o-o-o-o
They make an odd little group, the four of them jockeying for honours at the top of their class. All that really pulls them together in the beginning is their scholarship; all their differences mean nothing against their thirst for knowledge. They are the future, they are hope, they are inspiration.
And this is how they fit:
Ozorne brings ambition and an ever present spotlight. He meets a real challenge for the first time in his life. He learns friendship.
Tristan is the innovator, skilled at practical application. His companions temper him and provide him a sense of purpose which he follows with unswerving loyalty.
Varice is their public face; the rational one who talks them down from their stupider ideas and makes them remember there is a world outside their crazy, self-important lunacy. She is mother, lover, friend – the glue that holds them together. And in return she keeps company with the most important men in Carthak. (Arram never understands when she explains how this is not an unfair tradeoff.)
And as for Arram? He knows himself to be the most intuitively brilliant of the group, but also to be the most hopelessly lost in an academic fog. His friends focus him and channel his energy so that for once in his life, he has direction.
Soon, there is no one left in Carthak to match them, and they grow arrogant.
How could they not?
o-o-o-o
Later, much later, the four are friends no longer, but colleagues, ex-lovers, bitter enemies, fugitives. Arram – although these days he goes by a name of his own choosing – makes the acquaintance of a young girl who is both like him and not like him. He thinks that maybe, though, they are similar enough that he will be able to help her.
In time, if she wants it, he can teach her how to control her not inconsiderable power, but for now, the best thing he can do is to tease her gently and remind her of her humanity.