Amela*^ struggled with the weight of her cart as she trudged from the infirmary and down the many well-trodden servant corridors that led to the bowels of the White Tower. The other girl tasked with overnight cleaning must have been reassigned by Amico. The young Arafellin Yellow did not scare Amela, precisely—as well to fear the rain pelting the grounds below in steady sheets, for the rain paid as much mind to Amela as Amico did.
But even so, one did not linger in the rain without good reason.
Amela hastened her step as she continued her descent. The last year swirled in her mind’s eye like a sandstorm; when she’d traveled to Tar Valon at the Prophet’s behest, she never thought to experience such intrigue. But she’d been duteous in cataloguing the whispers she overheard in the infirmary, in piecing together rumors like strings of pearls on those days she was assigned to attend either Romanda or Corele.
A stifled groan escaped her cart as Amela nearly missed a sharp turn in the darkened passageway and collided with the opposing wall.
“Be quiet, or else it’s both our hides!” she hissed into the cart.
But only silence answered her as she continued her journey into the night.
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Light, but he must be as lucky as his sister always claimed if he could escape the White Tower and the scheming Aes Sedai. Of course, Adran was no storybook hero, he thought to himself. Afterall, he doubted any of Jain Farstrider’s harrowing escapes involved a bin of dirty laundry.
Adran could still feel the fetid prickling of pus and worse in his nostrils from his time spent concealed in the laundress cart. He must be imagining things—always with his head in the clouds or nose in a book, his mother would often lament—for he’d scrubbed himself balder and redder than an eagle upon securing accommodations at the inn in Alindaer.
Now to wait for his unnamed companion. Adran could hardly believe his own audacity, how easily he’d found a sympathetic washerwoman to see his missive to the coop and its destination beyond the White Tower. Maybe he was a storybook hero . . . only this must be the beginning of the story.
Adran looked around the Meager Beaver common room and the many knotty wooden tables and otherwise shabby appointments that adorned the place—certainly not the finest inn inside the little satellite village outside Tar Valon, but likely the one to escape an Aes Sedai’s scrutiny. Or maybe that’s what they wanted you to think.
Adran shifted uncomfortably on the unforgiving wooden pew upon which he rested. His hand drifted to the worn copy of the Karaethon Cycle in his breast pocket. Did it provide him a measure of solace? Perhaps. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it would any such young man as him who wondered about this hard life. This hard world.
Adran withdrew the slim pamphlet and flipped to a favorite passage, indicated so by the lines that underscored it beneath the text: O ye, people of the world. Weep for your salvation.
His own eyes began to fill with tears as he studied his annotations in the margin. What did it mean that—
A cloaked figure threw open the door to the Meager Beaver and strode into the common room; Adran might have even remained absorbed in study had the figure not headed directly for his table.
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*Old Tongue for ‘friend.’
^This servant has been identified herein only by her known alias.