Quickburned

Blue

Five years ago...

Pain and terror woke him.

Pain, and terror, and smoke choking his lungs with heavy black weights.

He didn't remember dreaming. And any lingering visions fled with the jerk and movement of his body as it bolted downstairs for the way out, scattering papers in his wake. He cracked his head on the stairwell halfway down hard enough to flare his vision white with pain and made it through the front door half-blind.

It wasn't until he lay gasping in the dark street his wits returned. By then it was too late; smoke had followed him out the door and his childhood home erupted into memory-devouring inferno. Half the town behind it was also in flames, fanned by hot dry winds, and it wasn't only the remnant of salt and shame which made his face hot and his skin dry.

Something crackled in his hand. He still clutched one of his Ma's letters, the paper slightly damp from being held so tightly. He smoothed it out against his leg and folded it carefully, tucking it into his pocket.

Caleb watched the fire engulf the house, licking through the windows of the upper loft where he'd been just moments ago. There was no saving it. The roar of the flames sounded like accusation in his ears. You brought this here. Your fault, your fault.... This town was better off without you.

"That's as may be. Alright, Raith, now what," he muttered. The elements had no answer.

Sparks popped and embers flew upwards. Caleb heaved himself to his feet and left his Ma's house, heading west where the flames had not consumed and pulling Jack's shirt down over his raw back as he went. Reminded of the state of his skin, the rest of his body reasserted its needs; hunger and thirst and other pressing needs clawed for his attention. One of those was easily remedied; if pissing on their ornery neighbor's porch did nothing to halt the fire, it at least made the twelve-year-old him amused.

He had a vague notion of heading to the guild hall; no one was around to object to him taking what he needed to leave town, if there was even anything left at the town's mercantile. And even if they were about, he'd take it anyhow. It wouldn't be the first time.

Caleb never made it to the guild hall.

A flutter of blue in an alleyway stopped him like a punch to the gut.

Only the Silver Lady's grace even revealed it to him; a spear of moonlight through the tangle of surrounding buildings shone directly on the bit of cloth stirred by the winds. It gleamed on the curve of a shoulder and limned a hard angle of jaw, and Caleb broke into a run, shouting. He knew that particular blue, that jawline, that body, better than his own face.

"Sainen! Sainen—!"

His right-hand man did not move. Caleb skidded to a stop on his knees next to his partner and knew immediately, horribly, why. The sand beneath Sainen was dark and stiff with a terrifying amount of blood.

No, no, no no no not you too, Sainen...

There was a broken-off haft of a crossbow bolt in his friend's upper arm, another two in the back of his thigh, a handful of slices where more had grazed him—someone had used Sainen for target practice. He had seen Sainen dodge arrows with ease, but this...

"Sainen, c'mon, buddy, are ya with me?"

He's gone, and it's your fault...

Caleb shook his shoulder, cupped his hands around his friend's sharp-angled face. It was relaxed, far smoother than he'd ever seen, calm and almost... content. And cold. There was no living tension in his friend's flesh. No heartbeat beneath his fingers. No warm breath in his ears, silently laughing at some foolery of Caleb's.

Sainen was gone.

He leaned into his friend, pressed his face against Sainen's still chest, ignoring the stench of death and blood. Caleb's hands fisted in Sainen's yukata, the cotton of it growing quickly damp beneath his face. "No... oh gods, Sainen..."

How long he stayed that way, sobbing into his dead partner's chest, he didn't know. Long enough when he finally rocked back, his knees protested abuse and his legs shimmered with tiny pinprick pain as the blood rushed back into them.

Caleb pushed away, set his back to the alley wall and slumped there, suddenly helpless to move. How had this happened? None of those crossbow bolts had struck anything vital. Luck—gods, Luck, where was he? Where was the rest of the gang?—Luck would have had him patched up quick. Sainen would have hated being the invalid, but he would live.

There was a darker patch in the gray of Sainen's shirt, just below his sternum. A knife wound—a stab, deep and sure, straight to the heart. He knew that kind of wound. Made it, often.

Something else glittered in the shaft of moonlight by Sainen's right hand.

A knife. His knife. Locust wood and Lookshyan folded steel, inlaid with green stone and silver. The knife he'd carried since Deathwatch, since his brother had been killed in a beef-headed raid ought never have happened in the first place.

Like this one. Since Sainen was dead. His friend, his partner, his... lover. Was dead.

The blade was marred, blood looking black in the moonlight.

Acrid smoke crashed over him, dragging him down with despair and grief.

You killed me! That's your knife, your handiwork. Your fault... you killed me...

"No... No! Sai... I didn't... couldn't have..."

He groped for Sainen, fists curling in his shirt again, as if by the action he could force strength and life back into his partner's cool flesh. Something bit into his hand and he snatched them back. Beneath where his fingers had been lay the chip of blue crystal Sainen always wore, the one with the antelope petroglyph etched on one side. Its edge was stained where it had cut a clean slice across the palm of his left hand.

"Yeah," Caleb said around the lump of grief which had settled at the base of throat and refused to budge. His voice came out thick and muddled. "Yeah, I got it Sai. Gotta have the last word, huh."

He drew the chip on its cord from Sainen's neck and dropped it over his own, then climbed slowly to his feet. The guild hall wasn't far. His partner needed a shroud.