Ooc: The liberation of Kandor begins here. My list of participants includes Warders Div members Cairma, Lyssa, Jasen, Deneira and Corin, plus a NSW by James, plus White Tower Div members Vera, Carise, Evaida, Shaneevae, Cemarillinin, Serena, Estel and party leader Jaydena. Anyone else who would like to give our people a good sendoff is welcome to post. Cheers!

*

Morning dawned bright and frosty, though for one Sirayn Damodred yesterday had never ended, shut up restless and busy in her own quarters high at the Tower’s top. Dawn light slid in through the leaded glass window and painted her quarters in a haze of gold. It lit one or two distinctive touches, like all the black old books stacked on the shelves, but the rooms remained near as foreign to her as though she had never moved in … still filled with the ghosts of her predecessors from golden Lanfir Leah Marithsen on back into the dust of centuries.

In her private rooms where nobody ever ventured but her she had complete freedom; only behind closed doors could she act as she wished without making a political statement. Out here in the sitting room, where she met the occasional visitor whom she judged to deserve a more intimate setting, she had bowed to the demands of high office and kept the old furnishings -- the pretty silver clock on the mantel which burned with its own white fire in the sunlight, the tapestry on the wall with its rich colours, fine furniture, no expense spared. It looked like somebody else’s room.

Up to her elbows in paperwork, an important job ahead of her and she couldn’t stop thinking about how out of place she felt here. Sheer displacement: in truth she had but the one concern today, a key part of her plans and perhaps the greater mission as well, maybe saving the world began right here on a cold morning in Tar Valon. In an hour’s time a brave band would depart the white city and head for the north, carrying the Flame of Tar Valon upon their banner and the Tower’s hopes on the strength of their swords. And she couldn’t go with them.

Intellectually she knew that she had done everything she could to assure their success. On a far more primitive level it pulled at her heart to send her people, some of whom were barely children by her standards, into bitter danger without her. How could she put such a heavy duty on anybody else’s shoulders? Who could she trust to raise the ancient Aes Sedai symbol over perhaps the most important battlefield of their time and see it done justice? She couldn’t. It didn’t take another hand to list the only people she could rely on and among those, the list of commanders who could win even a battle, much less a war was shorter still. She felt like a traitor for proposing to stay here in Tar Valon in warmth and security, pushing paper like a bloody secretary and reading over her reports from the north like it meant anything, while other people fought and died for her and without her.

Unfortunately, the law stayed until she got enough of a stranglehold on the Hall to undo it and even then she would have to think seriously about reversing an important Tower law due to her personal grievances. So instead she checked herself in the mirror, all copper silks and hard old composure, and headed down through the intricate and winding corridors of her stronghold to give the Tower’s troops the sendoff they deserved.

Kandor lying to the north of their white city, and the great north road following the east bank of the River Erinin before striking north, the company had formed up before the north-eastern bridge. They made a pretty sight in their bright colours and the glitter of sunlight off steel; the legendary white banner fluttered overhead to tell all and sundry that here the Tower went to war. It stirred a host of old memories, she couldn’t even count how many campaigns she’d fought under the Flame, and it burned her all the more to be too crippled and too useless and too hampered by Tower law to leave Tar Valon with them.

In the end there had only been the one obvious choice to lead this mission. Sirayn greeted her old enemy and rival unsmiling; a common cause bound them now, and the Order vows besides, but she had not forgotten how she had had to burn that letter. Really there was nothing she could say. A veteran needed no reminders about taking care of herself and her troops, though she couldn’t say she felt nothing at the prospect of Jaydena Mckanthur never making it back, and they had gone over the battle plans in detail already. Sentimentality did not become an Amyrlin. She kept it brief, her voice low: “Make sure we win this one.” Then she turned away.

Nobody would ever confuse her with Lanfir Leah Marithsen, her immediate predecessor and the standard by which she judged herself, but perhaps even she could find a few words to set their people onward into the dawning day. Being so short made it difficult to be clearly seen; she positioned herself before them on the bridge, a vast span of white over the hurrying waters, and spoke -- clearly, simply and without artifice, her voice carrying on the fresh morning breeze.

“This is a dark day for us. We go once more into danger. Everything is against us; there is war and ruin everywhere, the Shadow masses in the north and the Last Battle draws ever closer. Not all of you will return under this banner or see your families again.

"A dark day … but one which we will meet knowing we made the right choice. Some people are weak, others cowards, but the folk of the north are neither. We have counted the Borderlanders our friends for centuries; though others turned aside, they stood with us, and the Borderlands have always welcomed Aes Sedai as we welcome them. Now that Kandor has fallen beneath the Shadow, even its capital lying conquered, shall we abandon them? Shall we turn our backs on their suffering as they would never have done to us? No; we are soldiers of the Light together, brought together under the common banner of humanity, and when Kandor falls we will take its hand so one day it may rise up and join us among the nations of the Light.

"A dark day … but not the day we fail. Nobody can truly know what the future holds. Even the Karatheon Cycles, which speak so bold from two thousand years ago, are silent here. But we know each other’s strength, and the courage in our hearts, and we know that together we can prevail.”

Some day she too would ride to war again. But maybe not until the end of the world. “As of this moment we are at war. Go forth and raise the Light’s banner over Kandor.”

*

Sirayn Damodred

Watcher of the Seals

Flame of Tar Valon

The Amyrlin Seat

Thanks for your patience! This isn't the first problem we've had with the form recently. Please email your bio to wt.freshers.admin [at] gmail.com where our lovely Mistress of Novices will check it out. :)

Cheers,

Sirayn

“Will you taste the punch, Mother?”

It being improper for an Amyrlin to get her hands dirty, however much she might remember numerous kitchen chores as a novice, Sirayn had kept her involvement in organising the ball to a minimum; she had simply picked out a tremendous disused ballroom and adjacent dining room in the Tower’s heart and delegated the hard labour to the Mistress of the Kitchens. An army of kitchen servants had been marshalled in record time and set to work. They had swept floors, cleaned out cobwebs, polished the rich wood panels to a bright gleam and furnished the dining room with row upon row of fine oak tables.

Decorations had required at least her nominal oversight. Under her direction they had hung up half a hundred pretty coloured lanterns to cast light on the proceedings; in her memory every man invited to an occasion turned up in unrelieved black and she considered it wise to add at least a touch of colour in advance. The wide doors had been flung open to let cool early-evening air circulate from the sweetly scented gardens outside. Music they had brought in from Tar Valon. Drinks had been a somewhat delicate topic in comparison; without the stark uniform whites which marked the people not allowed to drink all year round, it was difficult to think how to prevent them all being rolling drunk before midnight. In the end she had just given up and relied on the threat of severe future punishment to discourage them from getting smashed.

The punch marked the high point of all their work, after which their kitchen helpers could sidle away to their ordinary duties and, if they were lucky, a long cool drink. Timeless old Laras held out an empty glass to her; Sirayn contemplated it gravely, surveyed the eager faces surrounding her in the bright ballroom, and stuffed her long-running war against alcohol away for a moment.

Nobody else was here. Briefly her innate and usually hidden love of showmanship woke up. She held up a finger for hush, then pushed back her sleeves ceremoniously, dipped her glass into the punch bowl and held it up. Bright lantern light lit through the liquid in shades of peach and gold, drops fell like diamonds back into the bowl. Maintaining a superbly serious expression, as if assessing the price of an old masterwork painting, Sirayn tasted the punch. The unaccustomed sting of alcohol startled her -- she hadn’t had so much as a sip in a very long time -- but the flavour suited her, light and not too sweet. Judgement time stretched out a moment longer until, solemnly, the Amyrlin gave her verdict. “It’ll do. Good work.”

They beamed; she permitted herself a small smile. The Mistress of the Kitchens clapped her hands. “Back to the kitchens!” In one corner the band were tuning up their instruments in a series of sliding sounds over the clatter as the kitchen servants trooped out. At first a screech, each sound gradually smoothed out into a low, sweet note. Less than an hour to go. A satisfied nod and Sirayn departed to get dressed up.

*

Master Danveer,

You are cordially invited to the upcoming White Tower Ball as my partner. You know the drill. I suggest you leave your usual tricks behind; should I hear that anyone left their drink unattended and inexplicably never woke in the morning, heads will roll, starting with yours.

Regards,

Sirayn Sedai

Formal, precise and occasionally sinister: the style she had done her best to put across in the tersely worded message. It at least covered up the multitude of doubts she had about the invitation, the Corin Danveer situation in general, and her own contagious idiocy. She even flattered herself to think that she had achieved the proper level of detachment suitable toward a Tower Guard.

The distance effect counted for one major reason why she preferred to conduct her business by letter. If she could have cut out all contact whatsoever, reduced daily life to a series of impersonal messages carried by courier, she did not doubt her work would be more efficient; not only that but she could cut out all the messy, unnecessary trappings of sentiment and stick to logic. Her feelings told her that she hated and feared the boy Danveer in equal measure, that she just couldn’t understand why he had turned on her so terrifyingly, that maybe she would never be able to see him again without remembering how he had touched her as she lay paralysed … that she had spared his life because she was a stupid soft fool, because she had liked him when she should have known better, because she was ashamed of herself, because she was too much of a coward to kill another child.

Logic told her that the boy was a liability and a possible Darkfriend, who had achieved nothing even backed up by forkroot and had no excuse for his failure, but one whom she might make use of yet. She preferred that version. It was colder, smarter, better. The quicker she learnt the Tower Guard philosophy trick the better for all her concerns.

Protocol dictated that she send her invitation early, to give her partner a week or two’s notice to prepare for the occasion, and thus she had had plenty of time to ponder the sheer lunacy of allowing a poisoner into an event full of young women too empty-headed to check who was putting what into their glass. In theory at least, she couldn’t be placing them in any more unnecessary danger than she already had by not having him thrown out of Tar Valon in the first place, since the red cloak gave him as much freedom as he needed to cut a swathe through the Tower. Besides, she could scarcely ban him from the ball without at least some public reason and Light only knew she had neither the desire nor the intention for that.

Yet all the same … it went against the grain to present such an enticing opportunity to an enemy. Certainly she was under no illusions about who would be ultimately at fault if anything happened tonight. Heads would roll, starting with his -- and then moving onto hers. Until then she could only limit the potential damage as much as possible. Keeping him closely at her side was one of the few ways she had in mind; she wasn’t exactly enthused by the prospect of an entire evening in the company of someone who had planned to keep her under forkroot until she went insane, but she wasn’t doing this for her own peace of mind, security considerations had to come first.

Anyway, it was all out of her hands now. She had sent the invitation, spent the intervening time preparing for the ball itself, and now she had no option but to rely on her own work and good judgement.

*

Prettiness had never been her field; she had long since given up on turning her plain looks into anything approaching the effortless glamour and beauty some Aes Sedai could summon at the snap of their fingers. Next to auburn-haired Jaydena Mckanthur she had always dimmed into obscurity -- a lesser light, out of place and overshadowed. Tonight she had intended primarily as a full formal trial for her Basic Etiquette students, so they could prove their competence in a proper occasion, but an Amyrlin was never off duty; it would also be an opportunity for her to make herself seen, to measure the mood, to check up on some of the underlying currents and, subtler still, to change them if she willed it. Anonymity was no longer an option.

Thanks to a discerning seamstress, she had acquired a new gown, which she was now with some difficulty lacing herself into one-handed. Mostly for numerous symbolic purposes -- for example that it was the colour of the Flame of Tar Valon on the ancient Aes Sedai banner, and a shade which would show up brighter as the evening went on and the lights dimmed, and emphatically not the colour of her former Ajah -- but also partly because with so many initiates finally allowed out of uniform probably nobody else would wear it … she had gone for white: a simple white gown, floor length, with long sweeping sleeves.

Once upon a time she had been coming to terms with the loss of her hand. Now the blackmailing memories were too vivid to face the thought of everyone staring at the crippled Amyrlin; how people ever got used to being marked so publicly, symbolic of her own bloody cowardice, she had no idea. Presumably some people did get over it. So she covered it up, good long sleeves so nobody would even notice, no opportunity to gossip or stare. It put a dent in her mood; to distract herself she arranged her dark hair, wound a narrow seven-striped sash about her waist, the only concession to her rank. Fortunately there wasn’t any time left to brood.

Outside the ballroom she met her partner. Any youngster with stars in her eyes would have been flattered to accompany Corin Danveer, with his fine good looks and his flawless record in the Tower Guard, but then again most youngsters were idiots; when she looked at him all dressed for the occasion she remembered the first ball they had gone to together, the Damodred occasion full of wit and beauty and poison, where she had talked politics with Cairhienin schemers while pretty young women turned on the charm for him … but she also remembered shame and fear and helplessness at his hands.

Maybe she should have granted his wish. He’d be less trouble dead. Sirayn took his arm like a well-mannered partner should, as if she didn’t remember how she had flinched from his touch, and put on a smile she didn’t feel. “Shall we begin, Master Danveer?”

ooc: Open to all members of the White Tower & Warders Divisions. Members of other Divisions please contact me before posting. Cheers and have fun everybody!

Sirayn Damodred

Watcher of the Seals

Flame of Tar Valon

The Amyrlin Seat

Bright light held back the shadow as the lanterns blazed on. Aes Sedai calm, somebody she could rely on, the illusion that she could protect herself and those around her: she hadn’t realised how intensely she needed this little piece of civilisation. It eased the unsteady fear that still shook her. No collar, she told herself again, tightened her grip on the delicate cup to stop her fingers creeping to her throat again. Only a fool would need to keep reminding herself as if the collar might appear by magic and her never notice. The collar had gone and Kitten with it, nobody was going to touch her, she could afford to unwind a fraction. She didn’t even remember how.

Instead she sipped tea and watched Aramina sideways under dark lashes. As always, the other woman’s composure both fascinated and daunted her, something strange and yet fragile, to be admired but not touched. If she was to speak the truth of this to anyone it would be Aramina sur Dulciena … but she felt such shame, which at the very thought tightened its grip on her that she couldn’t give serious consideration to spilling everything; though rationally she knew she had no basis for this belief an inner certainty told her that it was obvious just how much of a coward she had been and Aramina was merely too polite to point it out. Light only knew she couldn’t face that.

So she began a different story instead, approaching the real matter obliquely, from an angle. “I raised a Dreamwalker once. She came under my care as a novice, just a child, not yet adjusted to the Tower. None of us knew then what she would come to be. So I looked after her, as best I could,” another flash of memory: black stitches like spiders, blood on her hands, screaming: her best hadn’t been very good at all, “but in time … she came into her gift.” Far better for her young charge had Tayline never become a Dreamwalker. She had had neither the power nor the right to arrest that process, much to her useless fury. “So,” she resumed steadily, “though I have no skill myself, I know a little about Tel’aran’rhiod -- and I recognise when a wall needs holding.

“And one needs holding now. I dare say you can ward your dreams, but I certainly can’t, and while we all know there aren’t many Aes Sedai quite as pathetic as me,” perhaps a shade too much venom there, “there are enough who can’t manage the weave.” Including a friend of hers. She had parted from Jaydena for good, closed the book on that chapter of her life, and did not regret it a moment; but she would need far more callousness than she possessed to feel nothing at the prospect of Kitten paying her a little visit. “There are other security risks as well. Doors can be opened. Documents can be read. Not something we can continue to permit.

“Knowledge being power … we’re going to enter Tel’aran’rhiod. Then we’re going to learn it. Then we’re going to conquer it.” Conquer it so she never woke from confused dreams to a Dreadlord and a waiting collar. Conquer it so she never had to fear the night again. Conquer it so some day she could trap that woman in her own damn territory and teach her a little something about intimidation. “We’re going to drive out the enemy Dreamwalkers and stake our claim to Tower territory in the World of Dreams itself. If at all possible, we’ll overhaul the Aiel and the Shadow’s Dreadlords as Tel’aran’rhiod’s foremost powers. In six months’ time I plan for us to have several dozen trained Aes Sedai Dreamwalkers on a nightly rotation.”

Once this particular wall was being held perhaps she could fool herself she had done something worth her exalted rank. Maybe she could even forgive herself for surrendering to a bloody Dreadlord. She made it stark: “We will be the next masters of Tel’aran’rhiod.”

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

In theory the Tower Guard lived to serve her will. Sirayn expected and if it ever came to it she would even demand their support in the military sphere. However, in practice the two institutions they represented had a more complex relationship, one that did not need an Amyrlin stamping all over it, and whatever she might think of their homicidal tendencies toward Aes Sedai she did not dispute that only the Green Ajah rivalled them for knowledge of war. Their obedience she had; it was their genuine support that she needed. So her customary composure hid a spark of relief to hear his immediate assent.

It gratified her to know that she had made a good assessment. If anyone could be counted on to back her ambitious plans she had expected it would be this man. She had made only a cursory investigation into his life and career, they had run through so many Commanders recently that she was wary of wasting her time on another short-term appointment, but everything she had found out told her that Brand should be a valuable supporter; a Borderlander himself, and a Kandoran no less, he ought to feel the same outrage as she did at the thought of Kandor under the Shadow’s sway and his high rank in the yards meant that he could help put her planned campaign into practice.

For all she knew this stranger was as murderous as various of his current charges had proven themselves to be over time. The thought had never truly left her, despite the civilised surface, a small dark fear in the back of her mind. But until he snapped and turned into a lunatic too Sirayn figured she could work with him.

Sipping her tea, she put on a polite smile. “Believe me, I have no desire to leave Tar Valon undefended.” Far from it: if it came to a straight choice between saving Kandor or even all the Borderlands, and defending her home, she’d take the latter like a shot. The great northern defence was a necessary part of her plans and she was counting on them to keep the Blight off her hands while she worked … but Tar Valon represented the Light & the Tower and she would not suffer it to fall. Not with all its knowledge, its priceless libraries and stores of learning, its Age of Legends artefacts and its unique place in the eyes of the world. Tar Valon would be defended as long as she could order it. “The city’s defence is a top priority for me.

“I’ll pick a campaign leader. Most likely a sister of the Green Ajah. The politickers will complain but you and I both know that a major campaign, especially this one should be run by somebody who knows what they’re doing. I want this show on the road as soon as possible. The situation is still deteroriating and the longer we wait the more difficult we make our own job. My people can be ready whenever you need them … and they will be if I have to drag them out of bed myself. That won’t be the problem.

“The real delay will be in mobilising all those supplies. We’re facing a long supply chain across a large expanse of contested territory. Bad weather, exposure, accidents, metal fatigue, bandits and outlaws, unhappy or corrupt locals, theft … and that’s without even mentioning the Shadow. If possible we need to occupy the south of Kandor so I suggest that with the consent of whoever lives there we use towns along the way to stash supplies, allowing us to maintain uninterrupted contact with our people, and forcing any Trollocs who are up for it to take on a walled Borderlander town if they want to cut off the troops …” momentarily abashed, she realised she was telling one of the world’s best leaders of men how to run a campaign, “but, obviously, as I won’t be going myself my role is advisory only.”

Light only knew she wanted to. It felt wrong to send people out to die in her place while she sat in the white city, amid piles of books and papers, moving her pawns on the game board as her plans dictated. But she had to obey centuries-old Tower Law at least for now and the Amyrlin Seat must not endanger herself even when she missed war. No, she still had work to do here, enough to convince herself that she was being of at least some use to the Tower. Work … and personal business. The kind of personal business she didn’t want to think about much less discuss with a complete stranger whose interests she did not know; not her ordinary kind of personal business, frequently shady and sometimes downright illegal, but something much closer to her heart.

Something only a fool would do and yet … might be her best and only choice. Efficiency was the key; she needed a fast, effective and totally private way of shelving what she was coming to realise was serious trouble. An old hand at denial, she knew everything went away if she worked hard enough at forgetting it, and she had come to realise that a method of doing just that might be at her fingertips. Sirayn contemplated the surface of her tea cup as though it might tell her some secrets and added, in a tone she hoped betrayed no change at all, “And when they leave for Kandor I want somebody to teach me the Flame and the Void. Quietly. No questions asked.” She couldn’t face yet another meddlesome Tower Guard prying into her private affairs. But if she learnt this well enough she wouldn’t ever need to fear it again.

In fact, she wouldn’t need to fear anything at all, ever. No shameful fear, no anger, not even a moment’s irritation. She would be as unfeeling as stone; the thought appealed to her no end. Aes Sedai were supposed to be dispassionate and while she’d never got the hang of that herself, she couldn’t afford to give it another two hundred years on the off chance that she discovered the knack, she had work to do and personal feelings only got in the way. So she watched the Commander with a particular intensity as she waited.

Sirayn Damodred

Watcher of the Seals

Flame of Tar Valon

The Amyrlin Seat

Her wide dark eyes created the perfect illusion of innocence and shock; words adding to the presented package a display of surprise. But the words tried to convey to much; artificially supported and puffed up they spoke volumes of one who carried a far greater knowledge then she wanted reveled; the words adding a certain level of sarcasm that did not touch her voice. This one like others of her kind before him held subtle skills and a hidden agenda. In a way he could actually picture those words delivered in the acrid tone Sirayn seemed to enjoy when she felt a smiting was in order. Knowing her heritage as he guessed he would believe more then one agenda sat at the head of this little one's mind. None of that however added any reassurance or comfort.

The lands around them lay riddled with the cast off corpses of those who had fallen to the bite of merciless steel. Painted red the lands of Kandor be them snow, rock, dirt, or even the wood floors of tavern and house. Each reclaimed town meant deadly and often costly battles within the small cramped quarters of buildings and shed. Given the option Corin would lead a thousand men into open field or forested glade battle rather then the costly and messy affair of building to building searches. But like all those in the red cloak of the Tower Guard. His life was to that of the towers purpose and need. Though even the strongest supporter questioned some of it's masters decisions.

Her smile grew with another verbalization of want in the need of joining those that must die for the White Towers cause. In another time and another place he could think of many a men who would have fallen to this one quickly. Their hearts and minds wrapped around her little finger in baited anticipation of any promise she might offer. Images and a heart's remembered whisper began to rise up like wisps of smoke from within; Lavinya's face blooming within it. I'm sorry my dear but now is not the time. We have decided this already. With a twinge of pain and guilt still somewhat raw on the edges he scattered the thoughts and pushed her remembered softness away into the distance. Too much death lie around him in this light forsaken realm of Kandor to allow him any moment of remembered or hoped for warmth from either of those that had occupied so much of his mind before this posting.

“No idea of one end from another you say,” Casual conversation was all the tone in his voice carried as his hand stroked the line of his jaw thoughtfully. “Well then it would be difficult to make use of you anytime soon, though I suppose I could find a purpose you could fill nicely.” He stopped and turned toward her, eyes looking her over as if sizing her ability and strength for the needed task. Her smile had slipped a little and a touch of puzzlement floated in her eyes. “Yes, I think you will most defiantly do. I usually prefer reds but in this frozen place warmth in bed from a pretty face is still welcomed warmth.” His face took on a skewed look, “You aren't married or betrothed are you? I would hate to have to kill a jealous lover, might get blood on my clothes. That would never do, I prefer the touch of soft hands not wrinkled hands from extended time in the wash water,” his wink filled with warmth and barely contained restraint.

Like the moments before battle, it's combatants at the verge of movement, time seemed to slow down. The few seconds that passed between them could have contained a half a hundred different thoughts and emotions. It was a rather bold play for himself but then here there was little time to ferrite out a firm understanding of those you may have to deal with. Perhaps under different circumstances he would have offered her more credit to her present ability to maintain composure. But here it just worked to solidify belief that this one would need to be watched closely. Her smile returned to a broad and inviting expression; a slight tilt to her head. But as she opened her mouth to offer her justification to such a scandalous offer he began to chuckle.

“Relax deary that is not the way you advance in the ranks of the Tower Guard. To reach this cloak,” his hand grasped it's edge draping it out for emphasis, “you have to earn it with old fashion sweat and tears. Obviously you are determined to complete this little quest of yours what ever it's reason.” His voice had begun to take on the authoritative drone of a drill Sargent. “If this battle is to remain here and last for an extended time then additional ranks will be required, though it will be long before you will be ready to truly survive. If it was just the opportunity to fight you would have joined one of the many militia groups popping up, or what is left of the armies for these lands. Know if you desire the cloak then you will have to accept the time it takes to earn it.” While he talked he slowly circled the girl, her eyes trying to follow him. “I can not simply turn you away as you will no doubt accost another until you gain the entrance you seek; and with the drink the way it has been of late it is a risk I can not willfully accept.” The last was delivered in quiet dark tones, too many of the younger files still sought out it's mind numbing qualities to deal with what their eyes beheld each day.

“So little one, unless you are truly attached to that name perhaps you can share with me your true name and why it is you feel so strongly lead to the service of the Tower?”

_________________

Corin Danveer

Tower Guard

Tied to the Flame

ooc: Anjen-reply later. :P

One drawback to playing the empty-headed Domani lightskirt to her fingertips, she decided while her smile became a little fixed and she fought not to let her grip on his arm betray her tension, was that just occasionally it prevented her from satisfying the urge to slap someone. It was on the tip of her tongue to deliver a suitably caustic response but she dared not betray any intelligence or spirit; if she marked herself out from the nameless masses in any way she caused herself trouble; only the unmemorable and the underestimated had freedom. So inwardly seething she held her silence.

It appeared that the wretched man had taken one look at her and concluded that staying pretty had to be her top priority. As a foreigner alone in war-torn Kandor, whose red and bloody snows had caused refugees to flee in their thousands, he had also assumed that she lived a sheltered life despite there being no work nor shelter nor food nor safety in the entire country. Perhaps he disliked women. She had no idea why, serving the world’s greatest matriarchal force ought to foster respect, but it was the only reason save malice or misjudgement she could come up with. Neither eased her irritation.

Maybe she should take it as an oblique compliment, her performance as the feckless stripling had been better than even she planned, but frankly when she considered the circumstances it offended her all the more. No soldier herself, even she could tell that Kandor’s liberation would be a long and costly enterprise, as likely to fail as succeed, and if they planned to leave a gap in their ranks where old members had fallen then discouraging would-be recruits was an excellent way to go about it. Light forbid that a Domani girl should even be able to spell the phrase sustainable recruitment, far less have any concept of strategy or even common bloody sense, so she bit her tongue.

Damn it: for whatever obscure reasons he had, he had clearly taken against her. She managed not to tell him that if he refused to help her she would find somebody who would, her current frivolous fool of a self would not have thought that far ahead, but if he had two thoughts to rub together he would work that out for himself. She only hoped she hadn’t accidentally stumbled across the Commander of the Tower Guard or some such fancy title. It would be just her luck that the people she needed to let her in had conceived some irrational dislike for a Domani face and refused her.

Instead, falling back on the old familiar tactic of playing dumb, she widened her dark eyes in feigned surprise. “You don’t mean it might be hard work, do you sir?” On reflection the tone of horrified realisation had perhaps been overdone. “I wouldn’t want to chip a nail sir, and I’m afraid I really don’t know one end of a sword from another, and I’m surely not one for the hard life.” It took some effort to maintain the sweetly uncritical lightness when she thought of the journey’s hardships, her hopeless search here, the snows and the freezing cold and the hunger and pennilessness and the sheer helpless frustrated despair, or the plight of the thousands of refugees starving and homeless around them.

At least the Tower Guards had a bloody roof over their heads, three square meals a day and warmth and clean clothes, it wasn’t even their country being torn apart inch by bloody inch. She knew damn well they spent half their time sunning themselves in her beloved Arad Doman while their Aes Sedai brought down people’s families for fun. No, she had no sympathy. Not that she would say so.

“I must admit I’ve had second thoughts, sir,” Anjen furrowed her brow as if deep in thought, doing her best not to mention recruitment, numbers, hypocrisy or anything of the sort, “but I still want to save the world. Just like the Aes Sedai! Only with swords!” She tried out a brilliant smile on the unhelpful halfwit she had landed herself with. She had never undergone Aes Sedai testing and had absolutely no intention of it either; her commitment to this vengeance scheme had its limits. But she had come all the way to Kandor, she had yet to find what she was looking for, and a pat on the head was little enough to suffer to gain access to the next step of her plan. “Doesn’t everybody want to save the world?”

Fingers crossed that that would suffice. She certainly didn’t want to talk about why or how she had ended up here with her request; keep the lies simple, that was her principle, and the fewer stories she spread around the less effort she had to expend in keeping track of them. This stranger had proved more problematic than the Border Patrol, that was for certain, but if her luck held she could get around him as well. She smiled ever more brightly: pretty, dumb and eager, that was her. “So when can I start?”

Anjen

Ooc: You are patience itself. :D

It took a moment’s concentration to stamp out a flinch, half from the unwanted touch, half from the memories it triggered. Come now, what harm could it do? Amiarin Lucif had asked her some hundred feet below the ground, in a vast cavern of biting cold and heat, and in the soft glow of another woman’s room late at night the old question echoed for her.

What harm could it do to forgive? All those old grievances had done nobody any good and Jaydena played her role so beautifully that if she closed her eyes to history she could convince herself it was true; at least the Sitter could convincingly pretend affection, she considered it a toss-up whether feigned warmth was better than no warmth at all. Maybe she had misjudged her capacity for the lone game. Yet for Amiarin she’d known in her bones that even the most innocuous-seeming gesture could do a great deal of harm. If she’d not trusted her instincts that all these minor questions meant something in the greater scheme, that if she caved in to that she made it doubly hard for herself to defy the important questions, the Light only knew what might have happened.

Her instincts warned her the same way now. To accept simple warmth and comfort from a fellow sister might mean nothing on the surface. But it signified more than an Aes Sedai should permit: that she had let her guard down, that she had allowed somebody near her, that she had made herself vulnerable to a subtle style of subversion. She would not have permitted anyone under her command to ensnare themselves with an Aes Sedai, member of the same Ajah or not, and if it had burned them she would have had no sympathy for them. It was improper to tolerate in herself something for which she would have scorned others.

Once upon a time, years ago, she’d needed Jaydena. A full Green Ajah raising took people apart and put them back together in new patterns; she had hated every moment, young and stupid and poisoned by bitterness, unable to let go of Jehanine’s scorn; and she had known nothing. How to act as an Aes Sedai should, what it was to be Green Ajah, even her place in the Tower were mysteries she could not unravel. She had sought companionship -- people who had faith in her and whom she could rely on -- to make Tower life a little more bearable. In the end she’d learnt the hard way as Aes Sedai were supposed to do, found out the reasons behind the old Tower doctrine of separation, and did she owe anything to the people she had left behind?

Once upon a time they’d been friends. She’d thought she might even love this woman. No doubt many people took one look at the perfect features and came to the same conclusion, but she kept her hands off beautiful people for much the same reasons as she never drank, reasons like intoxication and risk and self control. She’d liked other qualities in Jaydena, like that strange and incomprehensible ability to discard reality in favour of sentiment, or how a political machine like her could listen to a career-destroying story and never mention it again, and maybe just a little bit the devotion she had given so freely to Seiaman Kera.

But that had been a long time ago and she couldn’t go back. The moving finger had writ and all that; lines had been crossed; she’d never mastered the art of forgetting an insult, never learnt how others let so-called friends call them cowards and still take their hand afterward, how to forgive a smiling pretence of friendship … and she had no desire to learn. Only the weak needed a warm embrace after a night of horrors or forgiveness for their crimes. If she needed forgiveness from now on she would make her own.

Better not to think of how Jaydena had so casually taken her Gaidin, the only possession she had feared to lose, and broken every Green Ajah custom into the bargain. Definitely better not to think of how cravenly she had let it happen for fear of offending a Sitter and, more importantly, losing her only friend. Anger did not become an Aes Sedai. An Aes Sedai had no ties to break, no friends to lose, nothing to trouble her serenity. It sounded better in theory than it felt in practice.

Nevertheless she stepped away, a deliberately slow movement, covering up her instinctive and powerful dislike of having people too close. “No. No, I think not.” She kept her voice quite toneless. “I don’t believe in second chances. You take what you want and you pay the price. You’ve had what you wanted,” certainly Jaydena had had what she herself had wanted so intensely, when she thought of how hard she had tried to make everything right with Seiaman and how easily this dazzlingly beautiful, perfect Sitter had taken everything away, it taxed her composure no end, “and now you pay for it. You can’t take that back.”

Now, finally, she felt calm. Considering her decision caused her a satisfying lack of feeling. She had wasted her time trying to be a friend and a sister and a bondmate with a Gaidin and a fellow Aes Sedai who’d never given a damn. Enough of that. Her kind had never been meant for companionship. “We’re done.” Her tone remained even, an Ajah Head with an out-of-favour Sitter, nothing more. “Good night, Banner Captain.”

On that note she left; a last glance, a careful stamping out of anything else she might have said, closing the door quietly behind her. Better that she be gone before she make any more of a fool of herself. She still had no idea how Jaydena affected her so strongly, confusing all her clear-cut priorities, but at least now she wouldn’t have the opportunity to find out. Maybe she had caused so much offence that even if for some lunatic reason she changed her mind it still wouldn’t be possible. That would be the best result -- a solid, gilt-edged guarantee that she would never have to deal with Jaydena on any level other than politics.

Because for all her bold talk the episode had upset her more deeply than she cared to admit, she left her loyal people alone to celebrate a hard-won triumph and the foundation of their future glittering careers, and crossed the Hall of Swords instead to the Captain General’s office. Never a Sitter herself, she had been here only for purposes of duty before, and to enter it as of right felt quite foreign to her. Inside all was silent. In the stillness she looked up at A’vron Shadar, greatsword and centuries-old symbol of office, and when she remembered that Lanfir Leah Marithsen had stood here before her she had a sudden and disturbing feeling of fragility.

Blood and ashes! This was not going to discourage her. She refused to let it. She had fought hard to get here, she had given the Battle Ajah as much service as anyone could ask for, she had a chance to be if not a fine Ajah Head at least a decent one. Only she couldn’t make herself believe her own propaganda. Giving up, she toasted herself drily amidst the trappings of a victory she hadn’t deserved. “Congratulations, Captain General.”

Strange. Her new title sounded hollow.

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

I have not betrayed you. I would not betray you.

Certainty had always been her armour. It took a subtle symmetry between faith in one’s own judgement and judgement that was worth faith to be Aes Sedai: two contradictory, fragile skills, a balance that could tip into arrogance or insecurity at any moment, poised on the fulcrum of an iron sense of self. If she hadn’t known in her bones that this woman had betrayed her, Aramina whom she had raised with her own hands, Aramina who understood her better than she had any right to, she would never have found the determination necessary to face her down. She had already made up her mind and the damage was done. Backing down now served nobody’s purpose.

So what came next represented the last words she wanted to hear in possibly the last tone she ever wanted Aramina sur Dulciena to use around her. It was sheer idiocy how hearing that much pain made her waver in ways no amount of reason would ever achieved. If she’d ever needed it confirmed that she cared secretly but intensely for this strange composed woman she only needed to feel the wrench of that voice. Briefly she remembered other, similar moments of recognition and the times she’d so clumsily sought and failed to secure the same affection in return … and damn it, she didn’t need that interference, she’d walked away from sentiment a long time ago.

Logic and courage were an Aes Sedai’s only friends. Logic to recognise and isolate what needed to be done: she had uncovered a traitor, just the one but damning enough for all that, and therefore she had to cut that person out of the loop and move on to controlling the damage. Courage to go through with it. Only when she looked at Aramina amid her flowers, a tiny scene of colour and beauty she had never been permitted to see … she didn’t want to. Didn’t want to face the inevitable. Didn’t want to do what had to be done.

“I,” she began, and ran out of words; couldn’t frame her thoughts in the right way; distracted by light and flowers and pretty women and too much pain, words locked tight in her throat. Eventually she managed, “Don’t -- don’t do that. Don’t lie. I already know, you can’t possibly make it any worse, you don’t have to try to -- fool me, why can’t you just-“ her voice slid into harshness as she sought to hide any waver and finally, stupidly upset, she turned away: hiding whatever a skilled politicker might read into her expression: stopped defending her decision blindly, let her determination crack.

Had she been wrong? After all her calculation, her careful assessment of who had been in a position to betray her, applying reason even where she hated the answers it gave her … could it be that her safe, cold, logical conclusion had been wrong? Light only knew she’d never wanted to think that Aramina of all people had turned on her but she’d seen too much betrayal to believe that anybody valued fidelity like she did. Maybe in a way she’d been expecting this all along. She hadn’t deserved loyalty, why would somebody like Aramina have such faith in her, how could that be true? It was inevitable that Aramina would turn on her. Better now than later. At some point she would lose this woman for good and it might as well be under the taint of treachery than to have to grieve her properly.

If she had been wrong … she let herself hold that fragile thought for a moment … maybe she didn’t have to lose Aramina just yet. Aramina looked up to her as she had never earned; Aramina meant the slow, careful beginnings of trust; Aramina meant trying to learn how to be a friend again. She hadn’t wanted to lose that either though it was also inescapable. Maybe she didn’t have to. She didn’t even know how to frame these thoughts: would an ordinary person reach out, would they apologise, what would they say? She wanted to touch, to hold tight … didn’t quite dare.

“Right. Right, I see.” It took some effort to make herself impassive, her voice clear and toneless, to match the other woman’s composure but she got there in the end. She had been wrong. She had actually been wrong. So much relief, stupid amounts of relief and she didn’t even know what to do with it other than to think mine and stop the word on her tongue. “Let us not be -- precipitous. I think enough precipitating has been done today.” Not a single shake in her voice. Aes Sedai calm was a marvellous thing. She had been wrong!

“If -- since it wasn’t you,” she made herself say it, deliberately, committing herself to a brighter interpretation by far, “then -- yes, one of the other three.” Personally she made no distinction between the act of an Aes Sedai and the act of their Warder; Gaidin were an extension of an Aes Sedai’s sword arm, if they had betrayed her, then so had their Aes Sedai. “Serena’s Dragonsworn in Cairhien.” Besides, she couldn’t even frame in her imagination that Serena Morrigan would ever betray her. There was something artless and sincere about Serena that no other Aes Sedai had, something about the way the woman lit up like a lantern whenever they were together, the affection Serena was not ashamed to show. “As for Lavinya … well.”

Complicated was a light word to describe her relationship with Lavinya Morganen. She hadn’t always liked Lavinya, in fact she wasn’t certain that she liked the other woman even now, though acquaintance had shown her the better qualities that Lavinya preferred to keep hidden -- her intelligence and ambition, the cool head in a crisis, the strength. Why under the Light the woman behaved like such a lightskirt when she could be a major player on the political scene Sirayn had no idea, she couldn’t even conceive of making the same choice herself, but she supposed it made some logic to Lavinya somewhere.

Would the other woman betray her if she could? Unlike at least one other, she had entered the Order willingly, believing that it would gain her success and standing. And it would: Sirayn intended to make certain of that: she made good on her promises. It made no sense to go back on that once she was already ensnared. Could it possibly be something to do with … no, she didn’t want to think for a moment that Corin bloody Danveer had sparked this off, she had enough trouble with the boy already without him causing her own agents to turn on her. No, it just didn’t make sense that Lavinya would turn on her.

That left only one option. Somebody who reminded Sirayn sharply and rather unpleasantly of herself; a difficult, insolent young woman with a troubled private life and a penchant for making things worse for herself; a girl to whom she had extended her hand but so far had only slapped it away. She didn’t want to believe it of Estel Liones partly because it was so easy. It seemed a cheap shot to blame everything on the charmless, incompetent one and she knew only too well herself what life was like at the bottom of the ladder. Partly as well, when she thought of the time and effort she had put into the bloody girl … all her effort to keep that shameful pregnancy covered up, to control the damage from those drawings, to position little Rossa where the two could help one another … why would Estel throw all that away? Destroy everything they’d been working to achieve?

“Estel.” For the second time in as many hours she reached the final conclusion that somebody she had seen promise in, whom she had taken under her wing, had betrayed her for no purpose that she could see. Had it been money perhaps? Not some kind of political advantage, the child had no interest in actual work as far as she could see. Something to do with her Talcontar boy? No way of knowing. It was all so bloody stupid and destructive. All her hard work and effort ruined! Her trust broken, their future damaged, and all because somebody who owed her continued political survival to other people’s effort had decided to bite the hand that fed her. “I suppose we’d better talk to her.” Slow talk. Painful talk. Talk like revenge.

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

Somebody had lit the sea on fire and it had washed across a thousand leagues to burn the night in southern Kandor. Nothing else explained the sight that greeted her; black the skies above her head, black as pitch and not broken by a single star, yet from where she stood clutching the icy stone atop a wall she glimpsed a thousand thousand stars reflected in the impossible water beneath her. Like waves they surged and broke upon the wall underneath while brilliant points of light eddied and swirled far out. The strange fantastic view overwhelmed her; her senses failed to cope with its intensity, with the glass sharp contrast of black and star-white, the impossibility of it all. Yet she wasn’t dreaming.

Carefully, though she felt that it must set her loose like a ship upon the storm-tossed waters beneath her, she loosed her grip on the hard cold stone and let go a long breath. Then she shut her eyes; sealing herself momentarily into undisturbed blackness. Eyes closed, she reminded herself that the sea lay many weeks’ journey from here, that no amount of the One Power could wreak such a tremendous change, and that even had it done so the stars reflected in the supposed water beneath her did not in fact shine above her head. She might have lived a sheltered life, loved and spoiled, but that did not actually make her an idiot. Finally she opened her eyes again.

The starry sea still surged beneath her. Her eyes had sharpened enough despite the dimmest of lights to pick out subtle distinctions in the waves and … as the scene crystallised for her in more detail she realised that each star was in fact a torch held aloft; the distance between herself at the top of the wall and the sea of torches beneath her had narrowed each flaming brand to a single point of light; as people moved their artificial stars produced the look of slow but inexorable currents. If she stared at it too long the sight disorientated her all over again. Tiredness was only making its effect worse. She rubbed her eyes wearily and did her best to remember why she had come up here in the first place.

“Get off the wall, woman.”

An unexpected voice made her jump amid shards of the previous silence. Lifting her eyes, she found herself face to face with a brawny-looking stranger, a Tower Guard by the half-glimpsed redness of his cloak. His cold look indicated quite clearly that this wall top was not wide enough for two and that, between the civilian and the highly skilled warrior, it was quite clear who should give way. Far be it from her to argue with somebody who might later save her life at the risk of his own. “Yes, sir.” She lowered her eyes decorously and headed toward the narrow stairway that led down to the ground. Snow crunched as she went. Once enough time and distance had elapsed she hid herself in a small corner of the wall and drew her soft white furs more tightly round herself, for warmth and concealment both, and contemplated the starry ground thoughtfully.

Days ago the Tower had come like a sudden storm. Amid driving snow they had arrived in force, rank on serried rank of them, all armed to the teeth and ready to do battle; herself trapped in a sieged town for several days now, Anjen had experienced a curious mix of relief, gladness and fury. Once her initial elation at being saved from an unfortunate future had faded her resentment had bubbled up all the harder. One night she’d found herself a quiet corner in a tavern and watched the off duty Tower Guards, memorised them intensely, these people whose masters had spread such lies and ruin. And when one had come over to her and offered to buy her a drink -- a pretty youngster, all dark mahogany colouring, maybe a night’s worth of fun in her -- she had damn nearly hit him. Only by the greatest self control had she simply walked away leaving baffled strangers behind her. In that moment she had hated them every bit as much as she hated the nameless Aes Sedai.

In the meantime she had taught herself to meet red cloaks and smile for them, and even the colour-shifting Warders, though she had so far managed not to even see an Aes Sedai. The thought made her so bitter that she didn’t trust herself not to do something unfortunate to them and Anjen doubted that her goals would be achieved any faster if the Tower folk threw her in chains. So she had watched while the Tower took over this walled town as a base to secure the surrounding country; watched while the streets filled with strange soldiers; watched while barrels full of arrows multiplied on the walls; watched while red-cloaked strangers drilled endlessly in the squares; watched, watched, watched.

She didn’t want to watch any more. She wanted to bloody do something. The snow and the swarms of Tower people everywhere made it near impossible to make any progress on her main goal; she’d come up here to try to spot a better way to approach her target, learn the street layout a bit better maybe, since at this rate she would have to circumvent a good number of Tower Guards, but even from this vantage she didn’t rate her chances of getting past them. Frowning absently, she drew patterns in the snow with one cold finger, watching the sea of improbable lights. Then something occurred to her. It was a way to gain access to places and information she couldn’t reach on her own but desperately needed. And it was so beautifully simple.

Not far away another Tower Guard crossed the snow. He looked approximately a hundredth as frozen as she was, but maybe being associated with the Tower brought heroic powers as well as making one a filthy liar, and for all she knew he didn’t feel the cold at all. She sidled up to him. “Sir?” Her sidelong glance conveyed better than a thousand words that he looked most handsome in his fine red cloak, what a skilled warrior he undoubtedly was, and that a man of his stature could surely spare a moment for a young lady all by herself. Anjen slipped her arm through his, partly so she could give him the benefit of a sultry look through her lashes and partly so she could get a bit bloody warmer, and put on her smokiest tones: “If you aren’t too busy saving the world, I want to enlist.”

Anjen

My dear husband,

You will not be expecting this letter from me; in the circumstances I thought it better to be considered dead. The deception was necessary. Had my survival been known, I am quite certain I would never have reached the border. But I live, I am safe and well if far from home, and I have every intention of returning to your side as soon as possible.

I cannot put my plans to paper; this letter may be intercepted and I do not know the codes my father used in his private communications. Suffice it to say that I seek to prove our family’s loyalty to the Light. I hope with all my heart that you are as convinced of our innocence as I am -- but I will pursue this cause whether you also follow it or not.

Please know that I did not leave you lightly. I have a duty to my own family as much as to yours and to the one we were to make together. And I will return just as soon as my work is done. I ask nothing of you: by our standards I have demanded enough that you accept my absence; but you will never be far from my thoughts.

To our future together.

She bit the end of her pen, considered the potential drawbacks of sending a letter signed with her real name, and instead signed it simply your loving wife. Completed, the letter looked short and unsatisfactory somehow; she had the silver tongue a little, as all Domani women should, but when faced with a blank page and the opportunity to confess everything to her husband all her words dried up. How could she summarise her arduous, lonely travels? Or the pale, flawless beauty of Saldaea laid out before her? Or her work to convince the Border Patrol, perhaps the first time she had tested her Domani skills in the field, or how she’d felt that first night when she took her wedding ring off and hid it? No, even if she had had the secure codes with which to communicate such details she didn’t know how to express it. Everything would have to wait until she got home.

If she got home. The sheer scale and difficulty of the journey ahead daunted her; she couldn’t imagine herself, a well-educated Domani lady as skilled at the trading table as she was unskilled at defending herself, dealing death to Darkfriends and worse. As for Trollocs … she’d imagined them half a story, something to terrify children, and to be confronted by the possibility of actually meeting some put cold fear in her heart. Her conversation with the guard earlier had sparked that small thought in her that she could genuinely be with child for all she knew and if she’d been even a little convinced of it she would never have exposed any potential child of hers to Fades. And even if she got to Kandor, in all the chaos and the confusion, how could she possibly find whom she sought?

It couldn’t be as bad as the Border Patrol had told her. That just wouldn’t happen. Ever since the Breaking the great northern defence of the Borderlands had stood firm against the Blight; monsters out of song and story might roam the Blight, but the brave Borderlander men held them back, and nothing would ever happen to her beloved home while Saldaea and Kandor and little Arafel and strong old Shienar stood against the Shadow. The north would never break in her lifetime, not with all the southern nations behind it and the Tower’s white hand to steady it … a thought that twisted her mouth in sudden bitterness and she began to stuff the letter into its envelope with quick rough gestures.

Then her hands stilled. She had considered the possibility of interception even before she started writing the letter. But what if it arrived safely? Her departure had been circumspect, so long as one assumed that the court fire was the work of some disaffected sympathiser, and intended to give the impression that she had either perished in the fires or perhaps at the hands of over eager townsfolk. She pictured her husband in the estates they should have ruled together -- in the gardens where their children should have grown up -- wearing whites perhaps, mourning for her … and she began to frown.

To inform him would be to force him to lie on her behalf. She didn’t consider for a moment that her husband might turn her in; she would never have betrayed him and she expected the same in return. Yet he would have to keep this deception for months, perhaps even a year or more, and Anjen had no idea how well he could lie to his own family and to anyone who asked. Could he do that? She had never yet met a man content to stay at home and wait while his wife went off adventuring on their behalf. It challenged their masculinity or some such rubbish. And if this letter could be traced back to the border town where she had put it on a mail coach … if people there remembered a pretty Domani girl whose speech betrayed her station and who had thrown herself on the mercy of the Border Patrol … perhaps he might even follow her.

Into Kandor! Light but she hoped he had more sense. Surely he would; nobody went to Kandor right now if they could avoid it. He wouldn’t know for certain … but then again, neither did she know for certain what reception she would find in Kandor, and she had set herself to the task with great determination. It would be idiocy for her husband to follow her. He ought to know better. Yet …

Blood and bloody ashes! She’d write from Kandor itself, if any mail still ran from there, and then even if he came after her like a lunatic he wouldn’t have the chance to enter Kandor before their paths crossed. Muttering in an unladylike fashion, she shredded the letter she had meant to send and scattered the pieces. They fell like white blossoms into the river far below.

“Lady?”

Her new friends were considering her with some suspicion. Anjen treated them to the most dazzling smile she could summon, not impressive given her mood, and dusted her hands off as though she hadn’t just torn up expensive paper and dropped it into the river. “Kind sirs, if I could have just one more moment to plead my case-“

“No need.” They sounded short. She deduced that her shameless manipulation hadn’t gone down too well even if proper Borderlanders could never resist a lady in distress. “Can you ride?” An eager nod; like any proper Domani child she had learnt to ride as soon as she had taken her first steps. This only furrowed brows further. Somebody was looking for any excuse to get rid of her. “Please understand that this is primarily a fighting company. Our purpose is to defend the helpless and the innocent. That means battle. You cannot be allowed to compromise that. If we run into trouble-“

Her pulse was beating faster. “I’ll flee. Like a coward.”

This venture earned her harder stares still. “How soon can you leave? And exactly who are you again?”

Protection! Her heart leapt. If she had secured the Border Patrol’s company, at least until she reached some well defended part of Kandor, she was gold. Her smile went warmer still. “Tomorrow. Tonight. Now.” Anjen gestured expansively with her now useless pen. “If you can go, I can go. And my name is …” Momentarily she searched her imagination. She had given herself a new secret name, to replace the one she dared not carry, but she had given others to everyone she met; it did not do to leave the same name behind her like a trail even if it was a false name. She plucked one from the air. “Keffria, sir. Thank you! I am so very grateful-”

“I bet you are. Tomorrow at dawn.”

Success. She positively beamed. “Yes, sir!”

Anjen

How hard could it be to raise a family? Women had done it since the beginning of time; despite the dangers of giving birth and lack of proper medical care, despite poverty and hardship on a massive scale, despite disasters both natural and unnatural and the ravages of war, they had somehow borne enough children to sustain the population across countless centuries. All it took to bring new life into the world was a roll in the hay. Her own father had been of dubious character even for a son of House Damodred and her mother hadn’t had two coppers to rub together; if unlettered and penniless commoners like her long-ago mother could raise a child fit to become Aes Sedai, she herself should be just as capable.

Though her family ties could best be described as complicated and her life as a roving Green Ajah soldier left neither time nor stability to bring up a child, not to mention the age-old prohibition on Aes Sedai having children, she had always wanted a family in a small secret way. She had left her own home so young that she scarcely remembered it. Half a child still she had come to the Tower, to have all her rough edges smoothed down and herself rebuilt in a useful form, and in the process she had sworn away any right to an ordinary life -- to make her own future, to marry the man she chose, to bear children if she wanted and to give them the best life she could provide. Despite or maybe because of its being forbidden, a family represented normality to her, an escape from the shawl’s demands.

Anybody who thought they could raise children as an Aes Sedai was a poor mother and a poor sister both. Tar Valon drowned people in intrigue, only Cairhien and the Rising Sun could compare to its tensions, and children wouldn’t even make a ripple; having an Aes Sedai for a mother only marked them out and if that particular Aes Sedai was the last Black Ajah hunter … it was tantamount to infanticide. Having a family just could not be balanced with Tower life. Either one betrayed the Tower for one’s children, as her mentor Telcia Nalemar had done in a decision she found both strange and horrifying, or one kept one’s priorities straight and strangled out all motherly instincts in the process.

In hindsight summoning her grown children to Tar Valon had been one of the gravest mistakes she had made as a mother. And considering one was now dead and a Darkfriend, she had made her fair share of those. Her two secrets, the tiny little gifts she had given away for their own safety, had grown so much in her absence … and such a long absence, she didn’t know how she had had the strength to stay away from them, knowing that somewhere in a sunlit glade her own children played and when they fell another woman caught them … why hadn’t she left them there? It had been safe; she had long ago taken all precautions she could to shelter the remains of her family. It had been far from Tar Valon and the currents of Daes Dae’mar that swirled round it. She might never have met her children, to be certain, but she could have resigned herself to that for their protection. Yet for some reason -- because she missed them, because being apart from her children was near to unbearable, because she’d been weak and stupid and thoughtless -- she’d called them to her side. She couldn’t have made any more open of an invitation to the Shadow if she’d written one herself.

It still stunned her how fast and how savagely everything had gone wrong. Had the Dreadlords been waiting for her somehow? They couldn’t have known that her son would develop the ability to channel … a seed which would have put down roots, grown and flowered had it been planted in her daughter, little Lyssa who had wanted to join her in the Green Ajah, but which had bloomed only blackly in her son … and even if they had somehow sensed it in him they had no way of knowing that she would defy Tower Law even in secret. They had watched her then as they did still -- she had always known that, it had become a fact of life after her journey as thirteenth Black Ajah Hunter to Tear, and she now the last one -- but even they had limits to their powers. So … surely … they couldn’t take her daughter as they had taken her son.

The thought frankly petrified her. She still wore the scars inside and outside, spaces in her memory she dared not go near, knowing that she had caused it all herself in her pride and her folly; if she ever had to watch Lyssa tainted by the Shadow until her own daughter turned on her … she didn’t know how she’d endured it the first time and she certainly didn’t think she could take it again. Yet her daughter, her only living child and survivor of twins torn apart by the Shadow, was now bedding a Darkfriend.

It had been difficult enough to teach herself to react like an Aes Sedai and not like a mother. All this time she had kept her distance, glimpsing her daughter occasionally but never speaking to her, every inch the detached Aes Sedai. To watch her now knowing that all the time a Darkfriend was poisoning her mind, that at any moment Lyssa might take her twin’s path into darkness, scraped her nerves raw. At the very least the Darkfriend sought information from her -- even the best politickers sometimes let information slip in pillow talk and so far Lyssa had never shown a moment’s discretion -- and at the worst … the Darkfriend had something far more damaging planned. What exactly had the child told him? How far had the Darkfriend sunk his claws in her daughter?

If she intervened she drew further notice to her daughter and perhaps risked the child’s life; if she did not … she gambled that her daughter’s will, a force never tested by the rigours of Tower life, could withstand a Darkfriend’s poison. Despite her own celibate life she knew how easily a foolish child could come to believe herself in love and spill everything she knew even to the most unsuitable candidate so long as he bedded her well. Lyssa probably thought herself hard done by but she had lived a life of luxury, sheltered in a quiet green place free from crime or poverty, educated in the proper style and her every wish paid for by her absent mother. How could an upbringing like that instil in a child the iron will she needed to navigate Tar Valon’s turbulent waters? It couldn’t -- and because she couldn’t rely on her daughter not to follow Solin to the Shadow she had to break all the rules she had set herself and intervene.

So afternoon found her in the yards, impassive as something carved from stone, while she sought out her last surviving child. She didn’t know whether Lyssa knew that she had been seen in bed with that Darkfriend, given the effort her daughter had put in unsuccessfully not to be noticed, but she imagined that the child could put two and two together. To see her daughter, taller and far prettier than her mother, sleekly muscled as a Tower Guard should be, was to remember their previous difficult meetings; like a lead weight she remembered that once upon a time Lyssa had babbled something about bonding her and she crossed her fingers that that mad thought had slipped the child’s mind. She had neither time nor patience for such foolishness today.

“Good morning, Tower Guard.” Keeping her voice cool and clear of all feeling she waited while her daughter finished whatever she was doing. “Are you busy? I would speak with you if I may.” The sun blazed palely high above them though it gave off little warmth and thus she bent her steps toward the grove, trailing Lyssa in her wake like a little comet and its tail. A ward closed them into silence and security. It might draw the occasional comment but it was far better than for anybody to hear what she had to say. “It is safe to speak freely.

"I want you to leave Tar Valon. Immediately. For good.”

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

Why would you prefer the other player to be female? :) I've heard of this phenomenon before but never understood it. If it's a question of who people feel comfortable writing romance with, presumably posts would ask for single heterosexual females of a similar age - rather than just females. So I'm curious as to why the gender interest?

Nobody so unimpressive and whom she outranked by such a margin had inspired such fear and revulsion in her since the Solin affair. Any fool could have worked out that he was a Darkfriend, only they would look at a forkroot conspiracy and see nothing but a means to blackmail, but she hadn’t expected the inventive little touches that made this so unbearable; his insistence on touching her made sense only as the product of sadism and while that shouldn’t come as a surprise to her, she had had her fair share of Darkfriend encounters along these lines, she had never yet worked out an effective defence. Maybe none existed. Maybe she could do nothing but endure it as long as she could.

Despite her hard-earned knowledge to the contrary, old instincts told her that if she made herself small and harmless he might not touch her any more, so she kept her eyes down and said nothing when he arrived. It was a subject of some bitter irony to her that she was acquiring the same captive-to-captor responses -- the downcast eyes, the subdued obedience and the silences -- as she had when Solin and his Dreadlord friend painstakingly taught her to fear them. Being effectively a prisoner in her own home she could do nothing about it other than keep her fears to herself and do exactly as she was told. She hated every minute with a silent, bitter intensity.

Near a year ago she had promised herself that she would never permit another person to touch her against her will. Never again: it put too much dread in her to even contemplate, she needed that reassurance to armour her. Once had been one time too many. To tolerate a slower but equally remorseless version of the worst nightmare she could imagine required a frankly inhuman level of resilience and if she had ever had the courage to face it she certainly didn’t have it now. That she couldn’t even prevent people from touching her against her will proved what a bloody failure she’d been as an Aes Sedai. Anybody who claimed to wear the shawl as of right should have got themselves out of this by now; logic therefore informed her that she was approximately as valuable as a bent spoon. It was intolerable. And she had no option but to tolerate it anyway.

Moments later her object lesson in why the Tower Guard should be disbanded resumed. Every time she convinced herself that just this once it could be all right, that it wouldn’t hurt too much, and every time it got worse instead. Rather a thousand Trollocs than being trapped in a room with someone who kept touching her. Unfortunately she didn’t get that option, who knew, maybe that wouldn’t have humiliated her enough for his taste; instead she got yet another game designed to frighten her as much as possible.

Takedowns. The cold grip of fear got a little tighter. Not only were they back to the touching again, but just in case she didn’t have enough difficulty dealing with it, she got force behind it as well. She pictured herself even trying to take down a fully trained Tower Guard and had to drop the image; her imagination presented speed and force and strength only too convincingly. They had been stronger than her when they came for her in the darkness. If she let him grab her, and the thought terrified her, what might he do? She couldn’t go on imagining the possible consequences or she would lose her nerve entirely. But when she looked at the task ahead bleakly she knew she would never do it.

As a highly skilled member of the Battle Ajah she had a range of options when dealing with a violent threat. She could kill as directly or as unobtrusively as necessary, fast or slow, messily or without leaving a mark. She could cripple for life in a variety of interesting ways. She could incapacitate temporarily or for as long as she thought fit. She could prevent her assailant ever reaching her without harming him in the slightest; she could simply put him to sleep right where he stood; he was a dead man walking if she ever got it into her head to harm him.

What she couldn’t do was allow him to touch her. Nevertheless, because she had no choice, she positioned herself as obediently as a puppet. In the back of her mind memories chattered: telling her that if she let somebody seize her she might never escape, showing her tiny glimpses of last time somebody did that -- fire waiting, her own blood black in the wavering light, shadows and a hand raised against her … damn it, she needed to concentrate. She was an Aes Sedai and a Green Ajah soldier; she should have better courage than this. Steeling herself, she waited while he backed off.

Intellectually she had been expecting him to come for her. Her instincts knew nothing of the sort. He was going to seize her: she hadn’t wanted any of this, she had done her best to protect him, even risked her career on that illegal gentling, but her son had turned on her all the same: she’d told him to snap out of it and exerted all the control she should have had as his mother and instead he’d brought fire and iron and darkness, sharp staccato images that lit up her imagination like fireworks, too much fear overloading everything.

Her supposed courage failed her. Her nerve broke and she was backing away before rational thought caught up; no touching, no holding, no way she could let him anywhere near her. She didn’t feel anything like safe until she had put a good distance between them and even then she had to take slow calming breaths to steady her racing heart. She was shaking. Wanted to hide, couldn’t hide, nowhere to escape to. It took what seemed like a long while for her unthinking, automatic reaction to let go; finally she got herself together enough to turn away, as close to hiding as she could get, and resumed feeling wretched.

How abysmally, unforgivably craven could one Aes Sedai be? She couldn’t believe that anyone took her shawl at its face value when they should have seen the truth written all over her -- that she was stupid enough to fall prey to Darkfriend blackmailers, that she was a dreadful coward, that the prospect of one person touching her beat all her Aes Sedai determination hands down. And yet even when she knew it was inexcusable and she had a duty to overcome it as best she could she just couldn’t defeat it. Basic, primitive terror had been hard wired into her on a level so fundamental she didn’t know how to undo it. She and fear weren’t even on speaking terms; rational thought did her no good at all. She had absolutely and miserably failed this particular test and while she was still trapped in this nightmare she couldn’t see any future but more of this abject failure.

In the end, partly because she had had it hammered into her at an early stage never to admit defeat but mostly because she didn’t have a choice, she returned to her previous position. She said nothing, didn’t trust herself to speak, beaten and humiliated and still stupidly terrified. So she stared at the floor again instead and waited for round two.

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

You want to change that email if you're replicating this post all over the place Corki. I'm assuming it's @dragonmount.com, not @deagonmount.com. :P

A keen reader, her head stuffed full of Farstrider’s Travels, Anjen had imagined somehow that journeys meant camp-fires and singing and eccentric fellow travellers. Afterward she looked back and had to smile. Her seventeen years had so far included being soft and spoiled and loved unconditionally; she had had no idea that those sweet memories were about to be crowded out by the most brutal, relentlessly demanding challenge she had ever undertaken.

Everything conspired against her. The summer drew out until everything withered. She ran out of money, starved and slept under hedges, sold everything precious she’d had and still couldn’t find coin, wore through her good boots and couldn’t afford to replace them, realised there were at least two easy ways of getting money and that she was too principled for one and too married for the other, finally earned a few coins as a scribe, went for several days without seeing another person, nearly broke half her fingers with a single mistimed punch in a rough town out toward the border, had a knife held to her throat as a result, got into trouble with the local watch, got out of it by desperate pleading … just in the first weeks of her journey.

By all rights Anjen should have given up a hundred times over. Once or twice she came perilously close to it. It never got better. But she got harder.

In time she reached the border itself. Once she looked across a river like a line of white fire in the sunlight and saw Saldaea laid out in all its harsh beauty she knew she had found the point of no return. She had never been so far north before and the appeal of crossing half the Borderlands for an uncertain reward diminished even further at the sight; vast plains stretching as far as her eyes could see, mountains so colossal they clawed at the sky, capped whitely with snow though the heat had lingered into autumn. If she crossed this winding river she bound herself to a course that would eventually take her to Kandor and whatever she found there. If she turned back now … maybe she could seek another path. Find her husband, beg him to go into exile with her.

But why should she? She’d done nothing wrong! Nobody had and yet the Tower had swept their pieces off the board in a single gesture. She didn’t even know why those Aes Sedai had taken such a violent dislike to her House after they’d spent time under her own roof. No self-respecting person would slip into exile with her husband, make a quieter life for herself and give up on justice while her father and her brother languished in jail. In a better world it would have been their job to make everything right -- but her House had no more free sons. It had only her. And she had inherited their obligations.

She found a glass window and made use of it as a mirror, straightened her unruly dark hair with a careless rake of her fingers, unlaced her bodice an inch and smoothed the thin Domani fabric over her hips, tried out a brilliant smile on her reflection. Then she sauntered toward the border guards on the bridge. They watched her sideways; northerners had many merits but resistance to Domani charms had never been one of them and when she laid a delicate hand on the nearest one’s arm he twitched. She turned up that practised smile another notch to watch him colour. “Could I beg your attention a moment, good sir?” Her voice had gone low and husky. He nodded, keeping his eyes on her face with what looked like an effort. “I hope to go to Kandor by way of your fair land and I-“

“Kandor?” He frowned, momentarily distracted even from the striking combination of Domani woman and Domani garb. “That’s no place for a lady to travel. Especially now. You have guards, m’lady?”

“Certainly,” she lied. “These are troubled times and I plan to present myself untouched to my husband when we meet again. He-“ she allowed a brief pause, biting her lip in not entirely feigned feeling, “he’s always been a fiery one, and when he heard that the Shadow had taken Chachin, well, nothing would do but that he join the Light’s resistance. Is it … bad out there?”

“Bad? It’s a bloody nightmare, begging your pardon, m’lady. If we were further east I could show you the columns of refugees making their way out of Kandor. Those motherloving Darkfriends are killing everyone they come across. Chachin is swarming with them, it’s not safe to love the Light within fifty leagues of the city, it’s -- look, lady, can’t you stay home?”

“No, I can’t.” It was a near automatic response. Blood and bloody ashes! She frowned over this unwelcome news. Perhaps she ought to get herself the guards she’d lied about so smoothly … but where would she find the coin? She couldn’t afford to pay her own and they certainly wouldn’t risk themselves on a hazardous jaunt into the Borderlands for nothing. If she attached herself to a merchant train of some sort … the likelihood was that they also would charge for the privilege. The only resource she possessed in unlimited qualities she had reserved for her husband’s benefit and she had no intention of crossing that line. She chewed her lip, smiled inwardly when the small gesture drew the guard’s gaze, then startled herself with her own stupidity. The Border Patrol! Heavily armed Borderlander warriors whose sole purpose was to defend Saldaea and all Light-fearing people who passed through. She surveyed her target with new interest.

Her light touch slid into an equally light grip and she turned slightly away from the others, drawing her new friend with her into a more private conversation. “Sir, I must go to Kandor. I must! My guards-“ briefly she grasped for a good story, “are only contracted to this border and I lack coin to pay them further because … our family fell on hard times. I need my husband back and I’ll get him if I have to drag him out of Kandor by the ear. But I need -- protection. Is there any way-“

“Oh no, you don’t,” said her erstwhile saviour, looking alarmed. “Not with a Border Patrol. What about the rules? What about common bloody-“

“I’m with child!” It took no effort at all to put outrage and fury into her hissed undertone. When she thought of her husband and the children she might never have all due to an Aes Sedai’s whim, that all the Tower had had to do was put a finger on the map where her old estates had stood and decide that that family should go on no longer, it filled her with enough ire for twenty people. And it should have been true. By now it could have been true, she could have been genuinely with child, in fact … for all she knew she actually was. The thought lit such hope in her that she had to look away and get herself under control. “Sir, I throw myself upon your mercy. I must get to Kandor and I’ll do so if I have to walk every step of the way -- on my own, carrying a child, hounded by the Shadow -- but still walking, I tell you!” She twitched the dusty hem of her skirt to indicate the terrors of walking. “But I fear the dangers that I might meet out there, and as for my baby … and I wouldn’t be of any trouble, I swear, if I could just come with you-“

“Dear merciful Light.” The guard looked as if he wanted to beat his head against the nearest wall. “Have you ever seen a Border Patrol before? Been to the Borderlands? Have you ever even seen a battle, for the Light’s sake?”

She remembered fire in the night, the taste of smoke bitter and heavy, the sudden desperate scramble for escape. “In -- a manner of speaking.” Damn it, she could read it in his face, he wasn’t going to fall for that one. How under the Light was she going to make it into Kandor alive? “A little. I’ve been in a fight or two. Hit this one person.” Anjen flexed her still-healing hand reflectively. “Turned out he had a knife. Not the smartest move to make.”

His eyebrows went up. “What did you do then?”

“Hit him again.” Then screamed for help. Then dived behind the nearest upturned table. Then beat him with a chair until the local watch turned up. Then got thrown in jail.

“This is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard in my life-”

“Perhaps you could help me make it a little less stupid,” suggested Anjen with a well-timed but somewhat desperate smile. “Sir.”

“No! You’d slow us down. You’d be useless when the Trollocs come down. And you’re-“ he waved a hand in the direction of her hypothetical child. “This is -- we can’t -- look, just no!”

Anjen glanced over his mailed shoulder and across the river to the Borderlands. The brilliant, colourless clarity of the sky lent a sharp quality to the air; she had to be seeing several hundred square leagues’ worth of country just from this vantage point. How many more would she have to cross to reach Kandor? By herself among the Shadowspawn? It would be madness. Suicide. She’d do her family no good at all by dying on some Light-forsaken plain far from her home. “As you say, sir.” She smiled, keeping her bitterness on the inside. “I’ll have a go all the same, I think. Thank you for your-“

“Are you mad, woman?” The guard looked as desperate as she felt. She’d been rather counting on it; all the stories told of the famous Borderlander gallantry toward women and, while lying and deceit was a poor return for it, manipulation was one of the only skills she could rely on. “Kandor? Alone? In your condition?”

“I am a loyal wife, sir!” Her voice sharpened despite her best intentions. “I’ll be in Kandor in a month’s time if I have to crawl there across broken glass. And you can either help me or stand aside!”

“Oh, for the Light’s sake!” Her many charms had evidently been forgotten. “Damn it. I’ll have to talk to my superior.”

“I’ll just wait here, shall I?” Anjen arranged herself artfully on the low wall.

“You do that.” He went in search of decisions.

Anjen

Looking back from a glacial Borderlander winter, where she found herself months later in a parlous state, her seventeenth summer struck her as a haze of sunshine and comfort. Of course she’d been accustomed to a life of luxury and that summer did not strike her as anything out of the ordinary. As the only daughter of a loving House she’d been spoilt from the moment she was born; almost from her first steps she’d begun learning to be a wife to her future husband and a mother to her future children. A mere youngster herself, she’d been promised early to the son of a neighbouring House, and when they’d both come of age they’d been allowed to meet a few times before they wed. She remembered it with a bittersweet clarity.

Barely sixteen, she’d prepared painstakingly for their first meeting. Her maid had helped her put all the womanly arts she’d learnt at her mother’s knee into practice; like best silver, she’d been polished until she shone, and when she’d looked in the mirror, for the first time she had seen a pretty young woman rather than a child. And by one of those strange, magical little coincidences … the first time she met her future husband her heart turned over and she realised that this was something like a miracle. Not that it mattered either way; love was something for stories, real life required her to wed for the political good of the family, and like a good daughter she was devoted to the good of the family. But she’d always been lucky and when she most needed it that luck gave her contentment like a gift. In the weeks leading up to her marriage she’d been as happy as she’d ever been in her life.

Then the Tower struck like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky and left everything she knew to burn. She’d caused a little burning herself, in revenge and in a bitter kind of justice, but what she truly sought lay far away from here. And while the ashes of the life she’d hoped to share with her husband cooled round her … she’d realised, like a hand twisting at her heart, what she had to do.

The episode with the oil lantern had given her a matter of hours before she had to leave. Half that time she spent hiding in an abandoned cottage still scarred by the wildfire war while shouts and lantern light played all about her. The occasional wink of light off her wedding ring had caught only her eyes so far but, though it left a bitter taste on her tongue, she slipped the ring off rather than risk discovery. A moment only she turned it over while wandering lights made tiny sparks from its smooth gold curve -- herself picturing her new husband, the children she’d planned, the ruined future she might never get back -- before she dropped it onto a chain and let it lie hidden. It felt like a small defeat.

Once the search had been called off she prepared as best she could. First she went home. Her obscure fear that she might come across her husband and her in-laws here, where they had been staying before everything went up in flames, quieted when she glimpsed how silent and desolate the entire site was now. Searching the still-smouldering rubble of half their house unsettled her; for weeks afterward she could still imagine the ash and dirt on hands scorched by the remaining heat; but she needed to recover whatever provisions and possessions she could if she was to make it to journey’s end and therefore she did it.

By the first light of dawn, a pale and colourless wash across the eastern sky, she had already left the smoke behind. If she kept the sun rising in front of her and cut tight round the Mountains of Mist as they lowered their weary heads to the plains she could reach the southernmost border of Saldaea in a matter of weeks, Kandor in months. After that … wit and intelligence could only get her so far. After that it was up to perseverance and dumb luck.

Anjen

They were given a small allowance of extra points, not an entirely new score, and that happened 3-4 years ago. Gaea has certainly been back since then. ;)

Welcome back!

We don't give out new One Power scores when people already have valid ones - I've no idea where you got that from Arie. :?

Despite the uninvited guest at such a late hour, the woman whom privately she considered her second in command did not so much as raise a brow. It steadied her somewhat; kings might fall and shadow move across the world, but Aramina sur Dulciena would never lose that calm, and while she remained unmoved her Captain General could do no less. If she could be a good Aes Sedai under the relentless pressure of Tower life then so could even a coward like Sirayn Damodred.

Half her thoughts had remained behind in Tel’aran’rhiod … collared, beaten and bitterly furious; realising all over again that her duty to the Tower compelled her to take whatever steps she could to avoid the thirteen Dreadlords and thirteen Myrddraal she’d been half promised already … and even thinking of it now made her fingers rise to her throat, tracing the line where the collar had lain against her skin. It disorientated her all the more to have her fellow Aes Sedai pour tea as if they were bargaining over the price of grain. The contrast between Dreamwalking nightmares and Aramina’s well-mannered calm jarred her. Distantly she recognised that she was slipping into a haze of exhaustion and subdued shock; needed to pull herself together, she’d had worse and they had work to do.

Mechanically she took the offered cup. “Thanks.” She kept it short; if she let up an inch everyone would realise how shamefully weak she had been, maybe it could be heard in her voice. Frankly she wanted something stronger to drink, but she’d sworn off the hard stuff long ago and times of severe stress were not good times to begin drinking again. She sampled the tea, found it suitably hot and strong, and did her best to relax. No threats here, no collar, no Dreadlord. Nobody was going to touch her; she managed not to pull her heavy robe more tightly round herself at the thought. Nothing but silence and civilised talk. It ought to be safe here. She couldn’t quite convince herself.

Scraping some wits together, she slanted a glance over her cup, which turned out to be a mistake. The lanterns painted Aramina in subtle shades of gold. Something about the loose brown curls and the robe, the lack of powder and paint, or maybe just the wavering light made her look softer somehow -- less the poised diplomat, master of Cairhienin intrigues, more the rumpled waker from sleep -- and for maybe the first time her Ajah Head realised in more than an intellectual way that Aramina was beautiful. She didn’t care to think like that often, politics and war were the only ways she knew how to deal with people, but that recognition she felt like a touch. Disturbed, she looked away.

“I -- apologise for the lateness of the hour. It was,” she picked her words carefully, “unavoidable.” Perhaps she ought to spill everything. It would be the responsible course to take; two heads being better than one, perhaps the other woman would read something into the nightmare that she herself had been too frightened to grasp. That would be common sense. She got as far as opening her mouth and then couldn’t go on: couldn’t find the words to describe it, didn’t want to, feared too much that if she dug up all that fear and fury again Aramina would scorn her. Her Banner Captain had never done that before but when everyone else had turned on her it seemed unwise to expect Aramina to be any different. And the thought of Aramina sur Dulciena asking her why exactly a Captain General succumbed to disgraceful fear was just too much to face.

Eventually she managed: “We’re going to need some books. And ter’angreal. And about a dozen Aes Sedai volunteers.”

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

Please don't scare me any more. :P

What? I'm only just being raised! :P

It had always struck her as one of life’s darkest ironies that Tar Valon, that snow-white symbol of the Light’s future, could be so damn dangerous. Murderers loose in Tar Valon while children lay dying and the storm washed fresh bodies; her mouth tightened in a hard line and she only wished she could say it was an unfamiliar story. But she’d seen it so often before -- the night Jehanine fell at her feet in a smear of red, mistaken in a moment’s half-light for herself, or even the time her own son lured her to a nightmare -- that it no longer surprised her. It just made her angry. And it made her afraid. And fear and fury had always been particular triggers for Sirayn Damodred to start calculating.

Nobody here who had been directly involved in the incident could be trusted to think as rapidly and as coldly as times required; it grieved her somewhat that even Corin Danveer, whom she had modelled in her image, couldn’t keep his detachment but he was still a child in the ways of the world and perhaps age and maturity would teach him better. The boy of course was clinging to life. It had to be somebody. That left only her to notify the Mistress of Trainees and warn the City Guard, to double the security at the gates, to put in place searches of inns frequented by foreigners, to check the hospices where they patched up the wounded … to inform their family, for the Light’s sake, and anyone in Tar Valon who had the right to be told. Just what she needed. Inwardly resigned, she crossed off her appointment with her three Sitters tonight as a lost cause, and for the moment put aside her duties as Captain General.

Her good intentions did her no good at all the moment Corin Danveer turned to her, took her hand and begged her to save his mentee. It unnerved her briefly; in such an unguarded moment even a cold-hearted schemer like herself could hear the desperation in his voice, read into his expression the strength of his feelings for the boy. That much she didn’t want to see. Even an idiot like her could see he was a Darkfriend and she had no need of further complicating factors, like him being capable of affection toward a mentee, or maybe just that he could pretend it so effectively. It had to be pretence; she knew him for false and a liar and, anyway, why would he reserve for his mentee the loyalty he wouldn’t give to her?

Liar or not he demanded the impossible of her. Briefly she remembered: Seiaman dying inch by inch in her arms; a sister she had loved who had taken a knife meant for her; a child bloody and screaming as she stitched stitches like black spiders; half a hundred old hurts. For a supposedly powerful Aes Sedai she couldn’t do a damn thing that meant anything. Couldn’t take away a child’s pain from fledgling Dreamwalking gone wrong, couldn’t save somebody her friend loved, couldn’t find a way to keep Jehanine alive when she had wanted that so intensely. Of course she couldn’t save this boy. She couldn’t save anyone.

The knowledge she’d carried all her life twisted at her now. Coldly she detached her hand from his grip and moved away from him; distance took the edge off her discomfort, composure and several layers of politics solved every problem. She couldn’t imagine how to even start explaining her inability to heal, how one toss of the dice had made her only half a channeller, or how this unyielding wall had been built over flaws that ought to be hidden. And she didn’t have to explain it. Aes Sedai did not have to explain themselves to anybody. Far better that he think her heartless than that he should know her private weaknesses.

Like a proper Aes Sedai she adopted her most glacial tones. “I believe I have told you numerous times to address me as Sirayn Sedai. One name, one title. Not difficult.” For a sentimental fool she had a fair line in scorn when the mood took her. “Sentimentality does not become you. Control yourself. I have no intention of interfering in my sisters’ work. If you lack faith in the Yellow Ajah, you are a fool; kindly keep your thoughts to yourself until somebody asks for them.”

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah

Thanks muchly everyone! :D

Being obliged to associate with fools and halfwits on a daily basis, Sirayn Damodred was well acquainted with many different stripes of idiocy, but this particular example left her speechless. Another woman! How many exactly did the fool boy need to keep sweet at any one time? It had been complicated enough that he was all moon-eyed over that hussy Lavinya Morganen, who went through men at the same speed she went through gloves and discarded the used ones just as carelessly, but she’d been under the blissful delusion that the lightskirt woman was at least the only one he was seeing. She could scarcely credit that Corin Danveer thought himself important enough to court multiple Aes Sedai at once. And surely he couldn’t have lost whatever wits he still possessed over Jaydena Mckanthur … could he?

Or maybe she was doing him a disservice. Perhaps it was Seiaman Kera who spread her ardour so widely. It wouldn’t be the first time that even the beautiful, charming alleged love of her life had been insufficient to keep her from straying; sometimes it seemed that every woman could be assured of a place in Seiaman’s affections so long as they were tall, slim and stunning. She indulged in a moment’s bitterness -- being too short, too plain and too drab for the likes of Seiaman Kera had always been a harsh pill to swallow -- before pulling herself up short. It wasn’t any of her business what her ex-Gaidin got up to any more. Seiaman had walked away from her; she had had that right, she had chosen to exercise it, she could get involved with as many women as she liked without giving her one-time bondmate a single thought. It did nobody any good to pine like a fool for a woman who owed her nothing. That much she had to remember.

Even so it took her a long moment to stamp out every bit of jealousy. Aes Sedai were supposed to live separate lives, better lives, free from the taint of weakness. Nothing should trouble them: not fear, nor wrath, nor especially love. She’d never been much good at being Aes Sedai. But at some point even she had to put resentment aside and exercise the perspective her shawl required. All she needed from the boy was his loyalty; she had instilled in him the proper frame of mind, taught him the necessary skills, to make him the perfect agent. His apparent difficulty in keeping his personal affairs straight was nothing to do with her. Light only knew it would be prolonged political suicide to get involved here. Let the children deal in sweet words and romance if they must; she had the Tower to defend.

Seiaman had kissed her once. In the wrong place and at the wrong time, but kissed her nonetheless, and she still didn’t know why. The memory gave rise to wretched thoughts: maybe if she’d been smarter or prettier or, or softer somehow, maybe … She killed that thought mid-sentence. She was an idiot of spectacular proportions. “I see.” Sirayn kept it deliberately flat and toneless. “Far be it from me to get between you and your legions of admirers. If you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to. Good day to you.”

Sirayn Damodred

Retro Head of the Green Ajah