Verin shook her head again, giving a laugh that sounded only slightly amused. “She’s in love with the young man, Cadsuane, and she’s tucked her heart in his pocket. She’ll follow that before her head, whatever you say or do. I think she’s afraid he almost died on her, and you know how that can make a woman determined to hang on.”
Cadsuane’s lips thinned. Verin knew more about that sort of relations with men than she did - she had never believed in indulging with her own Warders, as some Greens did, and other men had always been out of the question - but the Brown had hit close to a truth without knowing. At least, Cadsuane did not think the other sister knew Min was bonded to the al’Thor boy. She her?self only knew because the girl had let too much slip in a careless moment. Even the tightest mussel eventually yielded its meat once you got that first small crack in the shell. Sometimes it gave up an unexpected pearl, as well. Yes, Min would want to keep the lad alive whether she loved him or not, but no more than Cadsuane did.
Draping her cloak on the tall back of a chair, Verin moved to the nearest fireplace and stretched out her hands to warm them in front of the low flames. You could not say that Verin glided, but she was more graceful than her bulk suggested. How much of her was deception? Every Aes Sedai hid behind various masks, over time. It became habit after a while. “I believe the situation in Tear may be resolved peacefully yet,” she said, peering into the fire. She might have been talking to herself. Or wanted Cadsuane to think it. “Hearne and Simaan are growing quite desperate, afraid the other High Lords will return from Illian and trap them in the city. They may be amenable to accepting Darlin, given their other choices. Estanda is made of sterner stuff, but if she can be con?vinced there’s advantage for her in it - ”
“I told you not to go near them,” Cadsuane broke in sternly.
The stout woman blinked at her in surprise. “I didn’t. The streets are always full of rumors, and I do know how torumors together and sift out a little truth. I did see Alanna and Rafela, but I ducked behind a fellow hawking meat pies from a barrow before they saw me. I’m sure they didn’t.” She paused, clearly waiting for Cadsuane to explain why she had been told to avoid the sisters as well.
“I have to go to the boy now, Venn,” Cadsuane said instead. That was the trouble with agreeing to advise someone. Even when you managed to set all the conditions you could wish for - most of them, anyway - you still had to come sooner or later when they called. Eventually. But it did give her a reason to evade Verin’s curiosity. The answer was simple. If you tried to solve every prob?lem yourself, you ended by solving none. And with some prob?lems, how they were solved really did not matter in the long run. But not answering left Verin with a puzzle to ponder, a little but?ter for her paws. When Cadsuane was unsure of someone, she wanted them unsure of her, too.
Verin gathered up her cloak and left the room with her. Did the other woman mean to accompany her? But outside the sitting room, they encountered Nesune walking briskly down the hall. She came to a sudden halt. No more than a handful of people had ever managed to ignore Cadsuane, yet Nesune did a credible job, her nearly black eyes latching on to Verin.
“You’re back then, are you?” The best of Browns did have a way of stating the obvious. “You wrote a paper on animals of the Drowned Lands, as I recall.” Which meant that Verin had; Nesune recalled everything she had ever seen - a useful skill, if Cadsuane had been sure enough of her to make use of it. “Lord Algarin showed me the skin of a large snake he claims came from the Drowned Lands, but I’m convinced it is the same as I observed. . . .” Verin glanced helplessly at Cadsuane over her shoulder as the taller woman drew her away by her sleeve, but before they were three steps along the corridor, she was deep in discussion over this fool snake.
It was a remarkable sight, and troubling in a way. Nesune was loyal to Elaida, or had been, while Verin was one of those who wanted to pull Elaida down. Or had been. Now they talked ami?ably about snakes. That both had sworn fealty to the al’Thor boy could be laid to his beingta’veren, winding the Pattern around himself unconsciously, but was that oath sufficient to make them ignore their opposition over who held the Amyrlin Seat? Or were they affected by having ata’veren in close proximity? She would have liked very much to know that. None of her ornaments pro?tected againstta’veren. Of course, she did not know what two of the fish and one of the moons did, but it seemed unlikely they did that. It could have been as simple as Verin and Nesune both being Brown. Browns could forget everything else when they settled to study something. Snakes. Phaw! The small ornaments swayed as she shook her head before turning away, having the two receding Browns behind. What did the boy want? She had never liked being an advisor, necessary or not.
Drafts along the corridors rippled the few tapestries on the walls, all in old styles and showing the wear of having been taken down and rehung many times. The manor house had grown like a rambling farmhouse rather than being built large, with additions added whenever the family’s fortunes and numbers waxed. House Pendaloan had never been wealthy, but there had been times they were numerous. The results showed in more than worn, old-fashioned wall hangings. The cornices were brightly painted, red or blue or yellow, but the hallways varied in width and height, and sometimes met at a slight skew. Windows that once had looked to the fields now looked down on courtyards, usually bare except for a few benches and placed purely to provide light. Sometimes there was no choice in getting from here to there except to take a roofed colonnade overlooking one of those courtyards. The columns were wooden more often than not, though bravely painted even where not carved.
On one of those walkways, with fat green columns, two sisters were standing together watching the activity in the courtyard below. At least, they were watching together when Cadsuane opened the door to the colonnade. Beldeine saw her step out, and stiffened, twitching at the green-fringed shawl she had worn fewer than five years. Pretty, with her high cheekbones and a slight tilt to her brown eyes, she had not yet achieved agelessness, and looked younger than Min, particularly when she shot Cadsuane a frosty stare and hurried from the colonnade in the other direction.
Merise, her companion, smiled after her in amusement, shifting her own green-fringed shawl slightly. Tall and usually quite serious, with her hair drawn back tightly from her pale face, Merise was not a woman who smiled often. “Beldeine, she is becoming concerned that she has no Warder yet,” she said in the accents of Tarabon as Cadsuane stopped beside her, though her blue eyes returned to the courtyard. “She seems to be considering an Asha’?man, if she can find one. I told her to talk to Daigian. If it does not help her, it will help Daigian.”
All of the Warders they had with them were gathered in the stone-paved yard, in their shirtsleeves despite the cold, most seated on painted wooden benches watching two of their number work with wooden practice swords. Jahar, one of Merise’s three, was a pretty, sun-dark young man. The silver bells fastened to the ends of his two long braids chimed with the fury of his attack. He moved like a striking blacklance. Not a breath of breeze stirred, but the eight-pointed star, like a golden compass rose, seemed to shift against Cadsuane’s hair. Had it been held in her hand, she could have felt it vibrating clearly. But then, she already knew that Jahar was an Asha’man, and the star would not have pointed him out, merely told her that a man who could channel was nearby. The more men who could channel, the harder the star quivered, she had learned. Jahar’s opponent, a very tall, broad-shouldered fellow with a stone face and a braided leather cord around his graying temples to hold back shoulder-length hair, was not the second Asha’man down there, but he was as deadly in his own way. Lan did not really seem to move that fast, but he . . . flowed. His blade of bundled laths was always there to deflect Jahar’s, always moving the younger man just a touch more out of his line.
Suddenly, Lan’s wooden blade struck Jahar’s side with a resounding crack, a killing blow given with steel. While the younger man was still flinching from the force of the strike, Lan flowed back into a ready stance, long blade upright in his hands. Nethan, another of Merise’s, rose to his feet, a lean fellow with wings of white at his temples and tall, if still a hand or more shorter than Lan. Jahar waved him away and raised his practice blade again, loudly demanding another go.
“Is Daigian still bearing up?” Cadsuane asked.
“Better than I expected,” Merise admitted. “She stays in her room too much, but she keeps her weeping private.” Her gaze shifted from the men dancing their swords to a green-painted bench where Verin’s stocky gray-haired Tomas sat next to a griz?zled fellow with only a fringe of white hair remaining. “Darner, he wanted to try his Healing on her, but Daigian refused. She may never have had a Warder before, but she knows that the grieving over a dead Warder is part of remembering him. I am surprised that Corele would consider allowing it.”
With a shake of her head, the Taraboner sister returned to studying Jahar. Other sisters’ Warders did not really interest her, at least not like her own. “Asha’man, they grieve as Warders do. I thought perhaps Jahar and Darner merely followed the lead of the others, but Jahar, he says it is their way, too. I did not intrude, of course, but I watched them drink in memory of Daigian’s young Eben. They never mentioned his name, but they had a full winecup sitting for him. Bassane and Nethan, they know they can die on any day, and they accept that. Jaharexpects to die; every day he expects it. To him, every hour is most
