Title: Mourner's Dawn
Author: Kytten
Pairing: Lucien Lachance/OMC
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Author's Note: Pheonica's chapter!
May was not too keen on letting him down, apparently, as a half hour later all the blood he possessed had pooled to his head and Bosmeri killers were filing in, giggling as they danced past him.
Stupid, really to think they wouldn't have an absurd trap of some sort. It was practically outlined in their nature.
"May," he called piteously, having lost his dignity somewhere after the sixth dancing Bosmer. "I shall never speak to you again if you don't let me down. You'll fail as an assassin."
He heard barely stifled giggling from all corners and felt absolutely ridiculous. Had the rope caught around both ankles, he could have swung himself up and untied it. But it'd only caught one, unfortunately, and his other leg was beginning to ache.
"Didn't you bring your sword?" May asked, peeking around the corner.
Vicente glared at her, arms crossed. He'd had it strapped to his back when he came down, but being the wrong side up had altered that a bit. He was far too high up to reach it. Though even had his head scraped the floor, it was three feet away.
"May, get me down."
"Why didn't you dance?"
"May."
But she was grinning, very smug in his success, dancing around him to better look him in the face.
"Why didn't you dance?" she asked, punctuating each word with a poke to the chest. "You were obviously following me, so you must have seen me dance."
"I do not dance. And could you not have invested in a guardian?"
"Guardians stink," May said, crinkling her nose.
"Not nearly so effective either," came a new, authoritative voice.
Vicente smiled, recognizing the woman before he saw her.
"Hello, Sabine. Good to see you made it back from Solstheim."
May had never seen the woman before, but she was beautiful. Dark hair had been pulled back into a no-nonsense bun; her eyes, both green and brown glittered with some left over enchantment. Powerfully built and gracefully aged, she did not look like a woman to tangle with.
"Hello, Vicente." There was something vaguely familiar about this woman's purr of an accent. "What's this nonsense about my brother coming back from the dead?"
It was hard riding in the opposite direction when Lucien wanted nothing more than to curl up next to Sam as he slept.
With Ocato… he's slept with Ocato. What a taint.
To hold that slim little body to him again, to keep him close, to know that Sam was his.
He's mine. I'll make him mine. I'll win him.
Lucien clenched his teeth and pressed on harder. This horse was by no means Shadowmare's match, but fast as far as legion horses went in his experience.
Samwane. Perfect little imp…
His perfect little imp. Sleeping with a lecher of an Altmer. Lucien closed his eyes a minute, forcing away that haunting image in favor of something better.
Sam, exhausted, asleep in his bed, pretty little nose scrunched at something in a dream.
It was a flickering, fading thing, but it comforted him.
Act like a man, something hissed at him. Pining after that Bosmer like some forgotten woman.
A deep breath, Vicente's trick— in through the mouth, out through the nose.
Lucien set his jaw, pressing everything away until he was blank. A tired old assassin's trick. Become inhuman to kill a human. It'd served him so well in the past it'd become him. He was cold, remorseless, sensual, carnal, and never, never, did he pity or regret. Guilt was foreign, an enemy he'd never had to face.
And all it took was a single, grinning Bosmer to shatter all that. Only a boy who took pleasure in painting on his guardian's skulls, in putting perfume in his sheets so he reeked the next morning… simple little things, but they meant the world to him.
How long since someone had been brave enough to toy with him?
Since someone would fight him without fearing his wrath?
Since someone could face that wrath and still steal his every ingredient the next day?
How long since someone had refused his bed in favor of another's?
How long since he'd lost a lover to a mer centuries older?
The Old Home was still hours away, he noted, stirring from his thoughts long enough to see the road. He had miles of this torment yet.
How old is Sam?
The thought gave him pause. As a Bosmer, he could be anywhere from eighteen to two hundred. There was no way of knowing. It was fully possible Sam was a child twice his age.
Lucien smiled at the thought, at the contradictions that made up his whirlwind little Bosmer. It was odd… odder still the fact Sam could call back the dead. How long did a creature like that fight death?
His mate, Ocato had said. Possibly forced by circumstance but his nonetheless. What happened after twenty years? After forty? When he died again, in permanence, what happened to Sam?
Would he drag him under?
The thought comforted him in its selfishness. Perhaps in forty years, he'd lose whatever scrap he possessed capable of captivating an elf. But in death…
In death there was nothing Ocato could offer that he could not.
Sabine laughed, leaning back in her chair.
"That little Bosmer of his? You're certain?"
May nodded, grinning at the woman's contagious laughter.
"He had a hell of a time carrying him. Lucien's nearly twice his size."
"He has grown rather too fond of sweets in his old age, hasn't he?" she smiled, chuckling to herself. "And Samwane has the gift? Odd that he carries a woman's magic."
May shrugged.
"Could be he's simply the first man smart enough to use it."
"I resent that." Vicente played wounded, but the smile ruined the effect. "Keep in mind neither of you have ever managed—"
"Yes, yes, Vicente," Sabine waved him off with a smile. "We can't all be three hundred year old men blessed with vampiric strength."
May giggled.
"A three hundred year old man that gets himself suspended from the ceiling."
Laughing, Vicente leaned forward from his seat to tug lightly at one of her errant curls.
"May I remind you who it was recently dangling from my ceiling?"
"It's not polite to hang innocent young maids from the ceiling, you ass," May said, hiding a smile as she slapped his hand away.
Sabine tossed back her head as she laughed.
"You two are precious. Absolutely perfect. Nice to see you finally found a woman to give you back your own, Vicente."
Hieronymus finally reached Bravil, grumbling to himself about temperamental horses and idiotic highwaymen. He was limping where his horse had thrown him at the sight of one, dressed in such an outlandish hodgepodge of armor as to be absolutely ridiculous.
That one had run off, shouting something about mudcrabs he wasn't entirely certain applied to him. It was a mile further down the road where he'd caught up with the rest of the mad group he'd run into trouble.
Or rather they'd run into him and found trouble.
Hieronymus frowned at the huge black horse in the stables. There was no question to it. She was most certainly Sam's. But she was different today, anxious. Barely gave him or his steed a glance, only continued on staring at the gates, prancing from one end of the corral to the other. She was eerily intelligent, he knew. For her to be acting like this meant something had gone wrong.
Hand straying to his sword out of habit, he made his way in through the gates.
"Excuse me," he said to the gate guard in his most official bark. "Captain Lex of the Imperial City guard. I'm looking for a certain Bosmer."
"Yeah?" The guard looked up before he could properly finish. "Red hair? All in black?"
"You've seen him."
"Aye. Collapsed in the road a few hours past. Some other bloke in back collected him before I could."
That explained a lot.
"Where's he taken him?"
"Off in there," he nodded towards Silverhome-on-the-Water. "Came out without him. Figure he's got the boy set up in there."
"And he's gone?"
"The Bosmer? No, still in there far as I can tell. His friend's gone off though."
Hieronymus smiled. His job had just gotten intensely easier.
Sam woke up dazed and confused, staring at the ceiling of an inn he didn't recognize. There was a chest of drawers shoved up against the door, windows locked, his curtains drawn.
He didn't remember doing any of it.
What he remember was a sudden burst of white hot pain, vision destroyed in favor of beautiful, vibrant colors, the second before he passed out.
"I don't think you understand," he heard from outside. "I'm under orders from the High Chancellor himself to return this man."
Hieronymus. Silently, he stole from the bed, shoving on his boots and cloak.
"Sorry, sir. But I have a policy to upkeep. No one disturbs the guests."
Quickly as he could, he made the bed. Let Hieronymus think he'd been wrong— that the room had been empty, only strangely barred.
"Sir, if you do not remove yourself immediately, I'll have no choice but to put you under arrest."
"All this trouble over a man that may not be here. How can you be so certain this Bosmer is the one you want?"
Sam unlocked the window and scrambled out onto the very convenient trellis.
"Gilgondorin, by order of—"
Shutting the window on what was probably the poor Altmer's arrest, Sam cloaked himself in shadows and slipped off into the night.