The Wheel Turns

[Natalie Grey]

Malaika & Nythadri

The Brown was not to be found in her own rooms, which meant a search through the arching halls of the library before Nythadri found the particular study space she had ensconced herself in. Books and scrolls lay jumbled across the wide mahogany table, probably meant to provide ample space for several students. It looked surprisingly chaotic for the small, unassuming woman orchestrating it. Black hair cascaded straight as a knife-point, revealing only a sliver of her pale, bowed face, and that deepened in thought. She did not stir.

“Aes Sedai.” Unnecessarily formal, but she supposed there were no precepts for the particular situation. Public ones anyway. Pale eyes absorbed a little of what captured Malaika's attention, coming to rest naturally on the neat bundle of cloth she had seen the previous night. It was set a little aside from the research. She knew a blade rested within.

“These books are filled with the deeds of great men,” Malaika said without looking up. “The rest of us fall on the gentle slopes of time. Our tragedies and loves and losses; our victories and our sacrifices, they decay with every generation.” She leaned to close the book splayed in front of her reverently. No jewellery adorned her fingers but for the ring, but Nythadri noticed her palm cupped upwards, like perhaps the hand lacked full function. Afterwards Malaika’s thumb traced that palm like she massaged away pain, and for a moment her expression turned further inward.

Nythadri waited patiently, face smooth. No context illuminated the words beyond the acute melancholy of her tone, and perhaps the woman was still half-talking to herself, but she supposed the point of penance was not to be a pleasant distraction. So she folded her hands in front of those deep turquoise skirts, fingers interlaced, and tried not to appear bitter at her own stupidity whilst the Brown made her slow, plodding journey to the point. Ironic that she pointed out the slow decay of time.

You ought to be grateful she didn’t haul you to the Mistress of Novices last night.

Another book opened. It looked like a scrawled roster of names, ink faded. Nythadri watched the sister dutifully ignoring her. It might have felt like a slight from another woman, but the Brown seemed too soft for such calculation. “Of course, a woman of the Tower once cast to the wind is never truly free of us. Even after her death. What must it take for a man to leave the border and his duty there in order to seek peace? And Malkier to fall after that. Love, I suppose.”

Nythadri’s body flushed cold, though she could not immediately say why. Talk of Malkier made sense, given the Kandori’s claim to heritage and their overheard conversation, but that was not the source of her unease. Boredom honed to something sharper as she looked again to the covered dagger. Suicide. They had been talking about suicide. Her fingers tightened imperceptibly, a nail driving hard into her palm. Her tongue remained still, though. The ice of her gaze was on the cusp of demanding answers, but she was not sure she wanted to hear them.

“I will never know why he threw himself into the river. I feared those same paths once, and I wish--” The Brown drew silent, and a muscle flexed in her jaw, like maybe she had said too much. “Now that I have found them, his family should know,” she finished instead. Her eyes and attention turned upwards to where Nythadri stood. She was utterly still -- too still, really, had the other woman known her better. Thoughts raced inwards. Her heart flinched away from a sudden conclusion, the puzzle pieces clicking like the sick snap of bone. Malaika did not pause. “You’ve long years ahead of you, Light willing. And it is easy to forget the ordinary lives around us, as important and precious as any great deeds in a book. That is the lesson I wish to teach, sister.” She stood, her gaze drifting away again, like she truly preferred not to meet the eye. It wasn’t deference, nor hesitancy, but it was strange nonetheless. 

“Kojima,” she said quietly. “Which brother was it?”

Brief surprise flitted across the Aes Sedai’s face. Her fingers touched idly at the smokey quartz hung low against her chest, her brow knit softly. “You know the name.” The slur of her voice almost held a question. Was there a rattle of accusation too? Like Nythadri had somehow knowingly withheld answers? Or was that a fresh bite of guilt? It couldn’t be Jai, not if the Aes Sedai spoke of ordinary lives, but the fear still clawed desperately anyhow. Will the woman just answer!

“His name was Andreu.”

It was a horror to first feel relief; cruel and utterly selfish not to mourn, knowing the wound inflicted by the loss of a brother. Her eyes closed, briefly, lured by the Brown’s apparent inattention to her expression. But her chest still pounded. If she accompanied Malaika to the Kojimas, Zakar would think she had reneged on her promise to ignore his affairs. And carrying dark news such as this, he might even suspect a threat. Sick secrets reared like rousing beasts. The protections Jai bled to heave in place would crumble under only a little pressure, and bury him for the effort. “I have had some unfortunate dealings,” she said, aware of the tight bonds around her from oaths so newly scored on her bones. Though none of it even approached a lie. “But I fear it would not gladden them to see my face if you mean to bring them peace.”

And if Malaika insisted? Her skin prickled, not for the thought of punishment -- she’d haul herself to the Mistress of Novices’ office if it dug out the hook -- but for how quickly this might now unravel. Outright refusal would seem suspicious, and she could no more afford the Tower’s questioning eye than she could Zakar’s. He would not take the fall for embezzlement, and Jai already set up the noose for himself to keep Andreu quiet. Lythia spoke of his punishment last time, but there would be no second beating, no second sword to melt.

Light, Andreu killed himself? 

Sudden guilt sparked low in her gut, remembering the horror in his expression, like a man on the cliff-edge. Had she been the one to rip that final finger clear?

Then a final thought to join such miserable parade: 

Did Jai know?

No, he couldn’t yet, not if Malaika witnessed the act and had not yet relayed the news. Andreu’s disappearance might not even have been noted by his family as unusual, given the things Jai had said about him. Months of silence, and this the thing to push her hand. He had promised her anything and she delivered him a dead brother for his troubles. No forgiveness waited for that. It couldn’t. But it wasn’t like she’d ever shied away from the things that hurt most, and she couldn’t allow Malaika to deliver the news to him.That accent would betray her past if her mannerisms didn’t. The confrontation of one ghost was enough; she could spare him the second, at least.

“There are things you are not saying. I hear them in your voice.” The sister was looking at the dagger now herself, but the observation burrowed something of a shiver anyway. The woman must have lived years too afraid to look another in the eye; Nythadri should have anticipated that such an unusual nuance to her demeanor, one not scoured away with training, would be a strength rather than a weakness. She was Aes Sedai after all. 

Truthfully she had thought her voice as modulated as her composure, and so it cut, that unexpected exposure. For a moment she did not answer. Jai’s family history lay sprawled across the table; the lines of blood and honour he fought to conceal and protect as much as he deemed himself unworthy to the claim. She could not afford for a spark of curiosity to ignite and find the fresher ashes of recently buried secrets, but she could not lie either. Even had she wanted to. She tried not to shift against the tightness in her skin, like even the thought threatened to shrivel it from her bones. “Yes, sister,” she said eventually. The word was soft. It was the first time she had used it. “There are things I am not saying.” 

If she anticipated further questions she was wrong on that count too. Maybe it was the shawl offering a greater pillar of trust, or perhaps Malaika was unusual in her regard. Light send it was not that she detected anything else Nythadri's voice.

The Brown nodded slowly. "Then I must take my leave." She retrieved the knife in its wrappings, her expression somewhat pained, as though the weight of it burdened her. Perhaps it did. "You will not mind putting these away."

If there was any calculation to her Nythadri did not see it, but she'd be foolish to assume this was an end. Fate was a Brown. So was Liridia. As the Aes Sedai left, Nythadri's gaze fell to the desk. She closed her eyes.

---

A morning spent at a writing desk had never been much envisioned as part of her life as finally being Aes Sedai, though it was not like she could delegate the task to another, or would choose to. She had started letters before, picking over words that always felt lifeless on the page, wondering somewhat cynically if despite everything he might have chosen to forget her once he returned to Arad Doman. Memories of how thoroughly she had believed in Farune's loyalty after she left for the Tower always stung, even though they were different men. Writing this was worse though. Such news should not be entrusted to something so impersonal.

It was sealed and sent now, and might take weeks to arrive. Jai had joked about stray mail but she was not sure the news should come through Daryen either. The chances were she would never know if he received it or how he took it; she doubted he would return to the city, not now.

As such, Talin’s timely distraction had been appreciated when she appeared at Nythadri’s door, but now the gratitude had worn off. Hay and manure and horseflesh choked her nose with disgust. The horse in front of her was small, a black so deep she appeared like velvet. She made a soft whicker as she poked her arched neck over the stable door, curious and sweet and utterly terrifying. Talin ran a hand down her nose with an unusually gentle smile.

“She’s a gift, upon your raising,” the other woman said as the creature snuffed at her fingers and blinked its stupid eyes. Her gown today was lilac woven through with blue roses, cut close about her legs in a way Nythadri was not entirely convinced was decent. Not skirts for riding. Small mercy.

“You know I don’t like horses, Talin.”

There was a sharper smile playing on the edges of the Yellow’s lips, amused no doubt, but she ignored the protest entirely. The flowers woven into her red hair made look far too innocent. “Her name is Dove. Well, Dovienya actually, but it's such an uncomfortable mouthful."

Nisele had looked much the same way on presentation of that red, and Nythadri’s arms folded. She was a passable rider, when need dictated -- which she usually ensured it did not. Their friendship buried few secrets between them, they had never been close, but Talin knew that much of her damn fears courtesy of their practise of the hundred weaves. But it seemed expansive for the sort of cruel joke Nythadri might have expected of her, and little Talin ever did was without reason. And gain.

Suspicion roused, but it was somewhere distant, eclipsed by more pressing concerns. She had not heard from Malaika; did not know how the Kojimas had reacted, or whether the Aes Sedai found cause to press deeper into the odd situation she had stumbled.

It might not have made a difference, but Light in hindsight she wished she had thought to ask the obvious question, when Talin leaned into the mare, still smiling that queer little satisfied smile, and said: "Make good friends, Nythadri. We will need her.”