The Wheel Turns

[Raffe]

Asha'man Araya

*

TAR VALON

Spring’s embrace finally beckoned warm blue skies, though it was still cool beneath the arms of the grove’s trees. That, or perhaps he was simply growing used to Arad Doman’s sticky heat. Cradled between one such sentinel’s enormous roots, Araya fiddled with the strings of his newest acquisition. Gold filigree chased the instrument’s underside in a sinuous Domani design, its wood stained the colour of fresh plums. The neck was longer than he was used to, its sound thick as plush velvet as he cobbled together a tune, pausing every now and then to adjust one of the tuning pegs.

Hana half watched him from across the patchworked blanket as she set out the picnic dishes. The scent of warm fresh bread mingled with the perfume of blossom, and Araya smiled for such simple comforts of home. It was a treasure to hold on to when dark days burdened the horizon, though he could wish for another added to their number. Not that he knew what Trista might even make of such domesticity. Better not to think on where she might be right now.

The wind stirred the silver in Hana’s dark golden hair, free of its usual braid, and every now and then her clear grey-eyed gaze rose to Korene as she flittered between the trees, the brown pup lolloping at her heels. Even at play the girl was strangely quiet, though the dog’s rolling yips and playful growls made up for it. He even caught the shy edge of a smile as the animal nipped the hem of her skirts, then raced a tongue-lolling frenzy through the grass. Korene did not give chase, but even that much from her swelled him with hope.

“The dog is a pest,” Hana said. “Always underfoot, else making a mess.”

Araya laughed. “I’m sure he’ll grow into his feet. Eventually. The ones I grew up with always did. Besides, he’s the first gift she’s ever shown interest in.”

Hana didn’t disagree, and her mouth softened into a smile as she watched the girl despite her criticism. Then her hands smoothed the dark folds of her skirts where she sat, as inky as an Asha’man’s own uniform, and her focus adjusted. “So what will you do about this note?”

Araya leaned his head back against the tree to look at her. Consideration for the question writ plain on his face, as did his puzzlement for the rather direct way Hana’s attention now pinned him. He knew the missive she meant. He’d only met Nythadri once, and she had been icy as winter’s snap beneath that still mask; inscrutable to him as undisturbed snow, and as coldly beautiful. Whether it had been Jai’s fate or Lennox’s she had ultimately cared about he’d never really fathomed, for apparently she had gleaned from him whatever it was she had required with little effort. The exchange had been painless, and Araya had not seen her since, though he understood she had visited on occasion in the intervening months. According to Hana her last visit had been less than tennight before, and she had no longer worn the rainbow white.

“If Jai shows his face in Tar Valon again then I’ll do as she asks, if I even need to, but Daryen keeps him busy enough. He couldn’t wait to escape the Shining City before, so I doubt she has anything to worry about.” He’d searched for the man the morning after, but found no traces in the snowy streets. Whatever flesh and blood comforts Jai had clawed at to soothe himself after the fight with his brother, they had eventually propelled him back to duty’s path. Araya spent much of his time now in Bandar Eban, but not in the same palatial circles. He knew where Jai was though. Whatever business the Aes Sedai was concerned he might intrude upon was not likely to even snare his notice unless it actually concerned the Seanchan.

“I scrubbed that man of his own vomit and urine like he was one of my sons,” Hana said dryly. “He was quiet and contrite as a lamb the next day, but like most silly boys so deep in their cups he liked the sound of his own voice at the time.”

“Yes. Well. You can’t reasonably hold a man to the things he says when he’s drunk.” A grin toyed the edge of his lips, though fortunately Hana had never had to tend him in the same way. The dear, stoic woman had not balked despite that it had been the depths of night when Araya Gated them in, but then she never did despite her patient chastisements for his soft heart. He loved her all the more for it.

Her head tilted at him. “And do you at least recall that the girl visited for the first time the morning after. Knowing the things she knew, already.”

“Light Hana, just tell me what it is you think I should do!” He laughed a little. Hana regarded him in that inscrutable way women had, like perhaps she was perturbed at the density of his head, but Araya was open as a book. They were family, and she held his confidences in most things -- probably more than he ought, but he trusted her that much. She’d lived half her life with Daeyl at the Black Tower, and negotiated its waters better than he on occasion; her judgements were as sound at the roots as the great trees in this grove. She knew full well that he would listen to her, and clearly she was driving at something. He’d far rather she just be plain with it, though he did patiently pause to consider what she might mean. The Accepted had known about Jai’s brutality at Lennox’s hands; had known too that Araya had been the one to drag him away, and to where. But an Aes Sedai had visited that night as well. It wasn’t impossible for the news to have travelled those channels, even that quickly.

Hana’s brows rose.

He sighed, letting the lute fall silent in his lap. “I’ll not get involved unless I have to, Hana. I try to stay out of our own politics let alone meddle in anything White Tower.”

“For certainly you are not one to meddle, Araya.”

“Ah.” He scrubbed a hand over his chin, catching her meaning for at least that. His heart betrayed him, the small kindnesses he was prone to suturing each wound delivered by the hand the Creator dealt him. Apparently Hana intuited deeper meaning in the message. It had only said that should Jai discover Nythadri gone from the Tower and feel any inclination to follow her, it would be in his best interests to become dissuaded -- and that Araya ought to assure it by whatever means he deemed necessary. It seemed a fairly bald warning to steer wide of Tower affairs. Given the M’Hael’s hash hand of punishment it didn’t seem a mistake Jai was likely to make a second time anyway. “You think she’s in some trouble then?”

“I think that if you were to discover Trista Alquin suddenly vanished from where she ought to be, even you might be inclined to do something rash about it.”

Araya blinked. For his apparent transparency as much as for what he suddenly understood she meant.

How do you do it, Jai had asked. Araya was not inclined to poke too fiercely at another man’s demons, least of all those belonging to a Brother, though he hadn’t understood how it cut so deep at the time. He’d chalked it up to the ghosts of home, roused when Jai had found himself so unexpectedly back in the city of his birth. Saidin changed a man. Araya understood that as well as anyone who earned the pins, and such reflections did not sit kindly in the mirror of an old life. Yet Jai had barely been able to look at Hana, one of the few souls in this world from whom an Asha’man would not expect judgement for his sins. He’d told Jai he should speak to her, thinking it might ease the burden of his worries. That family could be anyone; that there was still a place for that, even. But it’d only pushed him out into the cold instead.

“You’re telling me he went to the Tower that night? I really don’t think...” he’d be that stupid, yet the words gutted themselves before the sentence finished. He’d seen them in Bandar Eban; had assumed spectacle, given the gulf of their stations. It had been so needlessly brazen he’d never really considered until now how they’d arrived half way through the bloody evening. 

Light.

He shut his mouth, gaze pulled out to the girl and her dog in the shadows of the trees; proof enough of the things a man might do for those he loved, and Araya’s heart was fuller than most. Korene looked so much like him. His chest tightened, and the grief must have pulled at his expression because he felt Hana’s touch on his knee. Blood and ashes, even the knot of feeling in his mind spoke to another foolishness of the heart. Trista always felt so damn quiet. 

He squeezed Hana’s hand back.

“I’m telling you that the next morning a woman turned up at our door to thank you for pulling his feet from the flames, and now the same woman is asking you to insure he stays away from the fire,” she said softly.

“He won’t find out,” Araya said. That was still likely true, and something he would be able to watch for at least. He was less confident about the second part: “And if he does, Jai knows where his duty is.”

Hana nodded, though something of her expression suggested he was still missing the point. This time he read her more easily though, perhaps because on reflection his own earnestness finally led him down the same path. He didn’t know Nythadri, and she was Aes Sedai now, not a normal woman at all. But he’d lived amongst them, once; saw more than rings and shawls, just as he saw more than the sword and dragon pins at the throats of his brothers. Power changed those it touched, but it did not make them any more than flesh and blood. 

Did she need help?

The woman knew he had aided Jai before, for no more reason than it had been the right thing to do. Just as he had interceded on Imaad Suaya’s overtures at Daryen’s celebration because he saw the way he pinched her arm. But Nythadri had Sisters now. Daryen’s own sibling was Aes Sedai, even. And Araya was about as far removed from the politics of either Tower as he could possibly be. If she was as enmeshed in the Great Game as her cool mask suggested her to be then she’d know that too. So why him? Or maybe that was exactly why him.

When he looked at Hana, a soft frown carved her expression pensive. 

Araya had never thought to pry into the foundations of her friendship with the Accepted, but given the new context perhaps he could understand it better. It shivered him a little, but he did not dwell on what he supposed Hana must see in the young woman, or her future. He realised then, though, that she wasn’t just worried about Jai, she was worried about a girl who showed up at their door and had returned ever since -- irrespective of the shawl now on her shoulders. Light, he was a fool. What will you do about this note? she had asked.

“Hana,” he urged.

“No one will speak to me at the Tower,” she said. “Not even the Yellow who came to our aid. But the servants like you. If there is something amiss I’m sure they would tell you.”

A breeze moved the strands about her face, its lines soft with a loss he knew only too well. Light, why had she not just said it all plain? He nodded, and her hand finally slipped free as Korene padded over to slide into her lap, the pup at her heels.