Filling the Days

[Morven]

Devika Sirideán

Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah

✥

“Would you like to know what it does? Besides distraction, of course.”

She plucked his hand away from where it hovered and laid it back against his own chest. Her own lay atop, the gold serpent on her finger intentionally prominent. There was no force behind the movement, or the pressure applied, but there was an undeniable thread of threat in the intimate gesture.

Devika had never trusted this man. Long years passed since she’d left the Tower and its perversion of her Ajah’s purpose, but if she accepted saidin’s cleansing she had lived too long in the grip of its tainted consequences. Her oaths to the Dragon were steadfast. He did not tell her everything, and nor would she expect him to; that red-fringe on her shawl had never endeared her, despite decades of staunch loyalty and the conspiracies she uncovered for his protection. It would have been a poor testament to her instincts to never suspect the man who remained constantly at his side throughout it all.

Suspicion and knowledge were different beasts though. The liquid dark of her attention did not break. Her expression betrayed little of her internal reaction to all but a confession from his own lips; truth or madness, and each equally damning. But he should not expect such tells from an Aes Sedai, and certainly not one as experienced as she.

Jorin had never harmed the Dragon. Trust had even loosened his chains – and he was chained, for even a fool could see he had once been kept here as a prisoner. If the Dragon often chose to eschew Devika’s confidences on account of her Ajah, the Maidens certainly did not, for they at least understood the temerity of her role here. And women talked. Devika protected the car’a’carn as much as they did, and with the same terrible ferocity. Yet as the years continued to roll by and the Last Battle still did not come, Vika began to fear assassination or betrayal was not the Dark One’s ploy at all. That it was the delay itself which was damaging, and the mortal-seeming man whose heart she could literally feel beating beneath the lay of their hands might well be the slothful monster responsible.

If any action tempted her in that vulnerable moment, it was not to gentle what remained of his power. For surely something castrated him into subservience already. He would not have spent his time here otherwise.

“Sometimes it is wiser to ask forgiveness rather than permission, no? Advice I’m sure you have lived by.” She leaned to say the words, as sensuous and intense as desert heat. Her fingers padded a contemplative drum across his own. But after a moment she only pat his hand, and finally found enough offence in his presence to retreat. She sighed as she did it, and cast sultry eyes over her shoulder.

“I have asked him many times,” she added. None who lingered close to the Dragon were beyond the scope of her scrutiny, and she had argued for years that he must be careful of this one even as it seemed she was not trusted with the light-bloody truth. The shield slammed down hard on the heels of her words, and bindings of air trussed Jorin tight. Vika’s expression tightened into a glare for his sheer stupidity in goading her. “But I trust the Lord Dragon’s word, Jorin. So this time, let us ask him together. Perhaps if you offer him that apology quickly enough, he will remember your sentimental friendship with fondness. Let us indeed not keep him waiting.”

A flick of power unlatched the door, where two Maidens waited beyond. The man was a fool if he’d thought an Aes Sedai had been sent to see to his comforts, and a bigger fool to walk away from the Dragon in the first place. Devika folded her arms. Jorin could walk, or he could be dragged; and she thought she knew which the Maidens would prefer.