Coming to a Resolution

[Raffe]

Asha’man Araya

After the ceremony concluded, Araya disappeared into the crowds.

He didn’t know the King of Arad Doman’s true plans, and nor did he want to; he just knew his small part in them. When Trista had first broached the subject with him her eyes had been vapid pools, completely unemotive, but Araya had learned her tells well by now. Not that he was likely to have denied anything she ever asked of him. Daryen could have done the job himself, but she hadn’t wanted him to. That truth ripped shreds in Araya’s chest, a gift and curse all at once. And not a wound that was likely to stop aching any time soon; not with the distance that would soon open between them. I belong to the Tower, she had told him once. He hadn’t liked thinking of her life as an expendable commodity to be used up at the White Tower’s whim, and he certainly didn’t like it now she was to be spent. But he also accepted that it was her life, and her choice.

This isn’t how I would have asked you, he’d told her in response. Trista always weathered affection like she was preparing for a knife slid through the ribs, but it was only the softness of his touch that had found her waist. It should have been a pleasant memory, a precious one, but all he kept thinking about was the last look she’d given him before she walked forward on the stage, exchanged like bartered goods. He rubbed his face. If anyone was going to be the distraction, it was him, and he couldn’t afford to be. Let her feel better than melancholy from him. Though light even now she still felt calm as spring rain.

The city was his safe harbour, and he’d been in Bandar Eban long enough now to know its distractions well. It was after dusk by the time he finally considered the promise he’d made to Hana, and by extension the Aes Sedai. Like as not Jai would be as unenamoured of the evening’s celebrations as Araya, which might not make him great company, but would certainly make them like-minded. Araya had been living in Caemlyn while the Black Tower had been liberating Arad Doman; the bloody and bitter work that had in the end won Daryen his crown. But he understood, perhaps more than most, how peace was not so easy a thing to nurture when you were standing on bones.

How do you do it, Jai asked once. The other man’s question wound just a little tighter in Araya’s chest now. Turned out it was harder to be the one left behind than the one doing the leaving.

Araya was not a palace guest, and nor was he in the black and pins, but his face was familiar enough, especially amongst the kitchen servants. When it transpired that Jai was not here, Araya’s expression fell first to surprise, and then to concern. He offered a smile to cover it and thanked the man for his information, then strode back the way he had come. Hana’s voice lectured in the back of his mind; things he imagined she would have found obvious.

The night Jai’s world crashed around his ears and he fought with his brother, where had he gone for solace? Araya had never realised. Hana made him feel foolish for the oversight then, but he felt even more so now.

Blood and bloody ashes.

[[will continue at Spiriting Away]]