Filling the Days

[Morven]

Devika Sirideán

Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah

✥

“Arikan.” The name spat impassioned venom over every lilted syllable, the heated sort, which suggested Devika had taken his actions against the Tower very personally indeed. She did not remain stationary for the rest of the tale, her emotions rolling turbulent as a sudden summer storm. If Devika was the epitome of Aes Sedai grace, it was with all the movement and muscle of a pacing tiger. And it was an angry one. Jole spoke a dead man’s name – for the Tower certainly considered him dead.

“If Eshamir wants him, we should kill him quickly,” she snapped. And properly this time. The jewellery adorning her wrists jangled as she folded her arms. It wouldn’t displease her to be the one to finally snap the dreadlord’s neck beneath her foot, and she would feel no guilt for doing so without first dragging him back to Tar Valon for the Tower’s judgement. In his case, she would kneel for the Highest’s forgiveness afterwards, not ask for her permission to enact an execution. And frankly she did not care what Kaydrienne thought – let the Amyrlin attempt to strip her of her titles; true to her warrioress nature, she would remain at the Dragon’s side regardless. Self-sacrifice was no bar to duty, and she considered her duty to the Dragon and the Light before the politics of the Tower. 

But a soul born to the Dark. Light, the possibility was unthinkable, and enough to send a genuine shiver of fear down her spine. If Arikan had once been innocent, a victim himself, Devika did not have the luxury to care about it. Not in times of war. But despite her angry words, it was not the man but the object itself she thought mostly closely about. Ironic, given her disdain for the path upon which Kaydrienne had pushed the Red’s new purpose. Because if the object Jole revealed ever resurfaced – and Light send it did not – it must come quickly into her own Ajah’s protection. She must speak to Kekura urgently.

As she considered the forward march, Jole’s earlier threat played once more through her mind, as insidious as everything she could feel of his emotions through the bond. Yet if he could truly perform such a feat still, she could see no reason he would not have used the ter’angreal on the Dragon Reborn. It must be lost. It must.

Abruptly, she turned back to him. He was languid in the chair she had vacated, a cuckoo content in the nest and watching for her reaction as though she were the show. The darkness beneath his eyes only made his wide grin all the more sinister. As impassioned and fierce as she was in countenance, Devika did not survive so long nor make such a name for herself by being unperceptive of the facts given, even in the heat of her own reactions. Forceful steps brought her closer, until she loomed over him. “But you told the Lord Dragon Arikan was a weapon. His weapon. You believe he can be used to clear the field.”

Her hands moved as she spoke, swirling about the other as he had parodied earlier. Jole answered her demand for information, and in return the healing was performed. Though it would be the only time she gave such favour for the self-infliction of a hangover. Vika’s terms on that had been clear, though she did not expect it to be a marked issue. It wasn’t a lazy man’s idle she perceived, but a bored one; and Jorin was bored here. She’d put his mind to better use.

The power was like a sledgehammer. She possessed the skill, but not the patience for subtlety as she revived and refreshed the ills within. Doubtless he’d have complaints for her manner, but that was what the gesture had been for – fair warning of her intention. Consent was implied when he begged her for the boon. “And yet he could not even take the White Tower,” she reminded. A finger pat under Jole’s chin, as though he were a child. If she was not yet clear in her intention, she accepted the path Jole suggested. They would find the famed dreadlord, and haul him before the Dragon if necessary. Breathing, or a corpse.

“You said you knew where to find him.”