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[we_bring_hell]

Harrowhark is in the bar, wearing the style of facepaint known as the Vanitas, with no lower teeth and sharp angular edges. It's good to be back in her makeup, even if the consecration was a greater undertaking than anticipated.

Although she is formally painted from the neck up, she is wearing some of the more informal clothes her room had supplied; soft trousers and a hoodie all in black. She is not wearing gloves today, because her palms are wrapped in bandages, but it is the kind of wound she is used to dealing with and it is healing quickly. The pinpricks of pain around her lips are worse, if only because it's been a very long time since she underwent the ritual of the Sewn Tongue.

She is diagramming spirals on paper, working in ink rather than blood right now. She can't spare any blood currently. She has refreshments to share, if you like faintly cucumber-flavored water and very bland, crumbly biscuits.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

She frowns. "So were you reunited when you returned? Or had he moved on? Had you?"

She's only had Gideon a month and a half but if anything happened to her she'd kill everyone in Canaan House and then herself.

[blue_ajah]

"His path lay elsewhere," she says, very simply. "I acted as best I could to ensure he remained alive to take it, and in time he forgave me for it."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods solemnly. "But--I still don't understand. You saved your world, why didn't you go home?"

There's just a note of plaintive concern in her voice; just a speck, but Moiraine has dedicated herself to composure even more thoroughly than Harrow, for much much longer. Harrowhark knows perfectly well Lyctors don't go home afterwards.

"Where did you go?"

[blue_ajah]

"For a time, I was unable to return to that world," she says. "During that time, I was invited to settle in another world, in a place known as Twin Peaks."

She smiles, and it is somehow fond.

"I made a home for myself there. Now that the Last Battle is over, I am content to visit the world where I was born; to advise and assist as I may, as I am needed. It would not, however, be wise for me to be too present for too long. I have avoided a throne once, and I do not wish to have another thrust upon me."

Or anything else, given her reputation and the knowledge of her work that continues to come to light.

[we_bring_hell]

"Ah--" she says. "So you come from a noble house as well."

If Moiraine has gone to great length to avoid the role, she won't get into it, but it's another interesting piece of the mosaic of the Aes Sedai.

"Is it similar to where you come from? Although I suppose I have a poor sense of what anyone's world is like, except for those in the past of the First House. And even that I have little real knowledge of."

[blue_ajah]

"Yes. I was born to House Damodred, in Cairhien," she says, with a slight sigh.

"Twin Peaks is very different from the world in which I was born, but it has its own appeal."

And it has Dale Cooper, although she does not mention him, not at present.

"A visit might be arranged, perhaps. At some point."

[we_bring_hell]

If Harrow were not so very used to the Nine Houses, it might strike her as uncanny how many new Houses she keeps discovering.

She looks startled, and pleased. (Subtly.) "I had not thought of that. I would be interested... I have never been on a thalergenic world, however."

If it's anything like being in interplanetary space, she's uneasy about feeling so powerless.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine looks thoughtful at that.

"How does it feel to you, being here in Milliways?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Unlike anything I have ever experienced," she says. "The death of a universe is a tremendous source of thanergy and it is... holy. Custom has not made me jaded to that."

"But at the same time, the buildings themselves are as sterile as deep space. The life outside is barely life, and there is no history there, no real depth of lifecycle."

She looks at her notes and drawings. "The saltwater inlet, however--does it connect to the outside world in some way?"

[blue_ajah]

"I see."

She taps a finger against the side of the water glass in thought, then takes a sip.

"I believe that it does, although the mechanism remains somewhat unknown. There have been those that passed from here to there through it, a black ship in particular, and another ship that at times appears from the world to which it connects. However, most of those who try to reach that other world fail in the attempt and find themselves returning to shore."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods and looks down at her papers, then circles a notation in one obscure diagram.

"Ah. My consecration ritual ending up being more potent than anticipated. I've been trying to reconstruct the vectors, and that's quite possibly one factor accounted for, then."

[blue_ajah]

The Aes Sedai studies her.

"Given the nature of your workings, then, it may matter to know that the ships in question have a connection to the dead."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow's eyes widen. "Yes, definitely significant."

She shakes her head and jots a note. "No harm came of it, but there was much greater spiritual activation than anticipated."

[blue_ajah]

She nods.

"The black ship - the Black Pearl, it is called - and its captain came here as the dead do, arriving through the lake in the area that later became the inlet."

Given Merriman Lyon's involvement in the surrounding events, Moiraine herself had taken a particular interest in learning everything that she could.

"The inlet was later transformed, which allowed the arrival of a ship called the Flying Dutchman. The Dutchman and its captain ferry the dead between worlds. They pulled the Pearl and Captain Sparrow back through the inlet to a place beyond. From time to time, the Dutchman and Captain Turner will still appear in the inlet to visit."

[we_bring_hell]

"Psychopomps!" she says, with definite interest and attending scribbles. "How fascinating."

"How often I find myself wishing Abigail Pent were still alive," she mutters thoughtfully.

[blue_ajah]

"I presume that she would have particular insight?" she asks.

"If it is of interest to you, I believe Captain Sparrow also continues to visit Milliways. Should you meet him, you might inquire further."

[we_bring_hell]

"The Fifth are spirit adepts by stereotype," she says, "in the same way that the Ninth are bone magicians. But Abigail specifically was an expert."

"A grim irony, when we could not raise her. Or perhaps an intentional one; removing our most accomplished ghost-speaker in the first strike."

[blue_ajah]

"It could be coincidence, but I find that unlikely," Moiraine agrees. "Is it unusual, to be unable to raise someone in that fashion?"

[we_bring_hell]

"No," she says. "Not if the ritual is enacted in time. In the normal course of things, any of the seven surviving necromancers would have expected to be able to contact them, especially given that it was a violent and unexpected death."

"But in the same way I could say that any necromancer can raise and control a construct. There are degrees of skill in all things. A true ghost-talker can call out into the River and summon even ghosts long laid to rest, or penetrate the shell of self-absorption and illusion around a raging revenant."

"I have never favored spirit magic myself," she says with a frown. "All of the power is in the hands of the ghosts. The artistry lies in the adept's ability to beseech and persuade."

Neither of which Harrow has cultivated, as may be obvious.

[blue_ajah]

"It is not a type of magic with which I myself am overly familiar," the Aes Sedai muses.

"Although I have known others who are skilled with it."

[we_bring_hell]

"I have met one or two as well," she says. "Indeed, I believe another factor in my ceremony was that I underestimated the capabilities of the other participants."

[blue_ajah]

She raises her eyebrows.

"Oh?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes--perhaps I was not experienced enough with the potential of the art they call cultivation," she says.

"They use music to invoke spirits, and I invited the accompaniment without truly considering it as a factor in addition to the more familiar rites." She taps her pen on the paper thoughtfully.

"I am not sure if we truly caught the attention of the spirits who appeared to us, or simply echoes of their impressions on our own souls. But I intended no such effect at all. It was a common rite to acknowledge the spirits of the Nine Houses and establish a sacred geography for the consecration to follow. It should have been purely routine."

[blue_ajah]

Cultivation as a magical practice, as it happens, is something that the Aes Sedai has herself just learned of recently.

"I see," she murmurs. "Using music to invoke spirits, did you say?"

A beat of silence falls.

"Is that art one taught in Yunmeng Jiang, perhaps? Or Gusu Lan?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Gusu Lan," Harrow says. "I was assisted by Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian is a necromancer and has often voiced interest in such things, and while Lan Wangji would never consider himself such, he is a loyal friend and I thought would be happier as a participant."

She is not anything like stupid enough to imagine that she is sneaking any topics up on Moiraine; the other woman has been having sensitive, cautious conversations longer than Harrow has been alive. But if Moiraine wants to talk about it, they can talk about it. If not... okay.

"He was my musician, and I did not expect his facility with spirits to be as strong as it was, given that. But the definition of terms is so often imprecise, between worlds, and the Universe delights in humbling me."