Respite & Resolve

[Natalie Grey]

Talin Sedai, Yellow Ajah

“No one is likely to forget who you are,” she said eventually. Not with the way he beat them around the head with it every five minutes, anyway, but she wondered if it was legacy that bothered him. Fading into ignominy after a lifetime of service – or worse, fading into nothing, forgotten. The way he spoke about the Forsaken she suspected the latter. Clearly he feared the obscurity that came with replacement.

Though Talin collected the useful bits in his surprisingly open confession, she was mostly bored with hearing about it. Arikan called himself a child bereft of a father’s love but did not seem to realise the squalling he was doing about a life lived in power. Choice was immaterial – he’d never known the lack until it was gifted back, it seemed. So he had been spurned. So he had suffered unspeakable tortures. He had delivered worse, and the balance of the scales was inconsequential – or so he should hope, for if there really was a Creator, judgement was unlikely to tip in Arikan’s favour.

Raqual would have a field day with this one's mind – the White might even have been able to look past who he was in order to study him. But it would not have been to fix him.

For the moment Talin watched him steadily. It was easier when he faced away. Arikan controlled himself with (usually) exceptional comportment, but he was like a chained and hungry beast. The hatred in him positively burned sometimes, and when the chains of it rattled Talin did not like it. It wasn’t aimed at her, usually, but it made her want to scrub her skin when he looked at her with eyes so rimmed with emotion.

“Must you pour so much salt on your own wounds, Arikan?” She sighed a little. “You really must stop calling him that. He is the Dark One, remember. You served the Forsaken. Holding on to old nomenclature will only make these habits harder to break.” He would not like that, though it would do him good to listen for once. But she did not pause to allow him time to pontificate more than he already had; he was always easier to manage when he felt in control, which meant answering questions promptly when he posed them. “What makes you call it weakness? Clearly, by your own conviction, this voice does not tell you not to kill the Dark One. Since I am apparently fortunate enough to still have the breath in my lungs with which to point that fact out to you, I cannot see a problem.”

Her attention was steady. If the bluntness of his admission concerned or alarmed her, it did not show. Kaori did not move either, though Arikan glanced for his reaction. But words were pretty baubles, and in this case she imagined he only meant to comfort himself with reminders of control. He could, if he wanted. If it soothed him like whiskey on a screaming babe's gums then she was content to let it.

When she spoke next, it was at least a little softer.

“You will remember the time it took to Heal your body. It was slow. It was painful. Healing often is, in all its forms. I will Delve you if you wish it, but I suspect to find nothing of note. You are not infected, Arikan. The infection has been removed. The weakness you complain of is only the pain of healing. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Talin was curious to see if he recognised the affliction. She couldn't imagine what it must actually feel like, but one did not need to be able to empathise to understand what it was he described. She didn't bemoan the lack of her own whisper, but she did think it was an easier way to live – to have something internal that told you the differences between right and wrong, at least insofar as accepted society believed. The irony of course was that if Talin had such concerns about guilt or conscience, Arikan would not be sat here now.

She had asked herself once if she truly minded which side ultimately won the war. She chose the Light because she already knew its rules, making it a decision of efficiency and convenience. None of it had much to do with morality or belief, though she was too wise to admit to it to another soul. If she could force Arikan to the path she wished him to take, she would, and do so without guilt. Truthfully it seemed no different a thing just because it was done in service to the Dark. But she wondered how one came to spend an entire life that way. Did they really waste the effort to Turn children? It could not be so because Arikan was not dead behind the eyes, as they said the Turned were. He was anything but that. That was a curious revelation.

"Of course, healing is often swifter with aid," she added.

---

“Do you really have nothing to say?”

“I have plenty to say, Aes Sedai, but not in public halls.”

“If he meant to kill us, he would have done so. I believe that is the truest thing he did say.” And perhaps the truest of his actions, too, though it was not a particularly comfortable thought. Had Talin done something to him? If Arikan’s power were contained somehow she was not sure how useful it made him for the path ahead. And Talin would know that – she would not have put a bet on a hobbled horse, especially not one she had incapacitated herself. It might be a measure of control placed upon him, or a spark of madness that made him untenable, or something else entirely. She wanted to ring the Yellow’s neck for answers, but waiting around for Arikan to release her would be a foolish pause. Time was not something they had to waste.

Elly kept a belligerent half-pace stride ahead, and Nythadri was tempted to halt completely in irritation, but it would only strike a match against dry tinder – and she needed to court at least a little of the woman’s trust and affability.

Her warder did not like this.

She was going to like the rest of the plan even less.

*

Elly began pacing once they returned to the sanctuary of their shared room, and Nythadri realised with some dismay that she must first spare the time to smooth her warder’s feelings into something that did not feel quite so fraught between them. The echo of it though their bond bit at her thoughts almost as much as the physical restlessness frayed her patience, but she owed that much to a bondmate – and especially one received in such a way. She could not concentrate anyway, and she would need to be able to trust the woman in the days ahead. Clearly Elly pieced together enough of what Arikan was. Nythadri could hardly fault her reaction. But this connection was too new, and too untested. If Elly couldn’t reconcile, what then?

So she waited. There was not much to see from the window beyond barren hillside and scrubby, stubborn undergrowth. It mattered little, for Nythadri was not seeing; she was remembering.

Arikan had moved fast. It was unlikely he was not armed at the meeting; not given the way he had waxed on about contingency and trust, and the boast of his long, long life. Even without saidin he could have hurt Talin before Kaori reacted. The power had indeed rippled out from him like waves, but beyond its disturbing touch, he had done nothing with it but protected himself from retaliation.

A rabid dog bites without question. It is not afraid. It holds nothing back.

His had not been a reaction stoked by paranoia; she had seen the chains of that beast, and knew the white flare of its eye. Jai’s insecurities needed the coax of time and steady ground to remedy; they might be panic-soaked and volatile, but never happened without a trigger. If power leaked out of him, neither was it to so benign an end as fluttery winds. It was to an end of pink fluttery entrails. Though even then, she could not say it had been a lack of control – Jai did control it. And he would have done worse if the shield hadn’t snapped in place that day.

Arikan had not reacted rashly because he wrongly sensed betrayal, or because he was offended; if such had been the case the warning enacted had been a poor one, for it had only made him look foolishly out of control. So he did not reign back because he needed them to deliver Elsae, as she would prefer to believe.

But it could not be a lapse of rationale either; if it was, they would all simply be dead. That was an irrefutable truth. He had not attacked at all. He had chosen not to.

There had been signs of his thinned patience, though; his white-knuckled grip on the chair’s arm, the creaking of the wood beneath the pressure. Unless it was not patience that unravelled, she realised. Had he been listening at all? He had barely acknowledged his flawed understanding of who Elsae was, and not until some moments after his retreat. Which meant the battle prior had been waged all within, not prompted by anything that had been said. It had been an internal realisation. Something personal. Something new.

What is wrong with me, he’d asked. A new condition. Light.

A darkfriend kills without compunction. He is not hesitant.

Nythadri shivered a little, and turned away, wondering suddenly if somewhere in the bloody fort he was still looking out over the same view. She’d known she’d seen fear, but the idea of humanity in a dreadlord was not compelling, and she did not want to truly consider it. She did not believe he had had a change of heart, nor would he even be permitted to do so after the oaths he had made and the atrocities he had committed. Talin intimated she had Healed him, though, and there were signs about his person of a long recovery. Who had reduced him in such a way? What had the injury been? She did not know, and she did not have the Yellow to question as she’d have liked. Whatever it was, this change had been forced.

But it was unlikely to be madness.

The only mad one here was her, for what she was considering.

Elly had been talking for some time; sober musings on how difficult Arikan might be to kill, and the ways they might do it. Her feral stride had calmed, and she stood closer now. Her fingers curled on the windowsill, then fisted in frustration. Her jaw was locked tight, framed by the dark slash of her hair. Nythadri finally intervened.

“We’re not going to kill him, Elly.”

“A darkfriend. Nay, a flaming dreadlord, Nythadri. There is no redemption for the things he has done, and it’s an insult to let him live. Even if we die in the trying.”

“There is no redemption,” she agreed. She tried to bury the weight of a sigh, but after a moment let the control lapse; she did not need it here. A wall would not help, and Elly was not an enemy. It seemed too much trust to ask a woman of the Borderlands, especially one who claimed Malkier in her blood. Every scar was hard won. She came to the Tower to fight the Dark, not to treat with it. Pale eyes met dark, but Nythadri had promised not to offer release every time their path grew grim. It was likely Elly felt it between them anyway, but Nythadri did not ask.

“Whatever he claims to be now, it makes no difference. You must see that! He has breathed lies for so long how could he possibly know the difference? If he does this truly at all, then it is for himself and no other, and he’ll cause more damage than he could ever possibly be worth in his pursuit of vengeance. Cold vengeance at best, Aes Sedai, and nothing for right and honour and goodness. The Light does not need him. The Dragon does not need him. And we, we certainly do not need him.” Elly turned. Her fist planted angrily beside Nythadri’s head, blocking the view. She leaned close and in earnest. “Raise the Tower against him,” she pleaded. “We know where he will be. What other chance will there be like this? It’s justice.”

It was worse because she was right. Though it was not like Nythadri had not considered it. She’d made no overt commitments when she’d agreed to Arikan’s demands. Her hands were tied, but only by ropes of her making. Thirteen sisters, though, and none of them could be Black, lest the entire plan come to ruin and Arikan declare himself an enemy in truth. It would become but another dire catastrophe for the crumbling Tower to address before Tarmon Gaidon descended. Light that comment had stung. It couldn’t be true, and yet Talin was not rash; she would not have left without good reason, and not with what she had stolen. Of course, it was not something Arikan needed to know. But it was something Nythadri did intend to discern for herself.

“I hear you,” she replied. “And I will never ask you to hold your tongue. But I will remind you to whom you made your oaths, Eleanore. You don’t have to trust him. You have to trust me.”

For a moment Elly’s expression was eerie still. It felt like twisting a buried blade, using the reminder of oaths so recently forged in flames to ensure obedience, but in the next breath Elly had knelt, hand on heart. A muscle still twitched in her jaw. She looked fierce rather than contrite, and angry still; Nythadri could feel it. She felt like cursing for the formality, for the furious loyalty, and for the guilt that burrowed deep in her own chest to witness it.

Elly would like Jai. Blood and bloody ashes, the two would probably be an indomitable force of annoyance.

After a beat Nythadri knelt alongside, knowing the woman would hate how casually she destroyed the ritual even before the irritation sprang up in the connection between them. A smirk twitched her lips, unapologetic for the irreverence. She did not want a relationship forged in such severity. In fact she did not think she could stand it. “I’m sorry for how you ended up with me, El. You deserve better than I can give. But you are stuck with me. For many years to come, I hope.” She waited for the woman to look up, to see that she meant every word. She needed to see it as well as feel it. Because Nythadri was not done testing their bond. “There is more we must agree. If any of this will work, I need to be able to move through the Tower freely, and for that I must make a neat stitch in the gaping hole of my disappearance. I can explain my absence, but I cannot so easily explain you. Not yet. Maylis was sure you would return north. I will be going south. We would have had no cause or opportunity to meet on the road.”

“You intend to leave me behind.” The words were stiff.

“I’m asking you to be discreet,” she corrected.

For a moment there was silence. Then, finally, the tension eased a little from Elly’s shoulders. Though not by much. She sighed sharply. “What do you mean, south?”

Three days, Nythadri had said. Arikan might be willing to burn up every advantage he currently had in order to bring himself the one thing he apparently wanted, but Nythadri would not be so blindly rash with the expenditure. After Elsae, what then? She did not intend to be collateral to his selfish gains, but neither did she plan to let him wriggle from the hook and hope he in the meantime delivered on his word, as Talin apparently did. The vow Arikan made was the only thing supporting this tenuous alliance, and she had meant what she said: she would ensure he saw it through.

It meant thinking ahead, and the best misdirections were couched in ample truth. Should someone in the Tower happen to ask where she had been, she could hardly prevaricate around Illian of all places.

Still, she paused on the precipice of the next decision. There were two options she might use to explain the rashness of her absence from the Tower. None of her Ajah sisters would fault a flight to claim a bondmate everyone was sure she would claim; it would be gossip, not scandal. Explaining the lack would not be tricky, but finding the will to leave in the first place might. If anyone tested the chains to duty, it was Jai. That only left the crumpled paper received on the night of her Raising. Not a place she had thought or desire to return. But it was the sensible choice, for more reasons than one.

The decision was made, then, though it did not fill her with gladness.

[[Nythadri continues here]]