Deep Blue

This blue must be gold's daughter,
the flame inside the flood,
the flood inside the wind,
the wind inside the flame.

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"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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It took neigh half an hour for the bath to be delivered. A knock came at the door, and after Kain answered, a manservant rolled in the bottom half of a large barrel. Wenches filed in, each bearing buckets of recently-boiled water. The barrel was quickly filled -- Kain stood betwixt Rahab and the servants until the humans at last retreated.

Rahab had largely ignored the activity, too focused on sopping up the last of the stew. When the bread ran out, the whore glanced between the remainder of the loaf and Kain, and then set to scooping from the bowl with two dirty fingers. "Enough, boy -- leave it. Come here," Kain ordered, as if to a mongrel dog. Best keep to simple commands until he could determine how much a human child this young could properly understand.

There was a short silence from the edge of the bed, then the soft swish of sackcloth against fabric as the wretch slid to his feet. Cringing and cautious, Rahab crept near.

There was, quite possibly, no worse manner in which to approach a vampire -- particularly Kain himself. A fighting chance might be extended to the proud, the defiant. The quiet and respectful lived out their lives as slaves. The weak or pitiable evoked nothing more than a hunting response, and could expect no mercy save, occasionally, that of a quick death.

Kain closed his eyes, just for a moment, and found that neither the fear nor the filth he could smell made control any simpler. On the other hand, the sight of the little human also made it no easier a task to contain the reflexive backhand that would have snapped the wretch's spine. Kain could only hope the human could attend to cleaning himself without assistance -- even in this weaker physical form, Kain had to exercise great restraint when touching humans, simply to avoid damaging them. And in his current mood... "Bathe," Kain said flatly, when the boy made no move.

Rahab scuttled to the tub and dipped one hand into the water. The boy nodded. "It's comfortable, Sire," he whispered, eyes fixed upon the floor. Then the boy knelt and reached for Kain's heavy black boots.

Kain stepped back, jarring against the fragile wooden table. The impact did him no harm, of course, but the table creaked alarmingly, one of the rough surface boards coming loose. "Bathe yourself, boy, he ordered. The thought of Kain attempting to wedge his body, even his presently-human body, into that barrel half would have been ludicrous even without considering the water it contained.

Rahab looked up, and Kain glanced down into that startling color once more -- the blue of a perfect summer sky, at the zenith of the heavens. Devastation blue. And terrified. Kain turned his eyes away, unwilling to look for long upon such a fragile, mortal expression on a face that should have been fierce and imperiously intelligent. Kain snorted softly, would have stepped back, save that there was no place to go in the tiny room save through the table, and Kain was fairly certain humans did not often splinter furniture with an incautious shove. "Do as you are ordered."

Perhaps such blatant fear had served to keep the mortal alive, but surely Rahab could not be afraid of the water. A hearty irony that would be, indeed. But Rahab backed away and after a few moments climbed into the barrel willingly enough, albeit he did so whilst still clothed, and then sat, forlornly small in the middling-warm water, seeming very much at a loss. The brownish lump of soap -- or what passed for it in this era -- still lay in its dish on the floor. It was entirely possible that the boy might not even know, or remember, what it was for. Which was a... problem. It had been literal eons since Kain had used it himself -- surfactants were typically poor cleansers in the distilled alcohol vampires used to bathe, -- and how in the world was he even going to...

"Lord?" a voice called faintly through the wooden door, accompanied by a hesitant knock. Were Kain merely human, he might not have heard either sound, faint as they were. Frankly thankful for the interruption, Kain stalked to the flimsy portal and wrenched it open, the leather hinges protesting.

Another tavern wench stood, wide-eyed and trembling a little, several scraps of absorbent fabric heaped in her arms. "They told me... I brought the... um. Your Lordship," she managed, hesitantly extending the armload of... towels, Kain supposed.

"Enter." Kain stepped to the side, as much as possible in the tiny room. "You will assist the boy in cleaning himself." There, problem solved.

The wench stunk of terror, the scent heightening by the moment as she bit at her lip and moved to tug off Rahab's clothing with careful hands. The fear was distracting, bothersome for its allure, and Kain paced back to the window when it appeared that the tavern wench knew what she was doing.

From the snatches Kain could catch of the quiet conversation in the tavern below, it seemed that rumors as to Kain's intent and powers were spreading rapidly. This could be of some use -- fearful humans were typically both more predictable and more tractable -- but would limit the time Kain could keep Rahab here. If the Sarafan, or whatever organization passed for law in this place, hadn't been summoned already, they would be soon enough.

And he dared not risk that the humans would, in their dread, take up arms against Kain. There was no danger to Kain himself, of course, but the boy was a different matter. One stray strike would be all it would take to...

When Kain made no motion, simply stood staring out into the rain, the tavern wench and the boy began to speak quietly, presuming their exchange masked by the sloshing water. The boy was crying very softly, fearfully, as he related the events of the past hour. Strange that the whore might have been less frightened if Kain had used him -- after all, at least the boy would then have then known what to expect. In retrospect, Kain realized that had he a more kindly countenance, the woman might have come to the conclusion that he was feeding and bathing the child out of some manner of compassion. But kindness was not exactly a frequent grace upon Kain's features, whether he wore a human form or no. So, again in retrospect, it should have been obvious that she would put together the rumors she'd heard about what warlocks did -- sacrifices to demons, cannibalism, necromancy and the like -- and the child's fear, and make some very dire infurances.

But Kain would never, could never, have imagined that in a place like this, under circumstances such as these, the wench's human pity would lead her to make such a noble, altruistic, self-sacrificing gesture.

The wench attempted to drown Rahab.

Without a word, the scent of her terror peaking, she shoved the boy's head under the soapy water. And there were a few moments, before the boy's heart rate sped, before he began to thrash, in which Kain was not concerned; assumed that the wench was merely rinsing the boy. It wasn't until Kain turned and found the wench glaring up at him in defiant fear, holding Rahab underwater, that he realized exactly what was happening.

He had the woman's neck snapped between his fingers in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He hauled her back from the tub in one fist, jerking the twitching body upright, and plunged his other hand into the water, heedless of the blistering burn, and dragged Rahab out by the upper arm. The crack of Rahab's thin humerus snapping was as hollow and dull to Kain's senses as the realization of his error. The boy struggled weakly, gasping for air, Kain's grip around his now-broken arm doubtless agonizing. But he didn't start screaming... until he realized what dangled lifelessly from Kain's other hand.

Even with a half-drowned, injured, wailing whore in one blistering and smoking hand, a dead wench in the other, Kain still heard a pair of humans approach the door to the small room, could sense the mortals even before one began pounding on the door.

"Your Lordship? The minstrel is here, an' I brought him, 'jist as you says. Should I..." The innkeeper was, of course, mindlessly insistent. "By the nine, what is going on in there?" interjected another voice, sounding shocked.

Damnation.

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Thanks to Nemi, for helping to hash out ideas. Huge thankings to all the reviewers, for giving me the kick in the pants I needed to get stuff written! Strati, you are for awesomeness. ;)