The Grey Tower

Bryn Riverstone Walker Bryn fretted with her novice gown as she stood in the Garden glade. The bloody thing actually fit properly this time around.

The red-haired Novice was nervous, a trait she often kept buried. As her gold-green eyes looked at the door ahead of her, she almost considered running.

No. She didn't run from anything. She endured a month on the Farms for her punishment of nearly burning a Dedicated to death, and an antagonizing 10 hours with his own father.

Their father, she thought.

Bryn Sevia Riverstone Walker, the daughter of an Aiel and a Andoran noble, the bastard child, had done well in the last few months. She returned from the Farms the same person, full of ambition, but with a much more discipline.

During that month, she had met her father. And Light, she had spoken so much. And learned more.

The legends were true. He was a man to be feared, a man to be avoided.

But he was also one of mercy, of love and passion. Light, the way he spoke of his mother, what brief memories he had of her, were ones to cement that he was a good man.

At the same time, she understood the .. uncomfortableness .. he felt around her.

Bryn knew the stories. Her older sister died in the Caralain manor, along with most of her immediate family, years before she was born. Her brother Cade was only a year or so older than she, and only he had a vague remembrance of who their father was, let alone what he was like.

And Sojin Majere. The man was a ghost, and the few times she did speak with him as brother and sister, it was only brief.

Yet the Tower showed some mercy, even after she returned from the Farms for nearly burning a Dedicated alive. The man was dead, for unknown reasons, and she wasn't sad. She was happy, in her own perverse way, for Jonath Cerwyn's death. He would never harm another woman again.

Still, she fretted with her Novice gown.

Sojin she knew, however little. He was a legend in his own right. Her deceased siblings, Angel and Belan, were more so.

Cade Walker was another story entirely. Light, but he was …

A knock came at the door and then Sojin Majere entered, armed with a broadsword and decked in chain mail. He was on task to guard some one that day.

The silver-haired Gaidin scanned the room and then looked at the Novice.

“You have but a half a candle mark with him, Novice, per his orders,” he said quietly. She opened her lips to speak, but he was too fast. “Little sister, he's protective of the first son he witnessed birth to in a very long time. You and I may be are protected by him, but he risks nothing for him.”

Bryn blinked and spoke bluntly. “Why?”

Sojin smiled blankly. “Our brother died when he was a Soldier, during a mission to assess whether the Seanchan were a threat to the Tower. He was executed on the spot. Our sister … much of our family died when the Shadow attacked the Caralain manor. Few remain alive within the immediate family.”

Bryn didn't blink.

“Why is he so special, our youngest brother?”

Sojin smirked.

“Imagine if you were a parent who sired and witnessed the birth of a child, knowing if would be your last … and the only one you witnessed his birth in the first time in decades,” Sojin murmured.

Both Jerid and Lysira Walker had been very clear about the orders surrounding their son. Around the corner and within a hundred yards, three Indigo, two Green and one Blue were prepared with their respective Warders.

Bryn tilted her head before nodding. She understood somewhat. Sojin Majere respected their father. Bryn, on the other hand, yearned for more contact. What few days she had with him were not enough, and the more she could learn from her lost siblings the better.

Before Bryn could answer Sojin's comments, the Warder answered the door. And her eyes glimpsed for the first time her youngest brother.
_ _ _

Sojin, in the meanwhile, was more cautious. Before he allowed entry, he looked at his little brother. He might have been grown, but he was still a boy lost in books. What little danger he knew was nothing that might await him.

“Lord Cade Walker, our sister, Bryn Sevia Walke Riverstone, would see you now,” he said simply. His eyes softened as he looked as at his little brother even as his hand tightened on his sword hilt. “Call only if you need, Cade, and I will be quick.”

Before the boy could respond, Sojin raised a hand.

“You are more than a child of this Tower, you are their's,” he murmured. “Channelers of six Ajahs are loyal to him, his Warder is a product of Caden Ives himself, and whom I'm no match for, and you are my brother, she your sister.”

“Jerid Walker was separated from his family from a very, very early time, raised a thief and only learned about his family after he ran away from the Tower for the first time,” Sojin murmured. “He said his biggest regret was never knowing his unknown children, and that of any of them not knowing whom they were.”

His sapphire eyes glittered. “As a father, and as a brother, I know our own father would do anything for you,” he murmured. “That means connecting you to our family, in this case Bryn Walker, Novice of the Tower. Address her as such, and not by her bastard name. She is your sister, no matter whatever her birth stature. Whether we are Andoran, Aiel, Cairhienin, Aiel or of Tar Valon, a bastard's name does not matter. Bryn claims the name Walker, our father acknowledges it, so she is such.”

When Balen acknowledged it, Sojin kncoked and entered, prepared to give his introduction

–

The moment Sojin left and Cade entered, Bryn stood still. All of her life, she had dreamed of her father, Jerid Walker, and the moment when he defied death. He had summoned fired and died.

And yet he lived. But other dreams persisted, ones of faded men so much like the Shadow.

Those dreams were forgotten as she launched herself at her younger brother. Her arms entwined around him near the point of cutting off air before she parted.

Then her hands clasped his face, looking for pattens, an identity.

“Hello, brother,” she murmured as she guided them to a nearby couch. “Tell me everything about you. About your life, about whom you are. About what you remember of our father. Before and now. Is he a good man?”

Cade Walker The young man, just shy of twenty-five years, had no idea what to expect.

He wasn't as naive or disconnected from his surroundings as his family seemed to think, but he could not blame them for that because he kept up that appearance. He wanted them to worry less about him by not thinking he was bothered by the things that went on around him, but he did know. He was the child of Jerid Walker and Lysira Viathene, there was no way he could be unobservant or lacking in intelligence. It just wasn't possible.

Still, there were some things he just couldn't anticipate or predict. He knew that he was not the only child of his father, even though he was the only child of his mother. His elder brother was among the great crowd, seemingly, that was...very protective of him, to say the least. Cade was yet a little surprised that they hadn't bundled him up in great seamstress cloth to keep him from getting injured, or found a way to keep him from turning pages lest he get a papercut.

No, that was unfair. He knew it was grave. He had seen those who attacked him and his mother in Cairhien... He had seen how she had to fight to keep them alive... He knew the gravity of the situation, but still, the care with which others took him could be a little wearying at such constant state.

Today was something all together different. Today he was to meet another sibling, half-sibling, but one he knew very little about. Even from what he had been told, he just had no idea what he was walking into.

Sojin's nature was not to be expected, even all of the things that he said walking in did not surprise Cade. What did, of course, was the girl in the Novice white launching herself at him and nearly suffocating him. He was not a small man, even if still somewhat young, but she bloody well almost squeezed his head off. Cade very nearly called his half-brother back into the room to protect him from embraces, but he did not.

"That's a lot to ask from one reply," Cade managed to reply with a half smile. He longed for the quietude of the library, but he did want to know more about her. "I'm not really sure where to begin..." He saw a pair of chairs in the room and gestured for them to both have a seat to more comfortably converse.

Bryn looked at her brother, her gold-green eyes absorbing every detail. He was the perfect combination of both father and mother.

Unlike herself. Oh, there were a few physical traits she inherited from her father, but the gold-green eyes were the most obvious. She looked more like her mother, or so the Indigo had told her, than anything else. An Aiel girl raised in Ghealdan wasn't exactly a norm, even these days with half the Wasteland on this side of the Spine of the World.

Her eyes glittered as she saw her brother's bookish attitude. Bryn had been busy asking around about him, and most had clammed up on the mention of his name. Either they didn't want to talk about it or he was an unknown.

What few lips had spilled about Cade Walker was done under ... pleasant coercion of a few Ji'dar and Accepted.

Cade inhabited the Library more often than not, and always with either an Aes Sedai, Asha'man, Gaidin or a retinue of Sa'Ji nearby. Their brother was constantly aware of the man's every move.

The only child he's witnessed the birth of in a very long time ...

Bryn almost felt a surge of jealousy. She grew up wanting to know a father she never knew, save for the stories and the dreams. But she knew better, simply because of the stories she heard surrounding her father since coming to the Tower.

She sat, her gold-green eyes glittering.

"Begin with what you recall of our father," she murmured. "I grew up only on legends, from the people in my town, from the man whom I called grandfather, from the few Aiel that passed through, and ... " she trailed off. Most stories were at best spectacularly dreadful and at worst horrifying.

"What was he like?"

She smiled as she rested her chin on a hand. "And then tell me about you. Why do you like books so much?"

Taking their seats, he tried to settle in, although he found his half-sister's gaze to be...somewhat disconcerting. Both for how much it looked like their father's, but also because it was so intense. He had no doubts that if she could open his skull and climb in to find answers, that she very well would. He couldn't determine if that was an unkind thought or an apt assessment.

"Honestly?" he began with a faint smile. "I don't really remember him. I was barely three when Mother and I moved away from the Tower and to Cairhien." He paused, the faint smile turning to a thoughtful frown. "Mother doesn't talk about that time much, but I know that their marriage was...troubled. Almost non-existent, because she moved with me to the manor with another man.

"But Mother never spoke ill of Father. She always told me that he was a good man, and that he had loved me a great deal, but there were just difficulties and that's why I could not see him." His dark eyes, like his mother's, drifted off to one side as he dug through her minds. "I know she still loved him. Even a child could feel it in her voice. Even when Jhered--" He smiled wryly. "Yes. Jhered was still there.

"He left early on, suddenly." Cade reached back and rubbed the back of his neck. Mother had worked hard to hide her pain from him, but he had been a sensitive child. He could tell. "I didn't meet Father again until we moved back to the Tower, so I perhaps do not really know much more of him than you do."

Bryn listened attentively, noting every word her brother said. Her gold-green eyes were on the young man the entire time, noting how adorably sheltered he appeared.

Yet Cade Walker was likely more knowledgeable than she was, or ever hoped to become. There was something to be said about being well-read, and while Bryn was a student of history, she wasn't as devout a student as she should have been.

So, their father was just as much absent from his life as she was, if not by a lot. It didn't surprise her, really, though it should have. The one impression he had of Lysira Walker Gaidar was enough to think that Jerid Walker a fool for even having some kind of problematic marriage.

After all, the woman was absolutely gorgeous and fierce.

“You might be more fortunate, little brother,” she said after a moment, her eyes still locked on his. “I grew up raised by a man who considered me his granddaughter, who told me what little of what he knew of my mother and even less of what he knew of my father. You at least grew up with stories of what he was actually like from a woman who knew him well.”

Her eyes flashed back almost 15 years ago, when she was a girl who had come home from her lessons. Her grandfather, Haas, had just been mortally wounded by a man with a slurred voice and a raven tattoo. A moment later, and the man was dead, killed by Bryn with the knife belonging to her mother, and watched as Haas died.

The years between then and now were whirlwinds of moments and passion.

“All I had were stories, of the High Seat of House Walker who marched on Tar Valon to save an Amyrlin Seat, the Asha'man who defied the Shadow,” she said. “The scholar Jaskin Suvoth wrote about him in The Seanchan Ghost, a history of the golden-eyed demon who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Seanchan over the decades, including a dozen Seekers for Truth.”

Thousands. That was a word that was hard to miss. Was it true, or had it been exaggerated? He didn't know. He knew that there were some stories that his mother hadn't told him. There were things that he didn't know, and in truth, things that he didn't want to know. Cade was a smart young man and knew where he could find things, and he knew that he chose not to.

It was clear there was a lot more to his father, and there were...dark things. He was too perceptive to not know it, but he didn't care. He couldn't. He had a father now, and he wanted to keep him. The last thing he wanted to do was chase himself away from the man.

So to his half-sister, he smiled. "Now there can be other stories?" he offered/suggested. He wanted optimism in his life, because it was in his nature. "You are here, and so he is. So am I. So is my mother. There can be other stories now, stories of the past and stories that can be created now." Optimism and practicality in one moment, in one person.

If there was one thing Bryn Walker was good at, it was knowing what ticked behind a man's brain. Or a woman's for that matter.

Most men thought her either an Aiel savage or a gal with a pretty face and air in her head. Quite a few women did so, too. Then they heard her talk. She had since outgrown her Murandian accent, furthered what knowledge she learned while a girl growing up and during her initial stay at the Tower, even after she ran away.

Bryn watched her brother dwell on the information she gave him, and almost felt sorry for relaying it in the first place. By the way their older sibling watched over Cade, and the protective nature so many Aes Sedai and Asha'man looked after him, it was obvious he was a bit sheltered.

And at the same time, she doubted very much he was a piece of Sea Folk porcelain.

“You're well loved, my little brother,” Bryn murmured. “It seems the entire Indigo Ajah, many Greens and half the Yards are looking after you. Light, I'd wager that Miahala Sedai would be around the corner if either parent asks.”

She leaned forward and grasped his hand lightly. “The legends of our father are dark and grim, yes, but also filled with joy. Before the Caralain fell, as House Walker's high seat, he was one of the most loved by his vassals, and he forged many relationships with other families. His blessing, even now, of a marriage between our cousin and a Seanchan noble is responsible for the rebuilding of Walker Manor in the Caralain. He tutored many here in the Tower, and he protected the en'Damier family.”

Her slender hand left his and cusped his chin. Her gold-green eyes were leveled on his face and she smiled softly.

“My dear brother, there's strength in you that this Tower doesn't see,” she said. “You've a strong mind, a passion for knowledge and the ability to look beyond what was and see the person who is in front of you rather than at his or her past.”

Her smile turned into a grin. “You will either make a fine Asha'man or an excellent scholar. Why is it that you like books so much?”

Cade appreciated that she felt affection for him, even though she didn't really know him, but he felt that she treated him a bit like a child...like everyone else did. He was not so young as everyone seemed to think him. No, he hadn't been birthed through fire and steel, but he was not a total innocent in the world like everyone apparently thought.

Still, he smiled. He didn't know what he would be yet, but he didn't think it would be Asha'man. "I don't know why, and I haven't really tried to figure it out. I have just always been drawn to scholarly matters, and find more friends in books than in people."

OOC: Do we wanna wrap it up so we can focus on the other thread?

Bryn tilted her head as her little brother spoke. Most would rather prefer the sword, or the weapon, to a life as a scholar, even the women who were too bloody air-headed to realize otherwise.

Granted, she was in the minority, where sweet people like Cade were more her preference. Light help her, but the most beautiful soul she had ever seen had been a willowy Novice whom stole her heart. And it had broken hers the day she decided to leave the Tower.

The Novice grinned and murmured, “I was much like that, though not by choice. The people of Cosamelle had suffered through what few Shaido Aiel remained on this side of the Spine, so growing up there, the daughter of an Aiel and a bastard to boot … you learn to take joy in books.”

Granted her books were on history and heraldry, and not so much on the more popular works, but still she was a learned woman.

“The world needs scholars more than it needs soldiers,” Bryn said. “Soldiers fight and die, but where are the deeds of common soldier who sacrificed her life for a village if someone doesn't record or speak of them. I knew this Novice once so like you ...”

She was interrupted when the door opened, admitting a somewhat stern Sojin Majere. With him was a Grey Asha'man, tall … Balen Asha'man, if she recalled correctly, and Zae Sedai, an Indigo.

What in the flaming bloody ashes, it hasn't even been one hour ...

Their older sibling flashed a look of empathy, however brief it might have existed.

“I'm sorry to interrupt, but Balen Asha'man will be escorting young Master Walker to the eight wing of the Library for research, per our father's request,” he said simply. Bryn blinked. The eight wing was a secure area, full of rare knowledge. “You will accompany myself and Zae Sedai to the Seventh Vault ...”

She blinked. The Seventh Vault was one of the more secure areas of the Tower, housing some of the most powerful items of the One Power.

Bryn stood. “What's wrong ...”

Zae Sedai's eyes flashed. “Child, it is simply an order and request, and not subject to your ...”

The Novice ignored the Aes Sedai. Light but she was tired of all this.

Her gold-green eyes looked at Cade before she caught on, as evident by all three looking at the very same person. Oh flaming sheep-swallow.

“He's not a child, he's a man grown,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “And neither of us will be leaving this room until either our hour is up, or we are owed an explanation.”

The words were aimed squarely at Sojin Majere. And she ignored the startled look delivered by Cade.

“I was promised an hour with my brother, to speak with him, and I will not deprive myself of that rare gift until our older one speaks up,” the Novice said. “Now.”

Oh, this merited a trip to the Mistress of Novice's offices, but she was no stranger to that. She would be burned if she didn't get her answer.

“It's complicated ...” Sojin said. Bryn's eyes stopped him from speaking, more out of respect than anything else.

“Cade Walker is not a piece of porcelain,” she said sternly, bypassing that very person with a firm grip on his shoulder. “You Sojin Majere treat him as such,” her eyes flashed to either channeler. “And you lot as well. He is the son of a flaming former Yards Officer and one of the most battle-hardened channelers this Tower has ever seen, a man whose name makes Seanchan soldiers wet their breaches. You will show him the flaming curtesy of acknowledging he's not an infant!”

She pointed a finger at Sojin. “By his age, brother, you already served in the Band of the Red Hand, Warded two Aes Sedai and survived his namesake's training regime.” Her eyes were on Balen. “He taught you everything he knew, from flaming battleweaves to pushing you toward the Grey Ajah because you were flaming good at telling nobles to sit on their own swords.” An angry glare was aimed at Zae Sedai. “I swear, just because you pulled my bacon out of the fire all those years ago doesn't mean I have to be the prim and proper Novice you were, or bow in magnificence because my father arranged for Aes Sedai to teach you.”

At that point her voice was enough to carry into the hall. And all three looked at her. The Grey actually chuckled in amusement, and Zae looked at her with a stern, but approving, look. Sojin was the only one unamused by this.

“A Seanchan delegation has arrived to see the First Seeker of the Grey Tower, and they have brought a Seeker for Truth, and a woman who looks like a sul'dam,” Sojin said simply. “They are here to speak of marriage arrangements and they have demanded that Cade be the one to fulfill that 'request' to balance out arrangements with another wedding arrangement with the current High Seat of House Walker.”

It took but a second for the words to sink in and she was in front of Cade in a heart beat. In fact, she helped him stand up. “Go with Balen Asha'man, now, please.” Her eyes were insistent, almost pleading. “The Seanchan … our father has made peace with them, and now this demand.” Slender fingers touched his face and she murmured, “A marriage to them means one thing, a war. Jerid Walker wants peace, and outright denying that means war, something the Seanchan know. Saying he has to discuss it with you but is otherwise engaged in areas he can't disclose means … delays.”

A Seeker for Truth was a dangerous insult, but the sul'dam carried a dangerous threat. Bryn could go missing.

“With respect, I must end our conservation short, my dear brother,” she murmured. Her eyes looked beyond to Zae Sedai. “I will accompany you, Aes Sedai, to the Vaults.”

Her gold-flecked green eyes were back on her young brother then. On instinct, she removed a pendant from around her neck. It was an amethyst encased in silver. She clasped it in Cade's hand and said, “This was a gift from my foster grandfather, whom he said was good luck. He said it belonged to one Master Trae Elien, a scholar and mediator who helped foster understanding between Cairhien and the Aiel after the Lord Dragon led the latter over the Spine. My grandfather called him the best man he ever knew.”

She saw the looks of objection on both Balen and Sojin's faces, but a sharp look stayed any spoken words. Bryn kissed Cade's forehead and murmured, “Go with Balen Asha'man and be safe.”

Then she left, following the Aes Sedai and Gaidin.

OOC: There would be more to this, but it's being kept simple.