“The world is full of strange wonders,” she told Coride, a pale-haired girl who was sobbing facedown on her bed. Only a year younger than herself, Coride was most definitely still a girl despite a year and a half in the Tower. “Why be surprised if some of those wonders appear in the White Tower? What better place?” She never mentioned the Last Battle to these girls. That was hardly likely to be any comfort.
“But she walked into a wall!” Coride wailed, raising her head. Her face was red and blotchy, and her cheeks glistened damply. “A wall! And then none of us could find the classroom, and Pedra couldn’t either, and she got cross with us. Pedra never gets cross. She was frightened, too!”
“I’ll wager Pedra didn’t start crying, though.” Egwene sat down on the edge of the girl’s bed, and was pleased that she did not wince. Novice mattresses were not noted for softness. “The dead can’t harm the living, Coride. They can’t touch us. They don’t even seem to see us. Besides, they were initiates of the Tower or else servants here. This was their home as much as it is ours. And as for rooms or hallways not being where they’re supposed to be, just remember that the Tower is a place of wonders. Remember that, and they won’t frighten you.”
It seemed feeble to her, but Coride wiped her eyes and swore she would never be frightened again. Unfortunately, there were a hundred and two like her, not all so easily comforted. It was enough to make Egwene angrier at the sisters in the Tower than she already had been.
Her days were not all lessons and comforting novices and being punished by the Mistress of Novices, though the last did take up an unfortunate amount of each day. Silviana had been right to doubt that she would have much free time. Novices were always given chores. Often it was make-work, since the Tower had well over a thousand serving men and women without counting laborers, but physical work helped build character, so the Tower had always believed. Plus, it helped keep the novices too tired to think of men, supposedly. She was loaded down with chores beyond what the novices were given, though. Some were assigned by sisters who considered her a runaway, others by Silviana in the hope that weariness would dull the edge of her “rebellion.”
Daily, after one meal or another, she scrubbed dirty pots with coarse salt and a stiff brush in the workroom off the main kitchen. From time to time Laras would put her head in, but she never spoke. And she never used her long spoon, even when Egwene was massaging the small of her back, aching from being head-down in a large kettle, rather than scrubbing. Laras dealt out smacks aplenty to scullions and under-cooks who tried to play pranks on Egwene, as was customary with novices sent to work in the kitchen. Supposedly that was just because, as she announced loudly every time she gave a thwack, they had plenty of time to play when they were not supposed to be working, but Egwene noticed that Laras was not so quick when someone goosed one of the true novices or tipped a cup of cold water down the back of her neck. It seemed she did have an ally of sorts. If she could only figure out how to make use of her.
She hauled water in buckets hanging from the ends of a pole balanced across her shoulders, to the kitchen, to the novices’ quarters, to the Accepted’s quarters, all the way up to the Ajah’s quarters. She carried meals to sisters in their rooms, raked garden paths, pulled weeds, ran errands for sisters, attended Sitters, swept floors, mopped floors, scrubbed floors on her hands and knees, and that was only a partial list. She never shirked at these tasks, and only in part because she would not give anyone an excuse to call her lazy. In a way, she viewed them as penance for not having prepared properly before turning the harbor chain to cuendillar. Penances were to be borne with dignity. As much dignity as anyone can have while scrubbing a floor, anyway.
Besides, visiting the Accepted’s quarters gave her a chance to see how they viewed her. There were thirty-one in the Tower, but at any given time some were teaching novices and others taking lessons of their own, so she seldom found more than ten or twelve in their rooms around the nine-tiered well surrounding a small garden. Word of her arrival always spread quickly, though, and she never lacked an audience. At first, many of them tried to overwhelm her with orders, especially Mair, a plump blue-eyed Arafellin, and Asseil, a slim Taraboner with pale hair and brown eyes. They had been novices when she came to the Tower, and already jealous of her quick rise to Accepted when she left. With them, every second sentence was fetch that, or carry this there. For all of them she was the “novice” who had caused so much difficulty, the “novice” who thought she was the Amyrlin Seat. She carried pails of water till her back ached, uncomplaining, yet she refused to obey their commands. Which earned her more visits to the Mistress of Novices, of course. As the days passed, as her continual trips to Silviana’s study showed no effect, however, that flow of commands dwindled and finally ceased. Even Asseil and Mair had not really been trying to be mean, only to behave as they thought they should in the circumstances, and they were at a loss as to what to do with her.
Some of the Accepted showed signs of fright at the dead walking and the interior of the Tower changing, and whenever she saw a bloodless face or teary eyes she would say the same things she told the novices. Not addressing the woman directly, which might have gotten her back up rather than soothing her, but as if talking to herself. It worked as well with Accepted as with novices. Many gave a start when she began, or opened their mouths as though to tell her to be quiet, yet none did, and she always left a thoughtful expression behind. The Accepted continued to come out onto the stone-railed galleries when she entered, but they watched her in silence as though wondering what she was. Eventually she would teach them what she was. Them and the sisters, too.
Attending Sitters and sisters, a woman in white standing quietly in the corner quickly became part of the furniture even when she was notorious. If they noticed her, they changed their conversation, yet she overheard many snippets, often of plots to avenge some slight given or wrong done by another Ajah. Oddly, most of the sisters seemed to see the other Ajahs inside the Tower as more their enemies than they did the sisters in the camp outside the city, and the Sitters were not much better. It made her want to slap them. True, it boded well for relations when the other sisters returned to the Tower, but still. . . .
She did pick up other things. The unbelievable disaster that had befallen an expedition sent against the Black Tower. Some of the sisters seemed not to believe it, yet they appeared to be trying to convince themselves it could not have happened. More sisters captured after a great battle and somehow forced to swear fealty to Rand. She had already had inklings of that, and she could not like it any more than she did sisters being bonded by Asha’man. Being ta’veren or the Dragon Reborn was no excuse. No Aes Sedai had ever before sworn fealty to any man. The sisters and Sitters argued over who was to blame, with Rand and the Asha’man at the head of the list. But one name came up again and again. Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan. They talked of Rand, too, of how to find him before Tarmon Gai’don. They knew it was coming despite their failure to console the novices and Accepted, and they were desperate to lay hands on him.
Sometimes she risked a comment, a mention of Shemerin being stripped of the shawl against all custom, a suggestion that Elaida’s edict regarding Rand was the best way in the world to make him dig in his heels. She offered sympathy for the sisters captured by the Asha’man, for those taken at Dumai’s Wells—with Elaida’s name dropped in—or regretted the neglect that saw garbage rotting in the once pristine streets of Tar Valon. There was no need to mention Elaida there; they knew who was responsible for Tar Valon. At times, those comments earned her still more trips to Silviana’s study, and more chores besides, yet surprisingly often they did not. She made careful note of the sisters who merely told her to be quiet. Or better still, said nothing. Some even nodded agreement before they caught themselves.
Some of those chores led to interesting encounters.
On the morning of her second day she was using a long-handled bamboo rake to fish detritus from the ponds of the Water Garden. There had been
a rainstorm the night before, and the heavy winds had deposited leaves and grasses in the ponds among the bright green lily pads and budding water irises, and even a dead sparrow that she calmly buried in one of the flower beds. A pair of Reds stood on one of the arching pond bridges, leaning on the lacy stone railing and watching her and the fish swirling below them in a flurry of red and gold and white. A half-dozen crows burst up out of one of the leatherleafs and silently winged their way north. Crows! The Tower grounds were supposed to be warded against crows and ravens. The Reds did not seem to have noticed.
She was squatting on her heels beside one of the ponds, washing the dirt from her hands after burying that pitiful bird, when Alviarin appeared, her white-fringed shawl wrapped tightly around her as if the morning were still windy rather than bright and fair. This was the third time she had seen Alviarin, and every time she had been alone rather than in company with other Whites. She had seen clusters of Whites in the hallways, though. Was there a clue in that? If so, she could not imagine to what, unless Alviarin was being shunned by her own Ajah for some reason. Surely the rot had not gone that deep.
Eyeing the Reds, Alviarin approached Egwene along the coarse gravel path that wound among the ponds. “You have fallen far,” she said when she was close. “You must feel it keenly.”
Egwene straightened and blotted her hands on her skirt, then picked up the rake. “I’m not the only one.” She had had another session with Silviana before dawn, and when she left the woman’s study, Alviarin had been waiting to go in again. That was a daily ritual for the White, and the talk of the novices’ quarters, with every tongue speculating on the why of it. “My mother always says, don’t weep over what can’t be mended. It seems good advice under the circumstances.”
Faint spots of color appeared in Alviarin’s cheeks. “But you seem to be weeping a good deal. Endlessly, by all reports. Surely you would escape that if you could.”
Egwene caught another oak leaf on the broom and brushed it off into the wooden pail of damp leaves at her feet. “Your loyalty to Elaida isn’t very strong, is it?”
“Why do you say that?” Alviarin said suspiciously. Glancing at the two Reds, who appeared to be paying more mind now to the fish than Egwene, she stepped closer, inviting lowered voices.
Egwene fished at a long strand of grass that had to have come all the way from the plains beyond the river. Should she mention the letter this woman had written to Rand practically promising him the White Tower at his feet? No, that piece of information might prove valuable, but it seemed the sort of thing that could only be used once. “She stripped you of the Keeper’s stole and ordered your penance. That’s hardly an inducement to loyalty.”
Alviarin’s face remained smooth, yet her shoulders relaxed visibly. Aes Sedai seldom showed so much. She must feel under phenomenal strain to be so little in control of herself. She darted a look at the Reds again. “Think on your situation,” she said in near a whisper. “If you want an escape from it, well, you may be able to find one.”
“I am content with my situation,” Egwene said simply.
Alviarin’s eyebrows quirked upward in disbelief, but with another glance at the Reds—one was watching them now rather than the fish—she glided away, a very fast glide on the verge of breaking into a trot.
Every two or three days she would appear while Egwene was doing chores, and while she never openly offered help with an escape, she used that word frequently, and she began to show frustration when Egwene refused to rise to her bait. Bait it was, to be sure. Egwene did not trust the woman. Perhaps it was that letter, surely designed to draw Rand to the Tower and into Elaida’s clutches, or maybe it was the way she kept waiting for Egwene to make the first move, to beg possibly. Likely Alviarin would try to set conditions, then. In any case, she had no intention of escaping unless there was no other choice, so she always gave the same response.
“I am content with my situation.”
Alviarin began grinding her teeth audibly when she heard that.
On the fourth day, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing blue-and-white floor tiles when the boots of three men accompanied by a sister in elaborately red-embroidered gray silk passed her. A few paces on, the boots stopped.
“That be her,” a man’s voice said in the accents of Illian. “She did be pointed out to me. I think me I will speak to her.”
“She’s only another novice, Mattin Stepaneos,” the sister told him. “You wanted to walk in the gardens.” Egwene dipped her scrub brush in the bucket of soapy water and began another stretch of tiles.
“Fortune stab me, Cariandre, this may be the White Tower, but I do still be the lawful King of Illian, and if I want to speak to her—with you for chaperone; all very proper and decent—then I will speak with her. I did be told she did grow up in the same village with al’Thor.” One set of boots, blacked till they glistened, approached Egwene.
Only then did she stand, the dripping brush in one hand. She used the back of the other to brush her hair out of her face. She refrained from knuckling the small of her back, much as she wanted to.
Mattin Stepaneos was stocky and almost entirely bald, with a neatly trimmed white beard in the Illianer fashion and a heavily creased face. His eyes were sharp, and angry. Armor would have suited him better than the green silk coat embroidered with golden bees on the sleeves and lapels. “Just another novice?” he murmured. “I think you be mistaken, Cariandre.”
The plump Red, her lips compressed, left the two serving men with the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests and joined the balding man. Her disapproving gaze touched Egwene briefly before shifting to him. “She’s a much-punished novice who has a floor to scrub. Come. The gardens should be very pleasant this morning.”
“What be pleasant,” he said, “do be talking to someone other than Aes Sedai. And only of the Red Ajah at that, since you do manage to keep me from any others. On top of which, the servants you did give me might as well be mutes, and I think me the Tower Guards do have orders to hold their tongues around me as well.”
He fell silent as two more Red sisters approached. Nesita, plump and blue eyed and mean as a snake with the itch, nodded companionably to Cariandre while Barasine handed Egwene the by now all too familiar pewter cup. The Red seemed to have custody of her in a way—at least, her watchers and minders were always Reds—and they seldom let much more than the promised hour pass before someone appeared with the cup of forkroot tea. She drained it and handed it back. Nesita seemed disappointed that she did not protest or refuse, but there seemed little point. She had, once, and Nesita had helped pour the vile stuff down her throat using a funnel she had ready in her belt pouch. That would have been a fine show of dignity in front of Mattin Stepaneos.
He watched the silent exchange with puzzled interest, though Cariandre plucked at his sleeve, urging him again to his walk in the gardens. “Sisters bring you water when you thirst?” he asked when Barasine and Nesita glided away.
“A tea they think will improve my mood,” she told him. “You look well, Mattin Stepaneos. For a man Elaida had kidnapped.” That tale was the talk of the novices’ quarters, too.
Cariandre hissed and opened her mouth, but he spoke up first, his jaw tight. “Elaida did save me from murder by al’Thor,” he said. The Red nodded approvingly.
“Why would you think yourself in danger from him?” Egwene asked.
The man grunted. “He did murder Morgase in Caemlyn, and Colavaere in Cairhien. He destroyed half the Sun Palace killing her, I did hear. And I did hear of Tairen High Lords poisoned or stabbed to death in Cairhien. Who can say what other rulers he did murder and destroy the bodies?” Cariandre nodded again, smiling. You might have thought him a boy reciting his lessons. Did the woman have no understanding of men? He certainly saw it. His jaw grew harder still, and his hands clenched into fists for a moment.
“Colavaere hanged herself,” Egwene said, making sure she sounded patient. “The Sun Palace was damaged later by someone trying to kil
l the Dragon Reborn, maybe the Forsaken, and according to Elayne Trakand, her mother was murdered by Rahvin. Rand has announced his support for her claims to both the Lion Throne and the Sun Throne. He hasn’t killed any of the Cairhienin nobles rebelling against him, or the High Lords in rebellion. In fact, he named one of them his Steward in Tear.”
“I think that is quite—” Cariandre began, pulling her shawl up onto her shoulders, but Egwene went on right over her.
“Any sister could have told you all that. If she wanted to. If they were speaking to one another. Think why you see only Red sisters. Have you seen sisters of any two Ajahs speaking? You’ve been kidnapped and brought aboard a sinking ship.”
“That is more than enough,” Cariandre snapped right atop Egwene’s last sentence. “When you finish scrubbing this floor, you will run to the Mistress of Novices and ask her to punish you for shirking. And for showing disrespect to an Aes Sedai.”
Egwene met the woman’s furious gaze calmly. “I have barely enough time after I finish to get clean before my lesson with Kiyoshi. Could I visit Silviana after the lesson?”
Cariandre shifted her shawl, seemingly taken aback by her calmness. “That is a problem for you to work out,” she said at last. “Come, Mattin Stepaneos. You have helped this child shirk long enough.”
There was no time to change out of her damp dress or even comb her hair after leaving Silviana’s study, not if she were to have any hope of being on time for Kiyoshi without running, which she refused to do. That made her late, and it turned out that the tall, slender Gray was a stickler for both punctuality and neatness, which put her back yelping and kicking under Silviana’s hard-swung strap little more than an hour later. Quite aside from embracing pain, something else helped see her through that. The memory of Mattin Stepaneos’ thoughtful expression as Cariandre led him off down the corridor and how he twice looked back over his shoulder at her. She had planted another seed. Enough seeds planted, and perhaps what sprouted from them would splinter those cracks in the platform beneath Elaida. Enough seeds would bring Elaida down.
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