02-02-2024, 10:43 PM
It was a helpless moment, and not one she was ever keen to relive as the seconds stretched by in fraught silence. But Arikan kept chains on his temper, and her intuition tested true. This time at least. She did not think those chains would hold forever – and all the more reason to give him a better target for his claws, before impatience and frustration put too great a strain on the logic keeping them alive.
When Jai took the book she felt a little steadier in her estimations. Then, when he flippantly admitted to creating the code, she let her arms drift free, and moved to take a seat in the armchair she’d occupied that morning. Where reluctance to accept her situation had held her rigid then, Nythadri had not the strength or inclination for self-imposed discomfort now. The room was dreary enough as it was in the dim light. She crossed her legs, and let her chin sink onto a fist. Besides the still and attentive nature of her expression, there was no concession in her posture to formality. Mostly, it was Arikan she studied as she listened.
Jai knew the skill for a curse, but it didn’t stop the small pulse of pride she felt inside, warm as the currents of the Aryth. Not for the curse, but for the man who survived it. Arikan dismissed everyone around him with the blanket designation of incompetence, and consistently found disbelief even when he did discover talent. She didn’t care for the manner in which he spoke to Jai then, though she did not think it bothered Jai himself. Or not for the same reasons.
As Arikan frowned and reclaimed the pocketbook, intent on deciphering its secrets, Nythadri glanced at him. Of all the poor decisions he could have made marching in here, she regretted this one least, though he must have felt the spike of her alarm as much as he felt the flood of her relief now this first storm settled and they were both unscathed. She knew he’d made a calculation, and there was no reprimand for the risk he chose to take. Rather, it was a touchstone look.
For the rest, she could not say if there was a connection between Aesdaishar and the plaque’s instruction (that took longer to think on, but she presumed it must be such), or if such a landmark was simply the most reliable method of imparting directions to it in the first place. Presumably the forts had names of their own with which to distinguish them. Jai might know better; he had been to Kandor, and possibly those very forts along the blightborder. But a puzzle was easier than dwelling on Compulsion and betrayal and all the other ruin the night had begat, and she fell into it with the focus of respite.
“I have plenty better to add,” she said, when this time Arikan’s tone pierced in her direction. He riled right under her skin, and if she could not exactly put her finger on why it bothered her so much, she knew it was the same kind of visceral reaction she’d had to Imaad Suaya. Her pale eyes were stubborn, not from hostility but irritation at being an afterthought. “But I presume you mean about that passage.”
Translation wasn’t much of a puzzle. Nythadri was a daughter of nobility. And while not scholarly in any traditional sense, she’d spent far more years than she actually needed to climb the Tower’s rungs. Even her tutors back in Caemlyn had agreed she was a frustrating student, but if she resisted the easy mould, she had never been an idle person when she broke away to indulge her own distractions. Only a fool wouldn’t make use of the sorts of resources the White Tower laid bare. Though as it happened both translations did not come from any deep knowledge of the dead language so much as time spent among the women in the Green halls.
It was meaning she paused to give thought, before she spoke again.
“Chandar, perhaps? Assuming north. Though I don’t see how that helps us. I suppose there might be a better indication of how to interpret the instruction on the plaque itself.” She spoke the musings with genuine thoughtfulness, as if among equals, and not because Arikan had all but mannerlessly snapped his fingers under her nose. If those sent by the Black Tower to investigate were dead, he was the best placed of them to circumvent whatever protections thwarted all those who came before. But a suggestion of orders would be a folly to add to the bloody lip, and she did not think Arikan needed such direction anyway.
She almost shrugged. It wasn’t arrogance that narrowed her eyes instead, but realisation in the moment that followed. The emotion smoothed itself quickly, perhaps surprisingly not into smugness, though she was probably entitled. When she spoke next, it was not with impatience, but a desire to understand exactly what he was asking. “You must have understood that it references Chachin at least. The throne of the clouds, the palace that tops a mountain? The old tongue is an idiom, I think. Move as an arrow. Straight as the arrow. Something like that. The arrow part I am certain of.” Nardes vasen’cierto ain. Thought is the arrow of time. It was part of the inscription said to be on the Ashandarei.
When Jai took the book she felt a little steadier in her estimations. Then, when he flippantly admitted to creating the code, she let her arms drift free, and moved to take a seat in the armchair she’d occupied that morning. Where reluctance to accept her situation had held her rigid then, Nythadri had not the strength or inclination for self-imposed discomfort now. The room was dreary enough as it was in the dim light. She crossed her legs, and let her chin sink onto a fist. Besides the still and attentive nature of her expression, there was no concession in her posture to formality. Mostly, it was Arikan she studied as she listened.
Jai knew the skill for a curse, but it didn’t stop the small pulse of pride she felt inside, warm as the currents of the Aryth. Not for the curse, but for the man who survived it. Arikan dismissed everyone around him with the blanket designation of incompetence, and consistently found disbelief even when he did discover talent. She didn’t care for the manner in which he spoke to Jai then, though she did not think it bothered Jai himself. Or not for the same reasons.
As Arikan frowned and reclaimed the pocketbook, intent on deciphering its secrets, Nythadri glanced at him. Of all the poor decisions he could have made marching in here, she regretted this one least, though he must have felt the spike of her alarm as much as he felt the flood of her relief now this first storm settled and they were both unscathed. She knew he’d made a calculation, and there was no reprimand for the risk he chose to take. Rather, it was a touchstone look.
For the rest, she could not say if there was a connection between Aesdaishar and the plaque’s instruction (that took longer to think on, but she presumed it must be such), or if such a landmark was simply the most reliable method of imparting directions to it in the first place. Presumably the forts had names of their own with which to distinguish them. Jai might know better; he had been to Kandor, and possibly those very forts along the blightborder. But a puzzle was easier than dwelling on Compulsion and betrayal and all the other ruin the night had begat, and she fell into it with the focus of respite.
“I have plenty better to add,” she said, when this time Arikan’s tone pierced in her direction. He riled right under her skin, and if she could not exactly put her finger on why it bothered her so much, she knew it was the same kind of visceral reaction she’d had to Imaad Suaya. Her pale eyes were stubborn, not from hostility but irritation at being an afterthought. “But I presume you mean about that passage.”
Translation wasn’t much of a puzzle. Nythadri was a daughter of nobility. And while not scholarly in any traditional sense, she’d spent far more years than she actually needed to climb the Tower’s rungs. Even her tutors back in Caemlyn had agreed she was a frustrating student, but if she resisted the easy mould, she had never been an idle person when she broke away to indulge her own distractions. Only a fool wouldn’t make use of the sorts of resources the White Tower laid bare. Though as it happened both translations did not come from any deep knowledge of the dead language so much as time spent among the women in the Green halls.
It was meaning she paused to give thought, before she spoke again.
“Chandar, perhaps? Assuming north. Though I don’t see how that helps us. I suppose there might be a better indication of how to interpret the instruction on the plaque itself.” She spoke the musings with genuine thoughtfulness, as if among equals, and not because Arikan had all but mannerlessly snapped his fingers under her nose. If those sent by the Black Tower to investigate were dead, he was the best placed of them to circumvent whatever protections thwarted all those who came before. But a suggestion of orders would be a folly to add to the bloody lip, and she did not think Arikan needed such direction anyway.
She almost shrugged. It wasn’t arrogance that narrowed her eyes instead, but realisation in the moment that followed. The emotion smoothed itself quickly, perhaps surprisingly not into smugness, though she was probably entitled. When she spoke next, it was not with impatience, but a desire to understand exactly what he was asking. “You must have understood that it references Chachin at least. The throne of the clouds, the palace that tops a mountain? The old tongue is an idiom, I think. Move as an arrow. Straight as the arrow. Something like that. The arrow part I am certain of.” Nardes vasen’cierto ain. Thought is the arrow of time. It was part of the inscription said to be on the Ashandarei.