Nynaeve sniffed, but her heart was not in it. She had not been wearing the bracelet much of late. Not because she could not hand over anything she dug out as her own. She was still sure Moghedien knew something about Healing even if she did not realize it herself—nobody could be that blind—and there was the trick of detecting a man’s channeling that Moghedien kept saying they almost had right. The truth of it was, she was afraid she might do far worse than Birgitte had if she had any more contact with the woman than was absolutely necessary. Maybe it was the way satisfaction seemed to underlie everything else even when Moghedien was groaning from the fed-back pain of Nynaeve trying to master that detection. Maybe it was remembering how afraid she had been, alone with the woman without the bracelet. Maybe growing disgust at keeping one of the Forsaken from judgment. Maybe some of all of it. What she did know was that she had to make herself put on the bracelet now, and that whenever she saw Moghedien’s face, she wanted to pound it with her fists.
“I should not have laughed,” Elayne said. “I am sorry I did.”
Nynaeve stopped dead so suddenly that a horseman had to jerk his reins to keep from riding over her. He shouted something before the crowd carried him away, but shock muffled his words beyond hearing. Not shock at the apology. At what she had to say. The right thing to say. The truth.
Unable to look at Elayne, she started walking again. “You had every right to laugh. I. . . .” She swallowed hard. “I made a complete fool of myself.” She had. A few sips, Theodrin said; a cup. And she emptied the pitcher. If you were going to fail, better to have some other reason than that you just could not do it. “You should have sent for that bucket and dunked my head until I could recite The Great Hunt of the Horn without a mistake.” She risked a glance from the corner of her eye. Small spots of color rested in Elayne’s cheeks. So there had been mention of a bucket.
“It could happen to anyone,” the other woman said simply.
Nynaeve felt her own cheeks heating. When it had happened to Elayne, she had dunked the girl to wash away the wine. “You should have done whatever you needed to . . . to sober me.”
It was quite the oddest argument Nynaeve could remember, with her insisting she had been a total fool and deserved whatever came of it, while Elayne made excuse after excuse for her. Nynaeve did not understand why it felt so refreshing, taking all the blame on herself that way. She could not recall ever doing that before, not without hedging as far as she was able. She very nearly got angry with Elayne for not agreeing that she had been a childish buffoon. It lasted until they reached the small thatched house on the edge of the village where Logain was kept.
“If you don’t stop this,” Elayne said finally, “I vow I’ll send for a bucket of water right this instant.”
Nynaeve opened her mouth, then closed it again. Even in this newfound euphoria of admitting she had been wrong, that was going too far. Feeling this good, she could not face Logain. Feeling this good, it would be useless anyway, without Moghedien and the bracelet she definitely felt too fine to put on. She glanced at the two Warders standing guard beside the stone-linteled door. They were not close enough to hear, but she still pitched her voice low. “Elayne, let’s go. Tonight.” With Thom and Juilin in Salidar, there was no need to ask Uno to find horses. “Not to Caemlyn, if you don’t want. To Ebou Dar. Merilille will never find that bowl, and Sheriam will never let us go find it. What do you say? Tonight?”
“No, Nynaeve. What good can we do Rand if they take us for runaways? Which is what we’d be. You promised, Nynaeve. You promised, if we found something.”
“I promised if we found something we could use. All we’ve found is this!” Nynaeve thrust her shriveled hands under the other woman’s nose.
The firmness slid from Elayne’s face, and her voice; she pursed her lips and studied the ground. “Nynaeve, you know I told Birgitte we were staying. Well, it seems she told Uno that under no circumstances was he to provide you with a horse unless she said so. She told him you were thinking of running away. I didn’t find out until it was too late.” Her head tossed irritably. “If this is what having a Warder is like, I don’t know why anybody wants one.”
Nynaeve thought her eyes might burst from indignation. So that was why he had been staring at her. Euphoria vanished in a heat of—well, partly anger, partly humiliation. The man knew; he thought she. . . . Wait. For a moment she frowned at Elayne, then decided not to voice the question that had come to mind. Was Nynaeve the only name Birgitte had mentioned to Uno, or was Elayne perhaps included? Elayne had found herself quite an adopted family. In Thom, an indulgent father who wanted to teach her everything he knew, and in Birgitte, an older sister who thought it was her job to keep the younger from breaking her neck riding horses she could not handle yet.
“In that case,” she said flatly, “let’s see what I can learn from Logain.”
It was a small house, only two rooms, but thick stone walls made it relatively cool. Logain was in his shirtsleeves, smoking a pipe and reading by a window. The Aes Sedai were taking good care of him. The chairs and tables were as fine as anything in Salidar—nothing elaborate, but well made, though nothing matched anything else—and a scroll-woven red-and-gold carpet covered much of a floor that was swept so clean Nynaeve doubted he did the sweeping.
He set his book down when they entered, seemingly not at all put out by the lack of a knock. Rising leisurely, he tapped out his pipe, donned his coat and only then made a smooth leg. “It is good to see you again after so long. I thought you had forgotten me. Will you join me in some wine? The Aes Sedai keep me on short supply, but what they do let me have is not bad at all.”
The offer of wine would have been enough—Nynaeve barely suppressed a wince—if she had needed more. Thinking of Uno, the fact that he was male was enough. No need to pull up any of her anger from the Little Tower. Thinking of it added its bit, though. The True Source was suddenly there, an unseen warmth just out of sight. She opened herself, and saidar flooded her; if what she had felt earlier was euphoria, this was beyond ecstasy. She was surrendering to it, burn Theodrin!
“Sit down,” she told him coldly. “I’ll have no chatter out of you. Answer when you’re spoken to, and otherwise hold your tongue.”
Logain only shrugged and complied, meek as a puppy. No, not meek; that smile was pure insolence. Part came from his feelings toward Aes Sedai, Nynaeve was certain, and part. . . . He watched Elayne take another chair, arranging her skirts with a studied care, and even if Nynaeve had not seen what he was looking at, she would have known it was a woman. There was no smirking about it, no leering, just. . . . Nynaeve did not know what, only that he directed the same at her, and she was suddenly very much aware that she was a woman and he a man. Maybe it was just that he was handsome and had broad shoulders, but she liked to think better of herself.