Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

Early on her seventh day of captivity, she was carrying water up the Tower again, to the White Ajah quarters this time, when she suddenly stopped in her tracks feeling as if she had been punched in her stomach hard. Two women in gray-fringed shawls were walking down the spiraling corridor toward her, trailed by a pair of Warders. One was Melavaire Someinellin, a stout Cairhienin in fine gray wool with white flecking her dark hair. The other, with blue eyes and dark honey hair, was Beonin!

"So you're the one who betrayed me!" Egwene said angrily. A thought occurred to her. How could Beonin have betrayed her after swearing fealty? "You must be Black Ajah!"

Melavaire drew herself up as much as she could, which was not very far since she was inches shorter than Egwene, and planted her fists on her ample hips as she opened her mouth to deliver a blast. Egwene had had one lesson from her, and while she was a kindly woman usually, when she became angry, she could be fearsome.

Beonin laid a hand on the other sister's plump arm. "Let me speak to her alone please, Melavaire."

"I trust you will speak sharply," Melavaire said in a stiff voice. "To even think of making such a charge. . . ! To even mention some things. . . !" Shaking her head in disgust, she retreated a little up the corridor followed by her Warder, squat and even wider than she, a bear of a man though he moved with the expected Warder grace.

Beonin gestured and waited until her own Warder, a lean man with a long scar on his face, joined them. She adjusted her shawl several times. "Me, I betrayed nothing," she said quietly. "I would not have sworn to you except that the Hall, it would have had me birched if it learned the secrets you knew. Perhaps more than once, even. Reason enough to swear, no? I never pretended to love you, yet I maintained that oath until you were captured. But you are no longer Amyrlin, yes? Not as a captive, not when there was no hope of rescuing you, when you refused rescue. And you are a novice once more, so that oath, it has two reasons to hold no longer. The talk of rebellion, it was wild talk. The rebellion is finished. The White Tower, it will soon be whole again, and I will not be sorry to see it so."

Lifting the pole from her shoulders, Egwene set down the pails of water and folded her arms beneath her breasts. She had tried to maintain a calm demeanor since being captured—well, except when she being punished—but this encounter would have tried a stone. "You explain yourself at great length," she said dryly. "Are you trying to convince yourself? It won't do, Beonin. It won't do. If the rebellion is finished, where is the flood of sisters coming to kneel before Elaida and accept her penance? Light, what else have you betrayed? Everything?" It seemed likely. She had visited Elaida's study a number of times in Tel'aran'rhiod, but the woman's correspondence box had always been empty. Now she knew why.

Sharp spots of red appeared in Beonin's cheeks. "I tell you, I have betrayed n—!" She finished with a strangled grunt and put a hand to her throat as if it refused to let the lie leave her tongue. That proved she was not Black Ajah; but it proved something more.

"You betrayed the ferrets. Are they all down in the basement cells?"

Beonin's eyes flashed up the corridor. Melavaire was talking with her Warder, his head bent close to hers. Squat or not, he was taller than she. Beonin's Tervail was watching her with a worried expression. The distance was too far for any of the three to have overheard, but Beonin stepped closer and lowered her voice. "Elaida, she is having them watched, though I think the Ajahs, they keep what they see to themselves. Few sisters want to tell Elaida any more than they must. It was necessary, you understand. I could hardly return to the Tower and keep them secret. It would have been discovered eventually."

"Then you'll have to warn them." Egwene could not keep her voice clear of her disdain. This woman split hairs with a razor! She took the thinnest excuse to decide her oath no longer applied, and then she betrayed the very women she had helped choose. Blood and bloody ashes!

Beonin remained silent for a long moment, fiddling with her shawl, but at last she said, surprisingly. "I have already warned Meidani and Jennet." They were the two Grays among the ferrets. "I have done what I can for them. The others, they must sink or swim by themselves. Sisters have been assaulted for simply going too near another Ajah's quarters. Me, I will not walk back to my rooms clad only in my shawl and the welts just to try—"

"Think of it as a penance," Egwene cut in. Light! Sisters assaulted? Things were even worse than she had thought. She had to remind herself that well-manured ground would help her seeds to grow.

Beonin glanced up the hallway again, and Tervail took a step toward her before Beonin shook her head. Her face was smooth despite the color staining her cheeks, but inside, she must have been in turmoil. "You know I could send you to the Mistress of Novices, yes?" she said in a tight voice. "I hear you spend half of each day squealing for her. I think you would dislike more visits, yes?"

Egwene smiled at her. Not two hours earlier she had managed to smile the moment Silviana's strap stopped falling. This was much harder. "And who can say what I might squeal? About oaths, perhaps?" The color drained from the other woman's cheeks, leaving her face bloodless pale. No, she did not want that getting out. "You may have convinced yourself I am no longer Amyrlin, Beonin, but it's time to start convincing yourself that I still am. You will warn the others, whatever the cost to yourself. Tell them to stay away from me unless I send word otherwise. They've had more than enough attention drawn to them. But from now on, you'll seek me out every day in case I have instructions for them. I have some now." Quickly she listed the things she wanted them to bring up in conversation, Shemerin being stripped of the shawl, Elaida's complicity in the disasters at the Black Tower and Dumai's Wells, all the seeds she had been planting. They would not be planted one by one now, but broadcast by handfuls.

"Me, I cannot speak for other Ajahs," Beonin said when she finished, "but in the Gray, sisters speak of most of these things often. The eyes-and-ears, they are busy of late. Secrets Elaida hoped to hold, they are coming

out. I am sure it must be the same in the others. Perhaps it is not necessary for me to—"

"Warn them, and deliver my instructions, Beonin." Egwene lifted the pole back onto her shoulders, shifting it to the most comfortable position she could find. Two or three of the Whites would use a hairbrush or slipper on her and send her to Silviana if they thought her slow. Embracing pain, even welcoming it, did not mean seeking it out unnecessarily. "Remember. It's a penance I've set you."

"I will do as you say," Beonin said with obvious reluctance. Her eyes hardened suddenly, but it was not for Egwene. "It would be enjoyable to see Elaida pulled down," she said in an unpleasant voice before hurrying away to join Melavaire.

That shocking meeting, turned into an unexpected victory, left Egwene feeling very good about the day, and no matter that Ferane did turn out to think she had been slow. The White Sitter was plump, but she had an arm as strong as Silviana's.

That night, she dragged herself down to the open cells after supper despite wanting her bed in the worst way. Aside from lessons and howling under Silviana's strap—the last time just before supper— most of the rest of the day had been given to hauling water. Her back and shoulders ached. Her arms ached, her legs. She was swaying on her feet with weariness. Strangely, she had not had one of those wretched headaches since being taken prisoner, nor any of those dark dreams that left her disturbed even though she could never remember them, but she thought she might be heading for a fine headache tonight. That would make telling true dreams difficult, and she had had some fine ones lately, about Rand, Mat, Perrin, even Gawyn, though most dreams of him were just that.

Three White sisters she knew in passing were guarding Leane: Nagora, a lean woman with pale hair worn in a roll on her nape who sat very straight to make up for her lack of stature; Norine, lovely with her large liquid eyes but often as vague as any Brown; and Miyasi, tall and plump with iron-gray hair, a stern woman who brooked no nonsense and saw nonsense everywhere. Nagora, surrounded by the light of saidar, held the shield on Leane, but they were arguing over some point of logic that Egwene could not make out from the little she heard. She could not even tell whether there were two sides to the argument, or three. There were no raised voices, no shaken fists, and their faces remained smooth Aes Sedai masks, but the coldness in their voices left no doubt that had they not been Aes Sedai, they would have been shouting if not trading blows. She might as well not have existed for all the attention they paid her entrance.

Watching the three from the edge of her eye, she moved as close to the iron latticework as she could and gripped it with both hands to steady herself. Light, she was tired! "I saw Beonin today," she said softly. "She's here in the Tower. She claimed her oath to me no longer held because I was no longer the Amyrlin Seat."

Leane gasped and stepped near enough that she was brushing the iron bars. "She betrayed us?"

"The inherent impossibility of dissimulated structures is a given," Nagora said firmly. Her voice was an icy hammer. "A given."

"She denies it, and I believe her," Egwene whispered. "But she admitted betraying the ferrets. Elaida is only having them watched for the moment, but I told Beonin to warn them, and she said she would. She said she had already warned Meidani and Jennet, but why would she betray them and then tell them about it? And she said she would like to see Elaida pulled down. Why would she flee to Elaida if she still wants her brought down? She as much as admitted no one else has abandoned our cause. I'm missing something, and I'm too tired to see what it is." A yawn that she barely managed to cover with a hand cracked her jaw.

"Dissimulated structures are implied by four of the five axioms of sixth-order rationality," Miyasi said just as firmly. "Strongly implied."

"So-called sixth-order rationality has been discarded as an aberration by anyone with intellect," Norine put in, a touch sharply. "But dissimulated structures are fundamental to any possibility of understanding what is happening right here in the Tower every day. Reality itself is shifting, changing day by day.”

Leane glanced at the Whites. "Some always thought Elaida had spies among us. If Beonin was one, her oath to you would have held her until she could convince herself you were no longer Amyrlin. But if her reception here wasn't what she expected, it might have changed her loyalties. Beonin was always ambitious. If she didn't get her due as she sees matters. . . ." She spread her hands. "Beonin always expected her due and perhaps a little more."

"Logic is always applicable to the real world," Miyasi said dismissively, "but only a novice would think the real world can be applied to logic. Ideals must be first principles. Not the mundane world." Nagora snapped her mouth shut with a dark look, as if she felt words had been snatched right off her tongue.