I shivered beneath 'Abd al-Rahman's grasp.

"Brother," I whispered, trying to compose myself in order to negotiate my release.

He backhanded me across the face, provoking a stream of blood from my lower lip.

"Your brother is dead," he whispered back. I took a moment to reminisce about the proud young boy I had met all those years back, and how much he had evolved under my guidance. How old was he now? A year shy twenty?

"Yet I see his fair face before me," I noted.

"Save me your honeyed words!" 'Abd al-Rahman bellowed at me, digging the knife deeper into my skin. I felt the warm blood trickle down my throat.

I spared a brief glance to my side, gauging how far away 'Abd al-Ka'aba was and whether he was able to intervene. I could not see him.

"You are my brother," I told him with a low, soothing voice. I knew 'Abd al-Rahman better than he knew himself. I knew he was gullible, weak-willed, small-minded with a high opinion of himself. I needed to use just the right words.

"You are my flesh and blood," I continued. "Time and again, you asked me whether I knew who you were."

Son of no one, fatherless, motherless bastard.

"Whether I knew whose son you are."

Father killing demented little shit.

"But have you ever stopped to think it is them that ought to be proud of their link to you, 'Abd al-Rahman? As I am? You will be the greatest warrior in these lands, 'Abd al-Rahman, once I temper you. Join me in Mu'awiyah's court, 'Abd al-Rahman."

"You lie because you are in a vulnerable state," he accused me.

I rejoiced at the brief hint of self-doubt I caught in his tone.

"Vulnerable state, brother? You know me to be vulnerable? I taught you all you know. You think I cannot escape this hold if I wished it?"

In truth, 'Abd al-Rahman was a hulking brute and he had a dagger pressed to my throat. Any wrong movement would render me dead or severely injured. He needn't know that, though. I tried to push away any desperation from my voice.

"What I wish is for you to flourish, 'Abd al-Rahman. I saw you transition from boy to man, and gods, what a transition it has been! I want you to mentor my sons in the same manner, 'Abd al-Rahman. Their uncle. Together, we can be an unstoppable force!"

"Your sons are dead boys walking!" his face flushed red, his eyes venomous. I maintained my steadiness.

"My boys can become testimony to your prowess. Make the correct decision, 'Abd al-Rahman. Abandon this newfound cult of yours and join us. With what you know of them, we can scour them of Arabia and Syria, send them all to the afterlife, where they belong."

"Join you? After you betrayed me time and again?" he dug the dagger deeper.

"I did not...did not betray," I could barely speak. I was wheezing out words. "It was all part of a process to forge a man out of you. Make you a warrior using fire and blood. And tragedy!"

'Abd al-Rahman started shaking and his eyes glistened. He gulped.

"You made me...you made me..." his voice trailed away. His grip on me was beginning to falter.

"Kill the man who abandoned you! Massacre the people who looked down upon you with disgust your entire life! By rights, your father ought to have freed you and your mother years before the Khalifa did."

"He was good to me!" he shrieked back. He was a man grown, but as I suspected, he was but a little boy inside, untampered, not one value within him. Mother had failed raising him.

"That is what he wanted you to believe. He was a foul being. I am the one with your best interests at heart, you blind fool. Ask 'Amr. Ask Mundhir. Ask anyone what I tell them about you. How I speak of you. It is you who abandoned my side after the ambush on Banu Namr, when we could have been a unit to be reckoned with. I do not regret what I did, for it was necessary to complete your transition into a fierce warrior!"

I sank my the back of my head into the cobblestones behind me, away from the unfocused bite of the blade.

"You think al-Khalidun have the ability, heart or resources to do the same for you? You think anyone else wishes the best for you, 'Abd al-Rahman?"

Clueless bastard wouldn't survive a minute in the battlefield. Fatherless, kin killing, insane, deprived bastard! My mind raged within.

"I killed a clan for you, 'Abd al-Rahman, an entire clan. And I would do much more for family. You are more than family."

I laid a gentle hand on his. His grip on my throat eased and his watery eyes shut close. He opened his mouth as if to say something in response, but he was cut short with a dagger in the back.

'Abd al-Rahman made a small, pathetic sound and he toppled over, face-first to the ground. Looming over us both was Qasim ibn al-Aswad.

Qasim cleaned the blood off his dagger on 'Abd al-Rahman's robes.

"He was always an unreliable weakling," he said, eyes on his blade. "We both knew that."

My eyes darted in every direction, seeking out 'Abd al-Ka'aba.

"Where is my son, you sick depraved shit?"

Qasim sniggered. "The one without fingers, or the one without ears?"

I wiped 'Abd al-Rahman's blood off my face and began rising but Qasim slammed me back on the ground with a sandal to the gut.

"If you wish it, ibn Ka'b," he sounded exasperated, as if dealing with a child. "If you wish it."

He snapped his fingers and I heard a shuffling sound moments later.

Emerging from the darkness was the man I recognized as Theodoros the Roman, a man I framed for the murder of Mas'oud's daughter. Theodoros was hauling forth my boy, 'Abd al-Ka'aba, a dagger to his throat. His ears and all his fingers seemed intact. What gibberish was Qasim on about?

"You would dare attack me on the grounds of the most powerful governor in the Caliphate?"

"We are not attacking you, Hanthalah," Qasim responded. "We would never."

He smiled then, an irritable sight on a thin, leathery face.

It was then that I felt a young, helpless boy again. The rage flared inside me and I began to shake, every fiber in my body set ablaze and ready to burst, to murder unapologetically, to burn nonchalantly, to destroy, to massacre, to tear Qasim ibn al-Aswad apart and feed him his own limbs.

I flung myself toward the bastard with a deep bellow, ready to squeeze the life out of him with my bare hands. Instead, I found myself clutching only air.

"You are more foolish than I suspected," Qasim's voice called out from behind me. He draped an arm beneath my chin, clinging to my head in an inescapable hold. I could not wriggle free nor could I remove his arm from its entrenched place at my throat. I attempted to strike him using my elbow, but I only found thin air.

"Bring the boy closer," Qasim commanded Theodoros. The Roman slave obliged.

'Abd al-Ka'aba squirmed in the grasp of his own assailer, and there was blood spurting everywhere.

"Bastards," I gasped out. "Bastards. I'll kill your boy. The boy you think yet lives."

"Ah," Qasim tightened his hold on me. "Perhaps, this is opportunity for proper introduction. And poetic justice."

Qasim snapped his fingers again. Answering the call, was yet another clad in the identical dark robes of al-Khalidun. I would not have been able to make out his faint figure in the darkness he so neatly blended into if it wasn't for the shuffle of his sandals on stone.

He tossed back his shawl, revealing a monster. Half-human, half demon.

The boy that yet lived. His face was partitioned in half. On one side, his face was pale, smooth with a rather boyish handsomeness to it. His dark hair was curly and silky. The one eye was a clear blue, the shade of the sea on a jovial morning. It reminded me of Martha and warm summers, of better days and dreams long disenchanted.

The other half of his face was the stark opposite of such. It was caved in, as if his skull was dashed with a hammer. There was no skin on that side; there was only the red, cracked flesh. It was absent an ear as well. That part of his head was bald, entirely hairless. His eye was shut, the red eyelid slanted and grotesque. His chin was shriveled, and the side of his mouth twisted and brown.

I would have been sure to recall a hideous appearance such as this if previously acquainted with it. Yet, Qasim and his lackeys taunted me with him as if he were my life-long nemesis.

"Who are you?" I gasped.

"You do not remember, ibn Ka'b?" his voice was just as grim as the misshapen side of his face. Raspy, deep and broken. "You do not remember all those years ago? In this very city? When you set alight my father, my mother, my uncle. My nephews and nieces. The children, ibn Ka'b. The children."

"Who? How?" I began shivering, equally terrified and appalled at the monster before me.

"You seem disturbed by me. But everything I am, I owe to you, ibn Ka'b. You flung me out of a window. An infant. A newborn. You thought me dead."

"No," I shook my head with vigor. "No. Impossible."

The boy yanked 'Abd al-Ka'aba away from Theodoros and unsheathed his own dagger.

"No!" I tried jumping forward but Qasim's grip was firm and unyielding.

"Let this be a lesson, ibn Ka'b. That you are not a god. You are not even human. You are an insect beneath heel," the boy rasped.

"Don't kill my son! Spare my son! Have me, boy! Have me!"

The boy placed his dagger against one of 'Abd al-Ka'aba's ears as he yanked my son's head back with a pull of hair.

"I will spare him this day. I promise you that."

The boy began searing through my son's ear as I struggled in Qasim's hold, wriggling and kicking and swinging my fists, swaying my elbows about, tossing my head back and forth.

And 'Abd al-Ka'aba screamed.

Qasim leaned in and whispered in my ear.

"I introduce you to the former Zayn ibn Yazid ibn Mas'oud ibn al-Aswad. Now, he is the Crow. By your grace."

I mirrored my son's screams as I dug my nails into Qasim's skin. He did not budge. Instead, he remained steadfast until the ordeal was completed.

He shoved me aside then, and I fell side-first to the ground.

My son's face was hidden by his curls and the expanding pool of blood emerging like a halo about him.

I felt light-headed and cold. I was freezing. My vision swam and all turned to dark.

What last I saw was a tall, homely man in a dusty black gown with a red right hand.