The Grey Tower

There was a resounding thud, the ear-splitting scream of a horse and the distinct clack of hooves on stone, and the petite brunette drew back cracked and bloody knuckles, grasping for the reins of her mount to pull the animal back under control, so that she herself would not be spilled out of the saddle to join the young man who lay in the street below her. Her mare, a small, white speckled gray fondly known as Molly Blue-Eyes – though her name was actually Dusk – sidled and rolled the eyes that had given her the name, but it was the bay beside her that had screamed, and after a brief moment of dancing anxiously over the ground and ramping wildly back and forth, the gelding spun and was off down a narrow side street faster than his rider could even get his feet beneath him. Around them, there was a worried murmur from those abroad in the city today, and from the corner of her eye, the young girl atop the gray thought she saw a boy a few years younger than herself take off after the fleeing horse, and snorted. If he expects a tip from Vander for fetching his horse back, he’ll be holding his breath til he’s naming his grandchildren, she thought, brushing aside a long lock of dark hair impatiently to stare down at her cousin, who was now managing to pick himself up, his jaw already beginning to purple a little where her fist had clipped him. “Is your memory really so short that you have forgotten what happened the last time you addressed me like that, Cousin? Or do you simply enjoy being unable to eat for days at a time?” The young man, on the ground glaring up at her, was a head taller than she was, and had a little more bulk to him, but his frame lacked the lean muscles that bunched in the girl’s arm as she clenched her fist again; she was clearly accustomed to work, while the man below her was not, which explained how she’d managed to knock him clean out of his saddle, despite their size difference. “And is your memory so short that you forget how often your mother has punished you for using your fists, Akymba?” he snapped, and spat a little blood onto the stones beneath his feet. Not enough to signal that she’d done him any real injury – cracked a tooth, perhaps, but no more. “You seem to forget other things quickly enough when it suits you, such as the fact that I am your second cousin, three times removed. We’re hardly even related.”

Now it was Akymba’s turn to spit, and she did so at the man’s feet, forcing him to jump back unless he wished his boots soiled by the sticky wad of saliva. “And old enough to be my father,” she growled, though that was an exaggeration. The grime of long travel and the dust of the road, though heavy in spots across the maroon shirt and dark brown pants, could not cover the youthful features of a man perhaps ten years her senior. At her own age of fifteen however, that span of years stretched far longer than their true length. She raised her arm again, looking as though she might be about to lean out of the saddle for another swing at Vander, but he hastily put space between them, and breathed a foul curse so softly that only the tone told her that it had been indecent. There was tense silence for a moment as she waited for him to try another smart comment, but he seemed to think better of it, and instead waved a dismissive hand in her direction. “Hostler’s Bend is well rid of you, girl,” he spat, and brushed his pants indignantly, trying to rid them of some of the dust as he turned down the alley after his horse, leaving her alone in the street with only the murmurs of the shopkeepers and street merchants around her for company. Fine. Just perfect. Better still that I get rid of him before I even get there. Wouldn’t want to be associated with rabble of his kind, anyway. She turned her eyes about her then, and caught several people staring at her, likely feeling wary after such a disruption of their peaceful afternoon’s work and shopping. A sharp glare from her caused most of these to go back to what they had been doing though, despite the plain dark green of her dress that clearly marked her as a commoner, rather than anyone of importance… or perhaps it was more the bloodied fist that closed about her reins and gave them a jerk, prompting her still-antsy mare into a slow walk that carried her through the crowd, and along the road to the most prominent feature of the city – the Grey Tower.

OOC: I'll take this one then Avram

Once she had passed on from the particular section of street where the confrontation had occurred, the city enveloped her once more and, as she made her way toward the tower, the usual chatter of gossip and bartering surrounded her again. Dusk pranced a little as they moved along, shying now and then at movements as she continued to express the fear spawned by the brief tussle, but Akymba kept her well in hand, proving a skill with horsecraft that probably explained how she'd managed to keep her seat when Vander had lost his. "Easy, Molly," she murmured more than once, but the mare seemed to be responding to her own uncertainty as well as the tension of the fight they'd just left behind. For one, she had to admit that she really had no idea where she was going or why she was being sent there; her father, between anxious wrings of his hands, had told her only that she was to be sent to Hama Valon to be "educated", and her cousin had been even less helpful. His company during the long journey had been at best boring and at worst infuriating, moreso the latter toward the end of the trip, and he'd only just pointed out the shape of the tower in the distance as the place they were going before he'd made that lewd remark that had prompted her to knock him out of the saddle. She'd talked to him as little as possible on the ride in, and so she knew no more about where she was going or why than what her father had told her. Light, if Vander could have only imitated a decent human being long enough to tell me what I'm doing here, she thought, but shoved that aside as Dusk clopped through the gates and into the courtyard.

At first, after the noise and bustle of the city she'd left, the courtyard seemed curiously abandoned to her. Oh, there were people about, but many fewer than had been in the streets just now. Still, it was enough that she didn't notice Avram until he stepped up beside her and spoke, causing her to flinch a little, and her mare to prance nervously to one side before she pulled her back under control with a firm hand. It was a moment or two after that before she realized that the voice that had spoken had an accent like her own, the first she'd heard in weeks since leaving the region of her home, and with that evidence, she pieced together that the reason that she couldn't see who'd spoken was because she was looking straight ahead, rather than down. Even as Avram made the dry statement, Akymba turned her gaze down to him, and schooled her face back into complete calmness as she did so. She considered him carefully before answering. "Yes, I have come some distance and have only just arrived. My escort," she growled the term like the vilest insult ever breathed, "has abandoned me at the city's edge." That was skirting the truth a bit, of course, but there was no reason this man should know that, and the regal way she held her head, despite how it stood over her clearly-common green dress, forbade him to question that, even if he did suspect that she was not abandoned as she'd claimed. Without offering her own name in turn, whether through oversight or deliberate neglect, she went on, "I was to come to this tower, to be educated - this much he told me, before he left. Are you here to escort me further?" Her tone said that she doubted that question even as she spoke it, but she did not choose to rephrase.

Avram

The crimson-edged hand tightened a little around the reins, subconsciously demonstrating a nervousness that she would have expressed to no one, herself least of all, and she clicked her tongue sharply to Molly as she danced aside again, finally pulling her to a more firm halt beside Avram, where the fellow wouldn't have to worry quite so much about keeping his toes out from under the sturdy hooves in order to retain their current shape. Her face, with its high, chiseled cheekbones and sharp nose - softened slightly by a spattering of light freckles over the nose and beneath the eyes - never showed the anxiety that her grip did, and in fact the gaze she turned to her sudden companion was calm and clear. "You are all too close to truth," she answered him, and gave a slightly indignant sniff to indicate her low opinion of the relative she'd just left behind. "The man breeds horses, and mentally breeds Solveres... a pretentious and criminal waste of time and resources, to my mind. Prosperous enough at his business, I suppose, but no mind for anything but horses." And five years ago, he wouldn't have spat in the direction of our end of the family if all the countryside was aflame. If she'd been alone, she might have been of a mind to spit again to express her continued dislike of her cousin, but as it was she refrained, and allowed her attention to be pulled away from that, to the man that stood below her. "It has been weeks since I have heard Cairhien on someone's tongue," she commented, by way of changing the subject. "Not since two days after we passed through the city proper and left the last little village behind us. You're as far from home as I am."

That was almost a companionable comment, like an attempt to bond on some level with a man equally as distant from home and family as she was, but his next comment spawned a laugh out of her which was somehow both truly amused... and a little bitter at the same time. "A channeler?" She covered what wanted to be a snort with one hand, and the corners of the thin mouth turned up in a smile that gave the hint that she could be an attractive lass, when she wanted to, and yet also revealed she could be equally mulish and difficult, if it suited her. "There's been not a single channeler in seven generations of Solveres as lived in Hostler's End," she laughed, and in the last several words of her sentence, Avram would get to hear a little twang that, even moreso than her plain dress, made it clear that she'd not been raised in the capital city, but in a smaller town outside. "Probably since the Breaking... and Light send never will be, say the family. Oh some of the cultured, city-born folk might find it amusing, I suppose, but we've no use for outlandish things like that outside festivals, and even then, those that are rumored to channel get looked at cross ways." Still, despite her clear disbelief on that account, she did seem mollified, and perhaps secretly pleased, when he termed her "fierce". That in addition to the knowledge that she was in the company of one of her own countrymen again - and one with a sight better manners than Vander - helped to ease both her anxiety and her irritability, until her tone was slightly less bossy and intrusive. "Skinned knuckles I've had before, and will have again. They are no cause for concern; I'd much rather rid myself of the grime of my travels, if you'd know of a place where that would be possible." She hesitated a moment more, and then offered him one corner of what could obviously be quite a charming smile, when accordingly applied. "I am Akymba, and you are a well-practiced flatterer, that is clear. Did you not learn subtlety, wherever they taught you compliments?" Still, she didn't sound annoyed... but rather, amused.

Avram

At least she'd run into one of her own countrymen, and that was a fair start for her first introduction in the Tower, especially considering that this was the first time she'd really been away from home, and alone, at that. With her relatively-young age, she had little business being out and about in the world without either her parents or another relative as her escort, though of course it wasn't the fault of her parents that she'd arrived here without one. Still, it was comforting to the anxiety that she refused to show, that the first person she'd run into was of the same accent and culture as she. It helped ease the transition for her, enough that after a moment, when he offered to lead her to the stables and speak to the hands so they would keep her horse, she offered him another smile, this one a touch more sincere than the others.

It was accompanied by a little toss of the reins, prompting him to catch them so that she could dismount more easily. Oh, she was perfectly able to do so without any help, but that was in skirts that had been divided for riding; over her own protests, both her mother and father had insisted that she wear a proper dress when she arrived in Hama Valon, and the one and only thing that Vander had been successful at was in convincing her that she must do so - and that, only because he'd threatened to turn about and head for home without escorting her all the way, if she refused to comply. Thus, the saddle that she clambered down from was not made for riding astride, but sidesaddle. She'd been riding for quite a chunk of her life, if her expert seat and control of her mare was any hint, and yet she'd never had occasion to master the more formal seat. She felt clumsy enough at the peculiar position that she even reached instinctively for his arm as she slid down, in order to steady herself as she landed.

Without either thanking him for the use of his arm, or behaving as if it was anything odd to take it in order to ensure she did not fall, Akymba then reached to gently reclaim her horse's reins. Afoot, she stood only an inch shorter than he, and did not have far to look up, to meet his gaze. But even so her petite figure made her feel small next to him, and perhaps in defiance of that, she drew herself up to her full height as though she were a noble addressing a commoner, unaware that the reality was the other way around. "A proper basin will be more than I've seen in near a week," she murmured, apparently not seeing the slight anxiety that had taken her companion, or whether it had become worse when she'd briefly taken his arm. "As long as the water is warm, it will be superior to all the streams the entire countryside has had to offer, these past few days."

Falling into stride beside him as naturally as if she'd known him all her life, and as if she considered him just another young man from her village whom she was perfectly capable of putting in his place if it became necessary, the girl tossed her head back to resettle her hair, which had blown into her eyes in the light breeze. The mahogany length ran to the middle of her back in gentle waves, which had the suggestion if not the true form of partial ringlets, and though the bulk of it was thick and heavy, the tiny strands about her eyes and cheekbones were still light enough for the wind to catch up and flutter about. "...and able to turn aside an accusation with neither acceptance nor denial," she noted, when he defended the compliment he'd given her, and even repeated it in a soft, but no less emphatic way. "Very well, if you're so determined, I can play at the Queen. Now take me to the stable, good sir." There was a note of pixie in her voice as she said it, and more than a hint of it in the bright hazel eyes, which creased a little with a silent laugh.

Now she giggled, and it was an innocent sound, more worthy of the girl her young age suggested than the woman that her bloodied knuckles had indicated to Avram. It was genuine amusement at his joking manner of playing up to her pretense of being a queen, and it matched how her fingers on the reins loosened a smidgen, which in turn saw Molly Blue-Eyes grow calmer, and her steps more fluid as her mistress came down from her anxiety. "Well at least you've the manners of a gentleman, at that," she acknowledged, and the smile lit her features again, proving her better temper. "Less hay in the hair and barnyard in the mouth in you than my wool-headed cousin, and thank the Light for that." Not carrying her statement any further than that - though anyone with half an imagination could puzzle out what she meant by that, judging by the disgust in her tones alone - she allowed herself to be led on to other topics as surely as she was led on to the stables.

"If it's as you say, it's likely that I'm to attend the university for my education," she agreed, as they moved on toward the stable at an easy pace. "And in that case, it's best that I clear up this confusion right away. It would be just like my cousin to deliberately send me somewhere that I don't belong." She shook her head, and a length of dark hair slid into her vision, prompting her to scoop it out of her eyes with an impatient gesture. By now, they'd managed the short walk to the stableyard, and out popped Davan, and after a brief chat with her escort, in seemed that the care of her horse was all settled. With less cordiality than she'd favored Avram with, but still a certain degree of formal politeness in her tones, Akymba handed the reins over to the fellow, and prompted, "Her name's Dusk," giving the mare's proper name instead of her pet name. "...and mind you watch her, now - she's twitchy on the left hind. Near brained my cousin last week when he forgot." Only too bad, she missed, she thought, but even the fiery young Cairhienin had the forethought not to say that. Instead, she went on, "And don't let her beg from you - she'll eat til she's too fat to fit a stall."