Stranger in a familiar land

[Helena]

“If you will not help me streamline the process, then it is your own fault if you find it unpleasant.” Talin bit back the full tone of her annoyance, mostly out of wariness of his changeable moods. She would simply adjust the flows as she felt necessary then. It was not like she was unaccustomed to ignoring the mewls and complaints of patients while she worked, and this was no different. King or pauper. Dreadlord or Dragon. Flesh was all the same. “I can work slowly, so as not to over-tax your constitution. Since it appears to pain you.” The last was added grudgingly, though she did briefly glance up, and there was a flatness to her gaze that suggested she was not best impressed by his silence on the matter.

She ignored his insult, as well as his affectation of superiority (that being quite normal for him anyway). He insisted on speaking to her like a child and not the Aes Sedai who raised him up from his deathbed. Fortunately she did not mark the disrespect as anything but poor manners on his part. But he was being absurdly redundant. Of course she did not trust everything the Tower said to be true; would she be here, healing a darkfriend, if she did? And he did not even know the half of it.

But she only tipped a dismissive shoulder. “It was not rudely done,” she clarified. “The Lady Armendariz was simply kept waiting with vague reassurances that she would be heard, until the message was finally received. I do not believe she went home after, but I had left for the north before then, in order to see for myself.”