Water poured out of Mave’s throat as she sucked in air in deep ragged gaps. Her throat felt as though it had been garotted with wire and she was having trouble making her limbs respond to her commands. Somewhere, along way down the list was the fact that she was naked and soaked. 

“G...gahh….” she managed as she pushed herself up onto all fours, dark hair hanging lankly over her face before he reached forwrd and brushed it out of the way. She reached out and embraced Saidar, the flow of power and serenity calming her. She could suddenly feel every impresion of the killers fingers on her throat, and could trace every droplet of water on her body.

“Gray man,” she managed, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her torso to provide some vestige of modesty. Ali seemed too focused on the corpse to notice her brief nudity.

“Sh...shadowspawn?” Ali asked, though if he had heard of graymen or if he was just guessing Mave couldn’t tell. She nodded and picked up the dagger the man had carried. It was warm to the touch, greasy and unpleasant in some fashion she couldn’t quite define. Even now her eyes tried to slide away from the body, though the temptation was not nearly so strong now that life had left it. He seemed an ordinary looking man, a little older than middle age, unremarkable in every fashion.

“Do everything be alright in there young lady?” came a call in a thick Illianer accent. Mave and Ali both froze for a moment uncertain of how to proceed.

“Are you alright?” came the voice after another moment.

“I’m fine,” Mave called back, rather more hoarsely than she would have liked, “Just slipped while I was getting out of the tub, i'll be out in a moment.” That was, apparently enough to satisfy the proprieter whose departure was marked with heavy footfalls.

“What should we do with… with the bo… him,” Ali asked. Mave looked around.

“Stand back,” she instructed Ali before laying the dagger on the corpses chest. Reaching out she wrapped the corpse in flows of air and then poured fire into it. Mave squeezed her eyes shut and gave it everything she had, the air containing the fire so that the corpse blazed bright for a few moments before nothing remained but ash. She loosened her weave and a stream of hot ash blew out the window leaving a few drops of cooling metal on the tile floor from the melted dagger. 

Had the gray man been looking for Ali and struck at her as a target of oppurtunity? Had it been hunting her? Was it merely preying on anyone who might be Aes Sedai.

“We should get out of here,” he managed before pausing, “And thank you Ali, for my life.” She leaned close to the distraught youth and kissed him briefly on the cheek.