Stranger in a familiar land

[Helena]

Talin had expected him to fall back upon his usual threats to hurry her along, but it seemed he really was distracted. The squirming was enormously inconvenient. Clearly he had no comprehension or gratitude for the delicacy with which she worked. This was no simple Healing, but a flat out miracle. She sighed sharply through her nose. Another patient would have experienced a pointedly heavy dump of saidar to prohibit the movement of the bouncing leg, but it was not a risk she was inclined to take with him. She felt like a mother pandering to a particularly annoying child. And Talin had never wanted to be a mother.

“I preferred you when you were unconscious,” she said matter-of-factly. Her lips pressed into a thin line. But she did not stop the work.

She did not look up when he shifted, though she could feel his renewed attention. At least the blessed knee had stopped. The line of questioning was peculiar, and she marked it as so. There was something decidedly uncomfortable about Arikan being conversational, and it chilled her innards far more than the suggestion he’d feed her to alligators. Talin was uninterested in lineage. Honestly, she was uninterested in people.

“It wasn’t the warder that did this to you,” she said, curious enough at the interest to make the comment, but not enough to ask outright why he knew the name Vladamir at all. Talin could not say whether she had ever met the gaidin in question. She attended regularly on the training fields, but one face was much like another, and she had no reason to remember them all. If she knew the name it was as she knew other names; the White Tower was full of burgeoning legends, to the point of dilution. But it was from her time at Fal Sion she knew specificity. The apparently bookish boy about whom a Sister had once proclaimed a grand Foretelling. In his childhood home Vladamir was regarded with much speculative mythos. It was among the first questions Kaori had ever asked her, for it seemed they had all quietly hoped that the Lady Graciela’s flight for aid would bring about the prodigious return of the Keep’s young Lord.

“The lady in question is married to Vladamir Gaidin’s older brother,” she answered. “If you know neither that, nor that he was once a lord of Fal Sion, your interest is markedly strange. Or is it simply that you believe in prophecy?”