More storerooms lined the narrow hallway leading away from the kitchen, and tall cupboards for brooms and mops, buckets and soaps, linens for tables, and all sorts of assorted things. Nynaeve found a fat feather duster in one. Egeanin took an armful of folded towels from another, and a stout stone pestle out of a mortar in a third. She hid the pestle under the towels.
“A cudgel is sometimes handy,” she said when Elayne raised an eyebrow. “Especially when no one expects you to have it.”
Nynaeve sniffed but said nothing. She had hardly acknowledged Egeanin at all since agreeing to her presence.
Deeper in the palace the hallways broadened and heightened, the white walls carved with friezes and the ceilings set with gleaming arabesques of gold. Long, bright carpets ran along white-tiled floors. Ornate golden lamps on gilded stands gave light and the scent of perfumed oil. Sometimes the corridor opened into courtyards rounded by walks with slim, fluted columns, overlooked by balconies screened by filigreed stonework. Large fountains burbled; fish red and white and golden swam beneath lily pads with huge white flowers. Not at all like the city outside.
Occasionally they saw other servants, men and women in white, tree and leaf embroidered on one shoulder, hurrying about their tasks, or men in the gray coats and steel caps of the Civil Watch carrying staffs or cudgels. No one spoke to them or even looked twice, not at three serving women obviously at their work.
At last they came to the narrow servants’ stairs marked on their sketchy map.
“Remember,” Nynaeve said quietly, “if there are guards on her door, leave. If she is not alone, leave. She is far from the most important reason we are here.” She took a deep breath, making herself look at Egeanin. “If you let anything happen to her—”
A trumpet sounded faintly from outside. A moment later a gong rang inside, and shouted orders drifted down the hall. Men in steel caps appeared for a moment down the hallway, running.
“Maybe we will not have to worry about guards on her door,” Elayne said. The riot had begun in the streets. Rumors spread by Thom and Juilin to gather the crowd. Domon’s sailors to egg them on. She regretted the necessity, but the disturbance would pull most of the guards out of the palace, maybe all with luck. Those people out there did not know it, but they fought in a battle to save their city from the Black Ajah and the world from the Shadow. “Egeanin should go with you, Nynaeve. Your part is the most important. If one of us needs someone to watch her back, it i
s you.”
“I’ve no need for a Seanchan!” Shouldering her duster like a pike, Nynaeve strode off down the hall. She really did not move like a servant. Not with that militant stride.
“Should we not be about our own task?” Egeanin said. “The riot will not hold attention completely for long.”
Elayne nodded. Nynaeve had passed out of sight around a corner.
The stairs were narrow and hidden in the wall, to keep servants as unseen as possible. The corridors on the second floor were much as those on the first, except that double-pointed arches were almost as likely to give onto a stone-latticed balcony as onto a room. There seemed to be far fewer servants as they made their way to the west side of the palace, and none more than glanced at them. Wonderfully, the hallway outside the Panarch’s apartments was empty. No guards in front of the wide, tree-carved doors set in a double-peaked frame. Not that she had meant to retreat had there been guards, no matter what she had told Nynaeve, but it did make things simpler.
A moment later she was not so sure. She could feel someone channeling in those rooms. Not strong flows, but definitely the Power being woven, or maybe a weave maintained. Few women knew the trick of tying a weave.
“What is the matter?” Egeanin asked.
Elayne realized she had stopped. “One of the Black sisters is in there.” One, or more? Only one channeling, certainly. She pressed close to the doors. A woman was singing in there. She put her ear to the carved wood, heard raucous words, muffled yet clearly understandable.
“My breasts are round, and my hips are too.
I can flatten a whole ship’s crew.”
Startled, she jerked back, porcelain dishes sliding on the tray under the cloth. Had she somehow come to the wrong room? No, she had memorized the sketch. Besides, in the entire palace the only doors carved with the tree led to the Panarch’s apartments.
“Then we must leave her,” Egeanin said. “You can do nothing without warning the others of your presence.”
“Perhaps I can. If they feel me channel, they will think it is whoever is in there.” Frowning, she bit her lower lip. How many were there? She could do at least three or four things at once with the Power, something only Egwene and Nynaeve could match. She ran down a list of Andoran queens who had shown courage in the face of great danger, until she realized it was a list of all the queens of Andor. I will be queen one day; I can be as brave as they. Readying herself, she said, “Throw open the doors, Egeanin, then drop down so I can see everything.” The Seanchan woman hesitated. “Throw open the doors.” Elayne’s own voice surprised her. She had not tried to make it anything, but it was quiet, calm, commanding. And Egeanin nodded, almost a bow, and immediately flung open both doors.
“My thighs are strong are strong as anchor chain.
My kiss can burst—”
The dark-braided singer, standing wrapped in flows of Air to her neck and a soiled, wrinkled Taraboner gown of red silk, cut off short as the doors banged back. A frail-appearing woman, lounging in pale blue of a high-necked Cairhienin cut on a long padded bench, ceased nodding her head to the song and leaped to her feet, outrage replacing the grin on her fox-shaped face.
The glow of saidar already surrounded Temaile, but she did not have a chance. Appalled at what she saw, Elayne embraced the True Source and lashed out hard with flows of Air, webbing her from shoulders to ankles, wove a shield of Spirit and slammed it between the woman and the Source. The glow around Temaile vanished, and she went flying across the bench as if she had been struck by a galloping horse, eyes rolling up into her head, to land unconscious on her back three paces away on the green-and-gold carpet. The dark-braided woman gave a start as the flows around her winked out of existence, felt at herself in wondering disbelief as she stared from Temaile to Elayne and Egeanin.
Tying off the weave holding Temaile, Elayne hurried into the room, eyes searching for others of the Black Ajah. Behind her, Egeanin closed the doors after them. There did not seem to be anyone else. “Was she alone?” she demanded of the woman in red. The Panarch, by Nynaeve’s description. Nynaeve had mentioned something about a song.
“You are not … with them?” Amathera said hesitantly, dark eyes taking in their dresses. “You are Aes Sedai also?” She seemed willing to doubt that despite the evidence of Temaile. “But not with them?”
“Was she alone?” Elayne snapped, and Amathera gave a little jump.
“Yes. Alone. Yes, she … .” The Panarch grimaced. “The others made me sit on my throne and speak the words they put into my mouth. It amused them to make me sometimes give justice, and sometimes pronouncements of horrible injustice, rulings that will cause strife for generations if I cannot put them aright. But her!” That full-lipped little mouth opened in a snarl. “Her they set to watch over me. She hurts me for no reason except to make me weep. She made me eat an entire trayful of white ice peppers and would not let me drink a drop until I begged on my knees while she laughed! In my dreams she hoists me to the top of the Tower of Morning by my ankles and lets me fall. A dream, but it seems real, and each time she lets me fall screaming a little nearer the ground. And she laughs! She makes me learn lewd dances, and filthy songs, and laughs when she tells me that before they leave she will make me sing and dance to entertain the—” With a shriek like a pouncing cat she threw herself across the bench onto the bound woman, slapping wildly, pummeling with her fists.