Work Text:
I'm Lechery a Luscious Hore
***
“I am thine, Hâkim.”
So; he had found his pawn, or one of them. Now in the close dark his eyes appraised the small body and face revealed by the brazier's glow. He was searching for – something. Nothing. His logic had conducted him, step by inexorable step, to the conclusion that no witness to the chain of events that had led this child here, the other one there, still lived. Looks meant nothing, size meant nothing, age could not be determined. It was not possible to know this thing; he had decided for himself that it did not matter. A child was a child. And yet, he was searching.
Slight, fine-boned to the point of scrawniness – but that could be the result of neglect. A superficial listlessness gave the child an appearance of sullen manners, distraction, and slow wits, but the restless fidgeting of one hand belied an underlying energy. This boy had learned self-restraint at the age of – two? Three? But he wore his placid mask poorly. Fear stared out through the eyes, huge, cringing eyes with long, dark lashes. Stained dark by artifice – they must be, on someone so fair. Francis Crawford stared into a blue that did not quite mirror his own and received, impassively, a gaze that neither flinched nor wavered, but merely submitted.
The hair glimmered bright gold in the low light. It was thin and silken, wind-blown like a wisp of cloud. The color told him nothing. He had already noted the bruises and the slight rawness of the lower lip – chapped by the wind or worn by nervous teeth, he couldn't tell. Other explanations, too, had occurred to him.
That was all the examination told him: small, fair, and terrified. Not much of a case for paternity. Still, he felt – naggingly – that there should be something, subtle perhaps, but extant; some clue, at least, if proof was impossible. He leaned closer, bracing himself with a hand on the floor, and realized his mistake instantly when the child trembled.
“I am thine, Hâkim,” Khaireddin whispered, bowing to kiss his exposed wrist. Lymond flinched; a bitter convulsion burned his throat. It took an effort not to make a sound. But Khaireddin had already shrunk back, fearful and baffled that what he had been taught, what must be his usual guarantee of safety, had resulted in unexpected rejection.
“I am good, I am good, I am good,” the child was whispering under his breath. A charm, a prayer for pity.
“Thou art good,” Lymond replied. “We are in agreement that it is true. Art thou afraid?”
The child peeked at him. “Not afraid. Only good.”
“So may it always be. We shall be friends, Khaireddin.”
His only answer was another hollow-eyed stare. He hoped the damage could be undone, and that he could, if not protect the boy from harm, protect him from death long enough to take him to where he could recover, in time.
For now, he could only attempt to spin a thread of trust between them. And he could not be too kind, too much of a friend, or Khaireddin would respond as he had been taught. Even so limited, however, he was not without resources.
“Tell me, dost thou enjoy music?”
***
And Love and Lounge in Lassitude
***
The arrangement proved more trying than he'd expected. A mask of bland detachment hid his contempt for Názik's man when he came to deliver his charge. This was no challenge; he relished the deception. The child, however – Lymond hadn't hoped that he would heal in these brief hours, mere stolen moments wedged between days of rote suffering. But he was surprised at how deeply that suffering pained him. Though he avoided thinking of Khaireddin as his child, he found himself, with aching perseverance, attempting to find gaps in the boy's trained behavior, his armor of clumsy and obscene performance – even though he knew the armor existed for good reason.
It was Mikál who suggested that he take the opium he now required during Khaireddin's visits. Lymond saw the reason in it: to feed this new, degrading hunger, he needed the privacy and respite from constant vigilance. Nor could he deny that it made things easier, pain more distant and thought more brilliantly lucid.
And so the winter wind blew through Constantinople and the room breathed like a cocoon, heavy and peaceful. His fingers moved slow as honey on strings and it seemed that the words of his songs and not the coals in the brazier warmed the air. He sang childish melodies, hoping to awaken a glimmer of childishness in the boy sitting quietly, not playing, not moving, at his feet.
"Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera
Dios guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera
Dios guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera
"Pues que ya tenemos lo que desseamos,
Todos juntos vamos presentes llevemos;
Todos le daremos nuestra voluntad,
Pues a se igualar con el hombre viniera."
Khaireddin never sang. Instead, he would tilt his head to the side and offer a vacant smile, as if happy but uncomprehending. His gaze, however, would follow the hands on the lute with obsessive avidity from beneath half-closed eyelids. When offered the instrument, he only bowed to the floor and repeated his talisman over and over: I am good. I am good, good. Hâkim. Only after the music resumed would any spark of genuine animation return. Then he fidgeted, cast stealthy glances around the room, edged closer to the brazier, or sometimes moved his lips silently as if whistling under his breath.
In the hazy grip of opium, this elicited only calm consideration. Afterward, he felt a driving sense of urgency to find something – anything – to engage Khaireddin's interest. To draw him out of the ill-fitting armor. Dice he merely stared at, making no move to touch them. When given a top, he spun it a few times with an air of mature politeness, then handed it back with a duck of his head. In the end, it was a small flute that woke a spark of eagerness in his eyes; but when offered it, he shrank away.
“I cannot play. Music is for lords. Thou canst play it, Hâkim?”
“Yes, I can play. Would a song cheer thee?”
Khaireddin nodded and sat back on his heels, returning his gaze to the floor.
Playing the whistle took little effort, and Lymond's attention, heightened and hazy, wandered away from the notes he was playing. It was an old song, a lullaby. He heard the words in his head.
"Il n’est mie jours,
Savourouze au cors gent ;
Si m’aït Amor
L’alowette nos mant."
When the verse came to an end, he started from the beginning. He had noticed, part-way through the first refrain, a soft hum following the melody. It buzzed, jolting along start-stop start-stop, a bumblebee's path through unfamiliar territory. Each pitch, Lymond noted, resonated in perfect, unconscious harmony with his own. It was only the rhythm that separated them, the tempo. Khaireddin didn't follow him, but stumbled along in his own time.
Lymond played on, coaxing. The humming neither stopped nor increased. Khaireddin was no longer staring at the floor; his eyes had wandered to the sliver of wintery sunset peeking from between the curtains. He seemed to be dreaming, gaze distant and unfocused, but the tension had eased from his mouth and shoulders. Perhaps his usual nightmare had drifted for a moment into a more peaceful reverie.
Lymond played until his mouth ran dry. He had not reached the end of his repertoire when the time came for Khaireddin to go. For once, the boy didn't simper – merely wished him farewell in the usual mannered words and followed the man who had come for him reluctantly, but obediently. With a quixotic sense of powerlessness, Lymond delayed them, negotiating as long as possible for the time of the next meeting. He succeeded in buying an extra hour; the flesh dealers appreciated consistent customers.
Only when he returned to the room, illuminated by the hollow clarity that heralded the end of an opium session, did he realize that his small flute had disappeared.
***
But I, dear Luck, will lead you all
***
Khaireddin took other things. Not everything; he was selective. He never allowed himself to be seen and he never mentioned the flute or the string of beads or the seashells he carried away with him again. One might have thought they were disappearing into nothing if it had not been perfectly obvious that Khaireddin was taking them. The boy presumably thought he was stealing. Any attempt to broach the subject would no doubt result in a return of the submissive terror that had gradually ebbed, though not quite disappeared. Well; let the child take in secrecy what Lymond would have given openly. The result was the same, and results were his first mandate.
“The boy is clever,” Mikál said while they waited for Khaireddin to arrive. “He has a clever mind and clever fingers. When he is grown, he shall be more dangerous than people judge him to be. Unlike his father, who appears quite as dangerous as he is.”
“What a relief; he won't need our help then,” Lymond said caustically. The time of the appointment had passed and the boy had not yet been brought. An itch crawled under his skin. Opium. Perhaps. The day was colder than usual. He did not pace; he gave no outward sign of emotional or physical discomfort. How farcical it was that Khaireddin could spirit things away with such perfect stealth, while Lymond, fortified by wealth and titles and strategy, could not steal the boy himself. Not without paying an unacceptable price. He could only wait and hope that luck would favor them.
The boy arrived after the hour, head down and shaking, on the heels of his escort. Before Lymond could launch an icy rebuke at the delay, Khaireddin clasped his hand, half-hanging from his arm on limp legs. He kissed the palm, wrist, and inner elbow, as he had not since the first day.
“I am sorry, Hâkim; I shall be good, I shall be good forever! Here are my kisses; give me thine.”
Lymond extricated himself. He did not look at the boy. “Why are you late?” he demanded of Názik's man.
“Názik sends his apologies, Efendi,” the man said. “It was discovered that the boy had stolen from you. He has been chastised and the items recovered.” He handed over a small sack. Lymond didn't bother to look inside.
“These trinkets are of no consequence. Do not be late again. I require the full time agreed upon.”
“Have no fear, Efendi. You shall receive what you have paid for.”
Khaireddin did not speak until the man had departed. Then he turned pleading eyes on Lymond. “Forgiveness, beautiful Hâkim. I am not bad.”
“Thou dost not require forgiveness,” Lymond said. “The things were thine. I intended them to be.”
But Khaireddin only stood stiff-backed in the center of the room and looked at him with that empty, hopeless gaze. In his abject acceptance of guilt there was a weight that seemed – familiar. Once again, Lymond had the sensation of staring into a mirror, cracked and distorted, but still true in essence.
“The things were thine, great Hâkim. I, too, am thine.”
More than ever before, the words repulsed him. He felt a surge of nausea. The child had spoken as if in reply to his thoughts. A hammer blow of surprise smashed the detachment he'd cultivated so carefully and, unguarded, he could suddenly see the truth of it. The insight shook him; he rang with agony like battered steel. Whether or not he had actually fathered this child, or the other one, or either or neither of them – was not this one the reflection of himself? What was blood when you shared a stronger bond: the common experience of bargaining away everything. He had sold himself and accepted the responsibility for doing so, and here the same forces worked busily on Khaireddin. If the child was too young to realize it, Lymond could recognize it in both of them. And if Khaireddin was not born Lymond's son, he had become so.
“Mikál,” Lymond said. He did not have to look to know that Mikál would fetch the opium without further instruction. He seated himself on the carpet, welcoming the shadows at the edge of the brazier's light.
“Sit,” he said to Khaireddin. “Forgiveness is thine. All is forgotten. We shall play music, as before. All will be well.”
He would have to start from the beginning. The seeds of trust they had planted could not be entirely blighted; he would find that fragile bond again and strengthen it, for as long as it took. Khaireddin was young enough to recover. He could be saved.
If they only had time. If they only had luck.
He played the lute and watched his son's downcast eyes.
***
Till Little-looked for Death appeared.