Gareth Bryne sat at his desk in his tent, leafing through the reports before him. Despite having stripped off his shirt, it was far too warm to be thinking. Not that he had much choice—the nearer they got to the Andoran border, the more worry there was of resistance from the local lords and ladies.
Behind him, there was a vigorous rustling of the tent flap, and while he turned to look at who had walked into his living space unannounced, he already knew who it would be—only one person had quite the nerve to do that, even among the Aes Sedai in the nearby camp. A pretty, young woman had just entered the tent, her arms loaded down with a basket containing his laundry. Well, at least she looked young, but Gareth knew that she was in reality only a few years younger than himself.
She stared at him, her blue eyes wide and a most peculiar expression upon her face. He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're late."
The woman's head jerked and her bemused expression changed to a scowl. She turned her back on him. "The Amyrlin had more important duties for me this morning than washing your smallclothes, Lord Bryne," she muttered, sitting the basket down beside his trunk.
He watched as she knelt by his trunk and began folding a pile of his shirts, snapping the wrinkles out of each one. He spared a glance down at his own discarded shirt that lay on his pallet, wondering if it had developed any tears from the woman's not so gentle method of folding. "The Amyrlin and the Hall both know you owe me a debt," he replied calmly. "What could be so urgent that they ignored that this morning?"
She sniffed. A breeze ruffled the tent, and he thought he saw her shiver in her thin, but very becoming yellow and blue dress. Gareth would have never assumed she would be the type to find any sort of amusement in silk and lace—indeed, he seemed to recall the Amyrlin Seat as a rather plainly dressed woman, despite the pomp surrounding her office. But he had noted her collection of such seemed to grow with every week she spent in his service. He thought it odd that the woman still often wore some sort of yellow whenever he saw her, which was most days; he was around enough Aes Sedai these days to know they usually wore their Ajah color, and Siuan had returned to the Blue Ajah after her Healing. Well, she did seem especially lovely in yellow: he had even told her that once.
He waited patiently for her to answer, knowing from experience she would rarely miss a chance to deliver a scathing comment, though she seemed to be paying an unusual amount of attention to her duties. The breeze blew into the tent again, causing the tent flap to open and shut a few times, chilling them both. Gareth frowned. Not moments ago he had been sweating over his reports—now goose bumps were rising on his bare arms and shoulders. He grabbed up his shirt from the bed, and put it on, buttoning it quickly against the chill. Was the weather finally turning?
Siuan peered over her shoulder, then turned to face him fully, a half folded shirt still in her hands. "You are told what you need to be told," she said briskly, her hands finishing the folds with a practiced crispness. He had to admit, that for an Aes Sedai, she did quite well with his laundry.
He grimaced. He knew there was plenty they weren't tell him, plenty of things that could easily land his head on a chopping block. Siuan was the only one of them that he even had the illusion of authority over—he often doubted he had any true authority with her, though he couldn't imagine why the woman would stay in his service otherwise. He expected to find a Warder with a bag of gold next to his tent one morning, and Siuan nowhere to be found.
He took a long step closer to her. "What the Hall believes I need to be told, and what I believe I need to be told are two different things," he said curtly. He stared down at her, her staring back challengingly at him as she continued to fold garments without looking at them. She was not a tall woman—while he was not an especially tall man himself, he still towered over her.
She raised a finger, nearly jabbing it into his face. "Don't even think about it," she growled. "I had begun to believe you might have some sense in your head, Gareth Bryne, but if you think I'm going to tell you anymore than what that Hall and the Amyrlin have, you are as much the carp-brained fool as I said you were for following me in the first place."
Irritated, he grabbed her wrist and pulled it down away from his face. He didn't let go, and her eyes widened in shock and not a little indignation. Their master-servant relationship had eventually developed an unspoken rule—they never entered one another's personal space, let alone touched. The few times one of them had violated that rule, it had always led to an awkward pause that exploded into one of their more interesting of conflicts. Yet it seemed they had both violated the first part of that rule, and he was currently blowing the latter part to pieces as he still gripped her wrist. "Need I remind you that you are still under oath to serve me."
She clenched her teeth, a hiss escaping from between them. The anger in her eyes was obvious, but Gareth thought he detected something else—the look of a trapped animal. "I am also under oath to the Amyrlin," she said hotly, raising her other hand in a clenched fist, which held the last few shirts that were yet folded. "Do not ask me to violate one oath to serve the other." There was a note of pleading at the end.
Without thinking, he grabbed her other wrist, so he was holding both of them at his side. The shirts fell to the dusty, earthen floor. "I would do no such thing," he said quietly. She half opened her mouth to speak, but for the first time he could remember, she seemed to find herself speechless.
Their eyes locked, and Gareth found himself lost in the blue eyes that had sent him trekking across hundreds of miles of foreign country side. For the first time, they seemed more frightened and vulnerable than angry, though there was the glassy sheen of hopeful excitement in them too. He was suddenly keenly aware of her pulse racing beneath his fingers as he held her wrists, and how her lips were still parted slightly, as if waiting for a kiss. He thought of how her friend, Leane, had attempted to sway his judgment in their favor all those months ago. Leane might be stunning, and could fog the brains of nearly any man with her Domani wiles, but if he was honest with himself, he found Siuan's blue eyes far more intoxicating than a hundred Domani women.
He considered it. Gareth didn't consider himself an expert on women, but he was no backwater shepherd either. By the look in her eyes, if he were to close the distance between them, if he were to press his lips to her and fold her into his arms, he truly did not think she would spurn him. More than once, he had caught himself thinking about kissing her, and of other things that she would probably hang him by some random piece of fishing equipment for if she ever caught drift that they had entered even his subconscious.
But he wouldn't. Willing or not, Aes Sedai or not, this woman was his servant, and his responsibility. He would not sully his honor by taking advantage of his position, as tenuous as it might be in reality. Gareth had once been in her shoes. No, he had not been a servant, bond by a crime accidently committed—but he had been a soldier, in service to his Queen, bound by an oath as strong as the one by which Siuan was bound to him. He had been willing too, and it all had ended with his life threatened and him in exile. No. If there was to be anything between them, it would be when they were equals, or perhaps with him as her servant. As a boy, he had always wondered what being a Warder would be like—he could certainly fancy the idea as a grown man, especially with this woman as his bond holder.
He dropped her wrist, and leaned over to pick up the few shirts that she had dropped. "See that you launder these again," he said calmly. "And try to not to drop anything else." Her eyes narrowed, her face taking on a mask of rage unlike that which he had seen before.
He turned away. "You…you…" she nearly shrieked. A far cry from the woman he had first met in Caemlyn all those years ago, though this was unlike even the present day Siuan. Her temper was scathing, not ear-piercing. "Bloody man!" She threw the shirts back into the basket, snatched it up—and hurled it straight at him. Gareth barely managed to avoid being knocked unconscious by the heavy wooden basket before it fell with a harmless thud onto his pallet, but still ended up with one of his freshly soiled shirts upon his head.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Siuan stood there, looking stunned at her own behavior, her breathing rapid. He merely gazed back at her, silently waiting for whatever abuse he had earned for his most recent trespass. He was long past the days where he was able to bring himself to punish her.
Without a word, she walked toward him. Gareth stiffened, bracing for a slap as she raised her hand, but she merely ripped the shirt from atop his head and righted the laundry basket and began throwing the soiled shirts back into it. With a final sniff, she left the tent, leaving nothing for him but a harsh, icy wind wafting into his tent.
He sank back into his chair with a sigh, wondering how long this could go on until she finally ended up killing him. He still longed to know—why had she broken her oath? With an uncharacteristic curse, he shoved the papers on his desk aside. He would know: then he would release her. If she stayed even then, then perhaps he could finally let himself entertain the more foolish of his own fantasies.
If he survived that long, at least.