Coming to a Resolution

[Seven]

Daryen

Return to the party Daryen intended, but return to the party Daryen did not.

He paused at the exit, beholding the lovely Aes Sedai one last time. He assumed he would see more of her, especially if she was seeking the brother that lived in his house, but he savored every moment as if they may be his last. As a king, and as an Asha’man, he knew well the value of every breath. Her message was acknowledged with a smile. “Socks are very important to a soldier! I can not wait to hear the tale,” he said and slipped away.

Ten years he’d walked every waking moment with another’s mind bundled safe within his own. At first so strange. The surges and pulses of emotion and tension infused him with life and purpose. He found the variability energetic and fascinating. How often had he stared into the back of his brother’s head while he worked bowed over paper and ink for endless hours. He’d yearned to know what it was like within that brilliance, and one fateful day, he did in fact come to know. Ever since then, that presence he wore like a ring on his finger never taken off. Tightness or dismay, sometimes even terror and shame, the emotions swung like heavy doors, but Daryen rode the waves like a skilled boatmaster.

Then, as he intended to share the tale of Jai’s entrapment in the cliffs when the tide swept in, a riptide violently swept away the bundle of emotions he knew as well as his own. An unnatural stillness replaced it as if the ocean suddenly stopped breathing. Moments later, Jai must have jumped across the continent. A jarring leap of distance that Daryen recognized immediately. These were events he disliked to say the least and desired to understand immediately.

Jai was in the city when Nythadri asked for him. He might have provided precise directions, but would be unable to do so without compromising the integrity of their connection. He vowed to protect that part of Jai and practically wrote the promise in blood. If it was known, ultimately, it was protecting himself. The night that Antony Sadiq was arrested, he explained that his enemies would use those closest to him to their ends. Who could be closer than a brother of battle and bond? The veil of secrecy shielded them both.

The king did not depart without delegating orders. It had to be elaborate story, he recognized, to explain a more than lingering absence, and Daryen was a masterful storyteller. While he could travel back to the palace in an instant, he could not skim to a place he did not know he desired to find. It would take some time to walk, test and explore. A cloak covered him when he left. A wave of the hand and brush of saidin opened the gate. Darkness would do the rest. He shared his destination with none, other than what was needed to fill the details of his absence.

The windows were dark along the street. The shops were closed for the night. There was no evidence that anyone was there at all. He wondered if he had the right location. Daryen did not desire to disturb the wares of his people’s businesses, but he gently tested the latch on the door of his best guess. It was open. The aroma of wax and dye filled the interior.

The One Power chased in front of him, testing the seen and unseen for residues or wards. The Asha’man followed cautious as a cat.

Tea cups were abandoned on a table in the back, but it was in a broom closet that he found the body. A gray-haired man in a leather apron looked as if he might have been sleeping. Daryen didn’t need to kneel to confirm death. She was an old mistress beholden a thousand times before. No evidence of the manner of death though, which meant the One Power was the instrument of the poor man’s demise.

Never for a moment did Daryen suspect Jai. Murder in cold blood was not in his faculties. Murder, yes. Tashir was proof of that, but not in cold blood. Asha’man were carved into killers, but never once did Daryen judge his brother the attempt on the merchant's life.

This was someone else, he concluded. A gateway skimmed him back to the palace where promptly he sent guards to properly investigate.

The party was still going when he returned to it.