Oh, how she wished Rand were near enough to share the full effect of her bond with him. That would teach him to get her with child so carelessly. Of course, she could have drunk the heartleaf tea before lying with him—she pushed that thought away firmly. This was all Rand’s fault, and that was that.
Aviendha chose blue, which she often did, with rows of tiny pearls edging the bodice. The silk was not so deeply cut as Ebou Dari fashions, yet still would display a little cleavage; few dresses sewn in Ebou Dar failed to do that. As Sephanie began fastening her buttons, Aviendha fondled something she had retrieved from her belt pouch, a small dagger with a rough hilt of deerhorn wrapped in gold wire. It was also a ter’angreal, though Elayne had not been able to puzzle out what it did before pregnancy forced a halt to such studies. She had not known her sister was carrying the thing. Aviendha’s eyes were almost dreamy as she stared at it.
“Why does that fascinate you so?” Elayne asked. This was not the first time she had seen the other woman absorbed in that knife.
Aviendha gave a start and blinked at the dagger in her hands. The iron blade—it looked like iron, at least, and felt almost like iron—had never been sharpened so far as Elayne could tell and was little longer than her palm, though wide in proportion. Even the point was too blunt for stabbing. “I thought to give it to you, but you never said anything about it, so I thought I might be wrong, and then we would believe you were safe, from some dangers at least, when you were not. So I decided to keep it. That way, if I am right, at least I could protect you, and if I am wrong, it does no harm.”
Elayne shook her towel-wrapped head in confusion. “Right about what? What are you talking about?”
“This,” Aviendha said, holding up the dagger. “I think that if you have this in your possession, the Shadow cannot see you. Not the Eyeless or the Shadowtwisted, maybe not even Leafblighter. Except that I must be wrong if you did not see it.”
Sephanie gasped, her hands going still until Essande murmured a soft admonition. Essande had lived too long to be shaken by mere mention of the Shadow. Or much else, for that matter.
Elayne stared. She had tried teaching Aviendha to make ter’angreal, but her sister possessed not a scrap of facility there. Yet perhaps she had a different skill, maybe even one that could be called a Talent. “Come with me,” she said, and taking Aviendha’s arm, she almost pulled her out of the dressing room. Essande followed with a torrent of protest, and Sephanie, attempting to continue buttoning up Aviendha’s dress on the fly.
In the larger of the apartment’s two sitting rooms, goodly fires blazed in both of the fireplaces, and if the air was not so warm as in the dressing room, it was still comfortable. The scroll-edged table bordered with low-backed chairs in the middle of the white-tiled floor was where she and Aviendha took most of their meals. Several leather-bound books from the palace library sat in a stack on one end of the table, histories of Andor and books of tales. The mirrored stand-lamps gave a good light, and they often read here of an evening.
More important, a long side table against one dark-paneled wall was covered with ter’angreal from the cache the Kin had kept hidden in Ebou Dar, cups and bowls, statuettes and figurines, jewelry, all manner of things. Most looked commonplace, aside from perhaps a strangeness of design, yet even the most fragile-seeming could not be broken, and some were much lighter or heavier than they appeared. She could no longer safely study them in any meaningful way—she had Min’s assurance her babes could not be harmed, but with her control of the Power so slippery, damaging herself was more a possibility than ever—yet she changed what was on the table every day, picking out pieces at random from the panniers kept in the apartment’s boxroom, just so she could look at them and speculate on what she had learned before getting with child. Not that she had learned very much—well, nothing, really— but she could think on them. There was no worry of anything being stolen. Reene had rooted out most, if not all, of the dishonest among the servants, and the constant guard at the entrance saw to the rest.
Mouth tight with disapproval—dressing was done in the dressing room, decently, not out where anyone at all might walk in—Essande resumed her task with Elayne’s buttons. Sephanie, likely as agitated by the older woman’s displeasure as anything else, breathed hard as she worked on Aviendha’s.
“Pick out something and tell me what you think it does,” Elayne said. Looking and speculating had done no good, and she had not expected it to. Yet if Aviendha could somehow tell what a tev’angreal did just by holding it. . . . Jealousy surged up in her, hot and bitter, but she knocked it down, then for good measure jumped up and down on it until it vanished. She would not be jealous of Aviendha!
“I am not sure that I can, Elayne. I only think this knife makes a kind of warding. And I must be wrong or you would know it. You know more of these things than anyone.”
Elayne’s cheeks heated with embarrassment. “I don’t know nearly as much as you seem to think. Try, Aviendha. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to … to read ter’angreal, but if you can, even a little, don’t you see how wonderful that would be?”
Aviendha nodded, but her face held doubt. Hesitantly, she touched a slim black rod, a pace long and so flexible it could be bent into a circle and spring back, lying in the middle of the table. Touched it and jerked her hand back swiftly, wiping her fingers unconsciously on her skirt. “This causes pain.”
“Nynaeve told us that,” Elayne said impatiently, and Aviendha gave her a level look.
“Nynaeve al’Meara did not say you can change how much pain each blow gives.” Uncertainty overcame her again at once, though, and her voice became tentative. “At least, I think that can be done. I think one blow can feel like one, or a hundred. But I am only guessing, Elayne. It is only what I think.”
“Keep going,” Elayne told her encouragingly. “Maybe we’ll find something that makes it certain. What about this?” She picked up an oddly shaped metal cap. Covered with strange, angular patterns of what seemed to be the most minute engraving, it was much too thin to be of use as a helmet, though it was twice as heavy as it appeared. The metal felt slick, too, not simply smooth, as if it were oiled.
Aviendha put down the dagger reluctantly and turned the cap over once in her hands before setting it back on the table and taking up the dagger again. “I think that allows you to direct a … a device of some sort. A machine.” She shook her towel-wrapped head. “But I do not know how, or what kind of machine. You see? I am o
