An Early Evening Run

[Eidolon]

Byron

Byron couldn't deny there was a certain appeal about her whenever her eyes gained that intense focus. Not that she lost any such appeal when lost in thought, it simply gained a new light. Not that he had any intentions of anything more then pleasant conversation. Despite his blatant reputation, as well earned as it might have been, there was certainly more to him then gambling and bedding women.

He had little doubt she would eventually piece together the truth of what he was, but it had come much quicker then normal. So either he was losing his touch or she payed more attention to what he had to say then he could ever expect. "Ah, the Greens. Light, I hear they...they..." he leaned over the table and glanced about as if to make sure none where lurking nearby, near enough to over hear and be offended, "I hear they...no, I cannot even utter the word! They marry their Warders!"

He leaned back again, just in time to catch the glare of the house Mistress as she crossed to their table, the tray tucked neatly under one slender arm. "You do this on purpose, don't you boy? Kidnap some poor innocent girl with that smile of yours and lead her astray. Well, good thing this one seems to have a head on her shoulders, and a bit of modesty too. Strange choice for you." Her tone was serious, but there was a hint of mirth in her eyes as she glanced at Malaika, offering a brief nod as Byron launched his defence.

"Slander and falsehoods, I dare say! When was the last time I came here with a woman on my arm? Never I say! Have I entertained your guests from time to time? Yes! But kidnapped some poor young woman and spirited her away? Never I say!" He grinned up at her innocently, a near perfect poster boy of good will and clean intentions, just the right hint of indignity and hurt in his voice and eyes. Perhaps even the faintest hint of wetness in the corner of one eye, the verge of manly tears.

The Mistress' tray was out from under her arm in a flash and gave him a light tap on the noggin before she finally gave way to a smile and looked to Malaika again, "He's a fool, there's no denying that my Lady, but he's a fine entertainer. Decent singing voice and he can carry a tune with near any instrument I put in his hands. But the real issue would be what name he's going by tonight?" She thought she had him with that one, giving him a victorious grin at the thought of ruining whatever game he was up to.

And he just grinned in return, holding his hands up in defence, "Byron, and point in fact the good Lady Malaika has already puzzled out what I am. Now she intends to pick my brain clean of every nugget and tale I have squirrelled away. At least those I haven't drank away that is." He smiled to Malaika and shrugged apologetically, "You've simply the challenge of asking the right questions to get the best stories is all."

The woman shook her head and looked to Malaika again, her tray once more tucked neatly under her arm and offered a motherly smile, "I am Osilia, owner of this establishment. If you want stories, Byron has no end of hot air, although I've never been able to tell how many are true or just words. The usual for you Byron? And what can I get you Lady Malaika?"

Byron could only throw his arms up in defeat, silently letting Osilia stomp all over his good name and quietly accepting it with grace. His brow furrowed and he huffed quietly, blowing a stray lock of hair away from his eyes, "Did you know, Mistress Osilia? She thought I was a wandering Gleeman! And I can't help but wonder if I made the wrong choice? Would my many skills be better suited to the..."

Osilia shook her head and brandished her tray again, causing Byron to yelp comically and duck in his chair, arms up defensively, "Oh hush boy! You'd make a terrible Gleeman. They need to be respectable, with good will and the best intentions. Now be quiet and let the Lady order would you?"

Malaika

Marriage was another of those things that had no bearing on Malaika’s life, so she had never given it much thought. It seemed a weird thing for a gaidin to say, though; surely bonding was a far more permanent and binding contract than a marriage band, so it seemed an odd fear for one of his vocation. Unless he was jesting. Or perhaps he simply objected to bedding the same woman for the rest of his life… though some Greens had rather … peculiar notions about that, too, if several of the more clandestine rumours were to be believed. Malaika was quite content to assume that those particular stories were spouted from idle minds speculating on less obvious reasons a Green should take so many Warders, and was not willing to be enlightened any differently.

His comment also made it likely that he didn’t realise what she was. If he had known, he probably wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to lower his voice from those around, only to whisper to the one person who possibly could take offence at such a remark. An Aes Sedai. And one whose ajah he might have guessed at, but could not actually know. She smiled because she couldn’t help but feel amused - she was no Green, after all - but she also turned her eyes away. Some dark feeling misted over her mirth; Light, I actually feel bad! It was a sister’s prerogative to keep her identity to herself as and when she wished, but holding it back seemed deceitful in this context, and it did not rest easily.

Mistress Osilia’s interruption was both welcome and unfortunate, since it ruined any chance she had of naturally implying it in to the conversation. She returned the woman’s genial greeting with a nod of her own, innately withdrawn at the presence of another stranger before she could ascertain her character, though not exactly shy as simply quiet. She would have blushed at the woman’s insinuation once, but only found herself amused at the assumption. Her gaze flickered back to Byron, and she gave him a look that, on the surface, was rather flat and unamused, with a single brow drawn. She might have made the façade of insult convincing had she not allowed the twitch of her lips to give her away.

“And you swore you were a gentleman, sir,” she said dryly, sharing something of a half smile before her gaze returned to Osilia. Just as the woman bashed him on the head with her tray. She quickly realised she had been wrong in her assessment of the Mistress’ glare. That wasn’t uncommon in itself, since it was still second nature for Malaika to rely on intonation of voice rather nuance of expression to read people. Osilia treated Byron like a son rather than a lover, and their exchange was amusing to watch, even endearing.

It seemed he had told more of the truth than she had given him credit for, and though he had not expressly said he was gaidin, she decided to take it on faith. No matter how… unlikely it seemed.

“I assure you it was a compliment," she said to his huff. "I won’t tell you my assumptions on first impression.” Which had been rather less generous thoughts of vagabond, thief and madman. But then, he had been enticing stray dogs to chase him with meat strapped to his ankles.

"Light’s blessing, Mistress Osilia. A pleasure to meet you.”

A myriad of different teas and condiments flashed through her mind; an Aes Sedai’s day-to-day life revolved around the stuff, a precursor or accompaniment to many a conversation or social nicety. It was funny, but though she drank it she had never acquired much of a taste for it; she much preferred the bitter kaf of her people. But it seemed folly to order something so stimulating this late. Might as well leave the choice of tea to fate. “Do you have a house special? And an assortment of whatever food you might have left over this late would be wonderful. I’m quite hungry, actually.” Cakes, biscuits and pastries, she assumed; not exactly her usual fare, but she was too ravenous to care. She smiled her thanks; unusually warm, since she had taken an immediate liking to the motherly woman.

She was smiling more than usual; she’d not felt this blissfully cheerful in a long time, or maybe even ever. “A challenge, is it?” she said, picking up on his earlier words as Mistress Osilia left. She didn’t suppose she would have any problem getting the information she wanted, which was very unspecific anyway. But knowing where to start was a quandary. "Why don't you tell me of your dire terrors as a cabbage farmer?" Yes, she really had been listening to the things he had been saying, and while it had virtually nothing to do with her academic interests as an Aes Sedai, it was really quite impossible not to be the slightest bit curious. Unless it was a tale from before he'd earned his gaidin title, how on earth did one of the Tower's elite end up tending cabbages?

Byron

Osilia took their orders and excused herself with a final mock glare for Byron and an amused smile for Malaika, and soon enough she had vanished into the back room to get everything ready. Byron managed a convincing look of hurt innocence at the glare which quickly turned back to a mischievous smile, "I am a master of first impressions. Or, recovering from them I suppose I should say. But I am sure my tender feelings would be best spared from knowing what dire thoughts you had."

His eyebrow shot up at her first question, his head tilted slightly to the side, "Of all the adventures and misdeeds I've been up to in my life, everyone always wonders about the cabbages. Why the cabbages?" Another warm grin and he settled back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head and after one furtive glance at the door to the kitchen he gave her a mischievous wink and put his feet onto the arm of an adjacent chair, settling in quite comfortably.

"Was just recent that I plied the trade of the noble cabbage farmer. Two years penance, not so far from Tar Valon actually. Creator knows I haven't the foggiest how I earned such a thing, but there I was, an acre of fallow farmland and a rundown one room house." He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, clearly organizing his thoughts on the matter. "You'd be amazed just how little an orphan cutpurse from Caemlyn knows of farming. Needless to say, my first harvest? Total write off. I was smart about it, or so I'd like to think. Planted one batch too early, another too late, but about a tenth of my harvest was recovered. It's the second year that the excitement came."

He glanced over at her and shrugged apologetically, although there was little doubting that he hadn't simply spent a year learning how to raise cabbage. No doubt there was all sorts of interesting things that had happened in the first year. "Now the second year I was certain I had it all worked out. Planted at the right time, and things were looking fine. Drought. Light, but there really isn't much you can do during a drought is there? Hot and dry, crops floundering. I did manage a fine harvest of thatch for my roof. Two weeks to get that right, a nice thick layer, wasn't going to be worried about the cold that winter. Creator's blessings though, that is hard work. Can you imagine how little a mischievous caravan guard might know of thatching roofs?!"

He spoke of the roof with pride, one of the few times his voice carried such an air, but all the while he wore his usual smile, likely evidence that there was some odd twist coming. "So I've learned since, that droughts...the heat and dryness of it, leads to problems asides from a lack of water. Light, but they were a scourge on the land..." his tone grew dark and troubled, almost as a tired soldier remembering a bad battle, and he flexed his hand vaguely, rubbing at the calluses with his other hand, "Terrible. Farm by farm we were over run. Most of the others were real land holders. They had men in their employ, if each farm had joined it would have been a determined, if small, army. And all the while, I tended my struggling cabbages."

He kicked his feet off the chair arm and sat up in his seat, stabbing a finger into the table top, leaning in to look at her with a fine air of tired pain. Totally false, of course, but he was one for airs after all. "They came near evening. I heard it, felt it in my bones I did. A great, dark vibration in the air, the sun's light fading to grey and shadow. They blocked out the sun with their numbers! They were a thousand if they were one! I set pyres with my remaining thatch and hay, hoping fire and smoke might drive them off. Worked for a time, but I ran out of fuel before their hunger drove them to easier prey."

A flash of false terror, eyes wide and near the verge of tears as he peered past her shoulder as if looking a past too painful to remember, spoiled by the brief flash of a smile as Osilia emerged from the kitchen with her tray loaded with tea and snacks, frowning at him and rolling her eyes, clearly knowing when he was in the middle of one of his stories, "The fires faltered and died, and they fell upon my sparse acre with tooth and claw. My blade was useless, I killed scores of the beasts to no avail! Every twenty I felled, ten-score more appeared..."

It certainly sounded a dire tale, his gaze lowered to the table top like a man who had lost everything might give into despair, and then Osilia arrived and layed the tray down, rolling her eyes at his melodrama. "The locusts again is it? They ate his roof, you know." She offered Malaika a sly smile which brightened with Byron's cry of dismay, ignoring the sudden rant he exploded into about 'stealing his thunder' and 'Light-blasted insects' or 'Can't stand cabbage! Never could!' and instead focused on setting out a few small bowls of pork and beef in lightly spiced sauces, a tray of sliced breads and cheeses, and two pots of tea with separate cups. One for Byron, clearly his usual, and one for her, a fine black tea that might be best served with a touch of honey or cream.

Malaika

Penance? Her mind zoomed automatically to that little detail, and she was slightly surprised that he would admit to it so freely. Light, what did a gaidin have to do to earn penance? And two whole years of it, too. Even if he had not professed to ignorance over why, though, she would have been too polite to ask; particularly of someone she had only just met. Those sorts of things were usually private; or, at least, they were among Aes Sedai. Her own single penance since earning the shawl had certainly been kept between her, Eithne and the youngest Sitter, Fate. Still, one did have to wonder inwardly what he might have done… although given Byron’s character, she found she didn’t have to wonder too hard.

Listening to the story, Malaika had the distinct impression he was toying with her attention. An orphan cutpurse now, is it? Not so long ago it had been a tanner’s son. And a mischievous caravan guard too? She was under no doubt that this was a lovingly crafted and oft told tale; he would not be lax with the details, so it was either that or he was laying a breadcrumb trail for her to follow. It was quite easy to believe that he had been all those things, after all. Other than those odd few musings, she was engrossed, if she didn’t give the types of reactions one might ordinarily expect of an enraptured audience. Her expression remained quite neutral, and she maintained a vigilant eye contact that followed his animated movements. It was easy to let herself be swept away; he had a way with words, or maybe with people. He would suit a worldly Blue, she thought, tilting her head.

By the time the tale was reaching its conclusion, she had grown somewhat oblivious to her surroudings; a woman’s voice took her by some surprise, if she didn’t deign to show it, and her gaze snapped to Osilia. It was still a second or two before her mind cleared and the words sank in. She was not sure whether the conclusion of the tale, Osilia’s interruption, or Byron’s reaction to it was the more amusing. Light, but she was on the verge of unabashed laughter! She couldn't honestly remember the last time she had laughed, and though it didn't quite surface now, the unchecked brightness of her smile was a rare enough sight as it was.

“Light bless you, it looks and smells wonderful. Thank you, Mistress Osilia.” For the food, or for the entertainment? The way her beam shifted to a coy smirk seemed to suggest the latter, but of the food she was pleasantly surprised at the content. Yes, she would definitely be suggesting the place to Adira.

While Byron ranted off a string of curses and Mistress Osilia basked in her success, Malaika didn’t waste any time in pouring herself a cup of the tea, which she was quite content to leave black and bitter. The teapot was unexpectedly cumbersome in her injured right hand, and when she set it down she flexed the fingers idly; the hand was unbearably stiff, perhaps because of the cold outside, or maybe that she had not really used it all day. Eithne had healed the wounds as best she could, but the damage the knife had done to the nerves had been beyond the Brown’s ability. By the time they had returned to the Tower, her hand already half healed, there was nothing else to be done. Damaged as it was, though, Malaika had still not managed to break the habit of defaulting to her right hand.

When she picked up the cup the broken nerve endings flared into surprising pain; tea sloshed the rim, but did not spill, and the only indication Malaika gave of difficulty was a slight tense of her jaw. It happened, sometimes; usually at the most inconvenient of times, of course, and felt not dissimilar to the sensation of the blade slicing through her flesh the first time. Which was to say extremely unpleasant. But the intense pain was normally short-lived, and was not generally common enough to be a real complaint. She placed the cup back down and switched hands, the ring on her finger finally peeping from beneath her sleeve. At least she could stop feeling guilty about that.

Her right hand she let curl in her lap. Blood and ashes it was spasming something awful; thank the Light her Tower training allowed her to erect a pretense to the contrary, because she very much wanted to screw up her face in pain. Instead she sipped the rich, earthy tea, and aside from her stumble with the cup, was very much void of expression.

"From Caemlyn, then?" And an orphan. That resonated with her. For all that her family had disowned her, she had at least had them growing up. The memories might be fuzzy, but the warmth was there, and she could not imagine being a child and having no one. "My parents were merchants, I think, but we lived in a village. What was it like growing up in a city? Being... alone," - he had mentioned it, thus he obviously didn't mind sharing, but she still paused over the word - "being alone as a child must have been tough, to say the least."

Byron

For all of Byron’s antics, he was still quite aware of his surroundings. There was years of training behind it, plus a long life of experience that was only made more acute for the years of training. Of course, he would never admit to being particularly skilled in anything even mildly respectable, so if he were ever asked and felt the need to explain, the only reason he noticed Malaika’s brief discomfort was simply for her looks. His own deep rooted concern for those around him also had nothing to do with it. He oft found himself annoying empathetic of others, something that many would consider a ‘chink in his armour,’ if one were to believe he had any armour to begin with.

Osilia however read nothing into the brief display, too distracted as she was with adjusting the various trays of food and giving Byron a comforting smile, apologizing for stealing his thunder then excusing herself to go check on her other patrons, leaving the two alone again. Malaika’s attention moved onto the next tidbit, a curious choice and yet still not something he had any trouble talking about. “Winters were a bit of a challenge I admit. But, I couldn’t imagine it any either way.” He flashed a warm smile, gaze dropping to her left hand and the ring displayed, and his smile only grew more amused for a moment before it was dismissed.

“Never really knew my mother. If what the men who raised me said is true, she did giving birth to me, just two alleys from where we lived. I’d like to think she was a wonderful woman, and had quite the bright and sunny image of her built in my mind as a child. Over the years I’ve long since realized the truth of what she must have been, but all the same…those childhood memories, as fake as they may be, are what I will carry with me to the grave.” He didn’t seem at all upset about it either, still holding that warm smile and watching her without any apparent change in his attitude, even with her ring now fully displayed.

After an apparent moment’s reflection, gaze hovering just over her shoulder and lost in the distance, he nodded slightly and launched back into his story telling, “I learned no end of skills on the city streets. I’m a deft hand with a purse string, and Light when I turn on the water works…no vendor could resist sparing me an apple or a meat pie. Winters though…not as many rich folk walking the slush lined streets in the winter. Not as many vendors hawking sweets and meats in the winter. And when it gets really cold? Your hands, they just don’t work right anymore. Grow stiff, unresponsive. Dangerous, that is. So either you earn enough in the summer to last the winter in some semblance of comfort, or you keep working in the winter too. Change the game a little. Later in the night, drunk from the taverns. You stand out more, but they’re tired and well…drunk.”

He shook his head ruefully, chuckling at some memory or inside joke he didn’t bother explaining yet, “So then I joined a caravan. The master taught me plenty about the word, a bit about herbs too. He taught some of the older hands how to make a cream from Cayenne pepper. Add a few other bits and pieces, works wonders on stiff limbs. Handy for hands stiff from the cold too, if you could mind the smell. It wasn’t unpleasant, just strong. Not so handy when you’re slinking about in the shadows, and your tummy starts rumbling because your hands smell good enough to eat.”

He chuckled again, flashing a grin, “Old Tock. As he tells it, he used to be a Lancer in Tear. I cannot deny he had hurt his legs, and as he tells it he broke both knees in battle. One to an Aiel arrow, the other when his horse rolled onto his leg. Ah, the tales of that horse…as he says it, old Tuck was the finest warhorse ever to carry a proud soldier of Tear. Don’t ask him which knee was broken by what though…they alternated as often as days of the week. But, he was bloody well fond of that cream. Wonders on his knees and on a slice of bread.”

He finally flipped over his own cup of tea and topped it off with his own small pot, apparently preferring white tea despite the late hour. Letting it cool briefly, he lifted a piece of bread and carefully spooned a bit of beef and sauce onto it before it vanished into his mouth, nodding in approval to the flavor. “Back to the point though…the men that raised me were not something I would consider family. Ah, the joys of youth yes? When you know nothing else, you stay with what you know. They beat me, quite regularly, and used me and some other kids to earn their way. We stole and begged for food and money, they in turn watched out for us, sometimes got medicine when we were sick. Was the whole world, when I was a child, and as much as I hated it I would never think to run away. Didn’t know where to go, right? The Guards were the bad guys, and there was no one else to turn to. It was just the way things were.”

A sip of tea, another bite of food, “Well, one day I made the mistake of trying my hand at purse cutting late one winter night. Fumbled the job and got caught. Master Dekan owned a rather successful caravan, and rather then stick to just one route, say between Andor and Cairhein, he went where the winds took him. Well, he wasn’t as drunk as I thought and caught me in the act. But rather then turn me into the Guard, he just took me into his caravan. And so began a new, if still not so pleasant, chapter of my life.”

As open about his past as he so often seemed to be, there were some things he would never tell anyone. For all his smiles and jests, his childhood on the streets, and even his years with Master Dekan, there were things that he had done, or had been done to him, that would be carried to the grave along side a child’s make-believe memories of a mother he’d never known.