot bread, a covered bowl, an empty glass, and a somewhat dusty bottle of wine. Its eyes flicked to something behind Kain. “Your dinner, Lord.” It drew a trembling breath. “Please... please don’t hurt him,” the human whispered.

Kain lifted the tray from the female’s hands and shut the door in its face.

When he turned around, he found that the whore had divested itself of the rags that passed for its trousers. Back arched, naked and shivering, the creature displayed itself on hands and knees in the center of the narrow bed.

Kain’s lip curled.

He’d rarely ever killed humans this small; the very suggestion that Kain would want to fuck one was unutterably insulting. And a beast of the woods would be cleaner than this louse-infested little human. The fact that the whore -- Rahab -- didn’t know any better was hardly a defense; it never had been in Kain’s empire.

What strength, what possibility, what determination, what chance could there be in this wretched thing? Despite the eons Kain had lived, despite his long view of the world and clear sight, he could ultimately see little of what would be in this...wretch, this waif. There was no honor in it, nor the keen intellect and knowledge hunger of his son -- superlative assassin and scholar both. Ne similarity at all, except... for the eyes. And with grudging admittance, the fact the whore was still alive.

Despite the poor lighting and the whore’s shivering, Kain could make out any number of scars and bruises. And although Kain cared little if the humans of this town saw fit to abuse their captives, he was a little confounded that the whore had lived through a tenth so much damage, as thin as it was. The number and variety of scars seemed beyond reason on so small a body -- but then Kain had never thought to closely examine a tavern whore before, and had no objects of comparison save memories of the empire’s human slaves and battle-grizzled veterans.

The whore should be dead, he realized. It should have longed for the soft embrace of death, at the very least. Instead it knelt there, offering the only thing it knew to offer, trying to survive in the only way it could. The whore clung to its filthy life with broken, blackened fingernails -- it fought to survive, and thus, it lived. It was beyond the pale, beyond the blue; there was something of his son there.

Kain sighed and set the tray down on the room’s sole table. The small, roughly-formed piece of furniture had been bolted to the floor, he found, and he ripped it from its anchorage with the squeal and snap of twisting metal. He set the entire table beside the bed. “Dress yourself, then sit,” he said, “and do not... disrobe again.”

The whore started in terror and scrambled to huddle on the corner of the bed as Kain moved the table, and it occurred to him that a mortal should not, perhaps, have been able to lift it so easily. It had been a very long time since Kain had concerned himself with what humans could and could not do. Evidently, that would quickly have to change -- he could not simply deliver the child to the Sarafan and expect them to rear him properly, not when the boy was so clearly of slave stock. And even if some chapel or outpost did take the boy, what were the chances of Rahab becoming one of that order’s living saints in just a few decades? Somehow, Kain’s very presence had disrupted a vital chain of events, and now... well. Now history was in very serious danger of not repeating itself at all.

Ignoring the whore for the moment, Kain gingerly dipped one manicured nail into the thick stew. He sniffed carefully, then licked the fluid off. His palate registered the flavors as ashy and unpleasant -- very few human foods appealed to him on any level anymore, -- but not inherently injurious. He set the bowl near the bed, and took up the dense brown bread, examining it. It did not seem to be poisoned either, but -- how much was it safe to feed a starving human? In the case of a fledgling, it was vital to get as much fluid into them as quickly as possible. But humans, like dogs, were capable of eating themselves sick, and Kain had no wish to have the stink of this little room enhanced, nor to subject the whore’s body to the potentially fatal stress of vomiting. He tore off a talon-sized fragment of the loaf and laid it beside the bowl.

The little whore had crawled back into its trousers, though it remained huddled in the corner, eyes fixed not on the food just out of arms’ reach, but on Kain. “Eat,” Kain said, when the mortal made no move, “and do so slowly.” Without a spoon, the whore should be forced to eat fairly deliberately, but Kain ordered it in any case.

Gradually, the whore uncoiled, blue, blue eyes fixed upon Kain, watching for the slightest movement that would indicate the food was to be withdrawn. When Kain did nothing, Rahab at last reached for the earthenware bowl. His thin arms trembled as he brought it to his lips. The boy drank a few mouthfuls of the rich liquid, eyes still wide with fear. Then, shivering, the whore restrained himself, and set the bowl back to the table. He pulled off a small bite of bread carefully, with dirty fingers, and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly.

The creature sat for a moment, as if thinking. Then the boy pushed the bowl towards Kain. “It’s not poisoned,” he asserted, voice little above a whisper.

Kain raised an elegantly arched eyebrow. “I did not ask if it was. Eat.” Either this innkeeper made a very regular habit of poisoning travelers indeed, or the boy had been aware of the attempt on Kain’s life, despite the distraction of servicing gambling humans at the time. Rahab had always been the most observant, the most aware of his surroundings, of all Kain’s get. His clan had more than its share of superb spies and assassins. It pleased Kain to imagine that Rahab might possess some shadow of that ability even as a mortal.

The whore, for its part, froze for a bare instant, eyes widening with realization of for whom the meal was intended. The boy wasted no time -- as if fearing that the food would vanish, he tore a crust from the bread and used it to scoop up chunks of hot meat, shoveling them into its mouth.

Kain’s fist struck the center of the table -- barely a tap, though it rattled the earthenware and made the wooden table creak alarmingly. “You will obey me precisely, boy, if you wish to survive this night.” Kain would not kill him, of course -- but if Rahab choked, there might be little Kain could do. First aid upon humans was not exactly a skill he had practiced of late.

And that... would have to be corrected. Bloody hell. There had to be some way to return history to its proper track -- some place safe enough, in all of Nosgoth, to leave the boy. Someplace where Rahab could grow fit and capable enough to cross blades with Kain’s wayward firstborn, if only for a few minutes. Kain watched the little whore flinch, eyes darting from the food to Kain and back again. “Yes, your lordship,” Rahab whispered, nodding quickly and reaching tentatively for the bowl.

“Sire --” Kain corrected absently, leaving the boy to his meal. He folded his arms and paced to the tiny window, where the air was at least marginally fresher, ignoring the graceless sounds of chewing and swallowing. Rahab would become his son in the distant future, and would make a strong Sarafan before that, but now? “-- you will call me Sire,” Kain said, watching the dim fall of drizzling rain.


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Notes: This is also a cowrite with Nemi the Nen, who is teh awesomeness. ;) We're both RPing LoK characters over at http://community.livejournal.com/multiversehaven/ -- come play with us! We don't bite. Much. ;)

Thanks very much to the reviewers! I really appreciate the time you took to drop me a line or to vote. Your encouragement gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get the next chapter polished. Thank you, thank you!