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Riani Seruam Aethan'Tar

To the casual passer-by, Riani can look like what she is - a well-off noble's daughter - or like a city tramp with equal ease. Her dark, shoulder-length, sleek hair looks perfectly natural hoisted up in an elaborate and time-consuming do, held up by pearl-embossed string and elegant ribbon, but the street-kids she enjoyed running around with in the more questionable areas of Maradon could never see the care taken with her hair in the unruly mass of grease and tangles she presented to them. Her almost boyishly slim figure suits the silken dresses her mother prefer dressing her in perfectly, even if both ladies would not mind some extra busum, but she can, with some adept application of the shades she posess, appear almost gaunt in the rags belonging to her second persona. Her tilted eyes, greenish brown in color, can reflect a truly miraculous specter of emotions, from the defiant glare of a noble brat denied a trinket to the seemingly lost and helpless look of a 'starved' child.

What then is it that marks her out as what she is?

First of all, her hands. Cleared from the grime of the street they appear as soft as any noble's: wielding a feather pen is the most demanding work they have ever encountered. Her nails are cut short, but to the observant it is only too clear that the deed has been done by experienced hands, not by some rushed child with a pair of clippers or a sharp knife. Someone performing a more in-depth check, asking her to flex her muscles for example, would also realize that this was not someone used to – or able to, even – managing on the streets. Oh, her legs were strong enough to let her run about for a while with friends, maybe even attempting a steal-and-run from some unlucky salesman – but they certainly were not the muscled legs of someone used to spending all day, every day, walking around searching for food. Her arms too are considerably weaker than what one would expect of even the most underfed of street-rats; it is more than evident that she's never had to defend herself from the leeches that seem so over-abundant in all cities of a certain size.

Have you ever felt like your heart was bursting, like your heart was weeping? Have you ever listened to your wife’s twists and turns, knowing she is worried about what the next day will bring? Knowing that she blames you, but will never say so aloud because she still, after nearly twenty years in Saldea, still is not used to the thought that she is allowed to argue, encouraged to fight back?

Then you know how I feel.

And who am I, you ask? I am the father of Riani, and I am also, like she will hopefully be one day, the High Seat of House Seruam. She was a child for whom the hopes were high and the expectations higher from the day her mother first heard that first, meagre scream, growing as she excelled in her studies, be they about governments of other countries or the niceties of being female at the Royal courts.

And then her brother, our Mihraim, died. At the time – Riani was only eight back then – it seemed unreasonable for us to tell her how he died, especially because they had been so close, closer by far than she ever was to either of us others. And then, later, when she grew old enough that we might otherwise have told, would probably have told…That was when Taren died.

That was a shock, I tell you. For days, weeks, even months I went around as a man lost in the Aiel Waste, a man without any hope of ever escaping certain death. In this time our trade, our farms, all that I had so painstakingly built up over my almost three decades as a successful man crumbled, to the degree that when I finally came to my senses nearly a third of what we had possessed only a year before was gone with the turnings of the Wheel. It was decided, then – or well, I decided, really – that Riani would be trained in what had so far been her somewhat elder brother’s mission in life; to successfully administer and multiply our fortune, for the good of her own family and that of her two aging parents.

In other words, her classes, that for a while had been administered solely by her mother, from which Riani has taken most of her persevering spirit, increased. In fact, since Riani had not for some time received lessons from because of my weakened state, she very nearly got her amount of work doubled. In retrospect I guess it must be said that we scaled her lessons up too much too fast, without the concern that must be taken for a adolescent girl, especially one that is still battling with the loss of her two brothers. Despite Mihraim’s death being nearly half a decade past that summer, when she passed her 15th birthday, and Taran’s death being merely a few months old, it was no secret to any of us that it was the former she missed the most.

It can safely be said that Riani did not much approve of these massive changes in her until this point easy life. Oh, emotionally it was hard, I am sure, to lose two brothers in the course of less than five years, but materially she had everything she needed and more, and her days were never too full for her to enjoy her luxury to the fullest. And then, suddenly, it was required of her that she spend most of what so far had been her free time, hers to do with as she wished, studying subjects she had never showed interest nor much aptitude for. Oh, she never did badly at anything, our little girl has always been able to learn what she was taught, even when her heart was not in it. That was the problem, though; her heart was never in it, and so it became a chore more than anything.

At first, both I and Lisent – my darling wife – thought she was adjusting well enough. Oh, we noticed that she got more silent, of course, that she drew into herself. We thought though, and maybe this was our folly, that it was merely a phase of the sort that adolescents go through before they mature, that our little girl would come out of it as a stronger, more self-assured, more self-disciplined woman. Maybe the small signs should’ve been enough for us; this I cannot fully say. Suffice to say that as time progressed we realized more and more that this was no short-lived phase, no adolescent riot.

It was riot, pure and simple.

The last time I had had my men haul her in from the streets – that was a week ago, and she had bitten one of my men and kicked one of the other…well, one of those places were men should not be kicked – I had beaten her severely with the strap the cook uses with our servants as a last warning before they are kicked out of the household. She never shed a tear, and in the end I ceased from pure exhaustion, after promising that if she ever snuck out like that again the repercussions would be harsher still.

And now…now she is in Tar Valon, most likely already having begun to regret leaving the comfort of the life she once had here. I am expecting the Aes Sedai who brought her there, my advisor Melarlin of the Gray, to return through Gateway any minute, informing me that my daughter, the apple of my eye, is in the competent hands of Dillan Gaidar, the woman who once trained her brother from being a bullying brat to a man fit to make a father proud, even if he never won the famed fancloth. And so I am sitting here, written note in one hand and burning candle in the other, ready to leave these notes of emotion to the flames while my daughter enters her own purge.