The First Age

The touch at his waist pulled him near. The aroma of Nythadri’s soap and the cool touch of still-damp hair promised a reason to forget about Bandar Eban, Tar Valon, and the whole bloody continent between the two cities. Resolve kept him from curling his arms around her and tucking them in for the rest of his life, though. He found himself peering toward the north as if he could see the responsibility on the edge of the horizon. People needed help in Tar Valon, and for once, he might be able to lend actual aid. He hadn’t contemplated the notion of visiting home — people who did not need his help — but with Arikan’s resurrection, the plots of Forsaken, and the fall of the Tower, there was the sense of a calm before battle. One that Nythadri would sense wrap itself around his heart as sure as if the horizon was full of Shadowspawn and nothing else. He truly was calm, and perhaps the bond had something to do with it, but perhaps it was because of the rekindled sense of purpose.

“I don’t see a reason why we’d run into them,” he replied as he brought his focus back to her and they resumed their walk. Soon, they were back in the privacy of sleeping quarters, and the remnants of earlier stole a few moments of appreciation while he listened. The tousled blankets… darkfriends…. watery footprints… Elsae as a key, but to what?  Discarded robes… Eleanore, that’s right, Nythadri holds another bond.

“Well,” he breathed in resolve, “If she is with Eleanore and she’s somewhere safe, I say the world can spare us the chance to sleep.” He tugged her hand and did not release until she was nestled in his arms in bed. The last thing she would see was half a smile and a whispered promise to let her sleep.. at least a little.

Nythadri said no more of his family, though the consideration lingered. He felt calm inside, and she wanted to be the steady foundation upon which he could build his strength, but this was the sort of concern she felt conflicted about laying aside. Greater challenges loomed, though – and they were all ones that would not wait. If they stumbled across the Kojimas in the city, it would have to be something they negotiated at the time. She could not spare the thought, no more than she could spare it for the thorn of Oshara’s betrothal to Pathor Winther. At least she would be at Jai’s side for whatever happened.

In their room she reset the protections before letting some of the tension unravel her shoulders, but Jai must have felt her stillness inside – the solid, sharp kind that was the sort of thinking she did between a rock and a hard place. Even Elsae had eased from her thoughts, and really she ought to be considering what in the Light she was going to say to justify ushering an Accepted into such danger as a dreadlord’s attentions. But it was the Tower that cut her deepest: the shape of an accusation her thoughts had already raced towards, no matter how she refrained from naming it plain. The pain in her chest when she considered it spoke truer than any excuse her mind could conjure, for the pieces fit too neatly, even as it made her feel sick to consider. Maybe it was why her ring remained by the basin, and why she still did not retrieve it. Talin’s offer had not been forgotten, either. Because Lythia was the only woman in the Tower Nythadri had truly, unequivocally trusted.

She wouldn’t keep the concern from Jai, and certainly not when it would affect him too – though it would test him to realise from how close the betrayal might have actually come, and she would not soon forget her first witness of his madness. It made her fears difficult to balance. So she was thinking how to say it, realising as she did that she had no way of disguising the rawness of her own pain at the thought, not without shutting him out – something she had no desire or intention to do. And that was as much for her as for him. Could she just be wrong? She still held onto the possibility, yet compulsion left no room for deviation, and Jai had paused of his own volition to ask if she’d moved the money like she’d promised. Whoever set the instruction left room for it, when even his proclivity for counting was smothered.

She was headed towards the desk when his hand caught and tugged hers, loosening her from the mires of her own mind, where little else might have disturbed her for all her snide advice to Arikan about resting. Jai’s share of strength still gently suffused her, and she had no doubt she could spend the entire night in planning and worry, but he eroded the desire to carry that entire weight on her own shoulders. There was no golden sand underfoot, no showy gateway invitation to a moment’s respite, but he was ever the escape that called welcome to her soul. She felt it profoundly when she looked at him, like that second soft kiss in the cradle of the ocean. No more words were spoken, but he’d feel the soft yield of acknowledgement inside. Not that she didn’t test with a tease of resistance, rooting herself long enough to lift his hand between them. Her touch skated across the tender skin of his knuckles like an admonishment, but it was only a kiss she pressed there. A smirk flashed beneath pale eyes; the only comment she would give on his punching Arikan in the face. Then she finally acquiesced to the sense he spoke and didn't allow her shirk, settling into his arms, and allowing herself to rest.

He woke the next morning feeling fresh as rain. It was a bloody unsettling sensation, this lightness in his limbs, the quickness in his step, the sharp edge to his thoughts. Forget the bloody Tower Guard—he should have signed his name to the Warders’ training log the second he sprouted a bit of facial hair if this was what a bond meant.

While Nythadri slept, he poked through her supplies, appraising her food and provisions with idle curiosity. For a woman supposedly locked up in the Tower for most of her adult life, she’d prepared well enough. He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. She had a habit of being three steps ahead, even when he’d thought he was the one leading.

He cleaned his clothes and tended to his weapons, letting the familiar ritual ease his mind. Today, for once, it wasn’t a desperate attempt to scratch an itch under his skin; it was just… nice. Like the quiet before a storm.

Nythadri was a lighter sleeper than he’d expected. Though she appeared calm, he could feel the restlessness simmering beneath her composed exterior, a keen urgency to tackle their many errands. Somehow, though, in the fresh light of morning, those tasks didn’t seem quite so pressing. Perhaps that was the effect of a full night’s sleep—a rare enough occurrence for Jai that he almost didn’t recognize it.

They ate quickly and were ready to leave soon after. While Nythadri finished up her last arrangements, Jai found himself by a window, watching the workers moving about the courtyard below. He glanced idly over the scene until something caught his eye—Arikan, emerging from one of the side doors to speak with a man who, to all appearances, looked like an ordinary laborer.

Jai frowned, watching the interaction. Neither man seemed aware they were being observed, and he couldn’t make out what they were discussing, but it struck him as odd. What business did Arikan have with a common worker? And why so openly, here of all places?

“Nythadri,” he called, his gaze still on the courtyard. “Do you know who that is?” He nodded toward the man with Arikan. There was nothing especially remarkable about the scene—except that it was happening at all. She’d been here longer than he had, after all. Maybe she had some idea what this was about.

Nythadri let the routines of the morning wash over her, content to share them. It was the sort of cohesion she’d always imagined a bond ought to feel like, though she couldn’t say it was just that connection guiding them. It felt deeper, more familiar than it had any right to. There was distraction in her comfort, but she leaned into Jai’s sense of ordered calm; let it soothe the shimmer of her restlessness for the day to come and the choices to soon be made.

When he called, she went to his side to look out the window. He would feel no glimmer of recognition from her, just thoughtfulness framed by something sharper. That Arikan was already risen set a flicker of tight irritation into her jaw, though she could not quite say why, other than that it made her wonder if he had wilfully ignored the advice about resting. His companion wore the rough garb of a labourer, and he had the kind of face she imagined would have caught Elly’s eye, but the gaidar was not here to ask.

“Arikan arrived in the night, and he was apparently alone – Talin’s warder saw him,” she said. They’d only themselves arrived earlier the same evening, and Nythadri had seen barely any of the fort’s occupants before she’d Travelled to Caemlyn the next morning. Arikan had had an entire day left to his own devices, yet she could see no reason for him to bother charming any of the folk in such a backwater. Which only really meant one thing.

“He knows we can see him from here. Like as not he intends us to take note.” Her eyes upturned to watch Jai’s profile, allowing him the space to reach the same conclusions. The dreadlord did not even pretend to respect the Asha’man pin or Aes Sedai ring; he simply would not bother at all with anyone who did not have a use to him. “Arikan won’t walk the Light’s path to do what we need him to. And if he intends to chase the instructions on this plaque, they will need to believe he is still one of them.”

It was both a merciless goad and an invitation into confidence; to reveal the face of a darkfriend to them, knowing they had no choice other than to accept it. But it was useful to know who might still be loyal to the former general. She retreated, running her hand along Jai’s arm to urge him away, though it was only a light touch. Nythadri had drawn them both to this shadowed path, but she’d never force him to walk it with her. It wasn’t what she would have chosen for either of them, but neither would she turn away from it, for all it weighed her heart with consequence.

She was still inside, quiet for a moment as she perched on the edge of the bed and shifted her skirts to lace her boots. Talin’s taste was ostentatious at the best of times, but the clothes she had prepared were for the most part tolerable. Yesterday’s dress lay neatly abandoned – meticulously cleaned, but Nythadri had no desire to wear it again after the memory of Larnair’s soaking blood. Instead her blouse today was as pale as her eyes and pearlescent as moonlight, with floral embroidery on the tight cuffs and looser neckline. Skirts belted at the waist fell in dark blues and indigos. At least the colours were muted. And matched.

She considered inwardly for a moment, and did not like the feeling of paranoia buried within, but neither did she deny herself the security of a ward before she spoke next.

“Jai?” She said his name softly, mostly to ensure his attention did not still linger on their more than questionable allies, though her own did not rise from the knot of her laces – which she was pulling at with an almost vicious tightness. “There’s something he doesn’t yet know – and I do not intend to tell him.” This first confession was the easier to share, held back until now only because of last night’s strain. She did not prevaricate. “The Yellow, Talin. She has the oathrod. She offered to release me from the Three Oaths.”

She glanced up, wondering if he’d ask the obvious question – if she had accepted. If the dizzying possibility might suddenly cast suspicion on everything she had said since their reunion. He’d have every right for doubt, and she braced for the possibility as much as she was absorbing his reaction – internal and external. She had not done it, and so far as she knew neither yet had Talin. But it was a tool at their disposal, and one they might need in the future. Aes Sedai could not lie, and everyone knew it. Including Arikan. But she might need to, where they were headed. She wanted to glean what he thought. The prospect sat uncertainly in her, edging around a deeper sense of self-crisis. The serpent ring was not on her finger, still sitting instead by the water basin. The Tower was fractured, and Nythadri hid how deeply it wounded her, knowing Jai’s own injuries clawed far deeper after last night. But that wasn’t the uncertainty which paused her now.

She took a breath, felt the light-forsaken betrayal of its hitch. She’d abandoned the effort with her boots by now, and her hands came to rest on her lap. Her posture was nothing but the perfection of raised nobility, a shield in itself, and there was a knot in her chest. It was pain she tried her best to smother, but she was aware that even absence would speak volumes to him. “I do not think it’s wise for us to risk returning to the Tower. As far as I know I haven’t been implicated in the theft, but… well, I do not know what we would return to either. Elsae should be in the city, somewhere I trust she will be safe. We have no reason to go back. Except one.” Her brows narrowed, her jaw tense, but though she looked intense in that moment, it was despair that battered at the walls.