Abruptly, he turned his gaze on her and Toveine, studying. A new thread of concern slipped through the bond. About them? Or - an odd thought -for them?
“I fear we must cut short our ride,” he said after a moment. “I have preparations to make.”
He did not break into a gallop, but he still set a quicker pace back toward the village of the men in training than he had coming out. He was concentrating on something, now; thinking hard, Gabrelle suspected. The bond practically hummed with it. He must have been riding by instinct.
Before they had gone very far, Toveine moved her horse close to Gabrelle’s. Leaning in her saddle, she tried to fix Gabrelle with an intent stare while darting quick glances at Logain as if afraid he might look back and see them talking. She never seemed to pay attention to what the bond told her. The divided effort made her bob about like a puppet, in danger of falling.
“We must go with him,” the Red whispered. “Whatever it takes, you must see to it.” Gabrelle raised her eyebrows, and Toveine had the grace to color, but she lost nothing of her insis?tence. “We cannot afford to be left behind,” she breathed hurriedly. “The man didn’t abandon his ambitions when he came here. Whatever vileness he plans, we can do nothing if we aren’t right there when he tries.”
“I can see what’s in front of my nose,” Gabrelle said sharply, and felt relief when Toveine simply nodded and fell silent. It was all Gabrelle could do to control the fear that was rising in her. Did Toveine neverthink about what she must sense through the bond? Something that had always been there in the connection with Logain - determination - now lay hard and sharp as a knife. She thought she knew what it meant, this time, and knowing made her mouth dry. Against whom, she could not say, but she was sure that Logain Ablar was riding to war.
Slowly descending one of the wide hallways that spiraled gently through theWhiteTower, Yukiri felt prickly as a starved cat. She could barely make herself listen to what the sister gliding beside her was saying. The morning was still dim, first light darkened by the snow falling heavily on Tar Valon, and the middle levels of the Tower were as icy as a Borderland winter. Well, perhaps not so cold as that, she allowed after a moment. She had not been that far north in a number of years, and memory expanded what it did not shrink. That was the reason written records were so important. Except when you did not dare write down anything, at least. Still, it was chill enough. For all the ancient builders’ cleverness and skill, heat from the great furnaces in the basement never reached this high. Drafts made the flames dance on the gilded stand-lamps, and some were strong enough to stir the heavy tapestries spaced along the white walls, spring flowers and woodlands and exotic animals and birds alternating with scenes of Tower triumphs that would never be displayed in the public areas below. Her own rooms, with their warm fireplaces, would once have been much more comfortable.
News from the outside world churned through her head despite her efforts to avoid it. Or rather, more often, the lack of solid news. What eyes-and-ears reported from Altara and Arad Doman was all confusion, and the few reports beginning to seep out of Tarabon again were frightening. Rumor put the Borderland rulers everywhere from the Blight to Andor to Amadicia to the Aiel Waste; the only confirmed fact was that none were where they were supposed to be, guarding the Blightborder. The Aielwere everywhere, and finally out of al’Thor’s control, it appeared, if they had ever been in it. The latest news from Murandy made her want to grind her teeth and weep at the same time, while Cairhien . . . ! Sisters all over the Sun Palace, some suspected of being rebels and none known to be loyal, and still no word of Coiren and her embassy since they departed the city, though they should have been back in Tar Valon long since. And as if that were not enough, al’Thor himself had vanished like a soap bubble yet again. Could the tales that he had half-destroyed theSunPalacebe true? Light, the mancould not go mad yet! Or had Elaida’s witless offer of “pro?tection” frightened him into hiding? Didanything frighten him? He frightened her. He frightened the rest of the Hall, too, let them put whatever face on it they wanted.
The only thing truly certain was that none of that mattered a spit in a rainstorm. Knowing so did not help her mood in the slightest. Worry over being caught in a tangle of roses, even if the thorns might kill you eventually, was a luxury when you had a knife point pressed to your ribs.
“Every time she’s left the Tower in the last ten years, it has been on her own affairs, so there are no recent records to check,” her companion murmured. “It’s difficult to learn exactly when shehas been out of the Tower and remain . . . discreet.” Her dark golden hair held back by ivory combs, Meidani was tall, and slender enough to look overbalanced by her bosom, an effect emphasized by both the fit of her dark silver embroidered bodice and the way she walked in a stoop to put her mouth more on the level of Yukiri’s ear. Her shawl was caught on her wrists, the long gray fringe dragging the floor tiles.
“Straighten your backbone,” Yukiri growled quietly. “My ears aren’t clogged with dirt.”
The other woman jerked herself upright, faint splashes of color in her cheeks. Pulling her shawl higher on her arms, Meidani half glanced over her shoulder toward her Warder Leonin, who was following at a discreet distance. If they could barely hear the faint tin?kle of the silver bells in the lean man’s black braids, though, he could hear nothing said in a moderate tone. The man knew no more than necessary - precious little, in fact, except that his Aes Sedai wanted certain things of him; that was enough for any good Warder - and he might cause problems if he learned too much, but there was no need for whispering. People who saw whispering wanted to know what the secret was.
The other Gray was no more the source of her irritation than the outside world, however, even if the woman was a jackdaw in swan’s feathers. Not the main source, anyway. A disgusting thing, a rebel pretending loyalty, yet Yukiri was actually glad that Saerin and Pevara had convinced her that they should not yet turn Mei?dani and her sister jackdaws over to Tower law. Their wings were clipped, now, and they were useful. They might even gain a mea?sure of clemency, for when they did face justice. Of course, when the oath that had clipped Meidani’s wings came out, Yukiri might easily find herself wishing for clemency herself. Rebels or not, what she and the others had done with Meidani and her confederates was as far outside the law as murder. Or treason. An oath of personal obedience - sworn on the Oath Rod itself; sworn under duress - was all too close to Compulsion, which was clearly prohibited if not really defined. Still, sometimes you had to smudge the plaster to smoke out hornets, and the Black Ajah were hornets with ven?omous stings. The law would have its course in due time - without the law, there was nothing - but she needed to be more concerned with whether she would survive the smoking out than with what penalties the law would exact. Corpses had no need to worry about punishment.
She motioned curtly for Meidani to go on, but no sooner had the other woman opened her mouth than three Browns rounded a corner from another hallway right in front of them, flaunting their shawls like Greens. Yukiri knew Marris Thornhill and Doraise Mesianos slightly, in the manner Sitters knew sisters from other Ajahs who spent long periods in the Tower, which was to say enoughto attach names to faces and not much more. Mild and absorbed in their studies was how she would have described them, if pressed. Elin Warrel was so newly raised to the shawl, she stillshould have been bobbing curtsies on instinct. Instead of offering courtesies to a Sitter, though, all three stared at Yukiri and Meidani the way cats stared at strange dogs. Or maybe dogs at strange cats. No mildness, there.
“May I ask about a point of Arafellin law, Sitter?” Meidani said, as smoothly as if that were what she had been intending to say all along.
Yukiri nodded, and Meidani began rambling about fishing rights on rivers versus lakes, hardly an inspired choice. A magis?trate might ask an Aes Sedai to listen to a case of fishing rights, but only to bolster her own opinion if powerful people were involved and she was worried about an appeal to the throne.
A single Warder trailed the Browns - Yukiri could not recall whether he belonged to Marris or Doraise - a heavyset fellow with a hard round face and a dark top knot who eyed Leonin and the swords on his back with a distrust surely picked up from his sister. That pair stalked by up the slowly spiraling corridor with plump chins high, the skinny newling leaping anxiously to keep up. The Warder strode after them radiating the air of a man in hostile country.
Hostility was all too usual, nowadays. The invisible walls between the Ajahs, once barely thick enough to hide each Ajah’s own mysteries, had become hard stone ramparts with moats. No, not moats; chasms, deep and wide. Sisters never left their own Ajah’s quarters alone, often took their Warders even to the library and the dining rooms, and always wore their shawls, as though someone might mistake their Ajah, otherwise. Yukiri herself was wearing her best, embroidered in silver and thread-of-gold, with the long silk fringe that hung to her ankles. So she supposed she was flaunting her Ajah a bit, too. And lately, she had been consid?ering that a dozen years was long enough to go without a Warder. A horrible thought, once she sifted out the source. No sister should have need of a Wa
