Crimsonthorn

[Eidolon]

Malaika Sedai, Brown Ajah

Tar Valon sprawled in miniature, far beneath the balcony view. Kings and queens would take note of an Amyrlin’s fall, but most would be oblivious to the Tower’s change of power; even those lives lived in the Tower’s literal shadow. Malaika had not been into the city since Andreu Kojima had jumped from the bridge, not even to visit the tea rooms where she had been a regular face for months, though she had written to Mistress Osilia so the woman would have no cause to fret over her absence. By now Byron’s tour seemed more dream than even distant memory, and she considered it with the nostalgia of something to be valued and set aside for safekeeping. She’d known at the time he was pushing her, as Broekk had once pushed her to learn children’s games or how to ride a horse. His coaxing play-the-fool manner had felt a safe challenge, for all she also understood he was also a dangerous man. But she was beginning to realise that the experiences he’d opened her eyes to could only ever be transitory when war loomed – not just the Dark One’s final push, but the creep of an empire that would simply subsume all the freedoms won in the name of the Light, and twist them instead into the name of the Empress.

It wasn’t a future she could live with.

As she watched the sun deepen its setting spark upon the roofs below, she reasoned that perhaps this was the difference between a man who found his unfathomable peace at the bottom of the river, and a woman who regularly contemplated the heights of her balcony, but would never allow herself the relief of the fall. Yet if Malaika’s life was not her own, then it must belong somewhere.

She had no one she would choose to confide such things in, but she had spent a long time thinking about what Calathea had gone on to say to her that morning, knowing it was purpose that had been offered. In honesty, even with her Oaths Malaika was afraid of the weapon war could make of her, all too aware of how easily humanity could be stripped from a soul, even in the cause of the greater good. But there was no peaceful way to reclaim what was lost, and no peaceful way to stop the Seanchan taking yet more. What made her skilled at Healing made her adept at its opposite, and it was what she had once been honed for on the leash all those years ago. A life she was keen to forget. A life that even Brenna could not fully fathom, for all that Malaika had revealed of her past. She had come to regard the Tower as her sanctuary; a place to retreat from the world. But perhaps that was not what it was meant to be for her.

In service of the Light, she would lay down her own life – would do whatever the Tower asked of her, so that the lives she watched from on high might continue on, oblivious to any sacrifices made to ensure it. That was what she believed the serpent ring meant. So when Calathea gave her the choice – because they were Browns, after all, not Greens – she had only repeated her dedication to service. Whatever the Ajah asked, whatever the Amyrlin asked, she would do her best to see it done.

She did not regret it, but she found herself wrapped in a weight of melancholy as she imagined what her future might look like. She could accept it though. For the Tower. For the Light.

It was not what held her attention now, though, but consideration of a letter she had received upon returning to her rooms. Conflict pressed a heavy weight in Malaika’s chest as she folded the paper and stared out at the cityscape. The hand she rested on the railing was bandaged – she’d found the crimsonthorn numbed too well, so that she had not realised how much she had been rubbing at the scar of late, until it had begun to bleed. As once before, she chose not to request the services of a Yellow, ashamed of an injury she had caused herself through inattention. It was a good reminder of her foolishness, given how she’d received the scar in the first place.

Sharain never would have written a second time in anything but desperation, especially not after the way things had been left between them. Malaika had lingered a long time before opening the letter, afraid it would tell her her brother was dead, and extinguish the last small hope she held of their reconciliation. But it didn’t.

It was a plea, not for Chakai, but for her nephew Kasimir.

---

  

Malaika Sedai and Gleeman Zahir

The gentle activity of the Brown’s library continued untouched by the Tower’s politics. Although the grief of their loss might be shared amongst sisters, in the timeless halls of knowledge such things did not so easily breach. Even in the wake of Arikan’s devastating attack she remembered such routines continuing unperturbed. It had been a great comfort to her back then, a defiant promise of unity, but not now. Instead Malaika found the dissonance with her internal world jarring, but she was a part of that serene landscape nonetheless; a face not yet ageless, but which had slowed many years ago; a face demure and familiar to the young girls and women in white.

She had taken Calathea’s gentle suggestions to heart, and had spent some time this morning ensuring her grief was not so easily marked in her appearance, whatever she felt inside. Her hair was a neat river of black, smoothed back from her face. Lythia’s gifted necklace lay in the loose folds of fabric layered modestly at her chest, the only jewelry she wore apart from the serpent ring. Her hands were clasped upon the desk, the bandaged resting within the other, though the fall of her sleeves adequately covered both. It was Zahir she was watching, as the man gave a respectful flourish of a bow and pulled a chair for himself with a warm, “Aes Sedai.”

The gleeman did not wear his motley cloak today, though his shirt was finely embroidered in many colours; vines and flowers and thorns that he had perhaps sewn himself. A great many coloured rings filled his fingers, speaking of wide and varied travels. As he sat he regarded her from beneath the tousled curls of his dark hair, eyes warm and curious. He did not sit close, mindful of her space in a way that let her breathe. And he saw the hand; she was sure of it. Though he said nothing.

Malaika had reasoned he would still be in Tar Valon, but she had not been certain he’d respond to the invitation. If he was at the Tower seeking the sorts of stories that might secure his legacy, recent events were sure to be filling his page. Beyond the time Zahir had spoken to her in the library, asking after her own story, she had only ever consented to meetings that included the Brown Sitter. He reminded her of Byron in many ways, but he did not elicit the same ease in her. But Brenna Sedai was fond of him, and Malaika wanted to trust her sister’s intuition.