Gideon the Ninth, Between 19 & 20

[we_bring_hell]

The first few times Harrow has come to Milliways, she gave every sign of a carefully cultivated appearance. Tonight is different.

She's wearing black trousers and a black, high-collared shirt; there's no sign of her robes or the bone corselet she usually wears. Even her gloves and bone rosary bracelets are missing. Her facepaint is worn away, sweated off and smeared into an indistinct grey in many places. For the first time her bare skin is visible on her hands and places on her face; it's a muddy, pallid brown. Her short-cropped black hair is mussed.

She is clutching her journal like a lifeline; she moves slowly but she's steady, in the way of someone who learned long ago to make her body steady when it wants to shake. She finds her way to an overstuffed chair and drops into it, staring at her papers in a way that suggests she is looking past them.

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[blue_ajah]

Moiraine has spent more time in Milliways over the last week or so than she has in months, she thinks. Still, as events in her worlds are settled enough and the passage of time between there and the bar at the end of the universe remains paused while she is present, it does not concern her.

Besides, she is interested in pursuing certain matters further, and the Aes Sedai's curiosity has ever been a driving force in her life.

That same curiosity is sparked now as she observes Harrow make her way across the room. Dark eyes narrow slightly as the other woman falls into the chair.

Moiraine signals to a waitrat, murmurs an order for it to bring to Harrow, and then rises to her feet and glides over.

"Lady Ninth." Each word is smooth and calm, with no indication of any concern that might be present. "Light illumine. May I join you?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Moiraine Sedai," she says, after a fractional pause. "Greetings."



"I must look a sight." Considering her normal frightful facepaint, it's more of a lateral move.

[blue_ajah]

"You do look different than you did when last we met, yes," the Aes Sedai agrees.

One eyebrow arches, very slightly, and then Moiraine takes a seat across from Harrow without waiting for further invitation.

On seeing this, the rat scurries over with a pitcher of ice-cold mountain spring water, two glasses, and small bowls of sliced cucumber and lemon. It settles beside Harrow.

[we_bring_hell]

She pours herself a glass of water, no additives, and drinks it like someone who has just realized she is very thirsty. Moiraine may note a smear of blood along the heel of her hand, disappearing into her sleeve.

When she's refilled the glass, she settles back in the chair and looks at Moiraine directly. "We earned another key and have found... a treasure trove. But Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent of the Fifth are dead. And I think--"

I think I may have spent my life making an enemy of the one friend I need.

"--I think I may have been a fool."

[blue_ajah]

"May they shelter in the palm of the Creator's hand," she murmurs, studying Harrow's face.

"Why do you call yourself a fool?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I underestimated the trials," she says. "And I underestimated Gri--Gideon. My cavalier."

"In truth, I brought her because there were no other viable options. She didn't want to come. Our bond is unsworn. But she has proven her mettle, and we are surrounded by danger, and I need her now, and..." She smiles mirthlessly and looks away. "And I have given her every reason to hate me."

[blue_ajah]

The Aes Sedai taps a fingertip against the arm of her chair as she considers.

"Did she act against you? Is that how Magnus and Abigail died?"

[we_bring_hell]

"No," she says. "She liked them." She looks, actually, shocked by the question; Harrow thinks of herself as cynical and scheming but she's all of seventeen. Griddle killing her seems possible and perhaps deserved; Griddle killing Magnus Quinn seems absurd.

You treat me more like a stranger than Marcus Quinn did and I've known you all my life.

"They died in the basement laboratory. We don't know exactly how, but Magnus the Fifth died with his sword drawn." She looks troubled now: "We couldn't raise their spirits. Seven necromancers drawing diagrams and spilling blood to no avail. The Eighth cavalier nearly lost his soul because of his master's stupid siphoning."

[blue_ajah]

Her eyes narrow sharply at that last, but she leaves it unremarked.

(For now.)

"It would seem that he perceived some threat, and not an inconsiderable one, if his soul has been either lost or destroyed. Such things are not unknown where I was born, but the effort it takes to remove someone from the reach of... such a raising... is notable."

A thoughtful pause.

"Did you not expect that the trials might be fatal?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I did," she says. "The priests who keep Canaan House said as much, and the construct we defeated for the red key could've killed Griddle if she was less skillful. But I didn't--"

"They hadn't even been trying," Harrow says, interrupting herself. "The Fifth had been too busy trying to be the grown ups in the room, as ever. They didn't even know about the hatch until the Eighth adept mentioned it at their stupid dinner party. They died in the entryway."

[blue_ajah]

"I see."

There have always been those among the Accepted who did not survive the testing to be raised Aes Sedai - or who survived but wished they had not. The White Tower endeavored to limit this number to as few as possible, but there were always some who were either not skilled enough or who did not take matters seriously enough.

It seems as though the Fifth, as Harrow calls them, had been among the latter.

"And now the stakes are realized to be higher," she says. "And loss spreads among you."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "Exactly."

"There is only one rule. I don't want to still be hunting for keys when they start to realize what that means. We have to keep moving."

She looks down at the papers in her lap with something very like hunger.

[blue_ajah]

She frowns at this, very slightly.

"The others you have mentioned. Are they your allies, your competition, or both?"

[we_bring_hell]

She smiles hollowly. "There is only one rule. We have not been approaching it collaboratively so far."

And she has no intention of doing so. "There are alliances--less now, without the Fifth to hold us together. Almost everyone liked them. But the only person a necromancer can truly trust is her cavalier."

And now she looks rather like she bit into one of the lemon slices in the bowl.

[blue_ajah]

"I see," the Aes Sedai says again.

"Then it would appear that you and Gideon--"

She has noted the use of the name 'Griddle' as well; some sort of nickname, she surmises. Whether or not it indicates a degree of closeness to be sufficient to their needs remains to be seen.

"--have matters to resolve."

Moiraine pauses for a moment, considering, then adds,

"To depend on an unbonded Warder - as I might term it - or cavalier, in your case, is not an impossibility, but it does add complexity to certain matters."

To say the very least.

"A great deal depends on the person - the people - in question."

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes," she says. "Yes, exactly."

She looks melancholy, and lonely, and very young. But she only lets that expression survive briefly.

"She's really extraordinary, you know," she says. "To complete this trial I had to see through her eyes and lend her my ability to see thanergy. I got to watch her fight from inside her. It was amazing. I knew she was the best we had, that's why I dragooned her, but she's the best we've had in generations."

"I looked at her for seventeen years and all I saw was insubordination and irreverence and her filthy magazines. I'm supposed to be smart!"

[blue_ajah]

Briefly, Moiraine wishes that Lan and Nynaeve were still likely to be found at Milliways, but then sets that aside.

(The Wheel weaves, and the no-longer-uncrowned King and new Queen of Malkier have very many responsibilities in their hands.)

Gently, she says, "It can be difficult, to come to balance with a new Warder."

She thinks of a pond in new spring; of Lan Mandragoran's pride, and her own.

"What does she see in you? Do you know?"

[we_bring_hell]

A butt-touched nun. A necrophiliac whose blasphemy destroyed her family. An autocrat who ruled the Ninth through grisly puppetry. A spiteful slave-master who teased her with hope and then shattered it.

She swallows; her throat feels thick. "A stranger, she said. She said I treated her more like a stranger than Magnus Quinn did." (She does not seem to recognize that those aren't the same thing.)

"I told her I wanted to earn her trust and she... became uncomfortable. Naturally. She's sleeping now."

[blue_ajah]

"It may take time," Moiraine advises her. "If it is as you have said, and how you have been treating her prior to this is different from how you intend to go on."

There is no condemnation in her calm tone, nor any sign of pity.

"What do you mean, when you say that you want to earn her trust? How would you plan to do that?"

[we_bring_hell]

I need you to be trustworthy!

"I don't know," she admits. "I don't know how to be trustworthy."

She has been alone and lying for such a long time. "You've had a.... a Warder before?"

[blue_ajah]

"Would you wish my advice on the matter?"

She is perfectly well aware that she intends to advise anyway, but some questions should be asked all the same.

"I have," she adds. "I did. For more than twenty years."

[we_bring_hell]

"Please," she says in a low voice.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine inclines her head to Harrow.

"Very well," she says, and as before, there is understanding but no pity in her words.

"First, as we consider trust - there is trust in words, and trust in deeds. Between Warder and Aes Sedai, between you and your cavalier, it would be best if there were both. To begin, you must not speak falsely to her."

[we_bring_hell]

Guiltily, Harrow discards her plan to wake Gideon up sooner than the nine hours agreed upon.

"Hold on," she says, and searches her pockets for her brass fountain pen. She inserts the nib in her mouth and jabs her cheek to load it with blood.

When Harrow takes something seriously, she takes notes. "All right." She scribbles less lying</> at the top of a page in her personal code.

[blue_ajah]

"I realize that might be difficult," she says, very dryly. Dark eyes are steady on Harrow.

"But I should perhaps also tell you that I myself am oath-sworn to speak no word that is not true. And before you ask, yes, it is a binding oath."

[we_bring_hell]

"Oh, but you can do so much harm with a little selective truth-telling," she says absently; dismally.


"Not that I--I was thinking of something I did." To Gideon. Involving a shuttle. Not very long ago.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine nods.

"That is so," she agrees. "The truth can be a weapon as well as a source of comfort and support."

"Actions can be the same."

[we_bring_hell]

"I know I shouldn't... beat her up with skeletons any more," she says.

"I am... I am trying. I went to the poor doomed Fifth's ghastly dinner party because she wanted to. But I'm afraid I have very little practice being..."

"You know, on Drearburh, I was beloved," she says fretfully. "I filled the honeycombs of their decrepit bones and I blessed them for keeping our lonely vigil. That's all they needed from me. To be... the Reverend Daughter." To be cold, and alone, and righteous, and tell them that was all anyone needed.

But Gideon hates all that.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine arches an eyebrow.

"I would not think such violence would be likely to inspire trust, no," she observes.

"It takes time, to become what one has never been used to being. Time to observe; time to learn the ways of interaction and shades of meaning in each."

"Where I was born, such is known as the Great Game, or the Game of Houses."

[we_bring_hell]

She raises her eyebrows at that. (One of them still has some dark blood in it.)

"For us, too. The politics of the Houses can be complex."

But the Ninth has always been shut out of that game. Too poor, too religious, too far away.

The dinner party -- she realizes it sounded petulant to bring it up, but she had been terrified of trying to mix socially with the other heirs. Yet Griddle--handicapped with a vow of silence--had still made more friends than her.

Are your biceps huge, or just enormous? Ninth, please tick the correct box.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, smearing the makeup there. Damn Dulcinea Septimus anyway.

"Was your partnership... easier than this? Classically chivalric?" She steers clear of the word 'romance,' which could be misconstrued, although she means it--of course she means it--in the courtly sense.

[blue_ajah]

"Indeed," she says, "politics are almost always more complex than most people realize. Learning the nuances of the Great Game was part of our training in the White Tower."

Whether intentional or not, as it happens.

"I suppose you might call it chivalric," she adds. "Indeed, the courtesy of the Borderlanders is renowned, in its way, and Lan was among the best. I would not say matters between us were easy at first, though. It took time to find the proper balance."

"It is said that there are few secrets between Warder and Aes Sedai. While few is not none, and we did not always agree, that understanding between us allowed us to build a partnership of incredible strength. He would have laid down his life to preserve mine, and I defended him with my own in turn, as we worked together in service of our common cause."

[we_bring_hell]

Sounds pretty damn romantic to her.

"Some of the Houses have techniques that depend on their Cavaliers. The Eighth, the Second. The Ninth has relied on skeletons," she says dryly. "As Gideon reminded me before she inserted herself into the experimental chamber."

"She was right. It seems the Lyctor in question was of the Second." She lifts her notes in, apparently, demonstration. "It was a test of collaboration. And now I have the theorem."

She laughs silently and looks up, willing herself not to cry. It's been a long time since she rested, by which she means passed out in a puddle of blood.

[blue_ajah]

"What will you do with it?"

Moiraine is studying Harrow very carefully now, taking in every nuance of her appearance and demeanor.

It is entirely likely, she realizes, that the other woman has come directly here from the aftermath of the ill-fated dinner party without taking any time to recover.

[we_bring_hell]

Only Harrow the Ninth, she thinks, would need a theorem to understand friendship.

Self-pity. Nauseating. Useless.

She closes her eyes, then opens them again, having looked down to her journal. "It must be one piece of becoming a Lyctor. There was a stone tablet... glowing letters. I copied everything down and locked it back up."

"They were living chambers," she says. "For a necromancer and their cav. Funny to think about the Lyctors having cavaliers." For a moment, a vital insight swims through the turbid waters of her exhausted brain, but it escapes.

[blue_ajah]

"Lady Ninth."

The Aes Sedai's tone is kind.

"You will be better able to focus with rest." She lets that observation stand for a moment, then adds,

"If you cannot bring yourself to do so at present, I might provide temporary aid, but you will still need to rest in the relatively near future."

[we_bring_hell]

"A head start is the only advantage one can claim by choice," she says blankly.

"My father used to say that."

Her eyes close, and then open again, and she's not sure how long they were closed for.




"Moiraine Sedai," she says, with a great deal of her former formality forcibly restored. "I am poor at thanks, as I have said, but that is no excuse. I owe you... I owe you a debt greater than I have sworn to anyone to anyone but the Emperor or the Holy Corpse. If I can serve you or your House without compromising my other obligations you must--

This is ruined by an enormous yawn she can't manage to stifle. "--must only speak."

[blue_ajah]

"We will speak of such things later, if at all," she says, and holds out both hands to Harrow.

Once again, a warm golden glow surrounds her.

"Place your hands in mine."

[we_bring_hell]

She does so. Her hands are bony and cold, perhaps a shade or so darker than Moiraine's own. Her face looks thin and desperate and quite young; the bland church mask is all in tatters.

[blue_ajah]

The Aes Sedai closes her fingers around Harrow's, and threads of white, blue, and silver explode from where their hands are linked to rush over the other woman like a wave.

The weave brings with it the feeling of wind over water, sweeping over and through its target and washing fatigue away in its wake, leaving nothing but the sense of being well-rested, as though after a good night's sleep.

It does not take long. The light fades as Moiraine finishes the weave. There is a final sense of gentle pressure on Harrow's fingers, and then the Aes Sedai releases her.

"You must rest within the next day or at most two. This is a masking, nothing more. It will allow you to function as though you have slept, but it only shields you from your exhaustion; it does not remove it."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow almost flinches away from the gentle touch; it's been a long time since she's had skin to skin contact with anyone at all.

The influx of thalergy is bewildering and refreshing. She's never used the Second's vampiric techniques, but she's heard that the victims die screaming. Moiraine seems at peace, though, a lens through which the energy flows from that mysterious Source.

"It's probably for the best that I not learn how to do that to myself," she says, eyes widening.

She lets herself sink back into the chair as the energy settles itself queasily into her thanergenic system. Ironically, with the exhaustion no longer clouding her perceptions, she's more aware of how badly into the red she's driven herself.

[blue_ajah]

A faint smile curves her lips.

"It is a peculiarity of this weave that you cannot, in fact, use it upon yourself. A protection of sorts, perhaps."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow lifts her hands to scrub her face, then realizes how filthy her hands are and what a disaster her makeup must be already. She lowers them to her knees instead.

"Thank you again. I know I was... compromised, but I was sincere. The Ninth House owes you a debt."

"I should bathe," she says, with an expression of distaste for herself.

[blue_ajah]

"If you will have it so," the Aes Sedai murmurs.

"Go and restore yourself, Lady Ninth. I will be here for some while yet, if you wish to return after, and if not, then I expect I shall see you again at another time."

[we_bring_hell]

She ducks her head in a silent agreement, and drains her glass of water before walking out the door. On the other side is darkness and some cacophonous snoring that is cut off as it closes behind her.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine settles back in her chair and signals a waitrat to bring her some tea, as she considers everything that has just happened.

She does not envy Harrow the situation that the younger woman has found herself in.