The Hunt

[Natalie Grey]

<dl>
<dt>Trista</dt>
<dd> </dd>
</dl>


If the mysterious stranger was threatened by the burst of life from the nearby chair, she showed no sign beyond following his approach with her death-stricken eyes. She looked straight to him in fact, as surely as if she had felt him weave the cords that pulled it. Trista could feel saidin no more than she could feel saidar - less, even, if one acknowledged the distant, distorted warmth glowing in the back of her mind like the sun trapped behind a cloud. She preferred not to.

"I am the Empress of the Crystal Throne, come to steal away your King,"
to hear her speak was listening to silence. No inflection of mirth or hint of sarcasm glittered beneath the surface, nor was their any measure of gravity. The utter lack of inflection in the syllables, of expression in her face, highlighted all the more the ridiculousness of her words. Let him take them as he would.

Trista's eyes travelled the whole long length of him, though what she brought away from her inspection was his to guess. "Who are you?"
Malkieri, obviously. Why else carry a sword when you could conjure fire in less time than it took to draw breath, let alone a blade? Sentimentality; either because it was a rare find or an ancestor's belonging, and given his height it was far more likely to be the hierloom. There was always the chance it was actual sense - Trista knew well that channelers could find themselves unable to touch the Power, no matter how close it felt - but Asha'man were a cocky sort, and this one hardly looked the exception.

Her gaze floated back across the crowd, narrowing a hairsbreadth as she caught Yui give a small nod to Daryen across the crowd. Having only known them a short time, Trista already suspected conspiracy. But just what they were conspiring was still in question. Or it had been, until she caught a glimmer of white coming down the cobblestone steps.

She was not the only one, though most watched as Daryen bounded atop the elevated dais and addressed them for the second time that evening.

"My esteemed Lords and Ladies, I confess I must introduce you,"
he extended his hand backwards to Trista, who stared at him with as near to begrudgement as she could muster. He grinned, patient and giddy as a child luring a lost kitten from its hiding place. She stepped forward and laid her hand on his palm, which he then lifted into the air as if displaying her for a twirl.

"This, is the lovely and deadly Trista Alquin of the White Tower. You may call her Gaidar."
He punctuated with a wink, and the fervored whispers broke with laughter. Trista had to give him credit, as he continued to fan the flames of their curiousity while seeming to give them answers.

"And this,"
his hand holding hers lowered as the other outstretched, gesturing open-palmed to a shaven male and the pale, pale maiden at his side, "is the High Lord Sivrikaya and his Voice, Dilek."
Every head had turned at his gesture, and be it filled with gasp, rumor, or fact every mouth moved at his announcement.

The man, tall and fit beneath his stone-gray robe, smirked at the shocked crowd, though it was hard to tell from what source the expression came. His Voice was near as tall as he where she stood at his side, the thick sandals on her tiny feet hiding the truth of her height.

She was so very, very white. She might have been a foreign ghost, glowing and ephemeral in the moonlight. Trista had heard of the disease before, wherein people could be born without color, but it was one thing to have heard and entirely another to see for oneself. Her skin, her hair, even her eyes were glossed milky so that surely she could not see, though there was no hesitation in the way her heart-shaped face turned towards the dais. Her gown was loose, flowing fabric as white and sheer as her skin, accented with tiny rubies speckling the fabric as if placed at random. Red paint adorned only the middle section of her lips, and traced the line of her eerily empty eyes. With her exotic face and complection she was beautifully inhuman, capable of stopping ones breath while not quickening the heart.

Beside her, the High Lord seemed almost plain. He was handsome enough, with a more oval face than Trista would expect of a Seanchan but that was the only deviation. His tilted eyes were a shade darker than his robes, and shone with a dark, calculating light. Yet he seemed human enough; more diplomat than the monster of time-distorted memory that chained women in their nightmares. But he moved with a deadly grace that made the Gaidar wary, and she found herself glad to be on her feet.