The Path of Daggers (58 page)

Egwene sighed. How
could
such a sensible, intelligent, capable woman turn into a scatterbrain over this one subject? Like a hissing viper, an image rose in her head. Herself, sitting on Gawyn’s knee playing kissing games. In a tavern! She shoved it away, hard. “Siuan, I need your experience. I need your brain. I can’t afford to have you half-witted because of Lord Bryne. If you can’t pull yourself together, I’ll pay him what you owe, and forbid you to see him. I will.”

“I said I’d work off the debt,” Siuan said stubbornly. “I have as much honor as Lord Gareth bloody Bryne! As much and more! He keeps his word, and I keep mine! Besides, Min told me I have to stay close to him or we’ll both die. Or something like that.” A pinkness in her cheeks gave her away, though. Her honor and Min’s viewing notwithstanding, she was simply willing to put up with anything to be near the man!

“Very well. You’re besotted, and if I tell you to stay away from him, you’ll either disobey or mope and wrap the rest of your brains in a cloud. What are you going to do about him?”

Scowling indignantly, Siuan went on for some little time, growling what she would like to do about Gareth bloody Bryne. He would have enjoyed none of it. Some, he might not have survived.

“Siuan,” Egwene said warningly. “You deny one more time what’s plain as your nose, and I’ll tell him
and
give him the money.”

Siuan pouted sullenly. She pouted! Sullenly! Siuan! “I don’t have time to be in love. I barely have time to think, between working for you
and
him. And even if everything goes right tonight, I’ll have twice as much to do. Besides. . . .” Her face fell, and she shifted on the stool. “What if he doesn’t . . . return my feelings?” she muttered. “He’s never even tried to kiss me. All he cares about is whether his shirts are clean.”

Egwene scraped her spoon through her bowl, and was surprised when it came up empty. Nothing remained of the roll but a few crumbs on her dress. Light, her middle still felt hollow. She eyed Siuan’s bowl hopefully; the woman seemed to have little interest in anything but drawing circles in the lentils.

A sudden thought occurred to her. Why had Lord Bryne insisted that Siuan work off her debt even after learning who she was? Just because she had said she would? It was a preposterous arrangement. Except that it did keep her close to him when nothing else would have. For that matter, she herself had often wondered why Bryne had agreed to build the army. He had to have known there was a very good chance he was laying his head on the chopping block. And why he had offered that army to her, a girl Amyrlin with no real authority and not a friend among the sisters except Siuan, as far as he knew? Could the answer to all of those questions be as simple as . . . he loved Siuan? No; most men were frivolous and flighty, but that was
truly
preposterous! Still, she offered the suggestion, if only to amuse Siuan. It might cheer her a little.

Siuan snorted in disbelief. It sounded odd, coming from that pretty face, but no one could put quite so much expression into a snort as she did. “He’s not a total idiot,” she said dryly. “In fact, he has a good head on his shoulders. He thinks like a woman, most of the time.”

“I still haven’t heard you say you’ll straighten up, Siuan,” Egwene persisted. “You have to, one way or another.”

“Well, of course I will. I don’t know what’s been the matter with me. It isn’t as if I never kissed a man before.” Her eyes narrowed suddenly, as if she expected Egwene to challenge her on that. “I haven’t spent my
whole
life in the Tower. This is ridiculous! Chattering about
men
, tonight of all nights!” Peering into her bowl, she seemed to realize for the first time that it held food. She filled her spoon, gesturing with it at Egwene. “You have to be careful of your timing, more now than ever. If Romanda or Lelaine grabs the tiller, you’ll never get your hands on it.”

Ridiculous or not, something certainly had restored Siuan’s appetite. She went through her stew faster than Egwene had hers, and not a crumb of the roll escaped her. Egwene found that she had drawn her fingers through her own empty bowl. There was nothing for it then but to lick off the last few lentils, of course.

Discussing what was to happen tonight served no real point. They had honed and refined what Egwene was to say, and when, so many times that she was surprised she had not dreamed of it. She certainly could have done her part in her sleep. Siuan insisted anyway, skirting very near the point where Egwene would have to call her down, going over it again and again, bringing up possibilities they had discussed before a hundred times. Strangely, Siuan had found herself a very good mood. She even essayed a little humor, unusual for her of late, though some was on the gallows side.

“You know Romanda wanted to be Amyrlin herself once,” she said at one point. “I’ve heard it was Tamra getting the stole and staff that made her stalk off into retirement like a gull with her tail feathers clipped. I’ll lay a silver mark I don’t have to a fish scale that her eyes bulge twice as much as Lelaine’s.”

And later. “I wish I could be there to hear them howl. Somebody’s going to before much longer, and I’d rather it was them than us. I never had the voice for singing.” She actually sang a little snatch about staring across the river at a boy and having no boat. She was right; her voice was pleasant in its fashion, but she could not carry a tune in a bucket.

And later still. “A good thing I have such a sweet face now. If this goes badly, they’ll dress the pair of us for dolls and sit us on a shelf to admire. Of course, we might have ‘accidents’ instead. Dolls do get broken. Gareth Bryne will have to find someone else to bully.” She
really
laughed at that.

Egwene felt considerable relief when the tentflap bulged inward briefly, announcing someone who knew enough not to enter where there was a ward. She really did not want to hear where Siuan’s humor went from there!

As soon as she released the ward, Sheriam stepped inside, accompanied by a rush of air that seemed ten times as cold as earlier. “It’s time, Mother. Everything is ready.” Her tilted eyes were wide, and she licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Siuan bounded to her feet and seized her cloak from Egwene’s cot, but she paused in the act of draping it on her shoulders. “I
have
sailed the Fingers of the Dragon in the dark, you know,” she said seriously. “And netted a lionfish once, with my father. It can be done.”

Sheriam frowned as Siuan darted out, letting in more cold. “Sometimes, I think,” she began, but whatever she sometimes thought, she did not share. “Why are you doing this, Mother?” she asked instead. “All of it, today at the lake, calling the Hall tonight. Why did you have us spend all day yesterday talking about Logain to everybody we met? I’d think you might share it with me. I
am
your Keeper. I
did
swear fealty.”

“I tell you what you need to know,” Egwene said, swinging her cloak around her shoulders. There was no need to say that she trusted a forced oath only so far, even a sister’s. And Sheriam might find a reason to let a word slip into the wrong ear despite that oath. After all, Aes Sedai were noted for finding loopholes in what they had said. She did not really believe that would happen, but just as with Lord Bryne, she could not take even small chances unless she had to.

“I have to tell you,” Sheriam said bitterly, “I think tomorrow Romanda or Lelaine will be your Keeper of the Chronicles, and I’ll be serving a penance for not warning the Hall. And I think you might envy me.”

Egwene nodded. All too possible. “Shall we go?”

The sun made a red dome on the treetops to the west, and a lurid light shone off the snow. Servants marked Egwene’s passage along the deep paths with silent bows and curtsies. Their faces were troubled or else blank; servants could pick up the moods of those they served almost as quickly as Warders.

Not a sister was to be seen, at first, and then they all were, in a great gathering three deep around a pavilion set up in the only open space in the camp large enough, the area used by sisters Skimming to the dovecotes in Salidar and Traveling back with reports from the eyes-and-ears. A large much-mended piece of heavy canvas, not a patch on the splendor of the canopy at the lake, it had been a great deal of effort to set up. Most often in the past two months, the Hall had convened much as they had yesterday morning, or perhaps squeezed into one of the larger tents. The pavilion had been erected only twice since leaving Salidar. Both times for a trial.

Noticing Egwene and Sheriam’s approach, sisters in the back murmured to those ahead, and a gap opened to let them through. Expressionless eyes watched the pair of them, giving not a clue to whether the watching sisters knew or even suspected what was happening. Not a clue to what they thought. Butterflies stirred in Egwene’s stomach. A rosebud. Calm.

She stepped onto the layered carpets, woven in bright flowers and a dozen different patterns, and moved through the ring of braziers set up around the canopy’s rim, and Sheriam began. “She comes; she comes. . . .” If she sounded a little less grand than usual, a touch nervous, it was small wonder.

The polished benches and cloth-covered boxes from the lake were in use again. They made a much more formal sight than the mismatched gaggle of chairs that had been used previously, two slanting lines of nine, grouped by threes; Green, Gray and Yellow to one side, White, Brown and Blue to the other. At the wide end, farthest from Egwene, stood the striped box and bench for the Amyrlin Seat. Sitting there, she would be the focus of every eye, very much aware that she was one facing eighteen. As well she had not changed her clothes; every Sitter still wore her finery from the lake, only adding her shawl. A rosebud. Calm.

One of the benches was empty, though only for a moment longer. Delana came running in just as Sheriam finished her litany. Looking breathless and flustered, the Gray Sitter scrambled up to her seat, between Varilin and Kwamesa, with little of her usual grace. She wore a sickly grin, and toyed nervously with the firedrops around her neck. Anyone might have thought she was the one on trial. Calm. No one was on trial. Yet.

Egwene started slowly across the carpets, between the two rows, with Sheriam close behind, and Kwamesa stood. The light of
saidar
suddenly shone around the dark slender woman, youngest of the Sitters. Tonight there would be no skimping of the formalities. “What is brought before the Hall of the Tower is for the Hall alone to consider,” Kwamesa announced. “Whosoever intrudes unbidden, woman or man, initiate or outsider, whether they come in peace or in anger, I will bind according to the law, to face the law. Know that what I speak is true; it will and shall be done.”

That formula was older than the oath against speaking untruth, from a time when almost as many Amyrlins died by assassination as by all other causes put together. Egwene continued her measured tread. It was an effort not to touch her stole, for a reminder. She tried to concentrate on the bench ahead.

Kwamesa resumed her seat, still shining with the Power, and among the Whites, Aledrin rose, the glow surrounding her as well. With her dark golden hair and big pale brown eyes, she was quite lovely when she smiled, but tonight a stone had more expression than she. “There are those within earshot who are not of the Hall,” she said in a cool voice strong with the accents of Tarabon. “What is spoken in the Hall of the Tower is for the Hall alone to hear, until and unless the Hall decides otherwise. I will make us private. I will seal our words to our ears only.” Weaving a ward that walled the entire pavilion, she sat. There was a stir among the sisters outside, who now must watch the Hall move in utter silence.

Strange, that so much among Sitters depended on age, when distinction by age was next to anathema among the rest of Aes Sedai.
Could
Siuan have seen a pattern in the Sitters’ ages? No. Focus. Calm, and focus.

Gripping the edges of her cloak, Egwene stepped up onto the brightly striped box and turned. Lelaine was already on her feet, blue-fringed shawl looped across her arms, and Romanda was rising, without even waiting for Egwene to sit. She dared not let either seize the tiller. “I call a question before the Hall,” she said in a loud, firm voice. “Who will stand to declare war against the usurper Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan?”

And then she sat, throwing off her cloak and letting it fall across the bench. Standing beside her on the carpets, Sheriam appeared quite cool and collected, but she made a small sound, almost a whimper. Egwene did not think anyone else had heard. She hoped not.

There was a brief moment of shock, women frozen on their seats, staring at her in amazement. Perhaps as much because she had asked at all as what she had asked. No one put a question before the Hall before sounding out the Sitters; it just was not done, for practical reasons as much as tradition.

At last Lelaine spoke. “We do not declare war on
individuals
,” she said in a dry voice. “Not even on traitors like Elaida. In any case, I call to shelve your question while we deal with more immediate matters.” She had had time to gather herself since the ride back; her face was merely hard now, not thunderous. Brushing blue-slashed skirts as if brushing away Elaida—or perhaps Egwene—she turned her attention to the other Sitters. “What brings us to sit tonight is. . . . I was about to say simple, but it isn’t. Open the novice book? We would have
grandmothers
clamoring to be tested. Remain here a month? I hardly need list the difficulties, beginning with spending half our gold without coming a foot nearer Tar Valon. And as for not crossing into Andor—”

“My sister Lelaine, in her anxiety, has forgotten who has the right to speak first,” Romanda cut in smoothly. Her smile managed to make Lelaine appear merry. Still, she took her time adjusting her shawl just as she wanted, a woman with all the time in the world. “I have two questions to call before the Hall, and in the second I will address Lelaine’s concerns. Unfortunately for her, my first question concerns Lelaine’s own fitness to continue in the Hall.” Her smile widened without growing the slightest bit warmer. Lelaine sat slowly, her scowl quite open.