Battle Planning

The Novice Halls, Tahmelah supposed, could not be more like an overturned anthill even if there was a fire.  Which, to her irritation, there wasn't: all this fuss was over dancing.  Letting her sour mood shine from her sweaty face, seated firmly over her besmirched white gown, she stalked back into her bedroom, which was, to her vast relief, all her own.  Not that enough space to barely turn about in, crowded with a bed, chair, table, shelf, and pegs constituted a proper bedroom: there wasn't even a window.  Of course, Tahmelah reflected, staring at her confining cage of whitewashed walls, there wasn't room for a window.  If it were over the bed, the only clear patch of wall, she'd crack her head climbing in and out of the narrow cot she slept in.

If you could call a few hours to herself, listening to the Tower creak in the winds off Northharbor, stiff in the darkness, being asleep.  Certainly it couldn't compare to her own bedroom, familiar and faintly lit.  She'd been away from home for several months now, but daily, she found she missed the small comforts of belonging where she was.  The White Tower made it clear that it was no one's familiar home, from the cold grandeur of the entry halls to the sparse comfort of the cubicles designated for its inmates.  Was it fair to compare the Tower to a prison?  If she was not permitted to leave, coerced to give years of her life for something she neither understood nor wanted, threatened, and minded every last flaming moment of her waking hours, she failed to see a difference between the two.  And if this was a prison, then what was her crime?

She'd tried to ask the first Aes Sedai that, when it came clear to her that becoming a Novice was not some prize position, but the woman had had "no time" to speak to the child she'd abducted and dragged out of the Borderlands.  Likewise, the so-called Mistress of Novices had had no time in her docket, either: Tahmelah was thrust into the glacial river of competition, rivalry, white-clad life, and abandoned to sink or swim on her own.  It was reflex that had guided her first few days, but once the numbness had worn off, a seething, thwarted fury had taken its place.  She'd made a few friends by relying on the bland politeness that was the shield of an innkeeper's child, but she couldn't keep that up.  Her life was designed to hold strangers just a few days, then have them disappear on business of their own, never to reappear.

Here, no one left, except the Aes Sedai, and they had no time for their own students.  Tahmelah had found herself foisted off on a network of girls clad in rainbow-striped white - a network infamous for judging you on its own first impressions.  And, sadly to say, Tahmelah's first impression for anyone had not gone well.  Having ducked the Accepted minding the gaggle of nobly born girls who had arrived for schooling, she had lit out across the Gardens, and she had been located sitting in the queue to see the Master of Arms.  A Gaidin's life she could understand, she had told the Mistress of Novices, after referencing all Aes Sedai as "prissy and meddling."  It hadn't, she had been told later, been the record for "fastest punishment possible," but it also hadn't been far off it.

Sorting through the few personal possessions she had been allowed to keep -  a brush, some pins for her hair, a comb, a small vanity mirror, a sewing box, all things small enough to fit in a corner of the table that doubled as a desk - she lifted the brush in laconic hands.  Her hair was a defiant smudge of intense orange, frizzy and thick, defying her best effort to tame it unless she began while it was wet.  (That annoyed her, because it would still be wet hours later.)  Many of the girls in the halls were doing just that, and the bathing chamber had been stuffed solidly with Novice bodies for hours.  Some of the girls had shirked afternoon chores to create hairstyles for one another, but she hadn't been invited to that group, and she wouldn't have stayed still for the fussing and combing, anyway.  Her toilette consisted of a clean dress (her other had had Kitchen duties, and it showed) and freeing her mass of orange curls from their temporary prison. 

As she glanced down into the hand mirror, noting her snubbed nose, lividly spotted pale skin, and slanted eyes, she was tempted to smack the silvered glass into the desk below.  Mirrors, however, were valuable, and she had no way of replacing it.  Sliding it back into its small dark fabric bag, she stuffed it under the brush, and shook her head.  Who was this vanity wasted on, anyway?  The trainees?  She had no desire to attract anyone, hated to dance...unless she had a sword in her hand, her feet tended to trip over each other, anyway!  Why go at all? she thought rebelliously, but her stomach answered her.  There was supper served in the small dining hall for Novices barred from the festivities, but everyone else was expected to take their meal there.

And the Kitchens had smelled so good all day.

No one commented on her arrival as Tahmelah inserted herself into the gaggle of excited girls poised at the top of the steps, waiting for an Accepted or Aes Sedai's inspection before they were permitted to join the party below.  The girl in front of Tahmelah, reeking of roses and wearing an inch of paint if she had a lick, was sent back.  A girl who had industriously...edited...her Novice gown was also sent back.  And to her shock, Tahmelah was sent back!  Her mood surly and dark, she scowled at the Accepted's advice.  "For the Light's sake child, a clean gown.  And wash your face!"

By the time she rejoined the party, forced to wait with a scrubbed-pink Domani, a Sea Folk girl (or so Tahmelah supposed from the tattoo on her hand, having never wandered so far away as Maradon's dock district.  She had lived in the streets surrounding the Palace.)  who had changed her white blouse and pants for a dress and a stern discussion on what Novices were permitted to wear, complete with the threat of Candance Sedai at the end, and some girls whose nationality she couldn't guess (nor could she guess their crimes) the other Novices had been absorbed into the crowd.  Feeling conspicuous, criminal, she perched at the edge of the grand stairway, her eyes scanning the crowd, not for familiar faces, but for...what?  A path to the tables heaped and groaning with food?  Perhaps.

The crowd before her opened, disgorging a tall, dark-haired man with cool green eyes, limpid as a stagnant pond.  The way his eyes flashed over them, sweeping down the group of girls, she assumed he was looking for someone.  It certainly wasn't her.  Her ongoing battle with the Novice rule book didn't include breaking the edict against men.  Coming from a country that had so recently celebrated the purge of Mazrim Taim and his army, Tahmelah felt a vague sense of horror every time her gaze landed on a man in Novice white.  The Soldiers, sworn to the Dragon, she could manage, but this man - no.  Dead or sworn to the Dragon, that was her motto, and this lad was neither.

And Light, was he smiling at her?

But it was the best offer she'd heard all night.  Crossing her arms over her breasts so he couldn't take one, she eyed him with the same interest she'd summon for a rat drowned in the butter churn.  Deciding he wasn't as serious as she would have liked, she thought about saying no - even as her mouth blurted out, "Light please."

Color crept up her cheeks, contrasting madly with the shrieking scarlet of her hair, and she stumbled forward, knowing the small hands at her back were from a jealous Novice she'd have to sort out later.  Escape wasn't possible, she knew that - but it was all she wanted.  And the night was still quite young.  Taking the hand he prooffered, she left the glaring gaggle of girls without even a backwards glance.  Putting herself in the hands of a madman?  No problem at all, she schooled herself.  The world had turned out to be full of them, and the women, in Tahmelah's biased judgment, were just a trifle more sane.

"So tell me what you really want," she asked, without preamble, as he tried assiduously to guide her into the fringe of twirling dancers.