Respite & Resolve

[Natalie Grey]

Talin Sedai, Yellow Ajah

Talin didn’t enjoy the emotional outburst. In fact she much preferred Arikan when he was cold and calculating, even when she imagined he might be contemplating the exact details of her demise to pinhead precision. At least that was cognition. Experience told her he was unlikely to act while she had value, and she knew better than anyone that the things one thought in the privacy of one’s own mind should not be allowed to cast such shadows as good and evil about their person. In short, he could think whatever he liked. Talin didn’t care or judge.

Neither did she enjoy her own emotional response; the trill-like speed of her own heart, or the way she felt herself tremble. It was all so physical.

She could still feel the brand of his hand. Her brain felt like it had been blended in her skull for how violently he had shook her. The shock was dissipating but the memory of that touch would not. She detested it, not because of what he was or what he had been, and not because she had been afraid at how he had lost all semblance of control (and it did scare her). It was his fear. His desperation. And the emotional switch in his head that had sent him tumbling in her direction like a child demanding solace from its mother.

Well, not tumbling. That was unfair. He was still diminished from what she imagined his peak physical limit must be, but he was more than adequately recovered from the snivelling mess of a man he had been when she’d discovered him. And muscle had an impressive memory. As a Yellow, Talin would know. She was proud of this restoration.

But the nauseous point remained. And it seemed likely he was infected with something she could not cure.

It was not a shock, exactly, but it was a disappointment she had adjusted her expectations for back when he had first demanded Elsae. Though certainly she could have wished he’d not been so visceral with his final proof. Talin was not a White, and had little interest in the murky caverns of minds she did not understand, even one so uniquely depraved and snarled up as his. If Arikan was plagued by some kind of feelings, she had little idea what to tell him. But since he did indeed appear to have them, and Talin took her self-appointed duties towards his care seriously, she had prepared herself quite thoroughly. If they proved enough to incapacitate him… well, Talin would not allow her investment to be for nothing. It was how they had come to this moment.

In the aftermath he appeared to be recalibrating, and she was content to allow him the time. She watched his turned back and tried to remember how to hang her arm naturally at her side, wishing he had not touched her, wishing she could not still feel it.

Kaori stood near, like the hounds who’d run with the wagons of her youth. She liked him for that.

Nythadri was clearly angry, or so Talin presumed from her hard look. It had been a lot for her to take in, but the woman worked best under exacting pressure, so it had been the only way to elicit the necessary responses. It was something Talin had learned about her during their training, though only once they had started to practise the 100 weaves together in earnest. The mask of her cold expression was almost always impeccable – so much so that once, before Talin had really known her, she had wondered from afar if they were utterly like-minded. It wasn’t the case. Like peeling back the skin of a cadaver to study the organs within, there was a lot of Nythadri’s inner-workings under that surface. As well as incentive, such pressure also provoked the kind of emotional response that made her simple to manipulate. Talin mapped the paths she might take with great care. She knew a great deal about Nythadri’s life.

Some things had gone very wrong in the execution, but some things hadn’t. A plan too rigid was just as ineffective as one born of spontaneity.

In the silence after Nythadri left, Talin found herself considering that this was all the fault of the spurned tea. It was a chamomile infusion, meant to inspire calm and balance, and she had instructed the servants herself on its preparation. But it was not just about the blend of herbs. Rituals themselves had importance. They defined life outside of more obvious rules, like law and punishment. Rituals created a balance of expectation – like pleasant discourse, and bonds of camaraderie. A sip of tea between talk of kidnap and treason softened the blow. Taking tea with a dreadlord was so absurd it forced the mind to set it aside.

And Arikan had ruined it.

She delicately retook her seat, hands threaded on her lap. It seemed to help. And she was tall for a woman, often misidentified for Aiel: both things that men in particular generally disliked. Some tractability would soothe.

“Okay,” she said eventually. “Tell me your symptoms.”