“Come, Aviendha, we must go,” Dorindha said.
“Wait,” Elayne told them. “Please wait, just a moment.” Clutching the dagger, she raced to her dressing room. Sephanie paused in hanging up Aviendha’s blue dress to curtsy, but Elayne ignored her and opened the carved lid of her ivory jewelry chest. Sitting atop the necklaces and bracelets and pins in their compartments were a brooch in the shape of a turtle that appeared to be amber and a seated woman, wrapped in her own hair, apparently carved from age-darkened ivory. Both were angreal. Placing the antler-hilted dagger in the chest, she picked up the turtle, and then, impulsively, snatched up the twisted stone dream ring, all red and blue and brown. It seemed to be useless to her since she became pregnant, and if she could manage to weave Spirit, she still had the silver ring, worked in braided spirals, that had been recovered from Ispan.
Hurrying back to the sitting room, she found Dorindha and Nadere arguing, or at least having an animated discussion, while Essande pretended to be checking for dust, running her fingers under the edge of the table. From the angle of her head, she was listening avidly, though. Naris, putting Elayne’s dishes back on the tray, was gaping at the Aiel women openly.
“I told her she would feel the strap if we delayed the departure,” Nadere was saying with some heat as Elayne entered the room. “It is hardly fair if she is not the cause, but I said what I said.”
“You will do as you must,” Dorindha replied calmly, but with a tightness to her eyes that suggested these were not the first words they had exchanged. “Perhaps we will not delay anything. And perhaps Aviendha will pay the price gladly to say farewell to her sister.”
Elayne did not bother with trying to argue for Aviendha. It would have done no good. Aviendha herself displayed an equanimity that would have credited an Aes Sedai, as if whether she was to be beaten for another’s fault were of no matter at all.
“These are for you,” Elayne said, pressing the ring and the brooch into her sister’s hand. “Not as gifts, I’m afraid. The White Tower will want them back. But to use as you need.”
Aviendha looked at the things and gasped. “Even the loan of these is a great gift. You shame me, sister. I have no farewell gift to give in return.”
“You give me your friendship. You gave me a sister.” Elayne felt a tear slide down her cheek. She essayed a laugh, but it was a weak, tremulous thing. “How can you say you have nothing to give? You’ve given me everything.”
Tears glistened in Aviendha’s eyes, too. Despite the others watching, she put her arms around Elayne and hugged her hard. “I will miss you, sister,” she whispered. “My heart is as cold as night.”
“And mine, sister,” Elayne whispered, hugging back equally hard. “I will miss you, too. But you will be allowed to visit me sometimes. This isn’t forever.”
“No. not forever. But I will still miss you.”
They might have begun weeping next, only Dorindha laid her hands on their shoulders. “It is time, Aviendha. We must go if you are to have any hope of avoiding the strap.”
Aviendha straightened with a sigh, scrubbing at her eyes. “May you always find water and shade, sister.”
“May you always find water and shade, sister,” Elayne replied. The Aiel way had a finality about it, so she added. “Until I see your face again.”
And as quickly as that, they were gone. As quickly as that, she felt very alone. Aviendha’s presence had become a certainty, a sister to talk to, laugh with, share her hopes and fears with, but that comfort was gone.
Essande had slipped from the room while she and Aviendha were hugging, and now she returned to set the coronet of the Daughter-Heir on Elayne’s head, a simple circlet of gold supporting a single golden rose on her forehead. “So these mercenaries won’t forget who they’re talking to, my Lady.”
Elayne did not realize her shoulders had slumped until she straightened them. Her sister was gone, yet she had a city to defend and a throne to gain. Duty would have to sustain her, now.
CHAPTER 16 The New Follower
The Blue Reception Room, named for its arched ceiling, painted to display the sky and white clouds, and its blue floor tiles, was the smallest reception room in the palace, less than ten paces square. The arched windows that made up the far wall, overlooking a courtyard and still filled with glassed casements against the spring weather, gave a fair light even with the rain falling outside, but despite two large fireplaces with carved marble mantels, a cornice of plaster lions and a pair of tapestries bearing the White Lion that flanked the doors, a delegation of Caemlyn’s merchants would have been insulted to be received in the Blue Room, a delegation of bankers livid. Likely that was why Mistress Harfor had put the mercenaries there, although they would not know they were being insulted. She herself was present, “overseeing” the pair of liveried young maids who were keeping the winecups full from tall silver pitchers standing on a tray atop a plainly carved sideboard, but she had the embossed leather folder used to carry her reports pressed to her bosom, as if in anticipation of the mercenaries being dealt with quickly. Halwin Norry, the wisps of white hair behind his ears as always looking like feathers, was standing in a corner, also with his leather folder clutched to his narrow chest. Their reports were a daily fixture, and seldom much in them to cheer the heart of late. Quite the opposite.
Warned by the pair of Guardswomen who had checked the room ahead of her, everyone was on their feet when Elayne entered with another pair at her back. Deni Colford, in charge of the Guardswomen who had replaced Devore and the others, had simply ignored her order for them all to remain outside. Ignored her! She supposed they made a good show, swaggering proudly as they did, yet she could not stop grinding her teeth.
Careane and Sareitha, formal in their fringed shawls, bowed their heads slightly in respect, but Mellar swept off his plumed hat in a flourishing bow, one hand laid over the lace-edged sash slanting across his burnished breastplate. The six golden knots brazed to that breastplate, three on each shoulder, rankled her, yet she had let them pass so far. His hatchet face offered her a smile that was much too warm, too, but then, however cold she was to him, he thought he had some chance with her because she had not denied the rumor her babes were his. Her reasons for not countering that filthy tale had changed—she no longer had need to protect her babes, Rand’s babes—yet she let it stand. Give the man time, and he would braid a rope for his own neck. And if he failed to, sh
