originally posted february 2011 (idea originally conceived 2005!)
for Cairnsy. warnings for Shydeman/Kai-stern and minor tentacles.
title from Joanna Klink's 'I Would Remain With You By Night'
i.
It took only three minutes, seconds that passed in crazy flashes of blood, steel and screaming. Ruwalk looked dead, Lykouleon like he wished he was. Alfeegi was flittering around with any semblance of calm long gone, his hair falling out of his neat ponytail and Ruwalk's blood smeared down his cheek. Tetheus was gone to secure the gates. Raseleane was in charge, ordering bandages and slings and trolleys.
Kai-stern leaned against the wall and felt oddly detached. He stretched his hands out before him. One was white and the other was red. Some little slip of a thing tugged at his sleeve and he let her wrap his arm.
Somebody took Ruwalk away on a stretcher. He didn't look to see which way they went, towards the infirmary or the mortuary.
"Debrief," Alfeegi said curtly. He had fixed his hair but hadn't washed his face. The incongruity almost made him smile until he remembered. He followed Alfeegi into a little room filled with hastily arranged chairs and ashen faces. Just looking at them all made him feel tired. Tetheus was back, the contours of his face more tightly-hewn than normal. Kai-stern looked at his dark eyes and wondered if he felt guilty.
Lykouleon and Raseleane were talking in hushed voices. Alfeegi joined them and the conversation went up an octave. Kai-stern sat next to Tetheus and felt a visceral thrill run through him.
Lykouleon closed his eyes very tightly and swallowed very hard before he turned to face them all. He gripped Raseleane's hand, and she leaned against him.
"I have transformed the creature..." Kai-stern's stomach jolted, "into a child." Lykouleon paused, gathering his words and his elegant composure. "I am consulting with you all for formality, but I intend to raise him as my own. He is my blood."
No one else would have noticed, but Tetheus started, the merest suggestion of ripple beneath leather. Kai-stern was mildly intrigued. It was the most emotion he had seen Tetheus show so far.
A strange sickness had settled in Kai-stern's belly at Lykouleon's words, the very finality of them. A mass of writhing worms, nibbling at his guts. He tried to imagine the thing laughing, crying, eating lollies, and failed. That Lykouleon could perform such magic seemed unspeakable, although it was the same magic he had used on Kai-stern. But his people didn't make a habit of eating others.
"Are you sure, Lykouleon?" Kai-stern said, amazed that the words came out of his mouth. Alfeegi was even more amazed, mouth flapping soundlessly. Lykouleon had always welcomed their input, but it was the first time Kai-stern had questioned him directly.
"Is there a problem, Kai-stern?" Lykouleon said, the green of his eyes withering.
Sometimes he almost thought he could smell it on Tetheus, that certain stench of blood and things long dead and decaying. He had learned at a young age to avoid caverns and dark places where the stink lingered. Would the kid smell the same?
"I wonder if this is a wise idea."
Tetheus stiffened beside him. Of course. To deny the child was to deny Tetheus. And yet Tetheus said nothing.
"It is non-negotiable," Lykouleon said, and left the room, Alfeegi following. His shoulders were those of someone who would not allow themselves to say what they wanted to say. Kai-stern was alone with Tetheus, and his stomach lurched.
"It was very kind of His Majesty to take me in," Tetheus said. If it had been anyone else, Kai-stern would have said, miserably.
"Let's face it, if you'd had the choice you would have left yourself for dead." Tetheus didn't flinch or deny it. Kai-stern got up to go. "And you would have been right."
ii.
"No," Kai-stern said, watching the disappointment spread across Jadie's face, tinged with anger. "You know I can't." He stood up and peeked out of the alley. No one was around at this time, just the two of them and the old, leaking barrels of wine, but that only made it even more suspicious. Government officials, as much as the title didn't suit him, should not be found holed up in dark alleys.
"I'm not asking for much," Jadie said desperately. "Here, I can pay." His pockets clinked audibly, and he started to withdraw an embroidered pouch from his pocket.
"Put that back!" Kai-stern hissed, forcing his hand down and checking again, compulsively, that no one had seen. "Are you trying to get me fired?"
"You said you'd help!" Jadie hissed back. "Isn't that what you said when you left? That if we ever needed anything we could come to you?"
"I said I'd do everything I could, I'm not a bloody miracle worker. You could bribe me all you like and it wouldn't help." Kai-stern took the opportunity to stuff the purse deep down in Jadie's pocket. "Look, I know you guys want this, and I'm trying, okay? I voted for it, okay? But I'm only one person and my vote doesn't count for that much."
"You promised," Jadie said, sullen, every word a drop of acid. "You promised you would take care of us. All of us."
Kai-stern thought of the money he sent back to his mother every month (how long again since he had seen her? Dragons had such different ways of thinking about time); the three new human scribes that had been hired at the castle in the past five years; the human emancipation legislation that had been rejected for three years in a row, but by fewer votes each time. Progress? At reptile pace. Lykouleon would share his frustrations over mulled wine, or something stronger, but whether he truly understood was another thing.
"My niece has the cough, you know," Jadie said, his eyes fixed on Kai-stern's. There was a scientific name for it Kai-stern had learned in the castle's books, but it only affected humans. "Aunt can't afford to buy the medicine for her."
Kai-stern watched one of the split barrels bleed slow, dark rivulets over the gravel.
"There's someone I know in Chantel. Likes throwing his weight around. Cashed up, but no brains."
Jadie was polite enough not to smile. His fingers dipped back into his pocket.
"Keep it. Use it to buy Kayla's medicine. They pay me too much as it is." He pulled his cap down over his forehead and his muffler up over his face.
"I can't believe you still have that thing," Jadie said in parting, slipping out of the alleyway first after checking that the coast was clear.
Alone in the alley, Kai-stern fingered the tattered wool as he started on the long walk back to the castle.
Ten years had it been, already? She would be fifty-four now.
iii.
pHe'd kept it together, made his reports, listened to Alfeegi. Tasted the dust of travel coating his throat. Played with castle kids, read enough stories to make himself hoarse; sweet-talked a few politicians. Made a good impression, and the rumours about him had started to die down, back to nothing that no one never said back home. Kai-stern had been so good for so long it was starting to itch, a little fuzz around the edge of his conscience, a little ache in his bones.
It was probably not the best idea he'd ever had but the town was dead, and he wouldn't be getting any information if people weren't loosened up enough to talk. He had never seen anyone with the same colour hair as him before. The man caught his gaze and looked him up and down casually. Nothing that didn't happen in a bar, but it made him feel naked, flesh peeled back off bone. He smiled a shark's grin and rose one eyebrow in the direction of his drink.
Lykouleon would never know, and Kai-stern had finished his anyway, had been feeling the coins in his pocket to see if there was enough for another, and the man looked like he had money, all that perfectly-groomed white hair and matching robes without a single wrinkle when Kai-stern had come into this life creased. Kai-stern sauntered over and pulled up the barstool next to him, a few lines ready to roll off his tongue, and got the shock of the night when he caught a good look at those eyes up close. They weren't dark brown but crimson, bloody and bright in his pale glowing face, like Tetheus' when the heat was on.
"This isn't your part of town," he said casually as his drink came up. Just the way he liked it, so the demon had been watching him for a while.
"Business," he said, and his voice was soft and pleasant enough. "A matter I had to discuss with a client," like he was nothing but an accountant. "Yourself?"
"Business," he tossed back with a gulp of his drink. The fumes burned his eyes. "I'm looking for information."
"Oh?" he said, and raised one aristocratic eyebrow. "Perhaps we can talk upstairs. An exchange of ideas could be... mutually satisfying," It was the most elegantly-worded come-on he'd heard for a long, long time; it was the first come-on he'd heard in a long, long time.
Kai-stern finished his drink in a long drag that scorched all the way down his throat and slammed it down on the counter. His companion was up the stairs, graceful despite the volume of material swirling around his feet, and frankly Kai-stern felt wobbly. A little too much to drink, he thought, and then he was being pressed up against the door and he really wasn't thinking much at all.
"Your colouring is unusual," the man murmured against his neck, a hint of scratching fangs. "Quite eyecatching." He popped Kai-stern's buttons expertly and the jeans hit the ground. "What do you like?"
"Don't really care," he mumbled, and felt the imprint of a fanged smile on the back of his neck. One of the claws tagged him as he was rearranged, and he felt blood running down his forearm. The demon followed it with his tongue, warm and scratchy like a cat's. Kai-stern's head was pleasantly thick and fuzzy, his blood blaring danger and he muted it, dampened it down to a humming he could ignore.
"Then allow me," and he was being held by something that was no longer hands, winding sinuously around his wrists, smooth evergreen tendrils slightly warm against his skin. He jerked by reflex, and they tightened.
"You look like you have something you need to forget," the demon purred in his ear. "Let me help you clear your mind."
True to his word, the demon gave no quarter and Kai-stern was unable to think of anything except keeping his mouth shut. He dressed afterwards in a fog, finding it difficult to coordinate fingers and buttons.
"Shall I go down first?" the demon said in his high, cool voice. "It was a pleasure doing business with you," he said, straightening his collar fastidiously. "Dragon Officer Kai-stern."
iv.
They stood in silence for a while. Kai-stern fiddled with the wrapper on his sword. Silence was one thing when you were always alone, but with someone else he felt compelled to fill in the gaps.
He—Lykouleon—finally turned around when the dust had died down. "Well, how about it?" he said with his big golden smile.
"About what?" Kai-stern said blankly. Lykouleon's grin got even larger.
"I have a position open at the castle, and I believe I know just the person for the job." He raised one elegant eyebrow.
Kai-stern looked at Lykouleon: tall and straight and gleaming, not a hair out of place, and then at himself. His wrist ached a little. And then at the village ahead of them, sinking into twilight as the sun greyed out.
"No thanks," he said. He stuck the sword down the back of his shirt in a makeshift sheath. Lykouleon's smile flickered slightly. "Stuff I have to do. You know."
"I see," Lykouleon said, like he didn't at all, but then that close-eyed smirk was back in place. "Well, thank you very much for your assistance today, then. I'll compensate you, of course—"
Kai-stern snatched the purse. "Yeah, well, you don't have to say thank you or anything. I was just bored, that's all."
"Naturally. Well, then, Shin, we must be going," Lykouleon said, scratching the little dragon on his shoulder. "Do take care of yourself, Kai-stern."
"Whatever," he said with practiced disregard, and then he started to walk away. He felt Lykouleon's eyes between his shoulderblades, but he never turned back.
-fin-