A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time 7)

“I am here only to advise Berelain, though the truth of it is, she ignored my advice by coming in the first place.” The Taraboner woman held her head up, voice confident. She was rubbing her thumbs for all she was worth, though. She could not do well at the negotiating table if she was that transparent. “For the rest,” she said carefully, “I have reached no decision as yet.”

“A wise decision, that,” Cadsuane murmured, with a pointed look at Merana. “It seems that in the last few years far too many sisters have forgotten they possess brains, or discretion. There was a time when Aes Sedai reached their decisions after calm deliberation, with the good of the Tower always in the front of their thoughts. Just remember what the Sanche girl got from meddling with al’Thor, Annoura. Walk too near a forge-fire, and you can be burned badly.”

Merana lifted her chin, working her neck to ease its tightness. Realizing what she was doing, she made herself stop. The woman did not stand that far above her. Not really. Just higher than any other sister. “If I may ask . . . ”Too diffident, but worse to stop and start over. “ . . . what are your intentions, Cadsuane?” She struggled to maintain dignity. “Obviously, you have been . . . holding yourself aside . . . until now. Why have you decided to . . . approach . . . al’Thor at this particular time? You were . . . rather undiplomatic . . . with him.”

“You might as well have slapped his face,” Annoura put in, and Merana colored. Of the two of them, Annoura should have been having the harder time with Cadsuane by far, but she was not the one stumbling over her words.

Cadsuane shook her head in pitying style. “If you want to see what a man is made of, push him from a direction he doesn’t expect. There’s good metal in that boy, I

think, but he’s going to be difficult.” Steepling her fingers, she peered across them at the wall, musing to herself. “He has a rage in him fit to burn the world, and he holds it by a hair. Push him too far off balance . . . Phaw! Al’Thor’s not so hard yet as Logain Ablar or Mazrim Taim, but a hundred times as difficult, I fear.” Hearing those three names together clove Merana’s tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“You have seen Logain and Taim both?” a staring Annoura said. “Taim, he is following al’Thor, so I hear.” Merana managed to swallow a relieved sigh. Tales of Dumai’s Wells had not had time to spread yet. They would, though.

“I do have ears to catch rumors, too, Annoura,” Cadsuane said acerbically. “Though I could wish I didn’t, for what I hear of that pair. All my work thrown away to be done over. Others’ as well, but I did my share. And then there are these blackcoats, these Asha’man.” Taking a cup from Daigian, she smiled warmly and murmured thanks. The round-cheeked White seemed ready to curtsy, though all she did was retreat to a corner and fold her hands. She had been longer a novice, and Accepted, than anyone in living memory, barely allowed to remain in the Tower, gaining the ring by a fingernail and the shawl by an eyelash. Daigian was always self-effacing around other sisters.

Breathing the steam from her teacup, Cadsuane went on, suddenly chatting pleasantly. “It was Logain, practically on my doorstep, that lured me away from my roses. Phaw! A scuffle at a sheep fair could have lured me from those Light-cursed plants. What’s the point if you use the Power, but do it without, and you grow ten thousand thorns for every — Phaw! I actually considered taking the oath as a Hunter, if the Council of Nine would allow it. Well. It was a nice few months, chasing down Logain, but once he was taken, escorting him to Tar Valon appealed as much as the roses. I wandered a bit, to see what I could find, perhaps a new Warder, though it’s a bit late for that in any fairness to the man, I suppose. Then I heard of Taim, and I was off to Saldaea as fast I could ride. There’s nothing for a bit of excitement like a man who can channel.” Abruptly her voice hardened, and her gaze. “Were either of you involved in that . . . vileness . . . right after the Aiel War?”

Despite herself, Merana gave a confused start. The other woman’s eyes spoke of the block and the headsman’s axe. “What vileness? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

That accusing glare hit Annoura so hard, she almost fell off the bed. “The Aiel War?” she gasped, steadying herself. “The years after, I spent trying to make the so-called Grand Coalition more than a name.”

Merana looked at Annoura with interest. A good many of the Gray Ajah had scurried from capital to capital after, the war, in a futile effort to hold together the alliance that had formed against the Aiel, but she had never known Annoura was one of them. She could not be that bad a negotiator if she was. “So did I,” she said. Dignity. Since setting out after al’Thor from Caemlyn, she had not retained much of that. The few scraps remaining were too precious to lose. She made her voice calm, and firm. “What vileness do you mean, Cadsuane?”

The gray-haired woman simply waved the question away, as though she had never spoken the word.

For a moment, Merana wondered whether Cadsuane’s wits might be wandering. She had never heard of it happening to a sister, but most Aes Sedai did go into retreat at the close of their lives, far from the stratagems and turbulence that none but sisters ever knew. Far from everyone, often as not. Who could say what befell them before the end? One look at the clear, steady gaze regarding her over that teacup quickly disabused her of any such notion. Anyway, twenty-year-old vileness, whatever it had been, certainly could not hold a candle to what the world confronted now. And Cadsuane still had not answered her original questions. What did she intend? And why now?

Before Merana could ask again, the door opened and Bera and Kiruna were herded in by Corele Hovian, a boyishly slim Yellow with thick black eyebrows and a mass of raven hair that gave her something of a wild appearance no matter how neatly she dressed, and she always dressed for a country dance, with masses of embroidery on her sleeves and bodice and up the sides of her skirts. There was barely room to move, with so many people in this confined space. Corele never failed to seem amused, whatever happened, but now she wore a wide smile somewhere between disbelief and outright laughter. Kiruna’s eyes flashed in a face of frozen arrogance, while Bera fumed, mouth tight and forehead creased. Until they saw Cadsuane. Merana supposed that for them, it must be as if she had found herself face to face with Alind Dyfelle or Sevlana Meseau or even Mabriam en Shereed. Their eyes bulged. Kiruna’s jaw dropped.

“I thought you were dead,” Bera breathed.

Cadsuane sniffed irritably. “I am growing tired of hearing that. The next imbecile I hear it from is going to yelp for a week.” Annoura began studying the toes of her slippers.

“You’ll never guess where I found these two,” Corele said in her lilting Murandian accent. She tapped the side of her upturned nose, the way she did when about to tell a joke, or what she saw as one. Spots of color appeared in Bera’s cheeks, and larger in Kiruna’s. “Bera there was sitting meek as a mouse under the eyes of half a dozen of those Aiel wilders, who told me bold as you please that she couldn’t come with me until Sorilea — oh, now that woman’s a harridan to give you nightmares, she is — I couldn’t have Bera until Sorilea was done with her private chat with the other apprentice. Our darling Kiruna, there.”

It was no longer a matter of spots. Kiruna and Bera reddened to their hair, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Even Daigian stared at them.

Relief surged through Merana in wonderful waves. She would not have to be the one to explain how the Wise Ones had interpreted that wretched al’Thor’s orders that the sisters were to obey them. They were not really apprentices; there were no lessons involved, of course. What could a great lot of wilders, savages at that, teach Aes Sedai? It was just that the Wise Ones liked to know where everyone fit. Just? Bera or Kiruna could tell how al’Thor had laughed — laughed! — and said it made no difference to him and he expected them to be obedient pupils. No one was having an easy time bending her neck, least of all Kiruna.

Yet Cadsuane did not demand explanations. “I expected a dog’s dinner,” she said dryly, “but not a bucket from the midden. Let me see if I have the straight of it. You children who stand in rebellion against a lawfully raised Amyrlin have now somehow associated yourselves with the al’Thor boy, and if you are taking orders from these Aiel women, I assume you take his as well.” Her grunt was disgusted enough for a mouthful of rotten plums. Shaking her head, she peered into her teacup, then fixed the pair again. “Well, what’s one treason more or less? The Hall can put you on your knees from here to Tarmon Gai’don for penance, but they can only take your heads once. What of the rest, out in the Aiel camp? All Elaida’s, I suppose. Have they also . . . apprenticed . . . themselves? None of us have been allowed as close as the first row of tents. These Aiel seem to have no love of Aes Sedai.”

“I do not know, Cadsuane,” Kiruna answered, so red-faced she appeared about to catch fire. “We have been kept apart.” Merana’s eyes widened. She had never before heard Kiruna sound deferential.

Bera, on the other hand, drew a deep breath. She already stood straight, yet she seemed to straighten herself for an unpleasant task. “Elaida is not — ” she began heatedly.

“Elaida is overambitious, as near as I can make out,” Cadsuane broke in, leaning forward so abruptly that Merana and Annoura both started back on the bed, though she was not looking at them, “and she may be a catastrophe simmering, but she is still the Amyrlin Seat, raised by the Hall of the Tower in full accordance with the laws of the Tower.”

“If Elaida is a lawful Amyrlin, why have you not obeyed her order to return?” All that betrayed Bera’s lack of composure was the stillness of her hands on her skirts. Only a marked effort to keep from clutching or smoothing could hold them so motionless.

“So one of you has a little backbone.” Cadsuane laughed softly, b

ut her eyes did not look mirthful at all. Leaning back, she sipped her tea. “Now sit down. I have a great many more questions.”

Merana and Annoura rose, offering their places on the bed, but Kiruna simply stood peering at Cadsuane worriedly, and Bera glanced at her friend, then shook her head. Corele rolled her blue eyes, grinning broadly for some reason, but Cadsuane did not seem to care.

“Half the rumors I hear,” she said, “concern the Forsaken being loose. It would hardly be a surprise, with all else, but do you have any evidence, for or against?”

Before very long, Merana was glad to be sitting; before very long, she knew what laundry felt going through the laundress’s mangle. Cadsuane did all the questioning, dodging from topic to topic so you never knew what was coming next. Corele held her peace except for chuckling now and then or shaking her head, and Daigian did not even do that, of course. Merana caught the worst, her and Bera and Kiruna, yet Annoura was certainly not spared. Every time Berelain’s advisor relaxed, thinking she was in the clear, Cadsuane skewered her anew.