Seated crosslegged on the floor beside the door, large green eyes startling in her dark tanned face, the Aiel woman shrugged. In coat and breeches and soft boots, shoufa looped about her neck, she appeared unarmed. “Careen whispered her message to Moiraine Sedai. It would not have been proper to listen. I am sorry, Aes Sedai.”
Guiltily, Egwene fingered the Great Serpent ring on her right hand, the golden serpent biting its own tail. As an Accepted, she should have been wearing it on the third finger of her left hand, but letting the High Lords believe that they had four full Aes Sedai inside the Stone kept them on their best manners, or what passed for manners among Tairen nobles. Moiraine did not lie, of course; she never said they were more than Accepted. But she never said they were Accepted, either, and let everyone think what they wanted to think, believe what they thought they saw. Moiraine could not lie, but she could make truth dance a fine jig.
It was not the first time Egwene and the others had pretended to full sisterhood since leaving the Tower, but more and more she felt uncomfortable deceiving Aviendha. She liked the Aiel woman, thought they could be friends if they could ever come to know one another; but that hardly seemed possible as long as Aviendha thought Egwene was Aes Sedai. The Aiel woman was there only at Moiraine's order, issued for unspoken purposes of her own. Egwene suspected it was to give them an Aiel bodyguard, as if they had not learned to protect themselves. Still, even if she and Aviendha did become friends, she could not tell her the truth. The best way to keep a secret was to make sure no one knew who did not absolutely have to know. Another point Moiraine had made. Sometimes Egwene found herself wishing the Aes Sedai could be wrong, glaring wrong, just once. In a way that would not mean disaster, of course. That was the rub.
“Tanchico,” Nynaeve muttered. Her dark, wristthick braid hung down her back to her waist as she stared out of one of the narrow windows, casements swung out in the hope of catching a night breeze. On the broad River Erinin below bobbed the lanterns of a few fishing boats that had not ventured down river, but Egwene doubted she saw them. “There is nothing for it but to go to Tanchico, it seems.” Nynaeve gave an unconscious hitch to her green dress, with its wide neck that bared her shoulders; she did that a good deal. She would have denied wearing the dress for Lan, Moiraine's Warder — she would have if Egwene had dared make the suggestion — but green, blue and white seemed to be Lan's favorite colors on women, and every dress that was not green, blue or white had vanished from Nynaeve's wardrobe. “Nothing for it.” She did not sound happy.
Egwene caught herself giving an upward tug to her own dress. They felt odd, these dresses that just clung to the shoulders. On the other hand, she did not believe she could bear to be more covered. Light as it was, the pale red linen felt like wool. She wished she could bring herself to wear the filmy gowns Berelain wore. Not that they were suitable for public eyes, but they certainly did appear to be cool.
Stop fretting over comfort, she told herself sternly. Keep your mind on the business at hand. “Perhaps,” she said aloud. “Myself, I am not convinced.”
A long, narrow table, polished till it glistened, ran down the middle of the room. A tall chair stood at the end near Egwene, lightly carved and touched here and there with gilt, quite plain for Tear, while the sidechairs had progressively lower backs, until those at the far end seemed little more than benches. Egwene had no idea what purpose the Tairens had put the room to. She and the others used it for questioning two prisoners taken when the Stone fell.
She could not force herself to go into the dungeons, though Rand had ordered all of the implements that had decorated the guardroom walls melted or burned. Neither Nynaeve nor Elayne had been eager to return, either. Besides, this brightly lit room, with its cleanswept green tile floor and its wall panels carved with the Three Crescents of Tear, was a sharp contrast to the grim, gray stone of the cells, all dim and dank and dirty. That had to have some softening effect on the two women in prisoners' roughwoven woolens.
Only that drab brown dress, however, would have told most people that Joiya Byir, standing beyond the table with her back turned, was a prisoner at all. She had been Gray Ajah, and had lost none of the Grays' cool selfpossession on shifting her allegiance to the Black. Every line of her proclaimed that she stared rigidly at the far wall of her own choice, and for no other reason. Only a woman who could channel would have seen the thumbthick flows of Air that held Joiya's arms to her sides and lashed her ankles together. A cage woven of Air kept her eyes straight ahead. Even her ears were stopped up, so she could not hear what anyone said until they wanted her to.
Once again Egwene checked the shield woven from Spirit that blocked Joiya from touching the True Source. It held, as she knew it must. She herself had woven all the flows around Joiya and tied them to maintain themselves, but she could not be easy in the same room with a Darkfriend who had the ability to channel, even if it was blocked. Worse than just a Darkfriend. Black Ajah. Murder was the least of Joiya's crimes. She should have been bowed down under her weight of broken oaths, blasted lives and blighted souls.
Joiya's fellow prisoner, her sister in the Black Ajah, lacked her strength. Standing stoopshouldered at the far end of the table, head down, Amico Nagoyin seemed to sink in on herself under Egwene's gaze. There was no need to shield her. Amico had been stilled during her capture. Still able to sense the True Source, she would never again touch it, never again channel. The desire to, the need to, would remain, as sharp as the need to breathe, and her loss would be there for as long as she lived, saidar forever out of reach. Egwene wished she could find in herself even a shred of pity. But she did not wish for it very hard.
Amico murmured something at the tabletop.
“What?” Nynaeve demanded. “Speak up.”
Amico raised her face humbly on its slender neck. She was still a beautiful woman, with large, dark eyes, but there was something different about her that Egwene could not quite put her finger on. Not the fear that made her clutch her coarse prisoner's dress with both hands. Something else.
Swallowing, Amico said, “You should go to Tanchico.”
“You've told us that twenty times,” Nynaeve said roughly. “Fifty times. Tell us something new. Name names we do not already know. Who still in the White Tower is Black Ajah?”
“I do not know. You must believe me.” Amico sounded tired, utterly beaten. Not at all the way she had sounded when they were the prisoners and she the gaoler. “Before we left the Tower, I knew only Liandrin, Chesmal and Rianna. No one knew more than two or three others, I think. Except Liandrin. I have told you everything I know.”
“Then you are remarkably ignorant for a woman who expected to rule part of the world when the Dark One breaks free,” Egwene said dryly, snapping her fan shut for emphasis. It still stunned her, how easily she could say that now. Her stomach still clenched, and icy fingers still crawled her spine, but she no longer wanted to scream, or run weeping. It was possible to become used to anything.
“I overheard Liandrin that once, talking to Temaile,” Amico said wearily, starting a tale she had told them many times. In the first days of her captivity she had tried to improve her story, but the more she elaborated the more she had tangled herself in her own lies. Now she almost always told it the same way, word for word. “If you could have seen Liandrin's face when she saw me.... She would have murdered me on the spot had she thought I had heard anything. And Temaile likes to hurt people. She enjoys it. I only heard a little before they saw me. Liandrin said there was something in Tanchico, something dangerous to... to him.” She meant Rand. She could not say his name, and a mention of the Dragon Reborn was enough to send her into tears. “Liandrin said it was dangerous to whoever used it, too. Almost as dangerous as to... him. That is why she had not already gone after it. And she said being able to channel would not protect him. She said, 'When we find it, his filthy ability will bind him for us.' ” Sweat ran down her face, but she shivered almost uncontrollably.
Not a word had changed.
Egwene opened her mouth, but Nynaeve spoke first. “I've heard enough of this. Let us see if the other has anything new to say.”
Egwene glared at her, and Nynaeve stared back just as hard, neither blinking. Sometimes she thinks she's still the Wisdom, Egwene thought grimly, and I'm still the village girl to teach about herbs. She had better realize things are different now. Nynaeve was strong in the Power, stronger than Egwene, but only when she could actually manage to channel; unless angry, Nynaeve could not channel at all.
Elayne usually smoothed things over when it came to this, as it did more often than it should. By the time Egwene thought of smoothing matters herself, she had almost always dug in her heels and flared back, and trying to be soothing then would only be backing down. That was how Nynaeve would see it, she was sure. She could not remember Nynaeve ever making any move to back down, so why should she? This time Elayne was not there; Moiraine had summoned the DaughterHeir with a word and a gesture to follow the Maiden who had come for the Aes Sedai. Without her, the tension stretched, each of the Accepted waiting for the other to blink first. Aviendha barely breathed; she kept herself strictly out of their confrontations. No doubt she considered it simple wisdom to stand clear.
Strangely, it was Amico who broke the impasse this time, though likely all she meant to do was demonstrate her cooperation. She turned to face the far wall, waiting patiently to be bound.
The foolishness of it struck Egwene suddenly. She was the only woman in the room who could channel — unless Nynaeve grew angry, or Joiya's shield failed; she tested the weave of Spirit again without thinking — and she indulged in a staring match while Amico waited to accept her bonds. At another time she might have laughed at herself aloud. Instead, she opened herself to saidar, that neverseen, everfelt glowing warmth that seemed always to be just beyond the corner of her eye. The One Power filled her, like joyous life itself redoubled, and she wove the flows around Amico.
Nynaeve merely grunted; it was doubtful she was mad enough to sense what Egwene was doing — she could not, without her temper up — yet she could see Amico stiffen as the flows of Air touched her, then slump, half supported by the flows, as if to show how little she was resisting.
Aviendha shuddered, the way she had taken to doing whenever she knew the Power was being channeled near her.
Egwene wove blocks for Amico's ears — questioning them one at a time did little good if they could hear each other's stories — and turned to Joiya. She shifted her fan from hand to hand so she could wipe them on her dress, and stopped with a grimace of distaste. Her sweaty palms had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Her face,” Aviendha said abruptly. And surprisingly; she almost never spoke unless addressed by Moiraine or one of the others. “Amico's face. She does not have the look she did, as if the years had passed her by. Not as much as she did. Is that because she was... because she was stilled?” she finished in a breathless rush. She had picked up a few habits being so much around them. No woman of the Tower could speak of