There was one person in the Tower she was sure she knew exactly where to find, someone she could demand answers from with no fear of what the woman thought. A little caution was needed even there, of course - careless questions revealed more than most answers were worth - but Elaida would tell her any?thing. With a sigh, she began to climb.
Mesaana had told her of another marvel of the Age of Legends that she wished very much to see, a thing called a “lift.” The flying machines sounded much grander, of course, but it was far easier to envision a mechanical contrivance that whisked you from floor to floor. She was not really certain that buildings several times as high as the White Tower could really have existed, either - in the whole world, not even the Stone of Tear rivaled the Tower’s height - but just knowing about “lifts” made climbing up spiraling hallways and sweeping flights of stairs seem laborious.
She did pause at the Amyrlin’s study, only three levels up, but as expected, both rooms were empty, the bare writing tables polished till they shone. The rooms themselves seemed bare, with no wall hangings, no ornaments, nothing at all but the tables and chairs and unlit stand-lamps. Elaida rarely came down from her apartments near the Tower’s peak anymore. That had seemed acceptable at one time, since it isolated the woman even more from the rest of the Tower. Few sisters made that climb willingly. Today, though, by the time Alviarin had climbed close to eighty spans, she was seriously considering making Elaida move back down.
Elaida’s waiting room was empty, of course, though a folder of papers sitting atop the writing table said someone had been there. Seeing what they contained, and deciding whether Elaida needed to be punished for having it, could wait, though. Alviarin tossed her cloak down on the writing table and pushed open the door, newly carved with the Flame of Tar Valon and awaiting the gilder, that led deeper into the apartments.
She was surprised at the surge of relief she felt at seeing Elaida sitting behind the starkly carved and gilded writing table, the seven-striped - no, six-striped, now - stole around her neck and the Flame of Tar Valon picked out in moonstones among the gold-work on the high chairback above her head. A niggling worry that she had not let surface until now had been the possibility that the woman was dead in some fool accident. That would have explained Zemaille’s comment. Choosing a new Amyrlin could have taken months, even with the rebels and everything else confronting them, but her days as Keeper would have been numbered. What surprised her more than her relief, though, was the presence of more than half the Sitters in the Hall standing in front of the writ?ing table in their fringed shawls. Elaidaknew better than to enter?tain this sort of delegation without her present. The huge gilded case clock against the wall, a vulgarly over-ornamented piece, chimed twice for High, small enameled figures of Aes Sedai pop?ping out of tiny doors in its front as she opened her mouth to tell the Sitters that she needed to confer with the Amyrlin privately. They would leave with little hemming or hawing. A Keeper had no authority to order them out, but they knew that her authority extended beyond that her stole conferred even if they did not begin to suspect how that could be.
“Alviarin,” Elaida said, sounding surprised, before she couldget a word out. The hardness of Elaida’s face softened in what almost seemed pleasure. Her mouth quirked close to a smile. Elaida had had no reasons to smile in some time. “Stand over there and be quiet until I have time to deal with you,” she said, waving an imperious hand toward a corner of the room. The Sitters shifted their feet and adjusted their shawls. Suana, a beefy woman, gave Alviarin a tight glance, and Shevan, tall as a man and angular, stared straight at her with no expression, but the others avoided meeting her eye.
Stunned, she stood stock-still on the brightly patterned silk carpet, gaping. This could not be mere rebellion on Elaida’s part - the woman would have to be insane! - but what in the name of the Great Lord had happened to give her the nerve? What?
Elaida’s hand slapped the tabletop with a loud crack, a blow that made one of the lacquered boxes there rattle. “When I tell you to stand in the corner, Daughter,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, “I expect you to obey.” Her eyes glittered. “Or shall I sum?mon the Mistress of Novices so these sisters can witness your ‘pri?vate’ penance?”
Heat suffused Alviarin’s face, part humiliation and part anger. To have anyonehear such things said, and to her face! Fear bubbled in her, too, turning her stomach to acid. A few words from her, and Elaida would stand accused of sending sisters to disaster and cap?tivity, not once but twice. Rumors had already begun swirling about events in Cairhien; murky rumors, but growing more certain by the day. And once it was learned that on top of that, Elaida had sent fifty sisters to try to defeat hundreds of men who could chan?nel, not even the existence of the rebel sisters wintering in Murandy with their army would keep the Amyrlin’s stole on her shoulders, or her head. She could not dare to do this. Unless. . . . Unless she could discredit Alviarin as Black Ajah. That might gain her a little time. Only a little, surely, once the facts about Dumai’s Wells and theBlackTowerwere known, but Elaida might be ready to grasp at straws. No, it was not possible, could notbe possible. Flight certainly was impossible. For one thing, if Elaida was ready to lay charges, flight would only confirm them. For another, Mesaana would find her and kill her if she fled. All that flashed through her head as she moved on leaden feet to stand in the cornerlike a penitent novice. There had to be a way to recover from this, whatever had happened. There was always a way to recover. Listen?ing might find it for her. She would have prayed, if the Dark Lord listened to prayers.
Elaida studied her for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod. The woman’s eyes still shone with emotion, though. Lifting the lid of one of the three lacquered boxes on her table, she took out a small, age-darkened ivory carving of a turtle and stroked it between her fingers. Fondling the carvings in that box was a habit she had when she wanted to soothe her nerves. “Now,” she said. “You were explaining to me why I should enter negotiations.”
“We were not asking permission, Mother,” Suana said sharply, thrusting her chin out. She had too much chin, a square stone of it, and the arrogance to thrust it at anyone. “A decision of this sort belongs to the Hall. There is strong feeling in favor of it in the Yel?low Ajah.” Which meant she had strong feelings. She was the head of the Yellow Ajah, the First Weaver, something Alviarin knew because the Black Ajah knew all the Ajah secrets, or nearly all, and in Suana’s view, her opinionswere her Ajah’s opinions.
Doesine, the other Yellow present, eyed Suana sideways, but said nothing. Pale and boyishly slim, Doesine looked as if she did not really want to be there, a pretty, sulky boy who had been dragged somewhere by his ear. Sitters often balked at arm-twisting from their Ajah’s head, yet it was not beyond possibility that Suana had found some way.
“Many Whites also support talks,” Ferane said, frowning dis?tractedly at an ink stain on one plump finger. “It is the logical thing to do, under the present circumstances.” She was First Reasoner, head of the White Ajah, but less likely than Suana to take her own views for those of the entire Ajah. A little less likely. Fer?ane often seemed as vague as the worst of the Browns - the long black hair that framed her round face needed a brush, and part of the fringe on her shawl appeared to have been dipped carelessly in her breakfast tea - but she could catch the slightest crack in the logic of an argument. She might well have been there by herself because she simply did not believe she needed any assistance from the other White Sitters.
Leaning back in her tall chair, Elaida began to glower, her fingers stroking faster on the turtle, and Andaya spoke up quickly, not quite looking at Elaida while pretending to adjust the set of her gray-fringed shawl along her arms.
“The point, Mother, is that we must find a way to end this peacefully,” she said, the Taraboner accent strong in her speech as it was when she felt uneasy. Frequently diffident around Elaida, she glanced at Yukiri as though hoping for support, but the slender little woman turned her head aside slightly. Yukiri was remarkably stubborn for such a tiny woman; unlike Doesine, she would not have responded to arm-twisting. So why was she here if she did not want to be? Realizing that she was on her own, Andaya rushed on. “It must not be allowed to come to fighting in the streets of Tar Valon. Or in the Tower; especially not that; not again. So far, the rebels seem content to sit and watch the city, but that cannot last. They have rediscovered how to Travel, Mother, and have used it to carry an army across hundreds of leagues. We must begin talks before they decide to use Traveling to bring that army into Tar Valon, or all is lost even if we win.”
Fists knotted in her skirts, Alviarin swallowed hard. She thought her eyes might pop out of her head. The rebels knew how to Travel? They were here at Tar Valon already? And these fools wanted totalk? She could see carefully laid plans, carefully arranged designs, evaporating like mist in a summer sun. Perhaps the Dark Lord would listen, if she prayed very hard.
Elaida’s scowl did not diminish, but she set the ivory turtle down very carefully, and her voice came close to normal. The old normal, before Alviarin reined her in, with a steel core beneath the softness of the words. “Do the Brown and the Green
