Faedre Janeen

Early Life

Faedre was seven when she first killed a man.

She was born in Tanchico, to a house that would have been considered nobility before the Seanchan occupation. Instead the only thing she inherited from her mother was the status of a slave, albeit one with the position to serve in the Panarch’s Palace as companion to the royal daughter. She was a cunning child, and such attributes marked her for specific grooming as a Listener. From a young age she learned to spy upon others, often going unnoticed as she performed her other duties. It was her honour to preserve the loyalty of the palace to the Empress. Even her own mother faltered sometimes, remembering the riches of a life before the Corenne and whispering stories at night in a bid to ensure her daughter did not forget her own heritage. But Tarabon before the Seanchan came was a world Faedre had never known.

Her formative years were shaped by an encounter in the palace halls, where she came across two men deep in conversation. Faedre naturally slipped back into the shadows to listen for anything that might need reporting, and perhaps to sate some of her own curiosity. One of the men was tall and dark-skinned, with eyes black as a starless night. Even as a child she understood he was beautiful, and she was captivated by it. After the two parted ways, it was the other man who paused and seemed to know exactly where she was hidden. She lowered her eyes, realising she might be in trouble. Audrek Luthaire was a Seeker for Truth, one of the men to whom Faedre’s whispers were delivered. While it still made him da’cavole, as a Seeker his bondage was to the Empress herself, and as such he possessed the authority to command even the Blood. He asked her to repeat what she had heard, which she did dutifully. To her surprise, no punishment came.

Instead, to her great pride, Seeker Audrek took her under his wing. He taught her to read others and to move unseen, to use her appearance to disarm and manipulate those around her. Faedre quickly flourished under the attention and promises. Her education grew to encompass poisons and the secret arts – forgery, the weak spots of a man, how to make someone talk. She excelled. Listeners were supposed to be impartial, observers only, but Audrek explained that this was all part of her training – that she would one day become something special to the Empire, a hand of its justice. The recognition glowed in her chest. When, as a still sweet and smiling seven-year old, she brought that first cup of wine to the doomed Ceridor Ivasadhil, she watched in curiosity as the man’s throat bobbed with each gulp. Audrek had directed her own hand to mix the poison, and she understood what it would do, and how. She did not stay to watch, but by sunset he was dead.

More than a decade passed under Audrek’s guidance, and Faedre blossomed into a young woman. She was an unlikely assassin, beloved in the palace and trusted by the Panarch. Her etiquette was beyond reproach, and she was skilled in courtly pursuits that made her company valued and often sought. She never questioned Audrek’s orders or wondered at the guilt of the people she helped to remove from the shadows. A Seeker enacted the Empress’s will, and Faedre viewed her own work no differently through the conduit of her master. She lived for the importance of her role in protecting the Empire, and in Audrek’s fatherly affections, dreaming of the day she would be allowed to tattoo the Tower and Raven on her shoulder blades, and join the Seekers in full heart and soul.

A New Kind of Servitude

At nineteen Faedre’s dreams were ruined. It was only her habitual vigilance that noticed the second glance the damane gave her as she passed with her sul’dam. No words were uttered, just that side-eyed look. But she knew what it could mean, and it flooded her with a kind of fear she had never experienced before. Despite her loyalty to the Empire, and her fervent belief in everyone’s rightful roles within it, faced with the prospect of losing everything dear to her, her faith in it shattered.

Faedre fled, knowing either choice would unravel everything she had worked for. Damane could hold no status, and if becoming marath’damane was little better, at least she retained her freedom. Audrek would have no choice but to turn her in if she went to him, and more than anything she could not bear the weight of the disgrace it would bring upon them both. There had to be a way out of this; one that restored both her honour and her status. But for now she was on her own.

For a time she survived, but while she had an abundance of unique skill, she had never had to feed, clothe or shelter herself before. And as good as she was at remaining hidden, there was one thing she couldn’t hide: the spark of her accursed gift.

She fought the Aes Sedai who discovered her with the same feral tenacity she would have fought the collar. Audrek’s teachings had made her a surprisingly dangerous adversary, but she was a creature that excelled primarily in the shadows. In a face-on confrontation, saidar was the easy victor, and bloodied and bruised Faedre capitulated – she had no choice.

Novicehood was a different kind of servitude; one with no honour, and no power. She hated it, furious with both herself and her dirty blood and the whole world for betraying her in such a way. The novices around her had no discipline and she took to abusing her skills to punish them for their misdemeanours, simply because she knew she could get away with it without getting caught. She refused to learn the One Power and rejected the indignity of her chores. As a result she was constantly dragged before the Mistress of Novices and became well acquainted with the birch. But the punishment only fuelled her fury and fertilised the seeds of hatred.

“I would run away, but I have nowhere to run to!”

Kira Valyrios

When the heat of her incarceration faded into despair for her future, Faedre became more calculating in her dismissal of this new life. Her health deteriorated, and she spent much time abed in the infirmary, excused from learning. None ever suspected the illness to be self-inflicted. Sometimes her fever dreams recreated the moment in the palace when she had first spied Audrek and his mysterious companion. Sometimes she simply dreamed of that other man, dark and beguiling. Faedre longed for him to turn. To see her. She pined desperately for her old life and the future that had been ripped from her. In the Tower, she was a nobody.

The infirmary was where she first encountered Kira, another novice who had initially struggled with her new life here. Faedre was reluctant to make a friend. Sul’dam often encouraged heart-friends among the damane, especially one which bucked the leash; it helped to calm them, to have that affection amongst their own kind. She suspected the same kind of trick to be embedded in the other novice’s kindness, and would neither speak nor look at her whenever she approached. But she did listen when the other girl sang softly to the other patients in the wing, or told soothing nonsense stories. It reminded her of her mother, long gone now.

Inch by inch Faedre began to piece together the similarities in their stories – how both their old lives had rejected them. And inch by inch she began to thaw to the kindness.

As their friendship grew Faedre only ever admitted that she had escaped Tanchico before she could be leashed. It did not take great acumen to realise that talking about the Empire with fondness would only isolate her further. Faedre’s colouring and petulant rosebud lips clearly marked her as Taraboner by blood, and most presumed her flight meant she was a victim. Faedre never corrected the notion. Neither did she ever mention Audrek, or her life at the palace and the things she had done there. But those were only details, and ones that had always been her most precious secret. It was their similarity that drew her and began to earn Faedre’s trust. With Kira as her guide, she began to reinvent herself to survive in this new world, until, when Kira was raised to Accepted, Faedre finally realised the only way out of the Tower was through it.

The Promise of Freedom

Once applied to a goal, Faedre proved astute. Her greatest difficulty was in swallowing the condescension of the Aes Sedai, and a growing resentment that they never recognised anything in her, as Audrek had done. She persevered out of belligerence and never denied herself small vengeances when she thought they were due. Even at the palace she had never killed on her own volition, only with Audrek’s guidance, and that did not change, but she did not baulk at causing misfortune to assert some meagre sense of control in her own life. When her own impulses grew loud, because it would be easy to sate, it was Kira she recentred herself with.

While Kira spent more and more time with the Yellows, Faedre spent her time with the Greys, learning about the Dragon’s Peace and the Tower’s own controversial treaties with the Seanchan. She was looking for ways in which her future might again tally with her past; a way in which earning the Aes Sedai’s shawl might protect her from the damane’s collar, so that she might see Audrek again. But though she had always considered herself learned, she discovered there was much about the world she did not know. The Seanchan’s philosophies and histories differed dramatically from the things she had been taught. For a while it plunged her into turmoil, and she questioned the bindings of loyalty on her heart. For many years she had considered the Tower as being an imprisonment behind enemy-lines. A challenge to survive, not to thrive in. But though her past felt suddenly clouded, and very far away, neither did she feel a connection to the Tower in its place. What she felt, was lost.

She had always spied in her own time, and continued to do so amongst her peers and the less vigilant Sisters. Eventually she uncovered whispers that said many years ago the Amyrlin had somehow stabilised the seals on the Dark One’s prison in order to buy more time to rally the Light’s forces. Yet in the decades since, the Aes Sedai had barely survived the Dreadlord General’s attack on their home, and the Seanchan’s hold crept ever more east despite the gains in Arad Doman. Such a fragile web was left, wrought thinner by time, not stronger. It was only a matter of time before it all collapsed. And what would happen then?

The Greys had been useful, but she felt no desire to be a mediator between greater powers. She wanted more for herself than that.

An Aes Sedai by any other name

In time Kira was raised and left the Tower on a journey to bring herself closure. It was the first time Faedre had ever really felt resentment towards her friend – for being given something Faedre herself was denied, but had longed for since her Arches. A blessing. Some guidance.

The rainbow bands of Accepted chafed all the more in her absence, yet she missed her all the same. Faedre was personable and by then well enough liked by her peers, her wild novitiate days but a memory, however Kira was her only true confidant. She had no one with which to share her growing awareness of the shifting tension and unease among the Aes Sedai. She detested the powerlessness, knowing once she would have ridden the crest of such upheaval and been privy to its secrets.

Once the Greys had served their purpose, it was the Blues Faedre had ultimately turned to. There was no great feeling of belonging, but she understood that it was an Ajah in which she might carve herself an island of freedom once she had the shawl. Blues were self-centred, and often travelling. And the Tower was theirs, both its Amyrlin and Keeper having been raised from its halls. Faedre no longer understood what she wanted, but she did understand that the rungs of power might be climbed amongst these women.

Then, Kaydrienne Lindelle fell.

The Blue Ajah was left in turmoil, half its Sisters fled rather than tolerate the rise of a Red Amyrlin. Whispers said that Kekura din Anor intended war.

When Faedre was called they made her say the oaths, and she did, though there was no oathrod on which to make them. She had not relished the idea of being bound so, and yet to be denied the true mark of the Aes Sedai was yet another disappointment.

Description

Faedre is small of frame and stature, with pale skin and rosebud lips. She has blonde hair, usually worn in a mixture of curls and intricate braids. Her eyes are deep amber, and her manner of dress shows a clear delight in beautiful things. She craves affection and recognition, dealing poorly with rejection. Her unusual past has muddied her morals and she is capable of heinous acts in pursuit of what she believes is right. She holds grudges and values honour, manners, and people who understand their own place in the world.

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