Knife of Dreams (89 page)

Every two or three days she would appear while Egwene was doing chores, and while she never openly offered help with an escape, she used that word frequently, and she began to show frustration when Egwene refused to rise to her bait. Bait it was, to be sure. Egwene did not trust the woman. Perhaps it was that letter, surely designed to draw Rand to the Tower and into Elaida’s clutches, or maybe it was the way she kept waiting for Egwene to make the first move, to beg possibly. Likely Alviarin would try to set conditions, then. In any case, she had no intention of escaping unless there was no other choice, so she always gave the same response.

“I am content with my situation.”

Alviarin began grinding her teeth audibly when she heard that.

On the fourth day, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing blue-and-white floor tiles when the boots of three men accompanied by a sister in elaborately red-embroidered gray silk passed her. A few paces on, the boots stopped.

“That be her,” a man’s voice said in the accents of Illian. “She did be pointed out to me. I think me I will speak to her.”

“She’s only another novice, Mattin Stepaneos,” the sister told him. “You wanted to walk in the gardens.” Egwene dipped her scrub brush in the bucket of soapy water and began another stretch of tiles.

“Fortune stab me, Cariandre, this may be the White Tower, but I do still be the lawful King of Illian, and if I want to speak to her—with you for chaperone; all very proper and decent—then I will speak with her. I did be told she did grow up in the same village with al’Thor.” One set of boots, blacked till they glistened, approached Egwene.

Only then did she stand, the dripping brush in one hand. She used the back of the other to brush her hair out of her face. She refrained from knuckling the small of her back, much as she wanted to.

Mattin Stepaneos was stocky and almost entirely bald, with a neatly trimmed white beard in the Illianer fashion and a heavily creased face. His eyes were sharp, and angry. Armor would have suited him better than the green silk coat embroidered with golden bees on the sleeves and lapels. “Just another novice?” he murmured. “I think you be mistaken, Cariandre.”

The plump Red, her lips compressed, left the two serving men with the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests and joined the balding man. Her disapproving gaze touched Egwene briefly before shifting to him. “She’s a much-punished novice who has a floor to scrub. Come. The gardens should be very pleasant this morning.”

“What be pleasant,” he said, “do be talking to someone other than Aes Sedai. And only of the Red Ajah at that, since you do manage to keep me from any others. On top of which, the servants you did give me might as well be mutes, and I think me the Tower Guards do have orders to hold their tongues around me as well.”

He fell silent as two more Red sisters approached. Nesita, plump and blue eyed and mean as a snake with the itch, nodded companionably to Cariandre while Barasine handed Egwene the by now all too familiar pewter cup. The Red seemed to have custody of her in a way—at least, her watchers and minders were always Reds—and they seldom let much more than the promised hour pass before someone appeared with the cup of forkroot tea. She drained it and handed it back. Nesita seemed disappointed that she did not protest or refuse, but there seemed little point. She had, once, and Nesita had helped pour the vile stuff down her throat using a funnel she had ready in her belt pouch. That would have been a fine show of dignity in front of Mattin Stepaneos.

He watched the silent exchange with puzzled interest, though Cariandre plucked at his sleeve, urging him again to his walk in the gardens. “Sisters bring you water when you thirst?” he asked when Barasine and Nesita glided away.

“A tea they think will improve my mood,” she told him. “You look well, Mattin Stepaneos. For a man Elaida had kidnapped.” That tale was the talk of the novices’ quarters, too.

Cariandre hissed and opened her mouth, but he spoke up first, his jaw tight. “Elaida did save me from murder by al’Thor,” he said. The Red nodded approvingly.

“Why would you think yourself in danger from him?” Egwene asked.

The man grunted. “He did murder Morgase in Caemlyn, and Colavaere in Cairhien. He destroyed half the Sun Palace killing her, I did hear. And I did hear of Tairen High Lords poisoned or stabbed to death in Cairhien. Who can say what other rulers he did murder and destroy the bodies?” Cariandre nodded again, smiling. You might have thought him a boy reciting his lessons. Did the woman have
no
understanding of men? He certainly saw it. His jaw grew harder still, and his hands clenched into fists for a moment.

“Colavaere hanged herself,” Egwene said, making sure she sounded patient. “The Sun Palace was damaged later by someone trying to kill the Dragon Reborn, maybe the Forsaken, and according to Elayne Trakand, her mother was murdered by Rahvin. Rand has announced his support for her claims to both the Lion Throne and the Sun Throne. He hasn’t killed any of the Cairhienin nobles rebelling against him, or the High Lords in rebellion. In fact, he named one of them his Steward in Tear.”

“I think that is quite—” Cariandre began, pulling her shawl up onto her shoulders, but Egwene went on right over her.

“Any sister could have told you all that. If she wanted to. If they were speaking to one another. Think why you see only Red sisters. Have you seen sisters of
any
two Ajahs speaking? You’ve been kidnapped and brought aboard a sinking ship.”

“That is more than enough,” Cariandre snapped right atop Egwene’s last sentence. “When you finish scrubbing this floor, you will run to the Mistress of Novices and ask her to punish you for shirking. And for showing disrespect to an Aes Sedai.”

Egwene met the woman’s furious gaze calmly. “I have barely enough time after I finish to get clean before my lesson with Kiyoshi. Could I visit Silviana after the lesson?”

Cariandre shifted her shawl, seemingly taken aback by her calmness. “That is a problem for you to work out,” she said at last. “Come, Mattin Stepaneos. You have helped this child shirk long enough.”

There was no time to change out of her damp dress or even comb her hair after leaving Silviana’s study, not if she were to have any hope of being on time for Kiyoshi without running, which she refused to do. That made her late, and it turned out that the tall, slender Gray was a stickler for both punctuality and neatness, which put her back yelping and kicking under Silviana’s hard-swung strap little more than an hour later. Quite aside from embracing pain, something else helped see her through that. The memory
of Mattin Stepaneos’ thoughtful expression as Cariandre led him off down the corridor and how he twice looked back over his shoulder at her. She had planted another seed. Enough seeds planted, and perhaps what sprouted from them would splinter those cracks in the platform beneath Elaida. Enough seeds would bring Elaida down.

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 was 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.”