Filling the Days

[Morven]

Devika Sirideán

Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah

✥

Though she might be as inscrutable as any sister, there was little about Devika that could be called serene. She waited in stormy silence for him to make the decision between shifting himself and being hauled by the Aiel women in the hallway, and only unfolded her arms when he slunk as insouciant as a cat towards the door. She mostly ignored him on the escort, blunt with her answers for the very reason she understood he craved the attention, and did not turn for the insidious whispers, though they pricked her skin. An impassioned temper lurked beneath her skin, and might have found ignition but for her narrow focus to a task. In that she was stubbornly disciplined.

The gag welcomed some blessed silence when he declined the invitation for quiet. Wiser for him to come to understand quickly that when she said she would do something, she would. Fair chance was certainly always given, but she would not be distracted. Afterwards she set a pace inconvenient for Jorin’s hobbled legs, but might provide plenty of sport for the Maidens behind them. Hair streaming from her shoulders at their speed, she meanwhile stewed on what he had said.

When they arrived the Dragon had the utter gall to look surprised. Devika offered her usual gestures of respect as Jorin sauntered his way to a chair, and sat with all the lordly comfort of familiarity. She followed that with a thin glare, before her attention returned. The Dragon looked beyond weary, all truth told; a realisation that always disturbed her in his presence, but steeled her now.

“What he is, Lord Dragon, is wasted,” she said.

Which was not, she imagined, what Jorin might have expected her to open with. She did not look for his reaction. Nor did the bindings loosen let alone free. A suggestion was not the same as a command, and the moment Jorin found freedom for his tongue he would begin to weave the narrative to his liking. Since he looked comfortable enough for a show, she intended to give him one.

“I have never spoken less than bluntly to you, even when you do not like it,” she continued. Which was certainly true, and did not always fall in her favour, but her ardour was always consistent and plain. The Dragon could rely upon that. Her chin titled with that passion now, and she looked every inch the prowling lioness for all that she stood in regal place. That she was angry was clear, if held in glittering check. At whom was less apparent.

“He whores and drinks, and undermines your very authority in the process. Whatever purpose he may once have served, he has surpassed it, unless that purpose is to make you look foolish. For you may think the leash is still kept tight in your fist, Lord Dragon, but it has assuredly run slack to allow for such confessions as he has just offered to me.” She let the accusation settle to understanding in those tired eyes, and Light bloody take the man for never trusting her with a truth that he should have long ago shared plainly from his own lips. Worse was the wound of his having assumed she would not suspect. A double folly and injury both, given the loyalty pledged and the ways she had proved herself ten times over. She even gave him time to refute it, injustice that it would be – as if a secret once slithered from its shell could ever be so easily contained. Jorin made this mess for a reason, she’d wager, but she meant to use it all the same.

When no refutation came, just stony silence and a look at the man in question, Devika pursed her lips; unsure if she was pleased or incandescently angry still.

“You have no need of a teacher. And he is no friend to you. Or the Light. If I thought you would listen to sense, I would beg you to balefire him this very moment and have done with it.” Her tone took a calmer cadence then, the outburst flared in all its fiery glory to the silence between storms. The Dragon wouldn’t, she knew; not after the thirty-odd years of companionship in which he had perhaps convinced himself this man meant no harm. Still, she did pause, lest she be proved wrong. A simpler, cleaner answer. But of course he did not.

“At the very least he should be Gentled now, Lord Dragon. What need has he of the power any longer? His soul is still sworn to the Dark One himself, and dangerous for it. He cannot ever be set free, no matter how dull his teeth. Perhaps you intend to let him rot at your side until Tarmon Gaidon be upon us, and have one less of them in the battle to come. If so I will bow to your judgement, as ever I have.”

Forsaken did not make mistakes, and there was far too much deviousness even in the mask Jorin presented to court for her to trust the pity in the Dragon’s gaze. Because oh she saw it; the softness eroded carefully over long years. Devika finally turned her gaze towards Jorin, openly seeking his reaction. To rotting, castrated of his power and resigned to literal shadow: the stagnant fate that awaited him here.

“Yet if what else he says is true, he may have one final purpose,” she finally added.

There was little slyness in Devika, but it did not mean she was not perilously sharp, and she certainly knew desire. Jorin had eyes on freedom. He could not be left to the power remaining to him, and Light send the Dragon granted that boon at least, lest the dull blade he so carelessly left lying around was one day plunged right into his back. It was a weapon of which Devika intended to make full use though; as the Dragon clearly intended once, and failed to harness.

For a moment longer her attention lingered, reading what she could of him, before she finally looked back to the Dragon. She did not know if what Jorin professed about Daniel Larnair’s assassination was true, but one look at the severe expression laid before her answered in all certainty. For a moment her eyes widened, but it was soon followed by a tight jaw and fierce flare of her nostrils. He should have come to her first. Light-forsaken fool of a man.

“Speak then, Devika. What is it you want?” When he folded his arms, the dragons on them flexed. It was possible he recognised the incendiary burn of her temper, and planned to navigate it with placation, but she wondered by the brief look he planted on Jorin then if something of sympathy and buried annoyance made him tractable instead. For if Jorin finally trickled the leaking truth of this poor secret, it was to the one woman apt to burst the very banks of it wide. Jorin might not know nor care of her storied reputation, but the Dragon certainly did. A compromise must be reached. Devika herself acceded to the Dragon’s will, but she’d be well within her rights to take this to the Tower, and they would not be so reasonable as she.

She did not sugar-coat it.

“I ask that you turn him over to me, so that I might set him to proper work. Let me use him as you have not, for the Light’s purpose and yours, to root out the Shadow. I will ensure he makes good on his word to assist you. But first he must be Gentled. He cannot leave Tear with a Shield you did not create.”

“If punishment is what you are asking, then say so. A Gentled man will be of little use to you. You are asking me for a husk.”

“And who else has more experience of it than I? Men survive it through purpose, and you could not possibly give him a greater one. So far as I have ever seen he does nothing with his time but languishes it away, though he has had every opportunity to be an asset to you. By now he might have earned more than your pity. Yet he cannot even manage a simple conversation when you require it. He needs more incentive, clearly. Else you need to accept that it is time to end the cruelty, and do what you should have done years ago. What I would still counsel you to do.”

Her plea was impassioned and fierce in equal measure. Truthfully, the Dragon’s reluctance to eradicate one of the Forsaken no matter how he presented himself sent a spike of cold fear into her chest. How deep did this poison spread? She needed to detach this bloody leach by any means available to her.

“Give him the chance to redeem himself if you must, if it's even what he truly wants; if it's even possible. But don't leave him the tools to betray you, Rand. What I would take could be returned. But if you are wrong about him, and he takes you from us, then you will have doomed us all, your wives and children included, out of pity for a Forsaken.”

“I have heard you, Aes Sedai,” he answered after a moment. For once she could read little in his expression. “And now you will let him speak.”

Her lips twitched, annoyed that he felt the need. But with a flick of her hand, she obeyed.