The Fires of Heaven (65 page)

They did not like it, of course. The women who tended the networks might be unknown to all but a few, but they were every one Aes Sedai.
They had always been Aes Sedai. But that was her only lever with which to pry her way into the circles where decisions were made. Otherwise, they would likely stuff her and Leane into a cottage with a servant to look after them, and maybe a rare visit from Aes Sedai who wanted to examine women who had been stilled, until they died. They would die soon, in those circumstances.

Light, they might even marry us off!
Some thought that a husband and children could occupy a woman enough to replace the One Power in her life. More than one woman, stilled by drawing too much of
saidar
to herself, or in testing
ter’angreal
for their uses, had found herself being matched with potential husbands. Since those who did marry always put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Tower and its memories, the theory remained unproven.

“It should not be difficult,” Leane said diffidently, “to put myself in touch with those who were my eyes-and-ears before I was Keeper. More importantly, as Keeper of the Chronicles I had agents in Tar Valon itself.” Startlement widened a few eyes, though Carlinya’s narrowed. Leane blinked, shifted uneasily, smiled weakly. “I always thought it foolish that we paid more attention to the mood of Ebou Dar or Bandar Eban than to the mood of our own city.” They had to see the value of eyes-and-ears in Tar Valon.

“Siuan.” Leaning forward in her thick-armed chair, Morvrin said the name firmly, as though to emphasize that she had not said Mother. That round face looked more stubborn than placid now, her stoutness a threatening mass. When Siuan had been a novice, Morvrin rarely seemed to notice the mischief of the girls around her, but when she did, she had taken care of matters herself, in ways that had everyone sitting straight and walking small for days. “Why should we allow you to do as you want? You have been stilled, woman. Whatever you were, you are no longer Aes Sedai. If we want these agents’ names, you will both give them to us.” There was a flat certainty to that last; they would give them, one way or another. They would, if these women wanted them enough.

Leane shivered visibly, but Siuan’s chair creaked as she stiffened her back. “I know that I am not Amyrlin anymore. Do you think I don’t know I was stilled? My face is changed, but not what is inside. Everything I ever knew is still in my head. Use it! For the love of the Light, use me!” She took a deep breath to calm herself—
Burn me if I let them shove me aside to rot!
—and Myrelle spoke into the pause.

“A young woman’s temper to go with a young woman’s face.” Smiling, she sat on the edge of a stiff-backed armchair that could have stood in front
of a farmer’s fireplace, if the farmer had not cared that the varnish was flaking. The smile was not her usual one, though, languid and knowing at the same time, and her dark eyes, nearly as large as Beonin’s, were full of sympathy. “I am sure that no one wants you to feel useless, Siuan. And I am sure that we all want to employ your knowledge fully. What you know will be of great use to us.”

Siuan did not want her sympathy. “You seem to have forgotten Logain, and why I dragged him all the way here from Tar Valon.” She had not meant to bring this up herself, but if they were going to let it lie wallowing . . . “My ‘crackbrained’ idea?”

“Very well, Siuan,” Sheriam said. “Why?”

“Because the first step to pulling Elaida down is for Logain to reveal to the Tower, to the world if need be, that the Red Ajah set him up as a false Dragon so that he could be pulled down.” She certainly had their attention now. “He was found by Reds in Ghealdan at least a year before he proclaimed himself, but instead of bringing him to Tar Valon to be gentled, they planted the idea in his head of claiming to be the Dragon Reborn.”

“You are certain of this?” Beonin asked quietly, in a heavy Taraboner accent. She sat very still in her tall, cane-bottomed chair, watching carefully.

“He does not know who Leane and I are. He talked with us sometimes on the journey here, late at night when Min was sleeping and he could not rest. He said nothing before because he thinks the entire Tower was behind it, but he knows that it was Red sisters who shielded him and talked to him of the Dragon Reborn.”

“Why?” Morvrin demanded, and Sheriam nodded.

“Yes, why? Any of us would go out of our way to see a man like that gentled, but the Red Ajah lives for nothing else. Why would they create a false Dragon?”

“Logain did not know,” she told them. “Perhaps they think they gain more by capturing a false Dragon than gentling a poor fool who might terrorize one village. Perhaps they have some reason to want more turmoil.”

“We do not suggest they’ve had anything to do with Mazrim Taim or any of the others,” Leane added quickly. “Elaida will no doubt be able to tell you what you want to know.”

Siuan watched them mull it over in silence. They never considered the possibility that she was lying.
An advantage to having been stilled.
It did not seem to occur to them that being stilled might have broken all ties to the Three Oaths. Some Aes Sedai studied stilled women, true, but gingerly
and reluctantly. No one wanted to be reminded of what might happen to herself.

For Logain, Siuan had no worry. Not as long as Min continued to see whatever it was that she saw. He would live long enough to reveal what Siuan wanted him to, once she had talked to him. She had not dared risk his deciding to go his own way, which he might well have done had she told him before. But it was his one chance for revenge now against those who had gentled him, surrounded by Aes Sedai again as he was. Revenge only against the Red Ajah, true, but he would have to settle for that. A fish in the boat was worth a school in the water.

She glanced at Leane, who smiled the faintest possible smile. That was good. Leane had disliked being kept in the dark about her plan for the man until this morning, but Siuan had lived too long wrapped in secrecy to be easy revealing more than she had to, even to a friend. She thought that the idea of Red Ajah involvement with other false Dragons had been neatly planted. Reds had been the leaders in overthrowing her. There might not be a Red Ajah once this was done with.

“This changes a great deal,” Sheriam said after a time. “We cannot possibly follow an Amyrlin who would do such a thing.”

“Follow her!” Siuan exclaimed, for the first time truly startled. “You were actually considering going back to kiss Elaida’s ring? Knowing what she has done, and will do?” Leane quivered in her seat as if she wanted to say a few choice words herself, but they had agreed that Siuan was to be the one to lose her temper.

Sheriam looked a trifle embarrassed, and spots of color floated in Myrelle’s olive cheeks, but the others took it as calmly as sunshine.

“The Tower must be strong,” Carlinya said in a voice as hard as winter stone. “The Dragon has been Reborn, the Last Battle is coming, and the Tower must be whole.”

Anaiya nodded. “We understand your reasons for disliking Elaida, even hating her. We do understand, but we must think of the Tower, and the world. I confess I do not like Elaida myself. But then, I have never liked Siuan, either. It is not necessary to
like
the Amyrlin Seat. There is no need to glare so, Siuan. You have had a file for a tongue since you were a novice, and it has only roughened with the years. And as Amyrlin, you pushed sisters where you wanted and only seldom explained why. The two do not make a likable combination.”

“I will try to . . . smooth my tongue,” Siuan said dryly. Did the woman
expect the Amyrlin Seat to treat every sister like a childhood friend? “But I hope what I’ve told you changes your desire to kneel at Elaida’s feet?”

“If that is your smoother tongue,” Myrelle said idly, “I may have to smooth it myself, if we do allow you to run the eyes-and-ears for us.”

“We cannot go back to the Tower now, of course,” Sheriam said. “Not knowing this. Not until we are in position to see Elaida deposed.”

“Whatever she has done, the Reds, they will continue to support her.” Beonin stated it as fact, not objection. It was no secret that the Reds resented the fact that there had not been an Amyrlin from their Ajah since Bonwhin.

Morvrin nodded heavily. “Others will, as well. Those who have thrown themselves too much behind Elaida to believe they have any other choice. Those who will support authority, however vile. And some who will believe we are dividing the Tower when it must be whole at any cost.”

“All but the Red sisters can be approached,” Beonin said judiciously, “negotiated with.” Mediation and negotiation were her Ajah’s reason for existence.

“It seems we will have a use for your agents, Siuan.” Sheriam looked around at the others. “Unless anyone still thinks we should take them away from her?” Morvrin was the last to shake her head, but she did it, finally, after a long study that made Siuan feel she had been stripped, weighed and measured.

She could not stop a sigh of relief. Not a short life drying up in a cottage, but a life of purpose. It might still be a short life—no one knew how long a stilled woman could live given something to replace the One Power in her life—but with purpose it would be long enough. So Myrelle was going to smooth her tongue for her, was she?
I’ll show that fox-eyed Green—I will hold my tongue and be glad she isn’t doing more than look at me is what I’ll do. I knew how this would go. Burn me, but I did.

“Thank you, Aes Sedai,” she said in the meekest tone she could find. To call them that pained her; it was another break, another reminder of what she was not any longer. “I will try to give good service.” Myrelle did not have to nod in such a satisfied way. Siuan ignored a small voice that said she would have done as much or more in Myrelle’s place.

“If I may suggest,” Leane said, “it is not enough to wait until you have enough support in the Hall of the Tower to depose Elaida.” Siuan put on an interested look, as though hearing this for the first time. “Elaida sits in Tar Valon, in the White Tower, and to the world she is Amyrlin. At the moment,
you are only a flock of dissidents. She can call you rebels and agitators, and coming from the Amyrlin Seat, the world will believe it.”

“We can hardly stop her being Amyrlin before she is deposed,” Carlinya said, shifting on her chair in icy contempt. Had she been wearing her white-fringed shawl, she would have snapped it around her.

“You can give the world a true Amyrlin.” Leane spoke not to the White sister, but to all of them, eyeing each in turn, sure of what she was saying yet at the same time offering a suggestion that she merely hoped they would take. It had been Siuan who pointed out that the techniques she employed on men could be adapted for women. “I saw Aes Sedai from every Ajah save the Red in the common room, and in the streets. Have them elect a Hall of the Tower here, and let that Hall select a new Amyrlin. Then you can present yourselves to the world as the true White Tower, in exile, and Elaida as a usurper. With Logain’s revelations added in, can you doubt who the nations will accept as the real Amyrlin Seat?”

The idea took hold. Siuan could see them turning it over in their minds. Whatever the others thought, only Sheriam voiced a word against. “It will mean that the Tower truly is broken,” the green-eyed woman said sadly.

“It already is broken,” Siuan told her tartly, and instantly wished she had not when they all looked at her.

This was supposed to be purely Leane’s notion. She herself had a reputation as a deft manipulator, and they could well be suspicious of anything she proposed. That was why she had begun by scathing them; they would not have believed her if she had begun with mild words. She would come at them as if she still thought herself Amyrlin, and let them put her in her place. By comparison, Leane would seem more cooperative, only offering the little she could, and they would be more likely to listen to her. Doing her own part had not been difficult—until it came to pleading; then she had wanted to hang them all in the sun to dry. Sitting here, doing nothing!

You didn’t have to worry about them being suspicious. They think you are a broken reed.
If everything went properly, they would not learn differently. A useful reed, but a weak one, not to be thought of twice. It was a painful accommodation to make, but Duranda Tharne had shown her the necessity in Lugard. They would accept her only on their terms, and she would have to make the best of it.

“I wish I had thought of this myself,” she went on. “Now that I hear it, Leane’s idea gives you a way to build the Tower again without having to tear it down completely first.”

“I still cannot like it.” Sheriam’s voice firmed. “But what must be must be. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and the Light willing, it will weave Elaida out of the stole.”

“We will need to negotiate with those sisters who remain in the Tower,” Beonin mused, only half to herself. “The Amyrlin we choose, she must be a skilled negotiator, yes?”

“Clear thinking will be needed,” Carlinya put in. “The new Amyrlin must be a woman of cool reason and logic.”

Morvrin’s snort was loud enough to make everyone jump in their chairs. “Sheriam is the highest among us, and she has kept us together when we’d have been running in ten different directions.”

Sheriam shook her head vigorously, but Myrelle gave her no chance to speak. “Sheriam is an excellent choice. I can promise every Green sister here behind her, I know.” Anaiya opened her mouth, agreement plain on her face.

It was time to put a stop to this before it got out of hand. “If I may suggest?” Siuan thought she managed diffidence much better than she had meekness. It was a strain, but she thought she had better learn to maintain it.
Myrelle isn’t the only one who will try to stuff me in the bilges if they think I’ve overstepped my place. Whatever it is.
Only, they would not try; they would do. Aes Sedai expected—no, required—respect from those who were not. “It seems to me that whoever you choose should be someone who was not in the Tower when I . . . was deposed. Would it not be best if the woman who unites the Tower again was one whom no one could accuse of choosing a side on that day?” If she had to keep this up, she was going to burst a seam in her head.