12-22-2021, 01:10 AM
A robe fit snug around her waist, her hair still a little damp and curling loose down her back, but if Nythadri cared anything for the impropriety of an Aes Sedai traversing public halls dressed so, it did not stop her. She knocked once and entered the door Elly had told her would lead her to Talin, and found the Yellow still awake in a highbacked chair by the fire in her rooms. Her eyes were darkened almost black in the meeting of night’s shadow and flame, her expression still as moonlight, and deeply contemplative. A blanket wrapped her shoulders, woven through with small budding flowers of myriad rainbow colours. The plain nightdress underneath covered her throat to ankle.
She did not say anything as Nythadi joined her, nor seemed surprised at the intrusion. A cup of tea rested primly in her hands, and the service was set for two, but there was no sign of Kaori. Perhaps he was still outside, staring out over dark battlements with only his presumed sins for company. Talin had been waiting for her, then, knowing full well Nythadri would be unable to hold her questions until morning.
Irritated with the prediction, but reluctant to gratify it with a reaction, she sat opposite, about to curl her legs up beneath her before she thought better of the movement. Aching limbs protested, dull now after the hot bath, but hardly forgotten. Instead she met Talin’s watchful and waiting gaze; then quite pointedly holding her tongue (petty, but still), leaned to pour herself a cup. Something stiff must have betrayed her posture though, because Talin’s eyes rolled, and she shifted to catch Nythadri’s wrist as she lifted the teapot. Saidar flooded, cold as ice-water drenched over her pleasantly warmed skin, and the shock loosed Nythadri’s grip. The pot fell with a heavy thump, though nothing spilled, probably because of the tendrils of cushioning air Talin now retracted from the task.
“Light, Talin, a warning? Or better yet, ask for permission before you do that,” she snapped. She’d not forgotten how indelicately the woman preferred to offer her healing, like pandering to comfort was always a wasted concern, but it never failed to freeze the breath from her lungs and leave her gasping. It would be a moment before she could even appreciate that the pain had gone.
“You weren’t going to ask though, were you; you were going to choose to pout about it all night. I saved us both the annoyance.” A brow arched. Talin sat back, took a shallow sip from her cup.
Of course, Nythadri had little to say to that. Instead, still breathing a little hard, she sent a wave of calm down the bond – lest Elly choose to break the bloody door down – and finally rested back comfortably in her chair. Her feet tucked under, chin propped on a palm. Thanks might have been offered, even begrudgingly, but it would be a gesture as wasted as Talin considered the solicitude. Instead she leaned on patience, and waited for Talin to talk. The Yellow might profess to know Nythadri’s habits quite thoroughly, but Nythadri knew hers in turn.
After a beat, in which a net of power masked them from eavesdropping, Talin obliged. “Kaydrienne’s support wanes, did you know that? This treaty with the Seanchan has done her no favours.”
“We didn’t flee the Tower because of Daryen’s treaty.”
“No,” she agreed. If she thought anything of the idle way Nythadri spoke a monarch’s name, she did not say. “But it’s symptomatic of the larger disease. The Tower rots, Nythadri. Our hands are tied by staid traditions, our cause ruptured by petty politics and infighting. I thought it would be different when I earned the shawl, but it isn’t. We spend so much time maintaining the illusion of power, we've half forgotten that Tarmon Gai'don still looms. The Dragon’s Peace was meant to unite us. Instead it’s made us soft.”
“The Tower is far from perfect, but–”
“The Tower is on the cusp of collapse. The best thing we could do is leave before the chaos ensues, and pulls us into the eye of its storm.”
It gave her pause. Scant weeks had passed since her own raising, and circumstance had turned her gaze away from lingering on political currents among the ajahs. Maylis expressed disquiet; the feed of information the Green offered about the situation in the West was half the reason Nythadri so blithely accepted her motherly wing, but the woman was Altaran and predisposed to frown over the plight of her countrymen, no matter the Ring that declared her impartial. Unrest did not surprise her, then, but collapse? Daryen’s own sister was a powerful Sitter in the Hall, and if Liridia had seemed perturbed at the hunt’s surprise guests, her very presence was a sanction. By her own words, or what Nythadri had understood of them, she’d been there to nudge and guide the proceedings to the Tower’s ends. Light. “Who leads it?” she asked.
But Talin only tipped a shoulder, a brief flick of her hand brushing the subject away. “The Tower weakens; this way or another, it ends the same way. Meanwhile we are bound. Our lives cut short. And for what? To expend half our energies making mockery of the very oaths we claim protect the world from our powers, and all the while ignoring the real threat. No one will do what needs to be done.”
It was nothing Talin had not expressed before, Nythadri realised, if she had always been circumspect about it in the past. But being frustrated was a far cry from acting on those frustrations, and she had never imagined Talin would truly do that. She was not a woman for risks. She was not a woman who placed ideologies before practicality. If the Tower had faults, and Nythadri did not disagree there, it was still the Tower. There was no alternative, and no other way to consolidate the power to enact change at all. For a moment her blood ran cool. She had asked Talin outright at the camp whether her allegiances ran true, and no answer the woman could give would truly assuage the possibility. Saidar hovered close then, but when she spoke, her voice was only weary. “What have you done, Talin? What makes you think the Tower will react?”
Talin paused for a moment. Her face was as glass. There was not quite uncertainty there, but a precipice of emotion nonetheless. No glow sprang about her. She pressed her teacup back on the tray and took a small breath before she rose from her seat. Nythadri watched as she retrieved a box, long and slender and wrapped in cloth. She returned to perch stiffly, not on her own chair, but in the space next to Nythadri. Proximity was not her usual habit. Pale red hair fell neatly either side of her cheeks as she contemplated the item she held. “The Last Battle will come sooner or later. You and I are young enough that we’ve known our entire lives we will live to see it. The Hall is old, Nythadri, and our sisters believe the Tower can survive unchanged. The Tower, which was created in the wake of the Breaking. If it will not adapt, its time is past. I mean to survive. And from the ashes, I mean to build something better.”
Talin pulled back the folds of fabric, but pushed the box closer for Nythadri to lift the clasp. A gesture of complicity, no doubt, which earned a pale, flat stare from Nythadri before she obliged. Inside, lay an object ivory-white and wrist-thick. If Nythadri’s blood had already cooled in anticipation of the revelation, now it froze to ice. Her eyes widened, then pierced Talin in accusation. The how of such a feat ripped questions through her mind like a maelstrom, but it was an insignificant question compared to the horror of the theft. The horror of being caught with the flaming thing.
Talin was utterly still, but it reminded Nythadri of the delicacy of a bird ready for flight. It was the moment Nythadri accepted or fled herself. The moment this alliance became something, or crumbled to dust.
Her throat was dry. But this was salvageable, wasn’t it? She shut her eyes for a moment, drawing in a calming breath, though it proved a shallow taste of serenity. She forged on anyway. “Light, Talin. If you release yourself and you are bloody caught they will execute you as Black Ajah, no question,” she said, closing the lid sharply. Even the sight of the thing deluged a reminder of the Test she would rather forget; of the way the oaths themselves still made her feel like her skin was several sizes too small. Then, as the question occurred to her, she snapped: “Have you released yourself?”
Talin shook her head. “It seemed prudent to wait, lest a mistake on my part allowed you to think I was Black Ajah. We are the only two who know of this, Nythadri. Not even Kaori.”
So there was time to rectify the situation, perhaps, before this became a mistake that drowned them both. Penance was nothing new to Nythadri, and she did not think this was an offence that would warrant stilling, if the consequences would nonetheless be unpleasant. Bearable, though, if she could coax Talin to see sense and return. The woman had called her a conscience before, and it meant she intended to listen to reason should this act prove unreasonable. But, in realising that, Nythadri felt the knot in her stomach tighten not loosen. Because this wasn’t it; this couldn't be the crux at which Talin was willing to risk everything. Couldn't be the reason she ruthlessly forced Elly’s bond or so fiercely insisted she would not be stopped in pursuit of her goal. Pale eyes searched the woman’s expression, but there was precious little to see. She was waiting on an answer.
“I know you Talin. I know you as well as you know me, and you wouldn’t have done this just because you feared the Tower was breaking apart. The risk of that--” she gestured, a little sharply, to the box still resting in both their laps “--is too great for far too little reward. You would free yourself of your oaths, and then what? The Aes Sedai will catch up sooner or later, we both know that. So what, sister, have you not yet told me?”
A hint of a smile touched Talin's lips. She placed a hand on the lid of the box. “The rest of the story," she said, "is not mine alone to tell. Tomorrow, there is someone you must meet.”
She did not say anything as Nythadi joined her, nor seemed surprised at the intrusion. A cup of tea rested primly in her hands, and the service was set for two, but there was no sign of Kaori. Perhaps he was still outside, staring out over dark battlements with only his presumed sins for company. Talin had been waiting for her, then, knowing full well Nythadri would be unable to hold her questions until morning.
Irritated with the prediction, but reluctant to gratify it with a reaction, she sat opposite, about to curl her legs up beneath her before she thought better of the movement. Aching limbs protested, dull now after the hot bath, but hardly forgotten. Instead she met Talin’s watchful and waiting gaze; then quite pointedly holding her tongue (petty, but still), leaned to pour herself a cup. Something stiff must have betrayed her posture though, because Talin’s eyes rolled, and she shifted to catch Nythadri’s wrist as she lifted the teapot. Saidar flooded, cold as ice-water drenched over her pleasantly warmed skin, and the shock loosed Nythadri’s grip. The pot fell with a heavy thump, though nothing spilled, probably because of the tendrils of cushioning air Talin now retracted from the task.
“Light, Talin, a warning? Or better yet, ask for permission before you do that,” she snapped. She’d not forgotten how indelicately the woman preferred to offer her healing, like pandering to comfort was always a wasted concern, but it never failed to freeze the breath from her lungs and leave her gasping. It would be a moment before she could even appreciate that the pain had gone.
“You weren’t going to ask though, were you; you were going to choose to pout about it all night. I saved us both the annoyance.” A brow arched. Talin sat back, took a shallow sip from her cup.
Of course, Nythadri had little to say to that. Instead, still breathing a little hard, she sent a wave of calm down the bond – lest Elly choose to break the bloody door down – and finally rested back comfortably in her chair. Her feet tucked under, chin propped on a palm. Thanks might have been offered, even begrudgingly, but it would be a gesture as wasted as Talin considered the solicitude. Instead she leaned on patience, and waited for Talin to talk. The Yellow might profess to know Nythadri’s habits quite thoroughly, but Nythadri knew hers in turn.
After a beat, in which a net of power masked them from eavesdropping, Talin obliged. “Kaydrienne’s support wanes, did you know that? This treaty with the Seanchan has done her no favours.”
“We didn’t flee the Tower because of Daryen’s treaty.”
“No,” she agreed. If she thought anything of the idle way Nythadri spoke a monarch’s name, she did not say. “But it’s symptomatic of the larger disease. The Tower rots, Nythadri. Our hands are tied by staid traditions, our cause ruptured by petty politics and infighting. I thought it would be different when I earned the shawl, but it isn’t. We spend so much time maintaining the illusion of power, we've half forgotten that Tarmon Gai'don still looms. The Dragon’s Peace was meant to unite us. Instead it’s made us soft.”
“The Tower is far from perfect, but–”
“The Tower is on the cusp of collapse. The best thing we could do is leave before the chaos ensues, and pulls us into the eye of its storm.”
It gave her pause. Scant weeks had passed since her own raising, and circumstance had turned her gaze away from lingering on political currents among the ajahs. Maylis expressed disquiet; the feed of information the Green offered about the situation in the West was half the reason Nythadri so blithely accepted her motherly wing, but the woman was Altaran and predisposed to frown over the plight of her countrymen, no matter the Ring that declared her impartial. Unrest did not surprise her, then, but collapse? Daryen’s own sister was a powerful Sitter in the Hall, and if Liridia had seemed perturbed at the hunt’s surprise guests, her very presence was a sanction. By her own words, or what Nythadri had understood of them, she’d been there to nudge and guide the proceedings to the Tower’s ends. Light. “Who leads it?” she asked.
But Talin only tipped a shoulder, a brief flick of her hand brushing the subject away. “The Tower weakens; this way or another, it ends the same way. Meanwhile we are bound. Our lives cut short. And for what? To expend half our energies making mockery of the very oaths we claim protect the world from our powers, and all the while ignoring the real threat. No one will do what needs to be done.”
It was nothing Talin had not expressed before, Nythadri realised, if she had always been circumspect about it in the past. But being frustrated was a far cry from acting on those frustrations, and she had never imagined Talin would truly do that. She was not a woman for risks. She was not a woman who placed ideologies before practicality. If the Tower had faults, and Nythadri did not disagree there, it was still the Tower. There was no alternative, and no other way to consolidate the power to enact change at all. For a moment her blood ran cool. She had asked Talin outright at the camp whether her allegiances ran true, and no answer the woman could give would truly assuage the possibility. Saidar hovered close then, but when she spoke, her voice was only weary. “What have you done, Talin? What makes you think the Tower will react?”
Talin paused for a moment. Her face was as glass. There was not quite uncertainty there, but a precipice of emotion nonetheless. No glow sprang about her. She pressed her teacup back on the tray and took a small breath before she rose from her seat. Nythadri watched as she retrieved a box, long and slender and wrapped in cloth. She returned to perch stiffly, not on her own chair, but in the space next to Nythadri. Proximity was not her usual habit. Pale red hair fell neatly either side of her cheeks as she contemplated the item she held. “The Last Battle will come sooner or later. You and I are young enough that we’ve known our entire lives we will live to see it. The Hall is old, Nythadri, and our sisters believe the Tower can survive unchanged. The Tower, which was created in the wake of the Breaking. If it will not adapt, its time is past. I mean to survive. And from the ashes, I mean to build something better.”
Talin pulled back the folds of fabric, but pushed the box closer for Nythadri to lift the clasp. A gesture of complicity, no doubt, which earned a pale, flat stare from Nythadri before she obliged. Inside, lay an object ivory-white and wrist-thick. If Nythadri’s blood had already cooled in anticipation of the revelation, now it froze to ice. Her eyes widened, then pierced Talin in accusation. The how of such a feat ripped questions through her mind like a maelstrom, but it was an insignificant question compared to the horror of the theft. The horror of being caught with the flaming thing.
Talin was utterly still, but it reminded Nythadri of the delicacy of a bird ready for flight. It was the moment Nythadri accepted or fled herself. The moment this alliance became something, or crumbled to dust.
Her throat was dry. But this was salvageable, wasn’t it? She shut her eyes for a moment, drawing in a calming breath, though it proved a shallow taste of serenity. She forged on anyway. “Light, Talin. If you release yourself and you are bloody caught they will execute you as Black Ajah, no question,” she said, closing the lid sharply. Even the sight of the thing deluged a reminder of the Test she would rather forget; of the way the oaths themselves still made her feel like her skin was several sizes too small. Then, as the question occurred to her, she snapped: “Have you released yourself?”
Talin shook her head. “It seemed prudent to wait, lest a mistake on my part allowed you to think I was Black Ajah. We are the only two who know of this, Nythadri. Not even Kaori.”
So there was time to rectify the situation, perhaps, before this became a mistake that drowned them both. Penance was nothing new to Nythadri, and she did not think this was an offence that would warrant stilling, if the consequences would nonetheless be unpleasant. Bearable, though, if she could coax Talin to see sense and return. The woman had called her a conscience before, and it meant she intended to listen to reason should this act prove unreasonable. But, in realising that, Nythadri felt the knot in her stomach tighten not loosen. Because this wasn’t it; this couldn't be the crux at which Talin was willing to risk everything. Couldn't be the reason she ruthlessly forced Elly’s bond or so fiercely insisted she would not be stopped in pursuit of her goal. Pale eyes searched the woman’s expression, but there was precious little to see. She was waiting on an answer.
“I know you Talin. I know you as well as you know me, and you wouldn’t have done this just because you feared the Tower was breaking apart. The risk of that--” she gestured, a little sharply, to the box still resting in both their laps “--is too great for far too little reward. You would free yourself of your oaths, and then what? The Aes Sedai will catch up sooner or later, we both know that. So what, sister, have you not yet told me?”
A hint of a smile touched Talin's lips. She placed a hand on the lid of the box. “The rest of the story," she said, "is not mine alone to tell. Tomorrow, there is someone you must meet.”