Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

“Thom?” Elayne said.

He snorted, glaring at Juilin and Nynaeve as though this were their fault. “Child, it’s just a rumor, as crazed as any we heard. I could not confirm anything, and believe me, I tried. I meant not to mention it. It just stirs up your pain. Let it pass, child.”

“Thom.” Much firmer. Shifting his feet, Juilin looked as if he wished he were somewhere else. Thom just looked grim.

“Well, if you must hear it. Everybody in Amadicia seems to think your mother is in the Fortress of the Light, that she’s going to lead an army of Whitecloaks back to Andor.”

Elayne shook her head, laughing softly. “Oh, Thom, do you think I would worry over something like that? Mother would never go to the Whitecloaks. I could wish she had. I could wish she was alive to. Even though it violates everything she ever taught me — bringing foreign soldiers into Andor; and Whitecloaks! — I could wish it. But if wishes were wings . . . ” Her smile was sad, but it was a muted sadness. “I have done my grieving, Thom. Mother is dead, and I must do my best to be worthy of her. She would never have gone running after ridiculous rumors, or wept over them either.”

“Child,” he said awkwardly.

Nynaeve wondered what if anything he himself felt about Morgase’s death. Hard as it was to believe, he had been Morgase’s lover once, when she was young and Elayne little more than a babe. Back then he must not have looked as though he had been left to dry in the sun too long. Nynaeve knew little more of how or why it ended than that he had slipped out of Caemlyn with an arrest warrant at his heels. Not the mark of a love to be told in the stories. At the moment he certainly appeared concerned only with whether Elayne was telling the truth or hiding her hurt, with patting her shoulder and stroking her hair. If Nynaeve had not wished they would just once snap at one another like normal people, she would have thought it a pretty picture.

A throat clearing broke up the vignette. “Master Merrilin?” Tabitha said, spreading her white dress in a quick curtsy. “Master Sandar? Sheriam Sedai says the Sitters are ready to receive you. She says you were not supposed to leave the Little Tower.”

“The Little Tower, is it?” Thom said dryly, eyeing the former inn. “Elayne, they can’t keep us forever. When we’re done, you and I can discuss . . . whatever you wish.” Motioning Tabitha to lead, he marched inside, his limp obvious, the way it was when he was tired. Juilin squared his shoulders and followed as though walking to a gallows; he was Tairen, after all.

Nynaeve and Elayne stood there, neither quite looking at the other.

Finally, Nynaeve said, “I was not — ” at the same time that Elayne said, “I should not — ” They cut off together, and moments passed in fidgeting with skirts and blotting faces.

“It is too hot to just stand here,” Nynaeve said at last.

It was unlikely that the Sitters who were hearing Siuan and Leane’s reports would stop to hear Thom and Juilin’s. They split such things among them. That left Logain, much as she wished it did not. She would not learn anything. But it was better than twiddling her thumbs until a dozen Aes Sedai descended on her with an hourly schedule.

With a sigh she started down the street. Elayne came along as though she had been invited. That helped Nynaeve find the anger she was going to need. Abruptly she realized that Elayne’s wrists were bare.

“Where is the bracelet?” she asked softly. No one in the street would understand if they heard, but caution once forgotten could be forgotten once too often. “Where is Marigan?”

“The bracelet is in my pouch, Nynaeve.” Elayne stepped aside to let a high-wheeled cart pass, then joined Nynaeve again behind the cart. “Marigan is doing our laundry, with about twenty other women around her. And groaning every time she moves. She said something she didn’t think Birgitte would hear, and Birgitte . . . I had to take the thing off, Nynaeve. Birgitte had the right, and it hurt. I told Marigan to say she fell down some stairs.”

Nynaeve sniffed, but her heart was not in it. She had not been wearing the bracelet much of late. Not because she could not hand over anything she dug out as her own. She was still sure Moghedien knew something about Healing even if she did not realize it herself — nobody could be that blind — and there was the trick of detecting a man’s channeling that Moghedien kept saying they almost had right. The truth of it was, she was afraid she might do far worse than Birgitte had if she had any more contact with the woman than was absolutely necessary. Maybe it was the way satisfaction seemed to underlie everything else even when Moghedien was groaning from the fed-back pain of Nynaeve trying to master that detection. Maybe it was remembering how afraid she had been, alone with the woman without the bracelet. Maybe growing disgust at keeping one of the Forsaken from judgment. Maybe some of all of it. What she did know was that she had to make herself put on the bracelet now, and that whenever she saw Moghedien’s face, she wanted to pound it with her fists.

“I should not have laughed,” Elayne said. “I am sorry I did.”

Nynaeve stopped dead so suddenly that a horseman had to jerk his reins to keep from riding over her. He shouted something before the crowd carried him away, but shock muffled his words beyond hearing. Not shock at the apology. At what she had to say. The right thing to say. The truth.

Unable to look at Elayne, she started walking again. “You had every right to laugh. I . . . ” She swallowed hard. “I made a complete fool of myself.” She had. A few sips, Theodrin said; a cup. And she emptied the pitcher. If you were going to fa

il, better to have some other reason than that you just could not do it. “You should have sent for that bucket and dunked my head until I could recite The Great Hunt of the Horn without a mistake.” She risked a glance from the corner of her eye. Small spots of color rested in Elayne’s cheeks. So there had been mention of a bucket.

“It could happen to anyone,” the other woman said simply.

Nynaeve felt her own cheeks heating. When it had happened to Elayne, she had dunked the girl to wash away the wine. “You should have done whatever you needed to . . . to sober me.”

It was quite the oddest argument Nynaeve could remember, with her insisting she had been a total fool and deserved whatever came of it, while Elayne made excuse after excuse for her. Nynaeve did not understand why it felt so refreshing, taking all the blame on herself that way. She could not recall ever doing that before, not without hedging as far as she was able. She very nearly got angry with Elayne for not agreeing that she had been a childish buffoon. It lasted until they reached the small thatched house on the edge of the village where Logain was kept.

“If you don’t stop this,” Elayne said finally, “I vow I’ll send for a bucket of water right this instant.”

Nynaeve opened her mouth, then closed it again. Even in this newfound euphoria of admitting she had been wrong, that was going too far. Feeling this good, she could not face Logain. Feeling this good, it would be useless anyway, without Moghedien and the bracelet she definitely felt too fine to put on. She glanced at the two Warders standing guard beside the stone-linteled door. They were not close enough to hear, but she still pitched her voice low. “Elayne, let’s go. Tonight.” With Thom and Juilin in Salidar, there was no need to ask Uno to find horses. “Not to Caemlyn, if you don’t want. To Ebou Dar. Merilille will never find that bowl, and Sheriam will never let us go find it. What do you say? Tonight?”

“No, Nynaeve. What good can we do Rand if they take us for runaways? Which is what we’d be. You promised, Nynaeve. You promised, if we found something.”

“I promised if we found something we could use. All we’ve found is this!” Nynaeve thrust her shriveled hands under the other woman’s nose.

The firmness slid from Elayne’s face, and her voice; she pursed her lips and studied the ground. “Nynaeve, you know I told Birgitte we were staying. Well, it seems she told Uno that under no circumstances was he to provide you with a horse unless she said so. She told him you were thinking of running away. I didn’t find out until it was too late.” Her head tossed irritably. “If this is what having a Warder is like, I don’t know why anybody wants one.”

Nynaeve thought her eyes might burst from indignation. So that was why he had been staring at her. Euphoria vanished in a heat of — well, partly anger, partly humiliation. The man knew, he thought she . . . Wait. For a moment she frowned at Elayne, then decided not to voice the question that had come to mind. Was Nynaeve the only name Birgitte had mentioned to Uno, or was Elayne perhaps included? Elayne had found herself quite an adopted family. In Thom, an indulgent father who wanted to teach her everything he knew, and in Birgitte, an older sister who thought it was her job to keep the younger from breaking her neck riding horses she could not handle yet.