Sisters who knew Nynaeve had learned to take care with that word around her. She could become quite snappish when it was used in a disparaging tone. Now, she just stared at Reanne. Perhaps she was trying to find the answer. Elayne knew what her own answer would be, but this had nothing to do with claiming the throne, or Andor. It was a decision for Aes Sedai, and here, that meant it was Nynaeve’s to make.
“If you don’t,” Lan said quietly from the door, “then you might as well give her back to the Seanchan.” He was not at all abashed by the dark looks given him by the four women who heard his deep voice toll those words like a funeral gong. “You will have to watch her closely, but keep her collared when she wants to be free, and you are no better than they are.”
“That isn’t for you to say, Warder,” Alise said firmly. He met her stern stare with cool equanimity, and she gave a small disgusted grunt and threw up her hands. “You should give him a good talking-to when you get him alone, Nynaeve.”
Nynaeve must have been feeling her awe of the women particularly strongly, because her cheeks colored. “Don’t think that I will not,” she said lightly. She did not look at Lan at all. Finally condescending to notice the chill, she pulled her shawl up onto her shoulders, and cleared her throat. “He is right, though. At least we don’t have to worry about the other two. I’m just surprised it took them this long to stop imitating those fool Seanchan.”
“I am not so sure,” Reanne sighed. “Kara was a sort of wise woman on Toman Head, you know. Very influential in her village. A wilder, of course. You would think she’d hate the Seanchan, but she doesn’t, not all of them. She is very fond of the sul’dam captured with her, and very anxious that we shouldn’t hurt any of the sul’dam. Lemore is just nineteen, a pampered noblewoman with the extreme bad luck to have the spark manifest itself in her on the very day Tanchico fell. She says she hates the Seanchan and wants to make them pay for what they did to Tanchico, but she answers to Larie, her damane name, as readily as to Lemore, and she smiles at the sul’dam and lets them pet her. I don’t mistrust them, not the way I do Alivia, but I doubt either one could stand up to a sul’dam. I think if a sul’dam ordered either to help her escape, she would, and I fear she might not fight too hard if the sul’dam tried to collar her again.”
After she stopped speaking, the silence stretched.
Nynaeve seemed to look inward, struggling with herself. She gripped her braid, then let go and folded her arms tight across her chest, the fringe of her shawl swaying as she hugged herself. She glared at everyone except Lan. Him, she did not so much as glance at.
Finally she took a deep breath, and squared herself to face Reanne and Alise. “We must remove the a’dam. We will hold on to them until we can be sure—and Lemore after; she needs to be put in white!—and we will make sure they are never left alone, especially with the sul’dam, but the a’dam come off!” She spoke fiercely, as if expecting opposition, but a broad smile of approval spread across Elayne’s face. The addition of three more women they could not be sure of hardly counted as good news, but there had been no other choice.
Reanne merely nodded acceptance—after a moment—but a smiling Alise came around the table to pat Nynaeve’s shoulder, and Nynaeve actually blushed. She tried to hide it behind clearing her throat roughly and grimacing at the Seanchan woman in her cage of saidar, but her efforts were not very effectual, and Lan spoiled them in any case.
“Tai’shar Manetheren,” he said softly.
Nynaeve’s mouth fell open, then curled into a tremulous smile. Sudden tears glistened in her eyes as she spun to face him, her face joyous. He smiled back at her, and there was nothing cold in his eyes.
Elayne struggled not to gape. Light! Maybe he did not chill their marriage bed after all. The thought made her cheeks warm. Trying not to look at them, her eyes fell on Marli, still fastened in her chair. The Seanchan woman was staring straight ahead, tears flowing down her plump cheeks. Straight ahead. At the weaves holding sound away from her. She could not deny seeing the weaves now. But when she said as much, Reanne shook her head.
“They all weep if they are made to look at weaves very long, Elayne,” she said wearily. And a touch sadly. “But once the weaves are gone, they convince themselves we tricked them. They have to, you understand. Else they’d be damane, not sul’dam. No, it will take time to convince the Mistress of the Hounds that she is really a hound herself. I am afraid I really haven’t given you any good news at all, have I?”
“Not very much,” Elayne told her. None, really. Just another problem to stack up on all the rest. How much bad news could be stacked before the pile buried you? She had to get some good, soon.
CHAPTER
9
A Cup of Tea
Once in her dressing room, Elayne hurriedly changed out of her riding clothes with the help of Essande, the white-haired pensioner she had chosen for her maid. The slender, dignified woman was a trifle slow-moving, but she knew her job and did not waste time chattering. In fact, she seldom said a word beyond suggestions on clothing, and the comment given every day, that Elayne looked like her mother. Flames danced atop thick logs on a wide marble hearth at one end of the room, but the fire did little to take the chill off the air. Quickly she put on a fine blue wool with patterns of seed pearls on the high neck and down the sleeves, her silver-worked belt with a small silver-sheathed dagger, and the silver-embroidered blue velvet slippers. There might be no time to change again before seeing the merchants, and they must be impressed at the sight of her. She would have to be sure Birgitte was there; Birgitte was most impressive in her uniform. And Birgitte would take even listening to merchants as a break. By the heated knot of irritation resting in the back of Elayne’s head, the Captain-General of the Queen’s Guard was finding those reports heavy going.
Fastening clusters of pearls in her ears, she dismissed Essande to her own fire, in the pensioners’ quarters. The woman had denied it when offered Healing, but Elayne suspected her joints ached. In any case, she herself was ready. She would not wear the coronet of the Daughter-Heir; it could stay atop the small ivory jewelry chest on her dressing table. She did not have many gems; most had already been put in pawn, and the rest might have to go when the plate did. No point worrying about it now. A few moments to herself, and she would have to leap back to duty.
Her dark-paneled sitting room with its wide cornices of carved birds contained two tall fireplaces with elaborate mantels, one at either end, which did a better job of warming than the one in the dressing room, though here, too, the carpets layered on the white-tiled floor were necessary. To her surprise, the room also contained Halwin Norry. Duty had leaped at her, it seemed.
The First Clerk stretched up out of a low-backed chair as she entered, clutching a leather folder to his narrow chest, and lurched around the scroll-edged table in the middle of the room to make an awkward
leg. Norry was tall and lean, with a long nose, his sparse fringe of hair rising behind his ears like sprays of white feathers. He often reminded her of a heron. Any number of clerks under him actually wielded the pens, yet a small inkstain marred one edge of his scarlet tabard. The stain looked old, though, and she wondered whether the folder hid others. He had only taken to holding it against his chest when he donned formal dress, two days after Mistress Harfor. Whether he had done so as an expression of loyalty, or simply because the First Maid had, was still in question.
“Forgive me for being precipitate, my Lady,” he said, “but I do believe I have matters of some importance, if not actual haste, to lay before you.” Important or not, his voice still droned.
“Of course, Master Norry. I would not want to press you to haste.” He blinked at her, and she tried not to sigh. She thought he might be more than a little deaf, from the way he tilted his head this way and that as if to catch sound better. Maybe that was why his voice almost never changed pitch. She raised hers a little. He might just be a bore, after all. “Sit, and tell me these matters of importance.”
She took one of the carved chairs away from the table and motioned him to another, but he remained standing. He always did. She settled back to listen, crossing her knees and adjusting her skirts.
He did not refer to his folder. Everything on the papers in it would be inside his head, the papers there only in case she required to see with her own eyes. “Most immediate, my Lady, and perhaps most important, large deposits of alum have been discovered on your estates at Danabar. The first quality of alum. I believe the bankers will be . . . umm . . . less hesitant regarding my inquiries on your behalf once they learn of this.” He smiled briefly, a momentary curving of thin lips. For him, that was near to capering.
Elayne sat up straight as soon as he mentioned alum, and she smiled much more broadly. She felt a little like capering herself. Had her companion been anyone but Norry, she might have. Her elation was so strong that for a moment she felt Birgitte’s irritability wane. Dyers and weavers devoured alum, and so did glassmakers and papermakers among others. The only source for first quality alum was Ghealdan—or had been till now—and just the taxes on the trade had been sufficient to support the throne of Ghealdan for generations. What came from Tear and Arafel was not nearly so fine, yet it put as much coin in those countries’ coffers as olive oil or gems.
“That is important news, Master Norry. The best I’ve had today.” The best since reaching Caemlyn, very likely, but certainly the best today. “How quickly can you overcome the bankers’ ‘hesitation’?” It had been more like slamming the door in her face, only not so rude. The bankers knew to a man how many swords stood behind her at the moment, and how many behind her opponents. Even so, she had no doubts the riches of alum would bring them around. Neither did Norry.
“Quite quickly, my Lady, and on very good terms, I believe. I shall tell them if their best offers are insufficient, I will approach Tear or Cairhien. They will not risk losing the custom, my Lady.” All in that dry, flat voice, without a hint of the satisfaction any other man would have. “It will be loans against future income, of course, and there will be expenses. The mining itself. Transportation. Danabar is in mountainous country, and some distance from the Lugard Road. Still, there should be sufficient to meet your ambitions for the Guards, my Lady. And for your Academy.”
“Sufficient is hardly the word, if you’ve given over trying to talk me out of my plans for the Academy, Master Norry,” she said, nearly laughing. He was as jealous of Andor’s treasury as a hen with one chick, and he had been adamantly opposed to her taking over the school Rand had ordered founded in Caemlyn, returning to his arguments time and again until his voice seemed a drill boring into her skull. So far the school consisted of only a few dozen scholars with their students, scattered about the New City in various inns, but even in winter more arrived every day, and they had begun to clamor for more space. She did not propose giving them a palace, certainly, yet they needed something. Norry was trying to husband Andor’s gold, but she was looking to Andor’s future. Tarmon Gai’don was coming, yet she had to believe there would be a future afterward, whether or not Rand broke the world again. Otherwise, there was no point in going on with anything, and she could not see just sitting down to wait. Even if she knew for a fact that the Last Battle would end everything, she did not think she could sit on her hands. Rand started schools in case he did end breaking the world, in the hope of saving something, but this school would be Andor’s, not Rand al’Thor’s. The Academy of the Rose, dedicated to the memory of Morgase Trakand. There would be a future, and the future would remember her mother. “Or have you decided the Cairhienin gold can be traced to the Dragon Reborn after all?”