She sighed, and the sigh turned into another yawn. She and the others had gone to his room after breakfast to see how he was, but he had not been there.
He is probably well enough to go dancing. Light, now I will probably dream about him dancing with Seanchan! No more dreams, she told herself firmly. Not now. I will think about them when I am not so tired. She thought of the kitchens, of the midday meal soon to come, and then supper, and breakfast again tomorrow, and pots and cleaning and scrubbing going on forever. If I am ever not tired again. Shifting her position on the bed, she looked at her friends again. Elayne still had her eyes on the list of names. Nynaeve’s steps had slowed. Any moment now, Nynaeve will say it again. Any moment.
Nynaeve came to a halt, staring down at Elayne. “Put those away. We have been over them twenty times, and there isn’t a word that helps. Verin gave us rubbish. The question is, was it all she had, or did she give us rubbish on purpose?”
As expected. Maybe half an hour till she says it again. Egwene frowned down at her hands, glad she could not see them clearly. The Great Serpent ring looked—out of place—on hands all wrinkled from long immersion in hot, soapy water.
“Knowing their names helps,” Elayne said, still reading. “Knowing what they look like helps.”
“You know very well what I mean,” Nynaeve snapped.
Egwene sighed and folded her arms in front of her, rested her chin on them. When she had come out of Sheriam’s study that morning, with the sun still not even a glint on the horizon, Nynaeve had been waiting with a candle in the cold, dark hall. She had not been seeing very clearly, but she was sure Nynaeve had looked ready to chew stone. And knowing chewing stones would not change anything in the next few minutes. That was why she was so irritable. She’s as touchy about her pride as any man I ever met. But she should not take it out on Elayne and me. Light, if Elayne can stand it, she should be able to. She isn’t the Wisdom anymore.
Elayne hardly appeared to notice whether Nynaeve was irritable or not. She frowned into the distance thoughtfully. “Liandrin was the only Red. All the other Ajahs lost two each.”
“Oh, do be quiet, child,” Nynaeve said.
Elayne wiggled her left hand to display her Great Serpent ring, gave Nynaeve a meaningful look, and went right on. “No two were born in the same city, and no more than two in any one country. Amico Nagoyin was the youngest, some fifteen years older than Egwene and I. Joiya Byir could be our great-grandmother’s great-grandmother.”
Egwene did not like it that one of the Black Ajah shared her daughter’s name. Fool girl! People sometimes have the same name, and you never had a daughter. It wasn’t real!
“And what does that tell us?” Nynaeve’s voice was too calm; she was ready to explode like a wagon full of fireworks. “What secrets have you found in it that I missed? I am getting old and blind, after all!”
“It tells us it is all too neat,” Elayne said calmly. “What chance that thirteen women chosen solely because they were Darkfriends would be so neatly arrayed across age, across nations, across Ajahs? Shouldn’t there be perhaps three Reds, or four born in Cairhien, or just two the same age, if it was all chance? They had women to choose from or they could not have chosen so random a pattern. There are still Black Ajah in the Tower, or elsewhere we don’t know about. It must mean that.”
Nynaeve gave her braid one ferocious tug. “Light! I think you may be right. You did find secrets I couldn’t. Light, I was hoping they all went with Liandrin.”
“We do not even know that she is their leader,” Elayne said. “She could have been ordered to . . . to dispose of us.” Her mouth twisted. “I am afraid I can only think of one reason for them to go to such lengths to spread everything out so, to avoid any pattern except a lack of pattern. I think it means there is a pattern of some kind to the Black Ajah.”
“If there’s a pattern,” Nynaeve said firmly, “we will find it. Elayne, if watching your mother run her court taught you to think like this, I’m glad you watched closely.” Elayne’s answering smile made a dimple in her cheek.
Egwene eyed the older woman carefully. It seemed Nynaeve was finally ready to stop being a bear with a sore tooth. She raised her head. “Unless they want us to think they’re hiding a pattern, so we will waste our time hunting for it when there isn’t one. I am not saying there isn’t; I am only saying we do not know yet. Let’s look for it, but I think we ought to look at other things, too, don’t you?”
“So you finally decided to rouse,” Nynaeve said. “I thought you had gone to sleep.” But she was still smiling.
“She is right,” Elayne said disgustedly. “I have built a bridge out of straw. Worse than straw. Wishes. Maybe you are right, too, Nynaeve. What use is this—this rubbish?” She snatched one paper out of the stack in front of her. “Rianna has black hair with a white streak above her left ear. If I am close enough to see that, it’s closer than I want to be.” She grabbed another page. “Chesmal Emry is one of the most talented Healers anyone has seen in years. Light, could you imagine being Healed by one of the Black Ajah?” A third sheet. “Marillin Gemalphin is fond of cats and goes out of her way to help injured animals. Cats! Paah!” She scrabbled all the pages together, crumpling them in her fists. “It is useless rubbish.”
Nynaeve knelt beside her and gently pried her hands from around the papers. “Perhaps, and perhaps not.” She smoothed the pages carefully on her breast. “You found in them something for us to look for. Perhaps we will find more, if we are persistent. And there is the other list.” Both her eyes and Elayne’s darted to Egwene, brown and blue alike frowning worriedly.
Egwene avoided looking at the table where the other sheets lay. She did not want to think about them, but she could not avoid it. The list of ter’angreal had etched itself into her mind.
Item. A rod of clear crystal, smooth and perfectly clear, one foot long and one inch in diameter. Use unknown. Last study made by Corianin Nedeal. Item. A figurine of an unclothed woman in alabaster, one hand tall. Use unknown. Last study made by Corianin Nedeal. Item. A disc, apparently of simple iron yet untouched by rust, three inches in diameter, finely engraved on both sides with a tight spiral. Use unknown. Last study made by Corianin Nedeal. Item. Too many items, and more than half the “use unknowns” last studied by Corianin Nedeal. Thirteen of them, to be exact.
Egwene shivered. It’s getting so I do not even like to think of that number.
The knowns on the list were fewer, not all of any apparent real use, but hardly more comforting, as she saw it. A wooden carving of a hedgehog, no bigger than the last joint of a man’s thumb. Such a simple thing, and surely harmless. Any woman who tried to channel through it went to sleep. Half a day of peaceful, dreamless sleep, but it was too close not to make her skin crawl. Three more had to do with sleep in some way. It was almost a relief to read of a fluted rod of black stone, a full pace in length, that produced balefire, with the notation DANGEROUS AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL writ so strong in Verin’s hand that it tore the paper in two places. Egwene still had no idea what balefire was, but though it surely sounded dangerous if anything ever did, it just as surely had nothing to do Corianin Nedeal or dreams.
Nynaeve carried the smoothed-out pages to the table and set them down. She hesitated before spreading the others out and running her finger down one page, then the next. “Here’s one Mat would enjoy,” she said in a voice much too light and airy. “Item. A carved cluster of six spotted dice, joined at the corners, less than two inches across. Use unknown, save that channeling through it seems to suspend chance in some way, or twist it.” She began to read aloud. “ ‘Tossed coins presented the same face every time, and in one test landed balanced on edge one hundred times in a row. One thousand tosses of the dice produced five crowns one thousand times.’ ” She gave a forced laugh. “Mat would love that.”
Egwene sighed and got to her feet, walked stiffly to the fireplace. Elayne scrambled up, watching as silently as Nynaeve. Pushing her sleeve as far up her arm as it would go, Egwene reached carefully up the chimney. Her fingers touched wool on the smoke shelf, and she pulled out a wadded, singed stocking with a hard lump in the toe. She brushed a smear of soot from her arm, then took the stocking to the table and shook it out. The twisted ring of striped, flecked stone spun across the tabletop and fell flat atop a page of the ter’angreal list. For a few moments they just stared at it.
“Perhaps,” Nynaeve said finally, “Verin simply missed the fact that so many of them were last studied by Corianin.” She did not sound as if she really believed it.
Elayne nodded, but doubtfully. “I saw her walking in the rain once, soaking wet, and took a cloak to her. She was so wrapped up in whatever she was thinking, I do not believe she knew it was raining until I put the cloak around her shoulders. She could have missed it.”
“Maybe,” Egwene said. “If she did not, she had to know I’d notice as soon as I read the list. I do not know. Sometimes I think Verin notices more than she lets on. I just do not know.”
“So there’s Verin to suspect,” Elayne sighed. “If she is Black Ajah, then they know exactly what we are doing. And Alanna.” She gave Egwene an uncertain, sidelong look.