"Wait outside," snarled Kain, loudly enough to be heard through the door and the screaming. He tossed the tavern wench's body aside with effortless strength. It struck the bedframe with a crack, limp as a ragdoll, tumbling down to the floor where it might, with luck, be out of the view of someone standing in the doorway.

Predictably, the boy's crying intensified. Oh, for the love of the Pillars... "Silence, wretch," Kain hissed more softly as he gathered Rahab up around the waist with great care, releasing his broken arm, "or I will inflict still worse upon you." The boy had shown a great deal of will to remain among the living, and Kain countinged on that now.

It worked. In a manner of speaking. The wails faded to soft sobbing as Kain set Rahab's small body cautiously on the straw-stuffed mattress. Black bruises were already forming on the boy's arm, around the break. Between the bed 'linens' and the rags that were evidently meant to serve as towels, it was difficult to say which was the cleaner. Kain twisted the fabric of space to open one of his dimensional pockets, reached out, and seized the first piece of cloth that came to hand, producing a cape of fine, deep red wool as if from thin air. He draped it around the boy's shaking shoulders. The cape was meant to adorn a vampire lord nearly seven feet tall; its folds swallowed the little human.

"Keep quiet," Kain warned softly, before he stalked to the door. The corpulent innkeep was still in the hallway, arguing with the minstrel, trying to persuade the man to stay. Kain jerked the door open, keeping his still-blistered right hand hidden behind it.

"Oh, your Lordship!" the inkeeper exclaimed. "I were just..."

"Your coin," said Kain, fingers dipping into the pouch at his belt. He pinched the small piece of silver hard to deform the stamp and dropped it, still warm, into the man's plump hand. "Now leave."

Rahab was still snuffling softly. The innkeep's piggish eyes narrowed craftily as he craned his neck, trying to look beyond Kain. "Your lordship, I's afraid there will be an extra charge, if ye kill the..."

Kain toyed briefly with the option of rending the sordid innkeep into scraps of meat. The problem therein lay in the fact that Kain had no way to know what the timestream would make of the act. This was not, after all, an era in which Kain was destined to be. If he destroyed or disrupted a vital event or life, would he be cast out of this era? Until he found someplace safe to leave Rahab, Kain could not permit that to happen. Killing the tavern wench had resulted in no harm, but was that simply because she was of no import in the skein of history? "Get out," Kain snarled, reinforcing the order with a pulse of finely-woven power. The innkeeper, bowing and scraping, backed away clutching his coin, and turned to totter down the stairs. Kain turned his attention to the bard. "You, however... will remain."

"Now, wait just a minu..." the minstrel was a relatively small man, fairly slender. He wore a long, belted tunic and trousers in well-worn, graying blue, damp with the rain. By his dress, Kain knew him a minor country bard, rather than a player favored by any particular court. Kain locked gazes with the human, and the mortal's voice trailed off, his outraged face going blank, eyes unblinking and unfocussed.

Dumbly, the bard stepped into the room, and Kain shut the door behind. "Remove your clothing," Kain commanded, more for Rahab's benefit than the minstrel's. If the boy thought Kain's more mundane magical abilities dreadful, Kain saw no reason to offer up yet greater reason for fear.

Rahab huddled down in the folds of the warm, soft woolen cloak, gathering one corner a little closer, his eyes wide and his left arm carefully limp. There was a certain dull acceptance in his eyes, as if he knew full well what Kain meant for the minstrel to do.

Kain ignored the boy while he inspected the minstrel's discarded tunic. As repugnant as Kain found the idea of playing the role of a common highwayman, it would be, quite simply, an arid day in the Lake of the Dead before he put Rahab back into the filthy, stinking, lousey rags the boy had been wearing. The minstrel's clothing was... tolerable, at least, smelling more of horse than of man. It would have to do. Kain ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of the shirt, and turned to Rahab while the minstrel continued to disrobe. "Can you move your left arm?" Kain demanded. While Kain was rather more familiar with injuries in adult rather than juvenile humans, the pattern of bruising and the fact that the broken limb was not deformed suggested a greenstick fracture, or partial break. At the boy's faint nod, he carefully settled the tunic over Rahab's head.

The garment was meant for a man of relatively small build; still, it swamped Rahab. After a few moments, the boy tentatively slipped first his right, then, haltingly, his left arm into the sleeves. The cuffs extended some inches beyond the tips of his fingers.

Unwilling to chance resetting the broken bone - not certain that it needed resetting at all - Kain took up his long strip of fabric and began wrapping Rahab's arm, over the fabric of the sleeve, paying close and careful attention to the tightness of the binding. Another length of fabric ripped from the edge of Kain's cape served as a serviceable sling, tied just so. It was, frankly, the best Kain could do, under the circumstances. He was far better at taking humans apart than putting them back together.

Kain stepped back, considering the boy. Rahab sat confused and shivering, looking like nothing so much as a maimed and waifish scarecrow in too-large clothing. His wide-eyed gaze darted, from time to time, to the scrap of fabric just visible on the floor at the foot of the bed - a corner of the tavern wench's apron. If the boy would otherwise have protested the order to don another man's clothing, that sight kept him quiet. Rahab was presently trapped in a very small room with a cooling corpse, a naked minstrel, and Kain - he likely had more pressing concerns than the state of his dress.

There was, alas, no point in requiring Rahab to wear the minstrel's soft boots, for they were far too big, and the child seemed unaccustomed to wearing shoes in any case. The rain outside was beginning to ease, the moonlight growing a little brighter behind thinning clouds. Kain turned his attention to the minstrel himself.

Under any other circumstances, Kain would have simply stripped the man's memories and blood from his body, would have consumed both with relish. But if perchance the minstrel was of some importance, if the timestream rejected Kain's presence now... Kain snarled silently to himself. "Remain here until dawn," he ordered the minstrel, who nodded slowly. Such simple commands - compulsions - could be inserted into a human mind without causing undue damage. Kain glanced about, then picked up the remaining loaf of bread and tucked it away into a dimensional pocket, making it appear to vanish from his hand. He nodded to Rahab. "Come, boy."

Slowly, the boy gathered up Kain's red cloak, holding it loosely around his shoulders with his right hand. Even so, the edge dragged on the ground, as did the ragged hem of Rahab's new tunic. It was clear that the little mortal's pace would be straggling at best.

Kain was a mage of no small prowess, and he could cloak both himself and Rahab from the view of mortals quite easily... provided the boy did not stray far from his side. Kain sighed briefly, the corner of his lip twitching into a snarl of mild repugnance. And then he stooped down, scooping the boy up into the crook of his arm very carefully. "Do not expect that this shall be a frequent occurrence," Kain stated, as the boy gasped and wound his undamaged right arm instinctively around Kain's shoulders for balance.

Kain disliked handling humans under most circumstances. Oh, they made tolerable playthings to be sure, but they broke without warning, and so very easily. Rahab's tiny heart was hammering, and Kain could feel the rush of blood through the little human's arteries, could smell it through his skin...

Kain tucked the edge of his red shoulder cape a little closer around Rahab's shoulders, extending his awareness and his powers. The human minds around them were all quite soft, malleable, and it was simplicity itself to imprint his desire upon them, to cloak himself and the mortal he carried in the thin guise of illusionary unremarkability. The humans in the tavern's main room still whispered to one another, but not one of them noticed Kain descend the creaking stairs, carrying the human boy.

Unnoticed and unseen, Kain carried the little mortal out the tavern door, and into the dim and drizzling night.

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Thanks to Nemi, for the cowrite. Thank you, reviewers, for the kick in the butt! We'd never have gotten this far without you. If you have something you'd like to see, or just want to chat, drop me a line!