The Wheel Turns

[Natalie Grey]

Nythadri & Talin

The camp was small.

Nythadri had been content to let Elly see to the horse, a task the woman took upon herself with neither prompting or complaint. She worked companionably alongside Kaori as he brushed down his own mount, the piebald creature named Badger. While Nythadri did not try to pick words from the murmur of their voices, she did pick up enough; Kaori seemed rougher around the edges than Nythadri would have assumed for Talin’s taste. Truthfully she was surprised the woman had chosen to bond at all. A necessity, perhaps.

Now the two sat by the fireside trading war stories. Elly had a blanket looped over her shoulders, probably rifled from Dove’s saddlebags, and though her palms reached out to absorb the heat of the flames Nythadri detected no real discomfort in her at the cool temperature. Enough supplies for three, Kaori had said. Nythadri stopped listening when the woman laughed slyly and suggested she might need share Kaori’s blankets for warmth that night. Apparently Elly had not an ounce of shame. It made Nythadri smirk all the same.

Shadows kissed the surrounding clearing. Talin tended her own horse some small distance away, running her hands along its coat and murmuring fondly to it -- certainly with more softness to her tone than she ever used with people, even patients. Thick muscle rippled beneath the gold of the creature’s coat, but with that shaggy mane and feathered fetlocks he seemed more suited to dragging carts than bearing the delicate form of the Aes Sedai. Nythadri had heard the beast called Mephisto. A suitably monstrous name.

The woman half turned as she approached. Dusk deepened the plum of her cloak to almost midnight, the stitched flowers and leaves still glinting amongst the folds like the last caress of autumn. Her red hair hung pin-straight either side of her cheeks, sterile and neat in design, and yet she seemed surprisingly at home in the wilderness. Nythadri’s lips thinned. Summer’s starlit trysts with Farune aside (and those were another matter entirely) she had never had cause or inclination to sleep outdoors. She did not like it already.

“You have questions,” Talin said lightly. “But before I speak, I will warn you that your ignorance is an asset we may need. The oaths bind us too tightly, sister.” She frowned, pressing a hand to the nose of her horse, and the animal puffed air through its great nostrils, content. Agelessness had not yet touched Talin, but she seemed somehow born to it in the severe cast of her features this night. Beneath the warmth of her own cloak, Nythadri’s arms folded. The ice of her attention did not waver, but neither did she speak. The demand did not need words.

“You suspect me. You are not sure whether I am deserved of your trust given the manner of our departure. But our friendship means something to you nonetheless. You would probably choose to give me the benefit of the doubt if not for that business with the gaidar. But you will stay because you are not certain.”

Some discomfort stemmed from how thoroughly Talin believed she understood Nythadri’s character; and at how easily such truth had allowed her to be manipulated. Her expression remained blank, but the Yellow did not seem reticent to speak now the gate was long behind them. She shifted closer, and for the first time Nythadri witnessed a flush to her pale cheeks. The woman’s hand almost reached out, as though to accord such confession with contact. Either way they were bound. Light. “Nythadri, the chains of loyalty you bind yourself in would drag you to the slopes of Shayol Ghul before you would rip the hooks from your heart. But if I am a monster, you will be the one to see it.

Perhaps you are my conscience.” 

Finally, a pause. Nythadri breathed into the silence, for once uncertain. They had never been close -- or she had never thought of their friendship in those terms for the years they had trained alongside. Talin had no friends. Neither had she really, not in the way most women forged such bonds at the Tower. Talin’s company had been a mutual convenience because her devotion to their training bordered on the sadistic, and the others shunned those leanings. Nythadri did not linger over her questionable moral fibre. Until now at least. But she had never considered what Talin’s perspective might be on the one soul who chose to share the darkness with her.

A conscience. Light.

“You're asking too much.” A frown touched Nythadri’s brow. Her jaw flexed. The tone was scathing, but perhaps not for the reasons Talin assumed. She was right, even if it twisted the knife to admit it; for, whatever strange friendship they shared, Nythadri was unlikely to betray it without good reason. The kernel of her largest concern, for good or ill, lay leagues away. And would remain oblivious, Creator willing. Malaika had to have delivered news of Andreu’s death to the Kojimas by now, but her own letter might not have reached Bandar Eban yet. She did not think it would draw Jai back to the city he loathed, nor to the family he cut loose to protect. And he did not know she had been raised, for she had not told him. But if the Pattern conspired against her, and he came home? What rumours might circulate around her departure if she could not resolve this quickly? Traitor was an ugly word. She did not know what Jai would do. Or she feared it, at least. He couldn’t become tangled up in this.

Talin’s lips quirked into a mirthless smile. “Why do you think I did not ask? I say again: you might choose to consider ignorance an ally. I forced you through the gate -- you cannot lie, and the Tower will know it. Eleanore will verify it for you, if they will take the word of your Warder. A bond forced in order to keep my secrets no less. The picture does not look so pretty for me. Does it seem the sort of risk I would take for naught?” She laced her hands, intent. “The Tower does not sanction my actions. I think you realise that already. But why would I take the risk? Think on it, before you ask your questions.”