The Grey Tower

He knew, right? That made this some kind of hamfisted try at teasing her, right? Well, maybe other girls fell over with their knees parted when Svan cracked a joke, but Liolet Belwhyn was unimpressed. Actually, she was angry. Didn't he think she didn't hear how much easier everything would be if she just used the One Power on it every day? Didn't he think she knew what the girls said about her behind her back? Because she did. It took every ounce of restraint that Liolet possessed and some on loan from some kind, intelligent soul somewhere, but she managed not to roast Caddoc Svan with her tongue or slap him until his eyes crossed. Well, she didn't want to touch him, that was for certain: she still had that ghostly afterimage of rope to taunt her. Sucking in a breath and promising that one day, she'd have some satisfaction out of all of this, she kept the cat restrained in her hands, wrapped in her cloak. Let him think it was stubbornness: maybe part of it was. He didn't get to see that his jest about her lack of strength in the One Power had hit home like a cinder through a wineglass.

She took the lecture in stony silence, her arms full of brindle tomcat. "There's water in the cistern," she said, slightly more brusque than she had intended to be. He took her bouquet of nettles, though, and even though her arms were full of unhappy cat, she dipped a clean cup into the water that the trainees, or maybe the stable boys, brought to the kennels every morning. She set the pewter cup down atop the empty kennel, shifted her armload of cat, and watched Svan mix herbs into a cup. It wasn't much different than making a cup of tea, which was disappointing, and the oddest part was that when he was finished, it was warm. Apparently, men felt women channel, but Liolet felt nothing from the men around her. It was disquieting. Unfair, really. They had size on you, breadth on you, muscles on you (even if you liked that, you had to admit it could be quite terrifying, all these men marching about unfettered) and beyond that, they could lash out with saidin and you'd know nothing. What had the Creator ever given women in return for all of that?

"I suppose we could mix it into the meat if we...ground it up," Liolet said, with a frown. "Like gravy." If gravy smelled like nettles. She reached around the cat for her belt knife, held up the small, sheathed blade. However, she couldn't chop the meat and hold the cat.

"Do you want to make his dinner," Liolet asked, finally, after juggling the cat and the blade, and the cat's burgeoning interest in the unsliced meat in the waxed paper package, "or do you want to hold him? I can't do both, and if I put him back in the kennel, you'll shout at me again." She frowned at him, and then, she threw the vestiges of her restraint into the wind. "Some of us," she said, coolly, "haven't the strength in the One Power to restrain a cat, or even lift him more than a hand or so. Some of us," she said, "have to use our hands." No way was she telling him about the curse of having a large and eager Talent: it was bad enough he knew about her weakness with the Power without adding in the freakish things her Talent did when it wanted to. "So I rather figure this will work better for all of us," she said, unloading the cat and cloak into Caddoc's arms, "if you play daddy and let me make...Junior...his dinner."

He'd likely be bouncing a brat or three on his knees by the end of the decade: perhaps it was time someone taught him how to do that. Not her brats, though: Liolet had tried kissing once, and found it to be highly foolish. And perhaps the boy was pretty, but he had a wicked sharp tongue, and he wasn't going to get to put it in her mouth after gouging her with it, no way.

Caddoc noticed her change in attitude rather quickly. He also noticed that she did not answer his very pointed question. However, there was a patient before him, and the did not care to take the time to delve into whatever had set her so awry. He brewed the tea quickly, mixing it in until it was just right, and applying fire to boil it until the small amount of liquid had taken on the correct appearance and scent. He dipped a finger to it and tasted it before nodding his head. Then he returned his attention to her as she suggested making it into a gravy. “That is a good idea.” He admitted, and one he had not considered. He had never had to dose an animal before. Getting them to drink anything other than water was difficult, he assumed. He wasn’t very familiar with animals at all.

Then she was going on, and her comment honestly puzzled him. Shout at her? He had not so much as even lifted his voice at her. Her next sentence, however, cleared up exactly what was going on in her head. He was silent as she raged at him, his expression showing nothing, his posture staying exactly as it had always been, stiff and serious. Those green eyes watched her, steady upon her as if dissecting her as she spoke. So she was weak in the Power and had taken affront at his wording. Very well. He took the cat with slight surprise when she dumped it into his arms. The cat was instantly unhappy about this new predicament. He could feel it’s desire to escape, and he did exactly as he had suggested before. Threads of Spirit and Air traced around it and held it as still as stone. “First of all,” he said as he did this. “I did not ‘shout’ at you. I do not think that I need to do something so crass.” He watched her as he settled the still cat form onto the ground and channeled a little spirit into it’s mind to make it docile and sleepy. “Second of all, I do not know you. I have never seen you nor heard your name before this day and, as I am not an Aes Sedai, do not have access to your amount of strength. Neither do I care.” He watched as she set about preparing the tea and meat. He lifted one brow just a little. “Even if you cannot lift a mouse, I would have assumed that one with any sort of whit would have looked up medicines that cause drowsiness before they looked up things such as anemia. After all, a struggling patient is one that will do more harm than good. It is always good to start with whatever you need to restrain someone that is too sick or too stupid to know better.”

He looked down at her, his face blank, his eyes sharp. “In the end, I suppose,” he said. “I actually believe I overestimated your ability, or at least your ability to reason.” He cocked his head slightly, and then added, “I am not one to tease, Accepted Liolet. You are lucky you have not killed this Tom, as much as you seem to allow your emotions to get in the way of your nursing.”

Well, she wasn't a nurse. It was on the tip of her tongue to serve this fool the rough side of her tongue, but as much as she wanted to rip some flesh off his back (and she did) she also wanted to sort out the cat. Her eyebrows furrowed together, she slammed the heel of her palm into the preparation she was making with her belt knife. Maybe that was too much pressure. But this wasn't fair, either. If she wanted to nurse horses, she could go learn, or if she wanted to mind dogs, she'd have good company, although they were diffident, at best, about female handlers who could channel. But no, she'd adopted cats, and she really didn't know the first thing about what she was doing, but she'd reached out, tried something, and now he was yelling at her for it. Well, not yelling, but the derision in his voice was shouting for both of them, and it was loud. She actually felt a tinge of shame as she pushed small nuggets of beef into the cooling nettle tea.

But there was a problem with shame, really: you couldn't do a damn thing with it.

She stewed to herself while she stirred the meat and tea mixture. When the meat had softened and the nettle tincture had reduced a little, being absorbed by the meat, she nodded at the small metal bowl. No way was she saying anything right now: she didn't trust her tongue. Worse, she didn't trust her eyes: they had a rather stupid habit of watering a bit when she was corrected, and the last thing she was going to let Svan see was her, crying! No, that wouldn't do. For one thing, he'd remember it. For another, he'd probably blather it about, and then she'd be stuck with that blemish on her records, too. It was already bad enough that she'd gone in quest of help with a cat. Likely, she should have...well, no. The fool furball didn't deserve to die because of a spooked horse! And she didn't deserve to have a bit of extra liquid in her nose just because some prissy Dedicated had snapped at her about anesthesia for cats!

"Thank you for the advice," Liolet finally said, opening the cage and setting the bowl inside. The interested tom struggled a bit in Svan's embrace. Liolet suspected the poor thing was swaddled in saidin. Better it than her, she guessed. "In there," she said, nodding at the cage. "After the fool eats his medicine, it seems I have more reading to be about tonight."

Anything so she didn't have to deal with this Svan again! And of course, anything not to lose a friend of the only variety she had.