The Grey Tower

Casey overheard the name one morning at the breakfast table, surrounded by other novices, the hall alive with a clamour of voices and a clatter of spoons and bowls. She was devoting all her attention to her hot porridge dotted with little dark berries when she caught a snatch of the conversation next to her. And choked on her porridge. “Dax Torellion?”

The girl beside her brightened. She was golden blonde and sweet as honey. “You’ve met Dax already? He’s dreamy, isn’t he?”

“Dreamy?” Casey sputtered.

“Those eyes. And those muscles! That man is cut from steel.” The girl fanned herself with one hand.

Casey dropped her spoon.

*

Five years ago, Casey had been helping Rylan keep watch over a shipment—a battered old trunk, chained shut with heavy links of iron—in the cellar of an abandoned house in the warehouse district of Tear where nobody could hear you scream.

Night had fallen hours ago. Somehow it felt much inkier inside the bare brick cellar below this wrecked house. The single candle burning between them only made it feel darker. Creepier.

“You know, I’m pretty sure this is the Torellion house,” Rylan said around her cigar. She leaned casually against the brick with her long legs stretched out. “Where all those people were butchered a while back.”

“What?” Casey’s imagination immediately kicked up a notch. The scratches in the bricks became fingernail marks, the dark stains on the floor old blood.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Oh, it’s story time. Let me tell you all about Dax Torellion.”

Despite her better judgement, Casey leaned back, ready for the story.

“The Torellions were a poor family with too many sons. The father was a fisherman who dreamed of the sea—I’m sure you know his type.” Rylan smiled a little, without warmth. “He made a lot of money somehow or other, probably piracy, and he bought this house. It’s not fancy by any means, but compared to cramming such a big family into a one-room dive, it must have seemed like paradise. It’s got rooms. It’s got windows. It’s got light, and fresh air, and space for your children to play. It would have seemed like a fresh start.”

And now it was a ghost house—drenched in cobwebs, the floorboards broken, the stairs too treacherous to even attempt. The candle flickered between them, the darkness alive with movement.

“So this boy, Dax, he was the youngest, or one of the youngest, I forget. Fourteen or fifteen years old. And people will tell you all kinds of reasons why he went bad. That he grew jealous of his brothers for being stronger and older, or the Dark One spoke to him in his dreams, or he had some touch of the Power that made him mad. Maybe it was just one of those families where the strong torture the weak. The youngest always gets it worst. Anyway, one night Dax had had enough. He got out of bed and cracked open his door and crept down the stairs, making them creak just a bit beneath his—”

The trunk jumped at their feet. The chain rattled. Something had thumped against it from inside.

Casey almost yelped. Her heart pounded in her chest, her dagger out before she even thought about it, her fist clenched tight around the hilt.

Rylan rolled her eyes, not even bothering to move. “Relax. You’re so jumpy.”

“What’s in the trunk?”

The trunk shuddered with another impact. Muffled words came from inside. Rylan kicked it none too gently. “Settle down in there. It’s going to be a long night.”

More impacts rattled the iron chains. Rylan kicked it harder. It went quiet.

Casey took deep breaths. She hadn’t known there was a person in there. They must be just waking up, because they had been dead silent all this time. “Why the hell is there a person in the trunk?”

“Eh. Business. You know how it is.” Rylan shrugged. “Anyway, this Dax kid is creeping down the stairs into that little kitchen up there, and he looks around for weapons. But the knives in the block aren’t enough for him. They’re too quick, too simple. He wants something a little more… creative. So he reaches up to the ceiling and takes down this hook. The type you use to hang a side of beef.”

Casey’s shoulders pressed against the brick wall behind her as her spine attempted to crawl free. Suddenly she didn’t want to hear any more of this story. The more Rylan talked in the near darkness, the more it felt like the stairs were creaking, the floorboards moving overhead, the whole house coming alive with ghosts.

“He kills his three oldest brothers,” Rylan went on. “One after another. Ripping the hook through their throats before they can even wake up. His hand over their mouths to stop them screaming as their blood goes everywhere. You know arterial spray, it’s a messy business.”

The trunk shuddered again. It sounded like a girl inside, begging for something. Water, maybe.

“Who’s… who’s in the trunk?” Casey’s voice came out a croak.

“Focus, girl.” Rylan waved that away. “He does his father next. I hear the father gets the hook in his throat and then Dax hangs him from the upper stairs, leaving him to dance and jerk on the hook. And that’s when Dax comes down the stairs. All the way down. Until he gets to the trap door that leads down into the cellar.”

In that same cellar, Casey froze.

“He flips up the trap door. And starts down the stairs. It’s so silent down there. Cobwebs clinging to the bare bricks. No sound but a girl’s breathing. And her bare feet scraping on the packed earth as she pushes herself back from him. Dax comes down the final step with the blood still dripping off him… and he says… ‘Kid, you are so flaming gullible.’”

Casey sat bolt upright.

Rylan cracked up laughing.

Casey flushed with hot embarrassment, feeling about an inch tall. She could only stammer for words. Rylan was laughing so hard she couldn’t even talk; it took her a moment to recover, still chuckling. “You’re so easy, it’s not even a challenge. A hook? Really?”

Casey seethed. And even though Rylan had clearly made all that up, for some stupid reason, Casey still felt the need to wrap her arms around herself as the night dragged on in that brick cellar beneath the wrecked house that apparently had not been the site of a massacre, but certainly felt like it.

*

But Rylan had not invented Dax Torellion after all.

And he was right here.

*

Now, back in the breakfast hall, Casey licked her dry lips, took a gulp of water, then put her cup down on the table before her hand could start to tremble. “He sounds, uh… special. Where can I find him? If I want to, um, watch him work out? Shirtless?” Or if she wanted to stay the hell away from him.

The blonde novice must have been waiting for that, because she started telling Casey all about Dax—she said his name with a laugh, like this was an innocent crush—the classes he liked to teach, what chores to get assigned to be near him, what times to catch him. Also that his jaw was chiselled and his abs lickable and his muscles bulged when he crossed his arms. And as for his—

“That’s really great.” Casey cut her off hastily. “But I have to go… do… something. Somewhere else.” And she fled the hall, even though the porridge was still hot and she’d barely gotten to taste it.

She went straight to the nearest quiet place, a laundry room with shelves stacked high with fresh sheets and pillow cases that gave off a scent of lavender. She slipped inside. Shut the door. Leaned against it. And took several deep breaths until her pulse slowed and her adrenaline cooled enough that she could think.

She had always known this mission would be dangerous. She was infiltrating a whole citadel prowled by cloaked murderers and superpowered abominations. But this hit too close to home. It took her back to being thirteen in a bare brick cellar with Rylan telling her ghost stories. And the Tower felt more threatening than ever.

Did nobody here know about the murders? Did they all think Dax was dreamy, like that idiot novice?

What happened if Dax found out Casey knew the truth? Did she get the hook, like his family? If she told somebody, would they even believe her?

Dax would surely cut her throat to stop her talking. Maybe he wouldn’t even stop there. Dax had murdered three of his own brothers: Casey had three little sisters of her own, all the way down to five-year-old Beckan. And the mere thought that anything could happen to little Beckan, the baby of the family, who still liked to cuddle in her arms, made Casey’s chest tight with anxiety.

She needed to get her sisters out of here. But Lia was stuck at the stupid Farm, whatever that even was. And Casey couldn’t leave without her. So Casey was trapped in close quarters with a psychopath.

She paced the laundry room until her hands fisted tight in an effort to hold in her panic. But she couldn’t run. She had to be a soldier now. For her sisters.

And that was when inspiration finally struck.

Casey had a plan.

*

This is a little risky, isn’t it? her imaginary Rylan asked.

Head down in the blazing sunlight, Casey swept the twigs and leaves off the path that led through the Yards, a chore she’d volunteered for just as that fool novice had suggested. As she methodically worked her way down the path with her broom, she kept half her attention on Dax Torellion as he taught some class or other involving spectacular throws and arm bars. The girl had been right, Dax was handsome, if murderers were your style. Black hair, blue eyes, a dazzling flash of a smile. Casey’s heart even fluttered faster—just not with romantic feelings. With the certainty that he was about to carve out her spleen.

The hot sun beat down on her bent head. Casey paused to wipe the sweat off her brow. Escaped curls kept sticking to her forehead, her temples; she had to yank the tie out of her dark hair and pull it back in a knot all over again, trying to straighten it with her fingers. Her palms stung from the roughness of the wooden broom. I have an insurance strategy in place if he tries to kill me, Casey said. I’m not a complete idiot.

Much good that will do you once your corpse is dumped in a river. Minus its tongue.

True. But at least her insurance strategy should kick in before Dax could murder all her little sisters too. Plus, it would really ruin his day.

Are you really going to ask a complete monster to take you somewhere nice and private where nobody can hear you scream? Rylan asked.

Yes. In a nutshell.

Well, it’s your funeral. Just watch out for hooks.

Casey almost smiled at that. And not in a friendly way. Because as yet another student hit the packed dirt with a thump, leaving them gasping for air in a puff of dust, it was quite clear that Dax didn’t need a hook any more. If he ever had.

She waited and swept, waited and swept. Until the class ended, everyone scattered, and only Dax stayed to finish up whatever he was doing. In this peaceful corner of the Yards where the birds twittered in the trees and nobody else had come by in at least an hour.

And that was when Casey dropped the mask.

Leaving the broom propped against the wall, she straightened up, finally letting go all that novice shyness, everything she used to make herself tiny and unthreatening. She even stretched, flexing her tight muscles, getting back that last inch of height she always hid by making herself so small. In that moment she remembered being Nadia Marcos, criminal enforcer.

Casey walked right up to the psychopath like she was in charge.

“I’m Casey Frey. And I’d like to do business. In private.”

Dax

The sword belt raised Casey’s eyebrows. Dax clearly didn’t need it to deal with some nobody novice. Maybe the sword was just far too fancy and expensive to leave lying around in the dust. Or maybe the first time she miscalculated that blade would go clean through her. She imagined it would feel cold.

Still eyeing it, she followed Dax into a green space alive with trees. One quick glance told her everything she needed to know—lush grass, even footing save for the tree roots that would trip her up, and a clear view between the tree trunks. They would see and hear anyone approaching long before the newcomer reached them. Good for privacy. And less creepy than the serial killer lair she’d been imagining.

Of course, it also made it trivially simple for Dax to snap her spine without anyone finding out. No doubt he could find a way to dispose of her body—stuff her corpse in a barrel, bury the barrel deep in the earth. That was an old favourite in the Maule. Sometimes the victim went in the barrel alive.

If that was his plan, there was absolutely nothing Casey could do to stop him. He was bigger, heavier, stronger and now pointedly cleaning his fingernails with a dagger. She would never win that fight.

And that was why Casey had spent last night scribbling on a lot of little bits of paper. Because her best defence against him was to stop him dead before he ever even touched her.

Her survival now absolutely depended on putting on a show of confidence. Predators reacted to fear. So Casey sat carelessly against the tree opposite Dax, not bothering to keep her distance. He could murder her before she could get clear anyway. “I pried all right. But it didn’t take as much work as you might think. I grew up in the same streets you once did, and I was raised on ghost stories. Stories about a little house with a red roof, and a father who made his money dishonestly, and a family with too many sons. Stories about a boy who murdered half his family in the night. And that man wouldn’t change over the years, Dax. Even if he put on the fancloak.”

Dax drew in on himself, becoming very still. His eyes became cold. He stopped paring his fingernails.

Congratulations! Rylan said. You just talked yourself into a barrel.

Casey licked her dry lips. Her spine had begun to crawl. She knew the moods of the sea well enough to recognise the exact moment it began to darken, the waves starting to swell. And the storm that seethed on the horizon this time could drown her.

She had considered and discarded many different approaches for this meeting—threats, lies, flattery—and finally settled on the truth. Which would be the conversational equivalent of a shovel to the face.

“Dax. Can I call you Dax?” Casey didn’t wait for permission, just like Rylan with her foreign cigars. “Let me be straight with you. Personally, I don’t care what you’ve done. I’m sure you had an excellent reason for apparently butchering half your family. I admit, it concerns me a little that you’re sauntering around Hama Valon like you own the place after leaving that many corpses behind in Tear. I assume nobody here knows about what happened.” Casey met his eyes right there to drive her point home. “I did think about what might happen to you if I started repeating all those ghost stories I grew up hearing. If everyone in the Tower found out about that little house, and the sons, and the murders. But who’d believe me? You have rank and standing here. I’m nothing. You have an Aes Sedai; I have nobody. And besides, a murderer is a useful friend. So here I am, meeting with you all alone, in private, at your mercy. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

I hope you like barrels, Rylan said.

Getting stuffed in a barrel and buried deep in the earth would be a bad way to go. And if she thought about that too hard—the stifling darkness, the barrel walls closing in, the tons of earth above her head—she would lose her courage. She would beg Dax for forgiveness. She would swear to never bother him again if only he would spare her the barrel.

But Casey locked that down. She was a Mask. She had been chosen for this work—terrifying and exhilarating, the ultimate test of her wit and skill—as a scrap of a girl five years ago. And the truth was, deep down inside, part of her had missed it. Even craved it.

Game on.

“I’m sure you’re thinking about killing me. You’re not going to do that. Not because you couldn’t murder me in fifteen different ways before I could ever scream for help, but because I prepared for this. I wrote a lot of notes, Dax. Dozens and dozens. All about these ghost stories we like to tell in the Maule. And all about what I’m afraid you’ll do to me if I confront you. And I hid them all around the Tower in so many places you’ll never be sure you’ve found them all. Nobody will believe these notes… unless anything happens to me. You might think you can risk it—that your word is good here and mine isn’t—but I suspect that while you may have friends here in the Tower, a man like you also has enemies. Just something to think about.”

Even as she imagined every way Dax might punish her for this, her voice remained so steady, so calm, it gave her some distant surprise. She sounded like a stranger. She sounded like Rylan.

“But that’s just for my own protection. I’m really not interested in messing up your operation here at the Tower. In fact, I want in. I have needs, Dax. Important needs. I need regular access to Hama Valon. I need somebody to train me in private. And I’ll have other needs in due time. This isn’t blackmail—I’m not forcing you to do anything. I can walk away right now, and unless I mysteriously fall down some stairs onto a dagger, nobody will be any worse off. But I have a lot more to offer you than just silence. I’m willing to repay you with discreet service. I specialise in operating in cities. I can lie, cheat, steal, follow. And I’m not too bad with a dagger close up. The fact I’m even here should prove my usefulness—I can’t imagine too many people know you’re a murderous psychopath and aren’t fazed.”

Casey leaned back against the tree trunk, crossing one leg over another with apparent confidence, even as her heart hammered against her ribs.

“So, friends?”

Casey tensed when Dax put his dagger away. Nothing good ever came of people ominously stopping what they were doing. That dagger was only getting sheathed because something worse was about to happen—this isolated spot was the perfect place for it. And Casey had played her only card. She had no surprises left to spring, nothing to help her get out of this alive. So if this was how she went out—she was about to find out what kind of person she really was.

Did she try to bargain with him? Even beg for her life?

Or did she go out on her feet like a soldier?

But fortunately for her continued survival, it turned out Dax was a talker too. And apparently he was very smart and she was very dumb. Casey had to work hard not to smile. Dax still thought she was a “twit”, after she’d ensured that he had every incentive to keep her alive—not just not to kill her personally, but to prevent anything happening to her—because even if she really did fall down the stairs by accident, suspicion would still fall on him.

She didn’t challenge him. That was her, a little twit of a girl, not worth noticing. “You don’t want to be friends? That hurts my feelings. I thought you were going to be my evil mentor and pass on your murder tips.”

One favour. Casey had basically offered to do whatever he wanted anyway, so that was a far better deal than she’d expected. For a moment she debated whether to put limits on her favour—anyone she wouldn’t harm, anything she wouldn’t do. But truthfully, there was no sin she wouldn’t commit. So if he ordered her to murder someone… or worse… that was just too bad for the target.

Casey shook his hand without flinching. This was far from the first time she’d pretended to be civil to someone who made her skin crawl. “Your roguish charm has won me over. Do we sign a contract in the blood of innocents, or is a handshake good enough?”

Casey sputtered out grass.

In that first moment of blank shock after the impact, she was—

—seventeen again and a rival Mask had hit her in the head with a full bottle of wine; she was fifteen and a city guard had backhanded her to the cobbles with a mailed fist; she was thirteen and Rylan had put her in the mud with a single punch; she was five years old, cowering in the rushes that covered the wooden floorboards, her whole body flinching back from the next kick. If she made even the tiniest sound, her baby sister would wake and cry. She had to be small and quiet like a little mouse. Just curl up tight and wait for it to—

—end.

Blood and ashes. Enough. Casey rolled over in the cool grass with her jaw set. Her shoulder throbbed, her back ached. The taste of grass lingered on her tongue. The world still spun, and not because of the fall. Dax hadn’t even thrown her that hard. She would have a bruise or two, nothing more.

This was drearily familiar. She had faced that sudden burst of violence so many times she expected it from everyone. It was meant to put her in her place—which apparently was face down in the grass with her arm twisted up and his knee in her back. It was meant to let her know she was defenceless against him.

Casey almost laughed. This man had slaughtered half his family in their sleep. She had known from the start that he could murder her in whatever creepy ritual way he liked and she couldn’t do anything about it. That was the only reason she had even bothered with such elaborate precautions—because she already feared him. So why had he bothered? Maybe it was just to heighten the suspense, sharpen her fear. Psychopaths liked that.

She ignored his outstretched hand. Obviously. He would only offer his hand so he could flatten her again. She pulled herself creakily to her feet, the bruises twinging where Sabine had gone after her with that jewelled dagger not long ago. “I sure hope what you’re about to teach me doesn’t rely on having size and muscle over an opponent, because I think I’m stuck being little.”

All right, then. Casey dusted off her novice whites, now stained with grass. This was going to end up with Dax breaking all her bones one by one just for fun. And the fact that Yellows could apparently Heal injuries would be little comfort if he snapped her spine and left her paralysed in the grass. But she’d never expected to walk away unscathed, so she might as well learn something in the meantime.

“I was taught an ambush style, making use of tight spaces, concealed weapons, and surprise attacks. I wouldn’t last two seconds toe to toe against someone bigger than me. So I ambush. Want me to demonstrate?” When Dax nodded, Casey put on her biggest smile, covering her approach with a flow of words as she went for a friendly hand grip. “Dax! It’s so great to see you again. How about that party last night? That was great, right? I hardly remember it. I hear if you can remember a good party, you weren’t really—”

Casey twisted his hand, locking the wrist, then slammed her other hand against the back of his upper arm, increasing her leverage on his elbow joint. With sufficient force, she might be able to lock his shoulder as well. Her foot stamped down toward the back of his knees aiming to take him to the grass.

“Mid-sentence is the best time to make a move, I’ve found.” Casey let go of him rather too hastily and took a long stride back. Then another. Smooth. She blew an escaped curl off her hot forehead. “Another move I like is to bring them their drink in a tavern like a meek little serving girl. Eyes down, small and harmless. Nobody ever notices me. And while they’re drinking with their buddies, I smash the mug in their face”—she pretended to shatter it against Dax’s jaw, breaking the thin mug into shards and hopefully blinding him for a few precious seconds—“and that’s when I knock their teeth out.” Both hands went for a firm grip on the back of his skull and she mimed putting her knee as far through his face as she could. “The bone crunches pretty hard. Easier when they’re sitting down. Otherwise I can’t drag them down far enough.”

Once again, she had to take several steps back before the prickle down her spine eased. Casey rubbed her jaw, thinking back to fights past. “Sometimes I get the ones who can’t stop staring down the front of my dress, so that’s when I…” Her words stopped. Every instinct rebelled against even pretending to cosy up to Dax and whisper in his ear. The elbow smash to the throat worked pretty well on an idiot who thought he was about to get kissed, but her skin crawled at the thought of getting that close to Dax. “Well, usually it hurts. But I have to make the first hit count so I can follow up with a dagger in the throat, because ending up in a close-quarters fist fight will not end well for me.”

After all, she was a little mouse girl. And she would never be able to announce to her enemies that she didn’t fight fair, because she needed every bit of surprise she could scrape together just to survive.

Casey gave a shrug. “That’s all I’ve got. If the target is big, the space is open, and the surprise factor is gone, the fight is over before it even starts. I’ve lost.” Just like facing Dax in this wide green grass. And there was nothing she could ever do to stop Dax kicking her while she was curled up on the floorboards.

So she just had to curl up tight and wait for it to end.

OOC: You have plenty here for a point in Unarmed and half of the Dirty Fighting Mastery, so I think we can probably wrap up and start a new thread for another point if you like. Time skip or something so we can do something more interesting than the basics, maybe?

I apologize for the short-ish post, but I’m hoping the Daxish humor makes up for it.

OOC: Sounds great! Thanks a ton for the fun thread! <3

Casey almost choked. Not just because Dax might be murdering children in Hama Valon for fun. The school part was a joke—it was hardly practical to sweep through a whole school in one go—but an intelligent predator could easily pick off the locals one at a time over months and years. And the fact Dax felt confident enough to joke only spooked Casey more. Because he could not possibly have warned her more clearly: he only planned to keep her alive until this favour he had in mind.

She should leave Hama Valon. Right now. She would never be allowed to stay here alive. Her only defence when she’d first come here had been her insignificance; there was no particular reason to target one no-name novice rather than another. Now even that defence was gone. But she faced the same problem as always—she couldn’t leave without Lia. Especially since Dax might find out they were family, and who knew how he might amuse himself with her thirteen-year-old sister.

No. If she wanted to protect herself and her little sisters, she had to somehow kill Dax before the end of this favour.

So both of them were just biding their time now. Waiting on this mysterious favour.

Well, then. Somebody’s days were numbered. “Sorry, Dax. I just can’t relax around you because of my repressed attraction to you. I might throw myself at you and that would be embarrassing. But I’ll need to work on that if we’re going to be murder friends.” Casey flashed her biggest smile. “You have fun with that school full of children. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pretended to shoot him with her finger arrow before she sauntered off.

To scheme.