The Path of Daggers

though they might follow her example. No others who had been chosen in Salidar, though. Romanda appeared ready to bite through a nail.

'Very clever,' Lelaine said at last in clipped tones, and after a deliberate pause, added, 'Mother. Will you tell us what the great wisdom of your vast experience tells you to do? About the war, I mean. I want to make myself clear.'

'Let me make myself clear, too,' Egwene said coldly. Leaning forward, she fixed the Blue Sitter sternly. 'A certain degree of respect is required toward the Amyrlin Seat, and from now on, I will have it, daughter. This is no time for me to have to unchair you and name a penance.' Lelaine’s eyes crept wider and wider with shock. Had the woman really believed everything would continue as before? Or after so long not daring to show more than the tiniest backbone, had Lelaine simply believed she had none? Egwene really did not want to unchair her; the Blues would almost certainly return the woman, and she still had to deal with the Hall on matters that could not be convincingly disguised as part of the war against Elaida.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a smile pass across Romanda’s lips at seeing Lelaine set down. Small profit if all she did was raise Romanda’s stock with the others. 'That holds for everyone, Romanda,' she said. 'If need be, Tiana can find two birches as easily as one.' Romanda’s smile vanished abruptly.

'If I may speak, Mother,' Takima said, rising slowly. She attempted a smile, but she still looked decidedly ill. 'I myself think you have begun well. There may be benefits to stopping here a month. Or longer.' Romanda’s head jerked around to stare at her, but for once, Takima did not appear to notice. 'Wintering here, we can avoid worse weather further north, and also plan carefully —'

'There’s an end to delays, daughter,' Egwene cut in. 'No more dragging our feet.' Would she be another Gerra, or another Shein? Either was still possible. 'In one month, we will Travel from here.' No; she was Egwene al’Vere, and whatever the secret histories would say of her faults and virtues, the Light only knew, but they would be hers, not copies of some other woman’s. 'In one month, we will begin the siege of Tar Valon.'

This time, the silence was broken only by the sound of Takima weeping.

Chapter 20 (Lion Rampant) Into Andor

Elayne hoped that the journey to Caemlyn would go smoothly, and in the beginning, it seemed to do so. She thought that even as she and Aviendha and Birgitte sat bone-weary and huddled in the rags that remained of their clothing, filthy with dirt and dust and the blood of the injuries they had received when the gateway exploded. In two weeks at most, she would be ready to present her claims to the Lion Throne. There on the hilltop, Nynaeve Healed their numerous hurts and spoke barely a word, certainly not berating them. Surely that was a pleasant sign, if unusual. Relief at finding them alive battled worry on her face.

Lan’s strength was necessary to remove the Seanchan crossbow bolt from Birgitte’s thigh before she could be Healed of that wound, but although her face drained of blood and Elayne felt a stab of agony through the bond, agony that made her want to cry out, her Warder barely groaned through her gritted teeth.

'Tai’shar Kandor,' Lan murmured, tossing the pile-head quarrel, made to punch through armor, aside on the ground. True blood of Kandor. Birgitte blinked, and he paused. 'Forgive me, if I erred. I assumed from your clothes you were Kandori.'

'Oh, yes,' Birgitte breathed. 'Kandori.' Her sickly grin might have been from her injuries; Nynaeve was impatiently shooing Lan out of the way so she could lay hands on her. Elayne hoped the woman knew more of Kandor than the name; when Birgitte had last been born, there had been no Kandor. She should have taken it as an omen.

For the five miles to the small slate-roofed manor house, Birgitte rode behind Nynaeve on the latter’s stout brown mare — named Loversknot, of all things — and Elayne and Aviendha rode Lan’s tall black stallion. At least, Elayne sat Mandarb’s saddle with Aviendha’s arms around her waist while Lan led the fiery-eyed animal. Trained warhorses were as much weapons as a sword, and dangerous mounts for strange riders. Be sure of yourself, girl, Lini had always told her, but not too sure, and she did try. She should have realized events were no more in her control than Mandarb’s reins.

At the three-story stone house, Master Hornwell, stout and gray-haired, and Mistress Hornwell, slightly less round and slightly less gray but otherwise resembling her husband remarkably, had every last person who worked the estates, and Merilille’s maid, Pol, and the green-and-white liveried servants who had come from the Tarasin Palace as well, all bustling to find sleeping accommodations for over two hundred people, most women, who had appeared out of nowhere with dark near to falling. The work went with surprising swiftness, in spite of the estates’ people stopping to gawk at an Aes Sedai’s ageless face, or a Warder’s shifting cloak making parts of him vanish, or one of the Sea Folk with all of her bright silks, her earrings and nosering and medallioned chain. Kinswomen were deciding that now it was safe to be frightened and cry no matter what Reanne and the Knitting Circle said to them; Windfinders were snarling over how far from the salt they had come, against their will as Renaile din Calon loudly claimed; and nobles and crafts women who had been all too willing to flee whatever lay back in Ebou Dar, willing to carry their bundled possessions on their backs, were now balking at being shown a hayloft for a bed.

All that was going on when Elayne and the others arrived with the sun red on the western horizon, a great upheaval and milling all about the house and thatch-roofed outbuildings, but Alise Tenjile, smiling pleasantly and implacable as an avalanche, seemed to have everything more in hand than even the capable Hornwells. Kinswomen who wept harder for all of Reanne’s attempts at comfort dried their tears at a murmur from Alise and began moving with the purposeful air of women who had been caring for themselves in a hostile world for many years. Haughty nobles with marriage knives dangling into the oval cutouts in their lace-trimmed bodices and craftswomen who displayed almost as much arrogance and nearly as much bosom, if not in silk, flinched at the sight of Alise approaching, and went scurrying for the tall barns hugging their bundles and announcing loudly that they had always thought it might be amusing to sleep on straw. Even the Windfinders, many of them important and powerful women among the Atha’an Miere, muffled their complaints when Alise came near. For that matter, Sareitha, still lacking the Aes Sedai agelessness, eyed Alise askance and touched her brown-fringed shawl as if to remind herself it was there. Merilille — unflappable Merilille — watched the woman go about her work with a blend of approval and open amazement.

Clambering down from her saddle at the front door of the house, Nynaeve glared toward Alise, gave her dark braid one deliberate, measured tug that the other woman was far too busy to notice, and stalked inside, stripping off her blue riding gloves and muttering to herself. Watching her go, Lan chuckled softly, then stifled his laughter immediately when Elayne dismounted. Light, but his eyes were cold! For Nynaeve’s sake, she hoped the man could be saved from his fate, yet looking into those eyes, she did not believe it.

'Where is Ispan?' she murmured, helping Aviendha scramble down. So many of the women knew an Aes Sedai — a Black sister — was being held prisoner that the news was bound to spread through the estates like fire in dry grass, but better if the manor’s folk had a little preparation.

'Adeleas and Vandene took her to a small woodcutter’s hut about half a mile away,' he replied just as quietly. 'In all this, I don’t think anyone noticed a woman with a sack over her head. The sisters said they would stay there with her tonight.'

Elayne shivered. The Darkfriend was to be questioned again once the sun went down, it seemed. They were in Andor, now, and that made her feel more deeply as if she had given the order for it.

Soon she was in a copper bathtub, luxuriating in perfumed soap and clean skin again, laughing and splashing water at Birgitte, who lolled in another tub except when she was splashing back, both of them giggling over the wincing horror Aviendha could not quite conceal at sitting up to her breasts in water. She thought it was a very good joke on herself, though, and told a most improper story about a man getting segade spines in his bottom. Birgitte told one still more improper, about a woman getting her head caught between the slats of a fence, that made even Aviendha blush. They were funny, though. Elayne wished she knew one to tell.

She and Aviendha combed and brushed one another’s hair — a nightly ritual for near-sisters — and then they