under-robes beneath, but her soft leather boots, themselves bleached white, gave little protection from the cold slush. “I was told to report what the Wise One Sevanna said exactly,” she added quickly. Someryn was one of the “other” Wise Ones, and her mouth had turned down at the word timid.
With her eyes lowered, that was all Faile could see of Someryn’s face. Gai’sbain were required to maintain a humble manner, especially the gai’sbain who were not Aiel, and though she looked up through her eyelashes to read Someryn’s expression, the other woman was taller than most men, even Aiel men, a yellow-haired giant who towered over her. Most of what she could see was Someryn’s over-large bosom, plump sun-dark cleavage exposed by a blouse unlaced halfway down her chest and covered mainly by a massive collection of long necklaces, firedrops and emeralds, rubies and opals, three-tiered strands of fat pearls and intricately patterned chains of gold. Most of the Wise Ones seemed to dislike Sevanna, who “spoke for the chief” until a new Shaido clan chief could be chosen, an event unlikely to occur any time soon, and they tried to undercut her authority whenever they were not squabbling among themselves or forming cliques, but many shared Sevanna’s love of wetlander jewelry, and some had even begun wearing finger rings, like Sevanna. On her right hand Someryn wore a large white opal that flashed caverns of red whenever she adjusted her shawl, and a long blue sapphire surrounded by rubies on the left. She had not adopted silk clothing, however. Her blouse was plain white algode, from the Waste, and her skirt and shawl thick wool as dark as the folded scarf that held her waist-long yellow hair back from her face. The cold did not appear to discomfort her in the least.
The two of them stood just beyond what Faile thought of as the border between the Shaido camp and the gai’shain camp — the prisoners’ camp — not that there really were two camps. A few gai’shain slept among the Shaido, but the rest were kept to the center of the camp unless doing their assigned work, cattle fenced off from the lure of freedom by a wall of Shaido. Most of the men and women who passed them wore white gai’shain robes, though few as finely woven as what she wore. With so many to clothe, the Shaido scooped up any sort of white cloth they could find. Some were garbed in layers of coarse linen or toweling or robes of rough tent cloth, and many of the robes were stained with mud or soot. Only now and then did one of the gai’shain show the height and pale eyes of an Aiel. The vast majority were ruddy-faced Amadicians, olive-skinned Altarans, and pale Cairhienin, along with occasional travelers or merchants from Illian or Tarabon or elsewhere who had found themselves in the worst place at the worst time. The Cairhienin were the longest held and most resigned to their situation aside from the handful of Aiel in white, but they all kept their eyes down and moved about their tasks as fast as the trampled mush of snow and mud would allow. Gai’shain were expected to display humility, obedience, and an eagerness to embrace both. Any less resulted in painful reminders.
Faile would very much have liked to hurry on herself. Cold feet were only a small part of it, and eagerness to do Sevanna’s laundry less. Too many eyes could see her standing there in the open with Someryn, and even with her deep cowl hiding her face, the broad mesh belt of shiny golden links around her waist and a close-fitting collar to match marked her as one of Sevanna’s servants. No one called them that — in Aiel eyes, being a servant was demeaning — but that was what they were, the wetlanders at least, just unpaid and with fewer rights and less freedom than any servant Faile had ever heard tell of. Sooner or later Sevanna herself was going to learn that Wise Ones were stopping her gai’sbain to question them. Sevanna had well over a hundred servants and kept adding to them, and Faile was certain that every last one was repeating every word they heard Sevanna say to the Wise Ones.
It was a brutally efficient trap. Sevanna was a harsh mistress, in a rather casual way, never snapping, seldom openly angry, but the slightest infraction, the smallest slip in demeanor or behavior, was punished immediately with the switch or the strap, and every night the five gai’sbain who had pleased her least that day were chosen out for further punishment, sometimes a night bound and gagged on top of a beating, just to encourage the rest. Faile did not want to think of what the woman would order for a spy. On the other hand, the Wise Ones had made it clear that anyone who did not talk freely of what they heard, anyone who tried to hold back or bargain, faced an uncertain future, possibly ending in a shallow grave. Harming a gai’shain beyond the permitted limits of discipline was a violation of ji’e’toh, the web of honor and obligation that governed the lives of Aiel, but wetlander gai’shain seemed to stand outside a number of the rules.
Sooner or later, one side or the other of that trap would snap shut. All that had held the jaws apart this long was that the Shaido seemed to see their wetlander gai’shain as no different from cart horses or pack animals, though in truth the animals received far better treatment. Now and then a gai’shain tried to run away, but aside from that, one simply gave them food and shelter, put them to work and punished them if they faltered. The Wise Ones no more expected them to disobey, Sevanna no more expected them to spy on her, than they expected a cart horse to sing. Sooner or later, though… And that was not the only trap Faile was caught in.
“Wise One, I have nothing more to tell,” she murmured when Someryn said nothing. Unless you were addled in the head, you did not just walk away from a Wise One, not until she dismissed you. “The Wise One Sevanna talks freely in front of us, but she says little.”
The tall woman remained silent, and after a long moment Faile dared to raise her eyes a little more. Someryn was staring over Faile’s head, her mouth hanging open in stunned amazement. Frowning, Faile shifted the basket on her shoulder and looked behind her, but there was nothing to account for Someryn’s expression, just the sprawl of the camp, dark low Aiel tents mingled with peaked tents and walled tents and every sort of tent, most in shades of dirty white or pale brown, others green or blue or red or even striped. The Shaido took everything valuable when they struck, everything that might prove useful, and they left behind nothing that resembled a tent.
As it was, they hardly had enough shelter to go around. There were ten septs gathered here, more than seventy thousand Shaido and nearly as many gai’shain, by her estimate, and everywhere she saw only the usual bustle, dark-clad Aiel going about their lives among scurrying white-clad captives. A smith was working the bellows on his forge in front of an open tent with his tools laid out on a tanned bull hide, children were herding flocks of bleating goats with switches, a trader was displaying her goods in an open pavilion of yellow canvas, everything from golden candlesticks and silver bowls to pots and kettles, all looted. A lean man with a horse on a lead stood talking with a gray-haired Wise One named Masalin, no doubt seeking a cure for some ailment the animal had, from the way he kept pointing at the horse’s belly. Nothing to make Someryn gape.
Just as Faile was about to turn back around, she noticed a dark-haired Aiel woman facing the other way. Not just dark hair, but hair black as a raven’s wing, a great rarity among Aiel. Even from behind, Faile thought she recognized Alarys, another of the Wise Ones. There were over four hundred Wise Ones in the camp, but she had learned quickly to know all of them on sight. Mistaking a Wise One for a weaver or a potter was a quick way to earn a switching.
It might have meant nothing that Alarys was standing still and looking in the same direction as Someryn, or that she had let her shawl slide to the ground, except that just beyond her, Faile recognized still another Wise One, also looking off to the north and west, and slapping at people who walked in front of her. That had to be Jesain, a woman who would have been called short even if she were not Aiel, with a great mass of hair red enough to make fire look pale and a temper to match. Masalin was talking to the man with the horse and gesturing to the animal. She could not channel, but three Wise Ones who could were all staring in the same direction. Only one thing could account for it; they saw someone channeling up there on the forested ridgeline beyond the camp. A Wise One channeling surely would not make any of them stare. Could it be an Aes Sedai? Or more than one? Better not to get her hopes up. It was too soon.
A clout on the head staggered her, and she nearly dropped the basket.
“Why are you standing like a lump?” Someryn snarled. “Go on with your work. Go, before I…!”
Faile went, balancing the basket with one hand, lifting the skirts of her robe out of the muddy snow with the other, and moving as quickly as she could without slipping and falling in the muck. Someryn never hit anyone, and she never raised her voice. If she was doing both, it was best to be out of her way with no delay. Humbly and obediently.
Pride said to maintain a cool defiance, a quiet refusal to yield, yet sense said that was the way to find herself guarded twice as closely as she was. The Shaido might take the wetlander gai’shain for domesticated animals, but they were not completely blind. They must think that she had accepted her captivity as
