Casey Frey
| Casey Frey | |
|---|---|
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| KAY-see FRAY | |
| Created by | Austin |
| Portrayed by | Sharbat Gula |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Novice |
| Affiliation | The Grey Tower |
| Relatives |
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| Nationality | Tairen |
Casey Frey (born Nadia Marcos) is a Tairen Novice of the Grey Tower.
Description
Short and sturdy, Casey is somewhat curvier than is fashionable, with a robust strength made for fetching heavy pails of water from the well. Her dark curly hair is just barely long enough to brush her shoulders. It’s usually pulled back in a practical knot, but to her annoyance, a few stray wisps always escape to curl around her face. Casey is not especially pretty - you wouldn’t look at her twice - except for her striking eyes that are as grey-green as the distant sea of Tear, where she was born.
Casey’s fashion sense is more practical than pretty. Her threadbare clothes have been mended often because she can rarely afford to replace them. Her one luxury is a pair of good-quality sturdy boots that lace up her calves. Soft-spoken Casey is often uncomfortable with attention, so she wears a lot of drab colours and keeps her head down. Most would assume she’s a servant to a modest family, if they notice her at all.
She’s not.
Biography
Casey is not her real name.
She was born Nadia Marcos in the height of stifling summer in the worst slum of the port city of Tear. Her mother was a drunk, her father a bitter sailor whose injuries had put him ashore for good. The best thing they ever did for Nadia was give her three little sisters, each tinier and more perfect than the last. Nadia lost her heart more helplessly each time she picked up a new baby sister for the first time, as they squirmed in her arms and tugged her curls in their little fists, their wide grey-green eyes on hers. They were so little, and they needed her so much. Their mother was always gone, their father always working, so Nadia was the one to hush her sisters when they cried, rock them in their cribs, teach them to crawl and toddle.
Their father became more bitter as the years passed and his precious sea glittered on the horizon, just out of reach. He would hit Nadia if dinner wasn’t ready, and if she cried, it would get worse. Nadia learned to keep her mouth shut. “I fell,” she would tell the grown-ups. “I bruised my face. It’s nothing.”
When her little sisters started getting bruises too, Nadia hushed them and dried their tears. Then she pulled on her shawl against the spring rain and went into the muddy streets looking for Rylan Jakes.
Rylan could be found one afternoon a week at the Wreck, a bar crafted out of the bleached hull of a boat driven ashore by some tremendous storm. She liked to laze at the same table with her long legs stretched out and her boots propped up, chewing the end of her foreign cigar. Every week the locals would bring her their questions and complaints, their petty squabbles, their cries of hardship. Rylan was the local enforcer for the Masks, the criminal organisation who all but ran this slum. It was her job to deal out mercy or cruelty.
Now Rylan took her boots off the driftwood table as Nadia approached. She broke off a crust of fresh hot bread and poured a cup of water to slide across the table. “Morning, kid. Have some breakfast.” Rylan pushed out a chair for Nadia to sit.
The chair was so tall Nadia had to scramble up, and her feet dangled in the air. It made Nadia redden. She was still small for her age. “Morning, sir.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Fine. I think.” Nadia hadn’t seen her since yesterday, or maybe the day before. She stuffed down the bread quickly, in case Rylan took it back. “I want my father to leave.”
That raised Rylan’s brows. “Really?”
“He hits my little sisters.” Nadia almost growled the words. She would’ve hit him back, but he was too big. He could just pick her up and toss her around like the little rag doll the baby played with.
“Hmm.” Rylan drank her ale. “I think we all know he deserves whatever he gets, but he’s still your father, whatever else he is. I could talk to him for you, if you wanted. Shake him up a little bit. Maybe that would—”
“No!” That came out very loud. “He hit the baby. She’s tiny. He could have killed her.”
Rylan thought that over. “In that case, how about he goes for a swim in the bay?”
In the deep chill water, tangled with nets and reeds, down into the drowning blackness where the dead ships rotted. Nadia should have said no. But she didn’t have any mercy. She only had sisters. “He likes the sea.”
“You’re going to owe me big for this.” Rylan threw a casual arm over the back of her chair. “How old are your little sisters now?”
Nadia’s teeth ground. “I’ll pay. Not them.” Sometimes the very poorest families sold the children they couldn’t feed. Nadia didn’t even know what for—maybe to work as servants. She would never let that happen. Not to her family.
Rylan chuckled. “So suspicious for one so young. I’m just wondering if the oldest one can watch the little ones if I borrow you from time to time. I’m sure your mother will be busy falling into the nearest bottle.”
“Stacia is nine,” Nadia said reluctantly. “She could watch Lia and the baby. But…” Nadia had never imagined running errands for the Masks. Rylan seemed impossibly grown-up to her, with her leather armour and her dagger, the coin she spread around to keep everyone loyal. Surely she didn’t need Nadia tagging along.
“You’ll need the money, with your father gone. Somebody needs to pay rent and put bread on the table. Your sisters don’t need to know anything about it. Tell them you’re a servant, if you like. Make up a story.”
“Well…” They did need the money. “What do you need?”
That was how Nadia first joined the Masks when she was thirteen years old, the same week her father drowned in the bay.
They started her off running messages and fetching drinks, watching targets and listening for rumours. When she proved reliable, the Masks brought her in on more interesting work, and when they learned she wouldn’t flinch from a blow, it became more dangerous. Rylan taught her to change her identity to infiltrate the rival Tiger Sharks who controlled the streets further to the south. Nadia looked younger than she was, and the Tiger Sharks had no fear of this mouse of a girl. She memorised names and locations, routes and schedules, schemes and profits. The Masks crushed them within weeks and took all their territory.
Rylan paid her good coin for that one, a pouch that felt rich and heavy and wonderful in Nadia’s hands. It felt like new clothes for her little sisters, maybe even a nicer home. Maybe she could move them higher, above the stink and flies of the teeming slums. Maybe the baby wouldn’t cough so much if she lived in cleaner air.
“Want to try some real work?” Rylan asked.
“Like what?”
Rylan smiled.
And Nadia became an agent of the Masks.
It was real work, that was for sure—gathering intelligence on rivals, providing unseen security for illicit deals, anything that required stealth and subterfuge. Nadia told so many lies she almost forgot what was true. She survived her first serious fight in a sudden ambush on a job that went bad. And on and on. Those long years changed her, until even her little sisters realised she was no servant. She spent weeks away from home, then months. Always she sent money. Once when she came home Stacia asked her if she had ever killed anybody for the Masks, and when Nadia hesitated, Stacia threw the coins back at her in a glittering shower.
Nadia came home less often after that.
She had been away for six months when Lia started getting sick.
Lia had always been the wilful sister, wild as the storms that came in off the sea, going from lies and rages to tears and hugs. At thirteen she could talk anyone into anything, and she used it ruthlessly. If she wanted a trinket from the street markets, boys fought to buy it for her. Afterward the fevers and chills would come, closer and closer together.
Fourteen now, Stacia held her hand one night as Lia shuddered in bed, racked by fever. Stacia smoothed back Lia’s dark curls and kissed her hot forehead. “I should bring a healer.” Stacia’s brow had a little worried furrow.
Lia groaned, curling tighter under the covers, her eyes shut. “Don’t.”
They both knew why not. Already the locals whispered that Lia was a witch. If they knew of this strange sickness that came on whenever Lia persuaded somebody, they would turn on the whole family, even little Beckan. Tairens hated channellers.
“You have to stop doing this,” Stacia whispered.
Lia opened her eyes then, the same bright colour as Stacia’s own. Her lips were dry and cracked. “I can’t.”
The next week, Lia started a minor riot in front of a strange woman in a fringed shawl.
If Nadia had been home, she would have drawn a dagger on the Aes Sedai witch who kidnapped her sister Lia, claiming she had some strange power that could only be dealt with in their witch prison, the Grey Tower.
If Nadia had been home, Stacia would never have been forced into hiding with Beckan in her arms.
If Nadia had been home, she would have burned down half of Tear before she let anyone lay a finger on her little sisters.
Instead, she found out in the middle of an operation in enemy territory with five hundred silver marks in her pocket that belonged to her Mask employers, who would not tolerate her leaving. Ever.
Nadia had been a Mask for five years. She set all that history on fire the night she ambushed Rylan with a knife and left with those five hundred marks still in her pocket to go get Stacia and Beckan.
They were going to the Grey Tower.
Nadia was getting her stolen sister back.
By the time Nadia entered Hama Valon, she was Casey Frey.
Career History
- Novice (22 July 2017)
Austin | |
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