The Hunt

[Jay Carpenter]

The fall of boots slowly replaced the hum of gatherings fading behind them. For a country estate, the halls were surprisingly long. Jai was unfamiliar with their layout, sizing up what was revealed with every turn, but Antony strolled with a soldier's casual stride straight to a courtyard as if he knew it was there all along. Outside, while all there was to hear was the dripping of an out of sight fountain and the conversation, neither man spoke too freely. Of the hunt to come for some time, including the hunters. Liridia Sedai's apparent tameness, seemingly uninterested in the King unless he read a book to her. The sunset pepper which won him the chance for a Razor. Antony seemed rather amused by Jai's bout of blindness at that point in the tale. "And you say she Healed your eyes only?"
He chuckled in new light, [/color]"Finally get a Razor and you'll have a pillow in the saddle." [/color]Jai quickly defended how a man can't help what he does in his sleep. At least the story did not incite invasive questions about just how a man runs into an Aes Sedai willing to bet on Razors.



The archways lining the modest space were bolstered by smooth cylinders too narrow to obscure a profile any larger than a child's, but Jai was fiercely aware that noble estates were littered with ears; privacy was not a luxury of nobility. For the moment at least he was satisfied in their apparent isolation. The way Antony's eyes circled the perimeter, it seemed the captain was as well.



"Let's speak freely. I'll know if someone channels. Whatever happened to eavesdropping the old-fashioned way?"
His remark fell without reply. Jai planted himself as though bracing for the non-existant gust of wind and continued to ensure their privacy. It almost wasn't necessary. The palpable humidity walled them in as securely. Antony's wiping the dislodged drips from his brow spoke to it's oppression.



"Forgive me, Jai. Not that you'll be offended. But I thought you were gone for good."


He was instantly drawn to the flash of paper produced from the captain's unbuttoned jacket. Jai accepted the note smoothly, but did not expect the apology which accompanied it. His prediction of the parchment's contents proved accurate moments later when his eyes darted across plainly written script within. As Antony continued, Jai lifted from the markings only long enough to hold the paper against the blazing sun overhead. "I've worked at it for two days,"
Antony added with a measure of frustration, "but i've gotten no where. I've some suspicions as to its intended drop, but.."




Jai finally lowered from his stare into the brightness diffused only slightly by the paper. "This is the original?"
A precise crease and Jai folded it into a pocket upon Antony's confirmation.

"Its not an amateur's, that's for sure. You think this has to do with today?"
Jai frowned at the puzzling shapes he'd so quickly memorized. They soon formed a new foreground across the flagstones as he tried to fit them into those initial quadratics he could mentally test - the kind that he could work without pen and paper. Until he realized the long moments of unanswered silence. Antony's faded shape coalesced suddenly again and greeted him with the question of anticipation. Jai shook his head in answer, and Antony retracted the hope of so swift a success as a response.



"How long do you think we have until we leave?"
Jai needed a more concrete answer than the previous. This time, it was Antony who seemed to recede thoughtfully, but his introspection lasted mere seconds.



"Its a two hour ride to good grazing land."
He started, absently looking through the gallery toward the western sky. "Antelope turn most active in the hours before dusk. So.."
He seemed to go back and forth, considering the appropriate calculations. "An hour, maybe two until we leave."




Jai took no such time. "Then give me an hour. And make sure nobody interrupts me."
He turned with newness of purpose in his stride.



For this task, an open view was the opposite of what he needed. A small room. Windowless, preferably, with an unadorned table and chair. Well, unadorned after an arm swiped all the contents to the floor. As Jai locked himself in there, the last thing he noticed of the world beyond this condensed universe was Antony pulling a pipe from a pocket as he had the note; a simple gentleman seeking solitude from the noise of socializing.



He sat in the chair stiffly, although it was not a fault of the seat, but as he would were this his desk in Tar Valon where he corrected the Golden Fox's finances. Straight-backed and forward-leaning to start with, but such a posture was not sustainable, as he well knew. Many a dawn, the Captain discovered the shell of a man curled low and unresponsive except to a sea of incomprehensible papers, but the ritual was necessary.



No such deterioration would happen in an hour, two or three days, perhaps; not that Jai usually needed so much time. The basic statistics finished in the short time in the courtyard determined this was not an amateur's code, but a moderate level cipher; an hour should suffice. Small as the note was, the margin of error on language transformation was narrow enough to make such a call. He quickly settled into the methodical clarity found in such beloved isolation to work the more complicated equations.



A thrill flushed beneath the black with the first warmth he noticed all afternoon as his wrist inked precise columns across the page; the animation was inhumanly fluid against so statuesque a figure. A multitude of rows matched the columns above, with each beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. Separating every stroke from its neighbors with perfect distance began to freeze his knuckles, but he lacked the option to ease their ache for fear of stopping now would collapse the pyramid of integers built so painstakingly in his mind. As Jai answered line after line of statistic, he smirked at the ineptitude he uncovered. Strict subtitution was amateur; transposition was amateur, but whoever wrote this cipher foolishly believed the combination of both doubled the security. It didn't.



It was only when the final message was rewrote, in his own hand, did Jai find his face pulled tight with thought. Unwrenching it was a task as much as pulling out the wedges shoved in every tense joint. But it was a satisfying chore to grip success. The aftermath of his hour rushed to the foreground, then. With only the one page to work with, it was nearly black with script. A new layer of ink laid down atop the old and useless ones before. To see it now it was practically incomprehensible even to its author. But here and there he saw the circle of a beautifully balanced equation hidden behind a checklist of letters.



It was at his creation, the deciphered message written in his own hand, that he stared sickly. The delay in understanding born from the frenzied isolation of a single-track mind only now free to comprehend.



'Proceed. The banker has gone back to Tar Valon.'



The heat of putrid bile bubbled up; as hot and choking as the fountain of blood when Tomdry's Fade split him open. But there was no heroic scene to slowly escort him to death, no rush of defiance filling his ears, no atonement to die on the battlefield.



The order of the last hour was replaced with chaos flying as fast through his thoughts as did the air in his lungs. Two days ago, Antony's men intercepted this note. Jai swallowed dryly. Someone knew he left. Someone knew where he went. He had to tear hot eyes away from reading the words obsessively, as though they might change with each new skimming. He had to leave, but a frantic look around the room boxed him in. Cohesive thoughts of logic, to escape by channeling, or walking out, were nowhere to be found. Instead, he vaguely heard his own chair clatter backwards as he stood too quickly. It was soon followed by the sound of the door opening.



He looked hesitantly.



Antony shut the door behind him. The slow look of worry creased his brow. "What? Did you decipher it?"
His eyes flickered to the table where the usual sea of papers were transformed into a single sheet. Jai watched Antony search without guidance. It was only by the negative shake of his head that Jai knew he'd found it. "The banker? I don't know who it's about."
To the point, as usual. He looked to Jai for insight.



Jai's rasp finally broke from his constricted chest. "Me."
Antony turned grave as though he'd been given a glimpse of a horrifying portrait without seeing the entire picture.



He wracked his brain for an explanation. The words flooded from his mind. "Intercepted two days ago."
Antony's nod agreed. "I am a banker by training. Accountant, essentially."
His chest heaved painfully. He'd told only one person in Arad Doman about that existance. Antony absorbed the information without reaction. "I went home."
No, that didn't make sense. He heard himself say it. He was pacing now. But the room was too small to pace. "I went home. I'm from Tar Valon, I went home. It's where I grew up. Two days ago. Somebody knew. How? Its impossible."
He clenched his hands to hide them shaking. And repeated it all again.



And again.



A sudden weight steadied his shoulder, and the vibrations in the world came to stillness.

"Lad."




It was enough. Jai knew as he was doing what he was doing. But the pacing, the counting, the clencing, the breathing; it helped. He had to do something to find a foothold in the avalanche. Every other day he suspected someone was warring against him, but in the end the cool logic of analysis set his thoughts true. Now it was so unnerving to discover a conspiracy not fabricated in his own head, but one that actually existed. If not for Antony's intervention, he could only guess what derivitive of a man might have later been found.



"Alright, lad. The hunt's been called. Let's think while we walk to the stables. I'd wager a guess what might be able to proceed with you gone."




On the threshold of leaving, Jai grit his teeth as the cold flame of saidin twisted the parchment to cinders. He could wager the same guess.