Ripple Four: Seekings: Ink
written by Aynaiss Cuelaen-Walker and Firredal Osiellin

The scent in her nose was strong near the site of Luantar's hanging, acrid and sour in the back of her throat. The Gaidar's head was held high, her nose to the air to catch the trail. Her dark gold hair flickered in the mix of shadow and sun as she paced around the small plaza, darting between people as she drew her fancloak close. Like an animal, she snorted out in irritation and lowered her head to rid her nose of the smell of violence before she began again. Her green eyes gleamed with mixed emotions of duty, anger and worry as she looked up at the swinging body.

Aynaiss had rushed Angel back to Jerid, almost collapsing with worry, her nerves a buzz around her. Recollected now, she stood, almost invisible to all that tried to catch her figure. Orders had come, and she was now out with her duty to find what and what had caused it to happen. Her face deep in the hood frowned fiercely before she loped off into the crowd, following the tangy cloud.

The field of where Luantar had been hanged was small, the violent smell seeming to only be close to his body. No trails led out around him, so the young man must have been hanged from the roof. Aynaiss made a last check before striding inside the Tower and scaling the stone steps up and up towards the top.

Her heart beat with excitement but not of the joyful kind as she climbed the Tower stairs. She passed a few recruits of the Tower and eyed each coolly with a traditional warder's gaze. Every one of them could have had a hand in this murder. How am I to decipher which of those are in on this? Eyes for the Black Ajah? She twitched her fingers at the thought of an ajah of the Shadow actually conceived in the Tower.

She came to the roof in little time, the wind and sun bearing down on her for a moment as she emerged up into it. Aynaiss walked across the tops of the Tower, a mixture of odd slants, tile, stone and tarred thatch. With a few moments of searching, she found the place where Luantar had been hanged. She searched the area a moment before gazing out a the crowd below, the feelings within her hard. Light?how did this come to pass? Green eyes looked at the large tiles decorating this part of the Tower, touching the pads of her fingers to the cold ceramic. His fate was decided here.

Her nose drew in the smell, and she rolled it over in her mouth. It seemed different. Not that she had smelled much kinds of violence in her life, but it seemed?subdued, if one could ever call brutality that. Her hair whipped around and her hood fell, but she kept still, tasting the air and thinking over things in her mind. She sank into a thoughtful reverie for several moments. When her eyes cleared, they focused on a patch of dried blood a little ways from the edge of the roof. She walked over and squatted over the blood, observing the way it was all centered in a large portion, neither marred by dragging or pulling.

Aynaiss's eyes caught on something to the side, a dark splotch of something that could be mistaken for blood. She moved over there and tentatively put her forefinger to it and drew it back. The feel was different and the color was dark, dark enough to be black. A thought clicked in her head. Ink.

Firredal moved slowly around the perimeter of the classroom which had recently held Luantar's body. There was blood on the wall - never a good sign - but no sign of the drin'far'ji, Wensa. Quietly, Firredal cursed to himself. I will find him. Alive or dead, I will find him. Straightening, he moved back towards the door.

So. Whatever was done with Wensa, he is not in this room. There are only so many ways to remove a man from guard duty. Depending on his or her talents, a channeler could have removed him, or even killed him and destroyed the body... but a channeler would not have left that bit of blood on the wall. He could have been lured from his post, but it would have to be a very convincing distraction... and that also wouldn't leave blood on the wall.

He checked his blades with a free hand, the movement automatic. That means someone attacked him here, and then took him away. Even for two men working with a stretcher, a body is not easy to transport. Such a thing would be slow, and very visible, and even in an area like this, there must have been servants or someone to see. His best course would be to find the servants, find out who had been in this area, and question them. Failing that, he could ask among the warders and trainees; someone carrying another man or a large, unwieldy bundle would be remembered.

Wind whispered into her ear as a sliver of air trailed up her spine companied by a shiver. Aynaiss whipped her head around, looking at the clear sunny sky, almost an infinite sea of blue; light puffs of white drifted across the sky's air currents. Her eyes unfocused again as they had before, her mind drifting as to why ink would be there. Perhaps Luantar had been working on a paper for class? Up on the roof??no. He was attacked and an ink bottle had broken or was unstoppered and leaked? No, there would have had to been shards or larger amount of ink spilled? Then what does it have to do with Luantar?

Aynaiss breathed out the smell of violence from her nose as she stood and made another reconnaissance of the rooftops. Her eyes almost missed it completely, but she spotted a quill that was bloodied. She examined the quill in her hands gently as she turned it over upon itself again and again. Luantar's quill? It must be his? Aynaiss noted the bloody fingerprints on the end of the quill before it was stained with ink whereupon it had been dipped into it. A letter?ink and a quill. Now because there are bloody finger prints on the writing quill?so that shows that he must have written something after he was injured and before he was killed. Or was he even killed at all, I wonder??If had the time to write a letter after he was injured, it must mean that he was hiding?up here on the rooftop...

Aynaiss severely paced the top of the Tower doing this, making odd gestures to herself while thinking. It wasn't until something called her name that, breaking from her train of thought, that she noticed she had been conversion out loud with herself.

Firredal paused on the edge of the barracks roof, looking down. He had no particular fear of heights, but the sudden and powerful gusts of wind were enough to shiver his blood no matter how calm he appeared. Can I trust her?

Antar had identified the main conspirators, but Firredal saw no reason to believe that they were the only ones involved. Still, as a full Gaidar, Aynaiss seemed less of a risk than most... and she was involved in the investigation already. Not to mention that you've fought together, and known each other, he told himself. Besides, I have to trust someone, and her Talent could be invaluable. Raising his voice to be heard over the wind, he called her name and waited until she looked around. Tensions were still too high for him to simply walk up to her; if he surprised her, the results might be unpleasant.

When he was certain she had seen him, he began a cautious approach, wary of the wind and the nearness of the roof's edge. "Hello," he said, when he was close enough to speak without shouting. "Did you find anything interesting?"

Aynaiss turned to find Firredal, the one who had called her name, come out into the sun and wind which equally beat down on him. She waved over to her once time battle partner and encouraged him to walk over to her. Can I trust him? You must, or what is there to do? ...Yes I must. Distrust should be left for nobles and paranoid wanderers... but still, I will have to be more careful if I am to be a true warder... She gave a smile, warm enough as she could with the wind burning her face and the temper of the Warder Yards after the murder.

Aynaiss wiped a strand of gold from her face and strided toward the Gaidin. "Yes, I have found some interesting evidence." With careful fingers she procured the blood stained quill and pointed out the ink. "The ink and quill show that someone must have written a letter ... and after they were wounded because of the finger marks in blood on the tip." She gestured to the ink stain on the roof. "See how it is neatly puddled? It seems as if it was randomly dripped, not as if a stoppered bottle leaked or whatnot." She crouched over again to bear herself against the wind, using her cloak as a shield. "The smells up here from my Talent are odd too, Firredal. They are...contained if you could call violence that...but it is. This makes me think--" the wind drowned her out, so she repeated herself again, "This makes me believe that Luantar was hiding up here and wrote a letter. And the sub-mystery here is...where is the letter and who took it." She stood silent for a moment, letting the wind wail as she left the other Warder to digest her speculations and findings.

Firredal nodded to himself. The conclusions made sense, but he still felt the need to assemble them into some kind of order. "So," he said carefully, "Luantar is wounded. He hides up here and writes a letter. Then he either hangs himself, or someone else hangs him." Where is the letter, then? Oh... "So that was why they were so eager to get to the body," he said. "They thought the letter was with the body. Maybe it was." He glanced around the roof, but only briefly. With this much wind, a letter left here could have blown anywhere.

He stopped, then, oblivious to the wind, forcing himself to see through the enemy's eyes, as his Mother had taught him to do long ago. "So... They hear that the body has been found, and taken down. While we are assembling the Executive Council, they remove the drin who was guarding the body, so they can search it. If the letter was on the body, then they have it now." He shook his head. "That probably means that Luantar hung himself; if someone else had done it, they could have searched him first."

He sighed. "Can I borrow your help?" he asked Aynaiss. "I'm trying to locate Wensa, the drin who was guarding the body. Unfortunately, no one seems to have seen or heard anything, and there weren't any servants in the area at the time. I'd wager that some sort of violence was done in the room where the body was kept."

Aynaiss nodded and talked over the wind. "You mean that none know where Luantar's bodyguard is? ...then yes, I will help." Aynaiss paused for a moment and rubbed her fingers that had touched the ink together . "Do you have any possible thoughts on where Wensa's body might be? Any leads?"

"I hope - though I don't really expect - that he is alive. When Luantar's body was removed from the wall, it was placed in a fairly isolated room and one of the drin was sent to guard it. When Caden and Saphire came to look at it - I happened to be with them - the body was still there, but the drin had disappeared." Firredal shook his head. "Let me take you to that room. I have no idea where Wensa may be, but whatever happened, it occurred there."

As they started back across the roof, he added: "There were no witnesses, and it was not an area that normally has a lot of people in it."

Aynaiss nodded as he told her of Wensa and how he was missing from where he had watched Luantar's body. She followed Firredal, blowing the sour smell out of her nose for a moment. She was afraid that all she would smell in the Tower for who knew how long, was death and violence. "Yes, that sounds like a good plan, Firredal, I might be able to track down where the Drin went and perhaps what happened to him." She tucked wind touseled hair behind her ear before giving the other Warder the motion to lead on.

Firredal nodded and led the way off the rooftop. A certain amount of caution seemed warranted, but they were not going to get down side by side, and if Aynaiss did want to get rid of him there easier, less obvious ways.

The hallway and its classroom were still deserted, most of the wing empty. He doubted that it was common knowledge where the body had been brought, and the few who knew were mostly busy elsewhere.

"The body was kept over here." His voice was more brusque than he had intended, but the tension of the morning had was inescapable. "Wensa would have been standing by the door, but I'd bet that splash of blood on the wall is his." His eyes lingered on the blood, though he knew he should be watching Aynaiss.

When he finally turned to look at her, though, he saw no hint of threat in her expression or her stance. They had fought together; now they would search together. And if she wanted to be rid of me, she had her chance. I can trust her.

Aynaiss followed her fellow Warder quietly, feeling the pressure of the Warder atomosphere, now gloomy with a misty air of forbodence. She entered the classroom and quickly took note of the blood splattered against the wall. Just as Firredal confirmed her thoughts, it was Wensa's. Her nose tweeked with the smell of blood and violence as it guided her over to the backdrop of red.

She placed her eyes on Firredal, walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Don't worry, Firredal. Wensa did his duty and he was an excellent student, a student that all should have looked up to. If he is dead, we will mourn his passing greatly and know that he died honorably at the hands of a cowardly rat. We will find the stained hand and give Wensa his justice." She gave a small smile of warmth to the Gaidin, although it was hard to smile near a large smattering of blood.

Something caught Aynaiss's nose, something other than violence. It had tang to it, but it was hard to catch because the wind had begun to blow. She heard echoing of...steel. Her heart stopped and she removed her hand from Firredal and placed it on her sword. "Fire," she whispered before sprinting toward the sound of yells and the smell of smoke.

Firredal ran at her heels. The shorter of his two swords was in his hand; he had no idea when he had drawn it. Practice, practice, practice... He did his best to keep the pace, though Aynaiss was faster than he was.

Return to "Seekings"

Chapter Two: The Martyr's Letter
~Ripple One: All But Pride Mended
~Ripple Two: Serpent in Shawl
~Ripple Three: A Shadow in a Black Robe
~Ripple Four: Seekings
~Ripple Five: The Twin Archers
~Ripple Six: Aftermath
~The Final Ripple

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