Crossroads of Twilight (69 page)

Halima sat up abruptly, eyes flashing and full lips compressed, but her scowl vanished as quickly as it had come. A smoldering remained in her eyes, though. Had she been a cat, she would have had her back arched and her tail like a bottle-brush. Rising gracefully to her feet on the layered carpets, she smoothed her dress over her hips. “Very well, then. If you’re certain you don’t want me to stay.”

With remarkable timing, a dull throb began behind Egwene’s eyes, an all too familiar precursor to a blinding headache, but she shook her head anyway and repeated that she had work to do. Halima hesitated a moment longer, her mouth going tight once more, hands fisting in her skirts, then she snatched her fur-lined silk cloak from the cloak stand and stalked out of the tent without bothering to pull the garment around her shoulders. She could do herself an injury going about like that in the cold.

“That fishwife temper will get her in trouble sooner or later,” Siuan muttered before the entry flaps stopped swaying. Scowling after Halima, she twitched her shawl up onto her shoulders. “The woman holds it in around you, but she doesn’t mind giving me the rough side of her tongue. Me or anybody else. She’s been heard screaming at Delana. Who ever heard of a secretary screaming at her employer, and a sister at that? A Sitter! I don’t understand why Delana puts up with her.”

“That’s Delana’s business, surely.” Questioning another sister’s actions was just as forbidden as interfering with them. Only by custom, not law, yet some customs were as strong as law. Surely she did not have to remind
Siuan
of that.

Rubbing her temples, Egwene sat down carefully in the chair behind her writing table, but the chair wobbled anyway. Designed to fold for storage on a wagon, the legs had a habit of folding when they were not supposed to, and none of the carpenters had been able to fix them after repeated attempts. The table folded as well, but that held up more firmly. She wished she had taken the opportunity to acquire a new chair in Murandy, yet there had been so many things that needed buying and not enough coin to stretch when she already had a chair. At least she had acquired a pair of stand-lamps and a table-lamp, all three plain red-painted iron but with good mirrors that were free of bubbles. Good light did not seem to help her headaches, yet it was better than trying to read by a few tallow candles and a lantern.

If Siuan heard any rebuke, it did not slow her down. “It’s more than just a temper. Once or twice, I’ve thought she was on the brink of trying to strike me. I suppose she has sense enough to hold back from that, but not everyone is Aes Sedai. I’m convinced she managed to break a wheelwright’s arm somehow. He says he fell, but he looks to be lying to me, with his eyes shifting and his mouth twitching. He wouldn’t like admitting a woman bent his elbow backwards, now would he?”

“Give over, Siuan,” Egwene said wearily. “The man likely tried to take liberties.” He must have. She could not see how Halima could have broken a man’s arm in any event. However you described the woman, muscular did not come into it.

Instead of opening the embossed folder that Siuan had laid on the table, she rested her hands on either side of it. That kept them away from her head. Maybe if she ignored the pain, it would go away this time. Besides, for a change, she had information to share with Siuan. “It seems that some of the Sitters are talking about negotiating with Elaida,” she began.

Expressionless, Siuan balanced herself atop one of the two rickety three-legged stools in front of the table and listened attentively, only her fingers moving, lightly stroking against her skirts, until Egwene finished. Then she made fists and growled a set of curses that were pungent even for her, beginning with a wish for the lot of them to choke to death on week-old fish guts and sliding downhill fast from there. Coming from that young, pretty face only made them worse.

“I suppose you’re right letting it go forward,” she muttered once her invective ran down. “The talk will spread, now it’s begun, and this way, you gain a jump on it. Beonin shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. Beonin’s ambitious, but I always thought she’d have gone scurrying back to Elaida if Sheriam and the others hadn’t stiffened her backbone.” Voice quickening, Siuan fixed her eyes on Egwene as if to lend weight to her words. “I wish Varilin and that lot surprised me, Mother. Discounting the Blue, six Sitters from five Ajahs fled the Tower after Elaida carried out her coup,” her mouth twisted slightly on the word, “and here we have one from each of those five. I was in
Tel’aran’rhiod
last night, in the Tower—”

“I hope you were careful,” Egwene said sharply. Siuan hardly seemed to know the meaning of careful, sometimes. The few dream
ter’angreal
in their possession had lines of sisters panting to use them, mostly to visit the Tower, and while Siuan was not precisely forbidden one, it was the next thing to. She could have put her name down forever without the Hall granting her a single night. Quite aside from the sisters who blamed Siuan for the Tower being broken in the first place—she was not accepted back quite as warmly as Leane, on that account, nor cosseted by anyone—quite aside from that, too many remembered her rough teaching, when she was one of the few who knew how to use the dream
ter’angreal.
Siuan did not suffer fools gladly, and everyone was a fool their first few times in
Tel’aran’rhiod,
so now she had to borrow Leane’s turn when she wanted to visit the World of Dreams, and if another sister saw her there, ‘the next thing to’ might become an outright ban. Or worse, set off a search for who had loaned her a
ter’angreal,
which might end by unmasking Leane.

“In
Tel’aran’rhiod,
” Siuan said with a dismissive gesture, “I’m a different woman in a different dress every time I turn a corner.” That was good to hear, though it seemed likely a lack of control had as much to do with it as intent. Siuan’s belief in her own abilities was sometimes greater than warranted. “The point is, last night I saw a partial list of Sitters and managed to read most of the names before it changed to a tally of wines.” That was a common occurrence in
Tel’aran’rhiod,
where nothing stayed the same for long unless it was a reflection of something permanent in the waking world. “Andaya Forae was raised for the Gray, Rina Hafden for the Green, and Juilaine Madome for the Brown. None has worn the shawl more than seventy years at most. Elaida has the same problem we do, Mother.”

“I see,” Egwene said slowly. She realized that she was massaging the side of her head. The throb behind her eyes beat on. It would grow stronger. It always did. By nightfall, she was going to regret having sent Halima
away. Bringing her hand down firmly, she moved the leather folder in front of her a half inch to the left, then slid it back. “What of the rest? They had six Sitters to replace.”

“Ferane Neheran was raised for the White,” Siuan admitted, “and Suana Dragand for the Yellow. They’ve both been in the Hall before. It was only a partial list, and I didn’t get to read it all.” Her back straightened, and her chin shot out stubbornly. “One or two raised before time would be unusual enough—it happens, but not often—but this makes eleven—maybe twelve, but eleven for sure—between us and the Tower. I don’t believe in coincidences that big. When the fishmongers are all buying at the same price, you can bet they were all drinking at the same inn last night.”

“You don’t have to convince me any more, Siuan.” With a sigh, Egwene sat back, automatically catching the chair leg that always tried to fold when she did that. Clearly, something odd was happening, but what did it mean? And who could influence the choice of Sitters in
every
Ajah? Every Ajah except the Blue, at least; they had chosen one new Sitter, but Moria had been Aes Sedai well over a hundred years. And maybe the Red was not affected; no one knew what changes if any had been made in the Red Sitters. The Black might be behind it, but what could they gain, unless all of those too-young Sitters
were
Black? That seemed impossible in any case; if the Black Ajah had had that much influence, the Hall would have been all Darkfriends long ago. Yet if there was a pattern and coincidence would not hold, then
someone
had to be at the heart of it. Just thinking about the possibilities, the impossibilities, made the dull pain behind her eyes grow a little sharper.

“If this turns out to be happenstance after all, Siuan, you’re going to regret ever thinking you saw a puzzle.” She forced a smile saying that, to take out any sting. An Amyrlin had to be careful with her words. “Now that you’ve convinced me there is a puzzle, I want you to solve it. Who is responsible, and what are they after? Until we know that, we don’t know anything.”

“Is that all you want?” Siuan said dryly. “Before supper, or after?”

“After will have to do, I suppose,” Egwene snapped, then took a deep breath at the abashed look on the other woman’s face. There was no point taking her headache out on Siuan. An Amyrlin’s words had power, and sometimes consequences; she had to remember that. “As soon as you can would be very good, though,” she said in a milder voice. “I know you’ll be as quick as you can.”

Chagrined or not, Siuan seemed to understand that Egwene’s outburst
came from more than her own sarcasm. Despite her youthful appearance, she had years of practice at reading faces. “Shall I go find Halima?” she said, half rising. The lack of tartness attached to the woman’s name was a measure of her concern. “It won’t take a minute.”

“If I give way for every ache, I’ll never get anything done,” Egwene said, opening the folder. “Now, what do you have for me today?” She kept her hands on the papers, though, to stop from rubbing her head.

One of Siuan’s tasks each morning was to fetch what the Ajahs were willing to share from their networks of eyes-and-ears, along with whatever individual sisters had passed on to their Ajahs and the Ajahs had decided to pass on to Egwene. It was a strange process of sieving, yet it still gave a fair picture of the world when added to what Siuan put in. She had managed to hold on to the agents that had been hers as Amyrlin by the simple expedient of refusing to tell anyone who they were despite every effort by the Hall, and in the end, no one could gainsay that those eyes-and-ears were the Amyrlin’s, and that they should by rights report to Egwene. Oh, there had been no end of grumbling over it, and still was on occasion, but no one could deny the facts.

As usual, the first report came from neither the Ajahs nor Siuan, but Leane, written on thin sheets of paper in a flowing elegant hand. Egwene could not see exactly why, but you could never doubt that anything Leane wrote had been written by a woman. Those pages Egwene held to the table-lamp’s flame one by one as soon as she read them, letting the paper burn almost to her fingers, then crumpling the ash. It would hardly do for her and Leane to behave like near-strangers in public then allow one of her reports to fall into the wrong hands.

Very few sisters were aware that Leane had eyes-and-ears inside Tar Valon itself. She might have been the only sister who did. It was a human failing to watch keenly what was happening down the street while ignoring what lay right at your feet, and the Light knew Aes Sedai had as many human failings as anyone else. Unfortunately, Leane had little new to communicate.

Her people in the city complained of filthy streets that were increasingly dangerous after dark and little safer by daylight. Once crime had been all but unknown in Tar Valon, but now the Tower Guards had abandoned the streets to patrol the harbors and the bridge towers. Except for collecting the customs duties and buying supplies, both done through intermediaries, the White Tower seemed to have shut itself off from the city completely. The great doors that allowed the public to enter the Tower remained
shut and barred, and no one had seen a sister outside the Tower to know her as Aes Sedai since the siege began, if not earlier. All confirmation of what Leane had reported before. The last page made Egwene’s eyebrows rise, though. Rumor in the streets said Gareth Bryne had found a secret way into the city and would appear inside the walls with his whole army any day.

“Leane would have said if anyone had breathed a word that sounded like they meant gateways,” Siuan said quickly when she saw Egwene’s expression. She had read all of these reports already, of course, and knew what Egwene was seeing by which page she held. Shifting on the unsteady stool, Siuan almost fell off onto the carpets, she was paying so little heed. It did not slow her down a hair, though. “And you can be sure Gareth hasn’t let anything slip,” she went on while still righting herself. “Not that any of his soldiers are fool enough to desert to the city now, but he knows when to keep his mouth shut. He just has the reputation for attacking where he can’t possibly be. He’s done the impossible often enough that people expect him to. That’s all.”

Hiding a smile, Egwene held the paper mentioning Lord Gareth to the flame and watched it curl and blacken. A few months past, Siuan would have offered an acid comment about the man instead of praise. He would have been “Gareth bloody Bryne,” not Gareth. She could not possibly miss doing his laundry and polishing his boots, but Egwene had seen her staring at him on those rare times when he came to the Aes Sedai camp. Staring, and then running away if he so much as glanced at her. Siuan! Running away! Siuan had been Aes Sedai for more than twenty years, and Amyrlin for ten, but she had no more idea how to deal with being in love than a duck had about shearing sheep.

Egwene crumbled the ash and dusted her hands together, her smile fading. She had no room to talk about Siuan. She was in love, too, but she did not even know where in the world Gawyn was, or what to do if she learned. He had his duty to Andor, and she hers to the Tower. And the one way to bridge that chasm, bonding him, might lead to his death. Better to let him go, forget him entirely. As easy as forgetting her own name. And she
would
bond him. She knew that. Of course, she could not bond the man without knowing where he was, without having her hands on him, so it all came full circle. Men were . . . a
bother
!