A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time 7)

“Even during the Trolloc Wars, women failed their tests, or lacked the strength, or were sent away from the Tower for any of the usual reasons.” Adeleas had adopted a lecturing tone, but not offensively. Browns often did when expounding. “Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a number feared to go off into the world alone, nor that they might flee to Barashta, as the city that existed here then was called. Though the main part of Barashta was, of course, where the Rahad now stands. Not that a stone of Barashta remains. The Trolloc Wars did not truly envelope Eharon until late, but in the end, Barashta fell as completely as Barsine, or Shaemal, or . . . ”

“The Kin . . . ” Vandene broke in gently; Adeleas blinked at her, then nodded. “ . . . The Kin persisted even after Barashta fell, in the same way they had before, taking in wilders and women put out of the Tower.” Elayne frowned; Mistress Anan had said the Kin took in wilders, too, but Reanne’s biggest anxiety had seemed to be making her and Nynaeve prove they were not.

“None ever remained long,” Adeleas added. “Five years, perhaps ten; then, I suppose, as now. Once they realize that their little group is no replacement for the White Tower, they go off and become village Healers or Wisdoms or the like, or sometimes simply forget the Power, stop channeling, and take up a craft or trade. In any case, they vanish, so to speak.” Elayne wondered how anyone could forget the One Power that way; the urge to channel, the temptation of the Source, was always there, once you learned how. Aes Sedai did seem to believe some women could just put it behind them, though, once they found out they would not be Aes Sedai.

Vandene took up the explanation again; the sisters frequently spoke almost in alternating sentences, each carrying on smoothly where the other left off. “The Tower has known of the Kin from nearly the beginning, perhaps from the very beginning. At first, no doubt, the Wars took precedence. And despite calling themselves the Kin, they have done just what we want such women to do. They remain hidden, even the fact that they can channel, draw no attention whatsoever to themselves. Over the years, they have even passed along word — secretly, of course; carefully — when one of them found a woman falsely claiming the shawl. You said something?”

Elayne shook her head. “Careane, is there any tea in that pot?” Careane gave a small start. “I think Adeleas and Vandene might like to wet their throats.” The Domani woman did not quite look at a still-staring Merilille before going to the table where the silver teapot and cups were. “That doesn’t explain why,” Elayne went on. “Why is knowledge of them such a deep secret? Why haven’t they been scattered long ago?”

“Why, the runaways, of course.” Adeleas made it sound the most obvious thing in the world. “It is a fact that other gatherings have been broken up as soon as found — the last about two hundred years ago — but the Kin do keep themselves small, and quiet. That last group called themselves the Daughters of Silence, yet they were hardly silent. Only twenty-three of them altogether, wilders gathered and trained after a fashion by a pair of former Accepted, but they — “

“Runaways,” Elayne prompted, taking a cup from Careane with a smile of thanks. She had not asked one for herself, but she realized absently that the woman had offered her the first. Vandene and her sister had talked quite a bit about runaways on the way to Ebou Dar.

Adeleas blinked, and pulled herself back to the topic. “The Kin help runaways. They always have two or three women in Tar Valon keeping watch. For one thing, they approach almost every woman put out, in a very circumspect way, and for another, they manage to find every runaway, whether novice or Accepted. At least, none has made it off the island without their help since the Trolloc Wars.”

“Oh, yes,” Vandene said as Adeleas paused to take a cup from Careane. It had been offered to Merilille first, but Merilille sat slumped and staring bleakly at nothing. “If anyone does manage to escape, why, we know right where to look, and she nearly always ends up back in the Tower wishing her feet had never itched. As long as the Kin don’t know we know, anyway. Once that happens, it will be back to the days before the Kin, when a woman running from the Tower might go in any direction. The numbers were larger then — Aes Sedai, Accepted, novices and runaways — and some years two out of three escaped clean, others three out of four. Using the Kin, we retake at least nine of ten. You can see why the Tower has preserved the Kin and their secret like precious jewels.”

Elayne could. A woman was not done with the White Tower until it was done with her. Besides, it could not hurt the Tower’s reputation for infallibility that it always caught runaways. Almost always. Well, now she knew.

She stood, and to her astonishment, Adeleas did also, and Vandene, waving away Careane’s offered tea, and Sareitha. Even Merilille, after a moment. They all looked at her expectantly, even Merilille.

Vandene noticed her surprise, and smiled. “Another thing you might not know. We are a contentious lot in many ways, we Aes Sedai, each jealous of her place and prerogatives, but when someone is placed above us or stands above us, we tend to follow her fairly meekly for the most part. However we might grumble about her decisions in private.”

“Why, so we do,” Adeleas murmured happily, as if she had just discovered something.

Merilille took a deep breath, absorbing herself for a moment in straightening her skirts. “Vandene is right,” she said. “You stand above us in yourself, and I must admit, you apparently have been placed above us. If our behavior calls for penance . . . Well, you will tell us if it does. Where are we to follow you? If I may ask?” There was no sarcasm in any of that; if anything, her tone was more polite than Elayne had heard out of her before.

She thought any Aes Sedai who ever lived would have been proud to control her features as well as she did right then. All she had wanted was for them to admit she really was Aes Sedai. She fought a momentary urge to protest that she was too young, too inexperienced. “You can never put honey back in the comb,” so Lini used to say when she was a girl. Egwene was no older.

Drawing breath, she smiled warmly. “The first thing to recall is that we are all sisters, in every meaning of the word. We must work together; the Bowl of the Winds is too important for anything less.” She hoped they would all nod so enthusiastically when she told them what Egwene intended. “Perhaps we should sit again.” They waited for her before folding themselves back into their seats. She hoped Nynaeve was getting on a tenth so well. When she found out about this,

Nynaeve was going to faint from shock. “I have something of my own to tell you about the Kin.”

Fairly soon it was Merilille who looked ready to faint from shock, and even Adeleas and Vandene were not far from it. But they went right on saying, “Yes, Elayne,” and “If you say so, Elayne.” Perhaps it would all go smoothly from now on.

The sedan chair was rocking through the crowds of revelers along the quay when Moghedien spotted the woman. She was being handed down from a coach at one of the boat landings by a footman in green and white. A wide feathered mask covered her face more completely than Moghedien’s did, but she would have known that determined stride, known that woman, from any angle in any light. The carved screens that served as windows in the closed chair were certainly no hindrance. Two fellows with swords on their hips scrambled from the coach roof to follow the masked woman.

Moghedien thumped a fist against the side of the chair, shouting, “Stop!” The bearers halted so quickly she was almost flung forward.

The crowd jostled past, some shouting curses at her bearers for blocking the way, some shouting more good naturedly. Down here by the river, the throng ran thin enough for her to watch through the gaps. The boat that pulled away from the landing seemed quite distinctive; the roof of the low cabin in the rear was painted red; she did not see that affectation on any of the others waiting at the long stone dock.

She wet her lips, shivering. Moridin’s instructions had been explicit, the price of disobedience made excruciatingly clear. But a slight delay would not hurt. Not if he never learned of it, anyway.

Flinging open the door, she climbed out into the street and looked about hastily. There; that inn, right overlooking the docks. And the river. Lifting her skirts, she hurried away without the slightest fear anyone might take her chair; until she untied the webs of Compulsion on them, the bearers would tell anyone who asked that they were engaged, and stand there until they died of hunger. A path opened ahead of her, men and women in feathered masks leaping aside before she reached them, leaping with squeals and cries as they clutched where they thought they had been stabbed. As they had; there was no time to spin subtle webs on so many minds, but a flurry of needles woven of Air did as well here.

The stout innkeeper at The Oarsman’s Pride nearly leaped, too, at the sight of Moghedien striding into her common room in gloriously scarlet silk worked with thread-of-gold and black silk that glistened as richly as the gold. Her mask was a great spray of pitch black feathers with a sharp black beak; a raven. That was Moridin’s joke, his command, as was the dress, in fact. His colors were black and red, he said, and she would wear them while she served him. She was in livery, however elegant, and she could have killed everyone who saw her.

Instead, she spun a hasty web on the round-cheeked innkeeper that jerked her up straight and made her eyes pop. No time for subtlety. At Moghedien’s command to show her the roof, the woman ran up the railless stairs at the side of the room. It was unlikely any of the feather-draped drinkers saw anything unusual in the innkeeper’s behavior, Moghedien thought with a small laugh. The Oarsman’s Pride probably had never seen a patron of her quality before.

On the flat roof, she quickly weighed the dangers of letting the innkeeper live versus those of killing her. Corpses had a way of pointing a finger, eventually. If you wished to remain quietly hidden in the shadows, you did not kill unless you absolutely had to. Hastily, she adjusted the web of Compulsion, told the woman to go down to her room, to go to sleep and forget ever having seen her. With the haste, it was possible the innkeeper might lose the whole day, or wake somewhat slower of wits than she had been — so much in Moghedien’s life would have been so much easier had she possessed a better Talent for Compulsion — but in any case, the woman scurried away, eager to obey, and left her alone.

As the door thumped down flat into the dusty white-tiled roof, Moghedien gasped at the sudden feel of fingers stroking her mind, palping her soul. Moridin did that sometimes; a reminder, he said, as if she needed any more. She almost looked around for him; her skin pebbled as though at a sudden icy breeze. The touch vanished, and she shivered again. Coming or going, it did remind her. Moridin himself could appear anywhere at any time. Haste.

Speeding to the low wall that surrounded the roof, she searched the river spread out below. Scores of boats of every size swept along on their oars between larger vessels, anchored or under sail. Most of the cabins of the sort she sought were plain wood, but there she saw a yellow roof, and there a blue, and there, in mid-river and heading southward fast . . . Red. It had to be the right one; she could not take any more time here.

She raised her hands, but as balefire launched itself, something flashed around her and she jerked. Moridin had come; he was there, and he would . . . She stared at the pigeons fluttering away. Pigeons! She nearly spewed the contents of her stomach across the roof. A glance at the river made her snarl.

Because she had jerked, the balefire she meant to slice through cabin and passenger instead had sliced diagonally through the middle of the boat, about where the oarsmen had stood, and the bodyguards. Because the rowers had been burned out of the Pattern before the balefire struck, the two halves of the craft were now a good hundred paces back up the river. Then again, perhaps it was not a complete disaster. Because that slice from the boat’s center had gone at the same time the boatmen really died, the river had had minutes to rush in. The two parts of the boat sank out of sight in a great froth of bubbles even as her eyes shifted to them, carrying their passenger to the depths.