The Grey Tower

The tavern was crowded, rowdy, the air heavy with pipe smoke and sweat and the occasional whiff of perfume mixed with the aromas of roast meats and ale and cheap wine. Sitting at a corner table, hunched over his glass, Marten wondered if anyone in the room was aware of the cold-blooded murder that had been committed in a room on the third floor. If they weren’t, they were unlikely to find out; Jaryd had Warded the room so thoroughly that no casual passer-by would even realise there was a door, or if they did, they’d certainly feel no desire to try to open it.

The woman had been dead by the time the two Reds had found her. More’s the pity; she was the person they were in Illian to meet. A former Aes Sedai of the late White Tower, and — according to intelligence Jaryd had somehow come by — a member of the Black Ajah, she had wanted to trade information for protection; the fact that she was dead indicated that she’d been right about needing protection. Whether any information she might have been willing to part with would have been valuable enough to make Jaryd spare her life… well, now they’d never know.

Marten eyed Jaryd over his drink. Outwardly the Altaran seemed unaffected by the scene that had faced them upstairs, but it was difficult to tell what he was thinking at any given time. For himself, Marten knew he was going to be seeing the blood-soaked curtains and the… well, the rest of it, when he closed his eyes, and he really, really didn’t want to. It didn’t help that he could tell exactly what had been done to the poor bastard. Well, there were gaps — there had been saidar involved, too, which muddied the reading of the residues — but his imagination was all too happy to provide the missing pieces. It hadn’t been a quick or a painless death, that was for sure.

What did you expect, an entirely rhetorical part of him asked, when you joined the Red Ajah? Walks in the Gardens with Maever? He told it to shut up and drained his glass. The alcohol was doing its job; he was no longer shaking, and though he wasn’t too sure about drinking on the job, well, Jaryd was the one who’d put the first glass into his hands so he was probably fine. Besides, was it Ajah business anymore when their target was dead and the perpetrators would have been long gone?

And… if this wasn’t Ajah business anymore, was he just casually getting drunk with his boss? He tilted his head in contemplation, squinting at the other Red again. Was Jaryd even capable of getting drunk? Granted, Marten was beginning to suspect his own tolerance had gone down; he’d not touched alcohol since— well, since that day, with Ninya and Jesi and the war.

The world felt a little blurry around the edges and instead of the dead woman upstairs, he now saw another dead woman in his mind — not an improvement — and a living one, if barely. He’d visited Paks in the Infirmary a few times now, and those visits always left him feeling helpless, useless. There was little he could do for her — there was little anyone could do for her — and he… worried. The Yellow Ajah wouldn’t let her die, but they couldn’t make her live, either, and nothing he’d read gave him much reason for hope.

People had been known to survive, and one such survivor sat next to him right now. Marten had entertained the thought of asking Jaryd for advice, had even gone as far as to visit him one evening, but he’d been out and Marten had lost his nerve in the face of Jaren’s open curiosity and concern… and an opportunity just hadn’t presented itself. Until now. Whether this was the time and place to bring the topic up was certainly open to debate, but he supposed he may as well accept that he wasn’t ever going to do it while sober; in fact the mere thought of asking Jaryd bloody Kosari about bond loss trauma, ever, under any circumstances, was fucking laughable, but… Shit, did he have any better ideas?

“Um. Boss?” he said, half surprised that he’d actually spoken up. “Can I ask a personal question?”

Jaryd knew that certain traditionalists questioned the point of the Red Ajah. They cited books and history and the apparent parallels in its public description versus other groups as if they knew better than the man who had essentially become the Ajah when its founder disappeared. They were smug, those armchair critics, utterly certain of their righteous opinion. Jaryd had learned over the years that he couldn’t convince them otherwise with logic or with anger. There were too many gruesome truths about his Ajah’s work that had to be lived to be believed, and most were easily misunderstood without that personal experience.

Gruesome truths, yes. He and Marten had seen, smelled, and touched such a one in the warded room upstairs and the memory would haunt him for weeks. Would those critics be able to stomach the stench that permeated that chamber even with Jaryd's ward? Would they grasp how much pain the Aes Sedai had been in when she died, or merely condemn her as a Darkfriend and forget her? What would they say if it were their boots sticking to the floor with every step, only to break away with stomach-churning pops and bubbles with every movement across the blood-stained wood?

No. They would lose their dinner to a one if they laid eyes on what’s left of Magritte Bakkel, the Altaran told himself. Even his mind's voice sounding tired and a little bitter. He had too many things to think about to ruminate any further on what stuffed up philosophers with no life experience had to say about his Ajah...but he had to admit it was a mildly welcome diversion from the disgusting mess upstairs.

His gaze fixed on his glass and almost immediately formed a disturbing comparison between the deep red wine within and the blood that ran down Magritte’s walls like some kind of ghastly root system. A human body simply should not spray like that, and yet...hers had. He reminded himself, somewhat pedantically, that the woman had been Black Ajah. Most other Ajahs and even Jaryd himself would argue that she deserved to die for her sins no matter what information she provided the Reds. Not like that, though, no one deserves to die like that.

Of course, the murder raised the frustrating question of what the Aes Sedai had known that was so bloody important. The room had been destroyed, stripped of anything remotely useful beyond her mutilated corpse. The Shadow had gone to extreme lengths to prevent her from sharing, which gave her knowledge weight in and of itself, but left them with very little to work with. Instead, they now had a corpse to remove without alarming the locals and a room to cleanse before they could even try. Fresh eyes and sunlight might provide further insight, he thought. It didn't seem all that likely.

Damn it.

Going in circles about Magritte was the last thing Jaryd wanted to do. Thankfully the maid appeared just then and he ordered liquor to replace the wine he could no longer stand to look at. While she was gone he watched his companion drink, noting Marten had clearly jumped straight to the strong stuff.

Marten had held himself together remarkably well, all things considered. Then again, the man had had front row seats to Ninya bloody Evoneigh torching an Accepted and had subsequently chosen to join the Red Ajah, so on a scale from “precious infant” to “utterly fucked in the head,” Marten probably scored higher than the average bear. Of course, that didn’t mean he was well, only that he was good at hiding. Jaryd had supported enough new Reds through exactly this kind of crisis to know it was only a matter of time before the wall came down.

All he had to do was wait, and therefore Jaryd chose to drink until his toes went numb and try his best to distract himself from any further contemplation of the matter at hand.

It ended up being not all that long, comparatively speaking, before Marten broke the quiet. “Um. Boss? Can I ask a personal question?”

Jaryd cocked his head to the side, thrown off guard by the odd phrasing. “Boss?” He repeated, rolling the word about in his mouth. It conjured memories of southern sun and bare feet in dust; he couldn’t keep his lips from quirking up in a faint smile. “It's been a while since I’ve been called that.”

The Altaran realized he held a half-full glass of amber liquid (and Light, exactly how many of those had he drank since the maid took the wine away?), in his left hand. He stared at it with hooded eyes for a breath, then downed the entire thing in one go, blinking his eyes rapidly against the burn. “Personal question time, is it? Sure, I can do that.” He settled back against the wall with a sigh, slender fingers linking together over his chest. “What do you want to know?”

If Jaryd had told him to shut up and keep drinking, Marten would have been perfectly happy to obey. Hells, there was a part of him that wished Jaryd had done exactly that, because there was no way this was a good idea… But Jaryd hadn’t. And this left Marten trying to decide whether to pursue the question he originally had in mind or quickly come up with something else to ask instead. It should have been easy, really; there were all kinds of things he was curious about, but somehow he couldn’t think of a single one if his life depended on it.

He fiddled with his empty glass, wishing it wasn’t empty but lacking the presence of mind to do anything about it. “It’s about bondage— uh, bonds—” That started well. “Shit. See, there’s a friend who—” That wasn’t going any better, and he could only imagine Paks’ reaction if she heard him call her a friend. Yeah, he’d gotten her lover and bond-holder killed but sure they could still be friends? No hard feelings, right? The thought was tinged with hysteria. Bloody flaming ashes. How did one even bring the topic up? Maybe he should have written something down? Maybe rehearsed the lines beforehand?

“Shit, I’m sorry, listen,” he went on quickly, desperately trying to get the right words in an order that made some sense. “You lost a bondmate.” Everybody knew that much; still, saying it out loud to the man’s face made Marten wince inwardly. Nonetheless, he forged on, if only because he’d said too much already to stop there, “How did you… I mean, would you have survived if he hadn’t done… bonded you?” The last words were mumbled somewhere in the general direction of the empty glass.

The bond between Jaryd and the former M’Hael had been common knowledge, but the circumstances of its origin were not, and Marten certainly wasn’t supposed to know that Jaryd had been bonded against his will. He’d just wanted to find something that might help him help Paks, he hadn’t been looking for this, but he couldn’t bloody un-read the flaming file where it was all documented. He felt sick with anxiety — mostly anxiety — as he made himself look up at Jaryd again. Shit. I’ve really fucked up this time, haven’t I?

A ripple of embarrassment crossed Jaryd’s mind at Marten’s slip, but he had had too much to drink to care too much. It was likely that had the other Red actually intended on asking about bondage, Jaryd would have answered with a degree of honesty neither would appreciate in the cold light of morning sobriety. ’And how was your first trip with Jaryd, Marten?’ ‘Educational’ would be one way to put it, Andraste. His lips twitched up despite themselves at the imagined conversation. Jaryd reached for his glass, intending on draining the last few drops.

“You lost a bondmate.” The Altaran’s hand missed its mark entirely. Instead it landed palm down on smooth wood, fingers spread as wide as they could go. His elbow nudged his cup dangerously near the edge of the table, but he could barely see, hardly think, and certainly couldn’t make himself care about glassware. “How did you… I mean, would you have survived if he hadn’t done… bonded you?”

Jaryd licked his lips, his hand pressed down on the table so hard that his elbow and shoulder shook. The words sounded both too loud and too soft, which oddly matched the world itself, which seemed impossibly distant and yet also far too immediate. He needed...needed… Kaia!

Beneath his skin, in the confines of his mind where no one was allowed to go, he slammed against the unhealed gash of his broken bond, beating himself to a pulp as he begged Kaia to come back. It had been too long, he knew that, but he couldn’t stop his incoherent pleas. How could it still ache so? How...Light, it hurt! She was gone, how had he forgotten?

Something else slid through the mess as well, and he realized he was physically shrinking away from it even as grief overcame him; dark, greasy, bone-deep and raw, betrayal curled through his mind like spilled oil, reminding him of people and things he had sworn he would never think of again.

In the end, it was the desire to escape that tar pit that brought him back to the tavern and the laughter of strangers, to the newly filled glass that had been pressed into his hand while he was lost in thought, and to Marten’s simultaneously curious and horrified face.

He drank before he spoke. It went down the wrong pipe, burning abominably, and he coughed gracelessly before finally getting it together enough to put words in order. “I don’t know,” he said finally, his voice gravelly, as if he had been screaming, and tinged with uncontrollable, bitter fury. “Zeen didn’t exactly give me the opportunity to decide for myself, and then he went off to fight in the Borderlands as if my life didn’t hang on his survival. Bastard.” And that was that cat out of the bag. Not that it mattered, the Amadician spent all his time as far from the Grey Tower as he could these days. Good. “I’d like to think I would have, though...somehow. I don't give up easy.”

He turned the glass in his hands, looking for words, but finally simply spread his fingers out. "I don't know if that's what you were looking for?"

Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit. Like the day hadn’t been enough of a disaster already, now he had to sit there and watch… this. For a long, terrifying moment Jaryd just wasn’t there, he was somewhere far away, and Marten didn’t know how to bring him back. Whatever was going on behind those unseeing, black eyes, shit, Marten wanted nothing to do with it, but there was no-bloody-one he could blame for this but himself.

His mind raced in a futile attempt to come up with something useful but his thoughts felt scattered and he couldn’t regroup them. He wasn’t in any way prepared or qualified to be dealing with this. Jesi had been right about him; he was just a kid who drank too much and walking up the flaming stairs in that bloody ter’angreal didn’t change that; the Dragon pin and the Red cord — not that he was wearing either here — didn’t change that. Maybe nothing would. Maybe everyone who’d taken a double-take at seeing him wearing the Red Ajah’s colours, as though they couldn’t believe he’d been raised, had been right.

He was still staring, wide-eyed and trying to control his own mounting panic, when Jaryd stirred again. It wasn’t the smoothest recovery, maybe, and he clearly wasn’t alright by any definition of the word, but at least he was present again and when he spoke, Marten could have wept from sheer relief. And then, then he wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, though he wasn’t actually amused. No, this was definitely not what I was looking for, he thought, more than a little hysterically, though I probably deserved it.

“I… I don’t know,” he said, because he had to say something and I’m sorry just didn’t seem to cut it. “Shit, I-I was just. See, the Accepted who died when Ninya… she had a Warder, a bondmate. Paks. Ji’val Paks Liard. And she’s— Paks I mean, she’s…” He trailed off with a helpless gesture. “You know.” He dragged his hands over his face, trying to calm his unsteady breathing, trying to ignore the way his eyes burned.

“Ninya was going to kill me,” he said, somehow managing to string the words together to form a coherent sentence, “but Jesi got in the way and now—” He cut off, for a few mortifying seconds sure that he was going to either be sick or start crying, but somehow he gathered himself, made himself take deep, slow breaths, like the flaming Yellows had instructed, and the moment passed. “It should have been me. And I don’t want to die or anything, but fact is Jesi died in my place and now everything’s fucked up and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say — he’d meant to ask, perfectly rationally, if there was anything he could do to help Paks — but he didn’t trust his voice to continue.

Marten spoke from very far away. An entire world, perhaps, or a universe. Perhaps even another telling of the Wheel entirely. At first he made no sense, simply emitting a jumble of random sounds. Marten needed something, but actually piercing that veil of nonsensical noise seemed impossible. The Altaran drank wordlessly, remembering red enameled nails tipped in gold curled around a crystal glass, and a woman’s throaty laugh. The heat in his gut helped until his mind decided to remember the fire in green eyes as Kaia slid his own knife between his ribs. Light, she’d been angry.

The words spoken at him began to fit together despite his distraction, this syllable with that, intruding on the fractured memories floating through his mind. Jaryd risked a glance up, his gaze raking over Marten’s face with detached curiosity. There was something there, something desperately important. More important? Something that needed his attention, anyway.

“-Jesi got in the way and-” Pleading horror filled the other man’s wide eyes as he continued to speak. Jaryd’s brows drew together as he ran back through what Marten had said already. Jesi. Right, the Accepted who had died. The Yellow Ajah had been caring for Paks since, because- Jaryd shied away from that. And now Marten is- The pieces fell together, everything the other Red had said coming back in a rush.

Jaryd sat up abruptly, the fog of his anguish banished beyond a wall so tall and thick it could never hope to be penetrated. “Stop,” he said, setting his glass down and turning his full attention to Marten. “I understand.”

Jaryd knew exactly how intense he could be; he employed every drop of that power as his dark eyes caught his companion’s gaze and held it. “I understand, but I do not agree, Marten. Paks knew the risks when she accepted Jesi's bond, and Jesi chose to speak up when Ninya was clearly unhinged. More importantly, a woman we elected to protect us instead chose to torture and murder those we view as children. None of that is your doing.” His companion tried to look away, but Jaryd’s hand darted out, long fingers soft as they wrapped around Marten’s chin and pulled it back to face him.

When he spoke again, his voice was impossibly gentle. “Do you remember our talks before you were raised? I told you that being a Red requires us to make impossible choice after impossible choice. I told you that sometimes the Shadow's response to our decisions can be horrific, but we must keep fighting regardless. The White Ajah would tell you there is an unfathomable distance between discussing theory and experiencing it; I am sorry you had to cross that gap the way you did."

The abrupt change in the other man’s demeanour was like a bucket of cold water had been poured over Marten. The effect was… well, not sobering, no mere cold shower could have accomplished that at this point, but jarring nonetheless. And when Jaryd spoke, those unsettling eyes of his staring straight into Marten’s soul (or that’s what it bloody felt like), Marten found his vision growing blurry. He blinked, tried to look away… but Jaryd stopped him.

In the end, it was the gentleness that shattered what was left of his composure; he could have handled anger, he could have borne judgement, but understanding was apparently too much and by the time Jaryd finished talking, tears were running freely down Marten’s face. Impossible choice after impossible choice. Was he cut out for this after all? But, no; even as that thought raised its head, Marten knew he couldn’t have chosen otherwise. Impossible choices, yet… the only possible choice.

Marten was very aware that he should say something, to indicate that he heard and understood, but he couldn’t seem to string the words together. Or stop the tears, for that matter. “Yeah,” he finally managed to force past the lump in his throat. Speaking felt odd and the common room seemed to be not only rotating but tilting to one side. “Yeah, I know, I— oh. Shit.” Yeah, drinking so much hadn’t been one of his brightest ideas, though it wasn’t like there had been a lot of thinking involved. Muttering something that he hoped sounded like an apology, he pushed himself to his feet and unsteadily made his way towards the exit.

Cool night air greeted him as he staggered out and across the street, almost refreshing though it didn’t smell much better than inside the inn. He took a deep breath, then another, for a moment almost convinced he’d managed to wrestle the nausea under control— until it returned with vengeance and he doubled over, heaving helplessly. Afterwards he leaned against the nearest wall, eyes squeezed shut, miserably wishing the ground would open and swallow him before anybody could see him in this state.

It’s a lot easier to give advice than to take it, isn’t it Jaryd? Sardonic humor twisted through that thought as Jaryd watched Marten struggle with what he had just been told. It was easier to give, certainly, but not easy to watch a young man suffer. Emotions flashed across the other man’s face in rapid succession as he struggled to speak. Verbal acceptance barely made it past Marten’s lips before he was struggling to his feet, making a distorted excuse as he turned away.

Jaryd watched him go with hooded eyes, weighing his options carefully. Before Marten had made it to the door the Altaran was standing, thankful for the Void and the sense of driving purpose that kept him steady on his feet. He collected a wooden mug of water from a maid before he skirted the crowds and followed Marten outside.

The night city was cooler and blessedly quiet. Jaryd glanced back and forth as soon as the door shut, searching for any sign of his protege. The sound of someone being sick in the still air gave him clear direction. Perhaps I should leave him alone, he thought, then instantly dismissed that idea. Marten was likely to do something very stupid if left to his own devices; if preventing that was the only way Jaryd could help, then so be it.

Marten wasn’t too far away, leaning against a wall and looking as if his entire world had just self-destructed. Perhaps it had. Rather than get too close, Jaryd simply made himself comfortable against the wall a span away and stared up at the sky, studying the distant stars with particular interest. After the younger man’s breath had steadied some, however, Jaryd tilted his head to look at him.

“I did not mean to make things worse for you,” he said quietly, “I am sorry. What can I do?” Abruptly he remembered the mug in his hand and held it out to Marten. "It's just water," he added by way of explanation.

The ground didn’t open up; the world didn’t end, though it felt just unsteady enough that the possibility couldn’t be completely written off as Marten stood there, leaning on the wall and trying to gather himself enough to head back inside. He didn’t hear the footsteps approaching and so Jaryd’s voice, when the Red spoke, startled him. Marten opened his eyes reluctantly and looked in the direction of the voice, to see the other man holding out a mug towards him. The words were somewhat slower to process… and when they did, Marten wanted to disappear again. He’d done this to himself; he’d fucked up on so many levels and he didn’t deserve that tone of concern and—

“Not your fault,” he tried to say, or maybe “I should be the one apologising,” but what really came out was somewhere in the vicinity of “I should fault.” He blinked, staring blankly for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the sentence because it just didn’t sound like it was meant to. “I mean,” he tried again, but whatever part of his brain was responsible for language production seemed to have taken a break. “Shit. Sorry.” He reached for the mug and took a careful sip of the water. “Too bloody drunk for this,” he managed, or at least thought he did. And, yeah, that was his own fault, too. “Sorry.”

It was vaguely embarrassing how long it took Jaryd to realize that he couldn’t understand what Marten was saying because Marten wasn’t making sense. The Void gave him a certain degree of distance and the ability to remain upright, which in turn gave life to the ill-conceived notion that Jaryd was sober. The cool night air helped, though his body felt like it weighed four times too much. More importantly, his brain was clearly still jumbled somewhere in the murky bog of Tangential Consideration between Wine Lake and the Sea of Brandy and there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it at this point.

What in the Light am I even thinking? The Altaran felt his cheeks heat up, and scrubbed at them with his palms, hoping the friction would bring clarity. “Too bloody drunk for this,” Marten muttered, and Jaryd wholeheartedly agreed. Too drunk. Stupid. Marten was young and that scene had been hellish. What was I thinking?

Jaryd couldn’t do a damn thing about his own state of mind, but he could help Marten. This was nothing compared to the night of his first fateful -but delightful- dance with Jaren. If he could weave a ward to protect an entire bloody ballroom in that condition, he could weave a simple Healing now. He reached out, then paused with his hand halfway to the younger man’s face, his subconscious supplying a requirement that his brain had forgotten. Permission. Right.

“Healing will fix that if you’ll let me,” he said. “If you’ll do the same for me after,” he added after a beat.