“Aah, order.” Rendra laughed. “I remember order. Maybe it will come again one day, yes? Some thought the Panarch Amathera would put the Civil Watch back at their duties, but were I she, with the memory of the mob brawling outside my investiture... The Children of the Light, they killed very many of the rioters. Perhaps this means there will not be another riot, but perhaps it means the next riot, it will be twice so big, or ten times. I think that I, too, would keep the Watch and the Children close around me. But this is no talk to disturb the meal.” Examining the table, she nodded to herself in approval, the beads in her thin plaits clicking. As she turned toward the door, she paused with a small smile. “It is the fashion to eat the Domani food with the sursa, and of course one does what is the fashion. But... there are none here to see save yourselves, yes? Should you perhaps wish the spoons and the forks, they are under the napkin.” She indicated the tray on the end of the table. “Enjoy.”
Nynaeve and Egeanin waited until the door closed behind the innkeeper, then grinned at each other and reached for the tray with decidedly unseemly haste. Elayne still managed to get her spoon and fork first; neither of the others had ever had to eat in the few minutes between a novice's chores and lessons.
“It is tasty enough,” Egeanin said after her first mouthful, “when you can put any on your tongue.” Nynaeve laughed with her.
In the seven days since meeting the darkhaired woman with her sharp blue eyes and slow drawl, they had both come to like her. She was a refreshing change from Rendra's chatter about hair and clothes and complexions, or stares in the street from people who looked as if they would slit a throat for a copper. This was her fourth visit since that first meeting, and Elayne had enjoyed every one. Egeanin had a directness and an air of independence she admired. The woman might be only a small trader in whatever came her way, but she could challenge Gareth Bryne for saying what she meant and bowing to no one.
Still, Elayne wished the visits had not been so frequent. Or rather that she and Nynaeve had not been at the Three Plum Court so often for Egeanin to find. Almost constant riots since Amathera's investiture made moving about the city all but impossible, however, despite their coterie of Domon's tough sailors. Even Nynaeve had admitted as much after they had had to flee a shower of fistsized stones. Thom still promised to find them a carriage and team, but she was not too certain how hard he was looking. He and Juilin both seemed insufferably pleased that she and Nynaeve were mired inside the inn. They come back bruised or bleeding and don't want us to even stub a toe, she thought wryly. Why did men always think it was right to keep you safer than they kept themselves? Why did they think their injuries mattered less than yours?
From the taste of the meat, she suspected Thom should look in the kitchens here if he wanted to find horses. The thought of eating horse made her stomach queasy. She chose a bowl containing only vegetables, bits of dark mushroom, red peppers and some sort of feathery green sprouts in a pale, tangy sauce. “What shall we discuss today?” Nynaeve asked Egeanin. “You have asked almost every question I can think of.” Nearly every one they knew how to answer at any rate. “If you want to learn any more about Aes Sedai, you'll have to go to the Tower as a novice.”
Egeanin flinched unconsciously, as she did at any words linking the Power to her. For a moment she stirred the contents of one of the small bowls, frowning at it. “You have not made any real effort,” she said slowly, “to keep secret from me that you are looking for someone. Women. If it does not intrude on your secrets, I would ask —” She cut off at a knock on the door.
Bayle Domon strode in without waiting, grim satisfaction warring with uneasiness on his round face. “I have found them,” he began, then gave a start at the sight of Egeanin. “You!”
Shockingly, Egeanin knocked over her chair leaping up, and threw a fist at Domon's thick middle almost too fast to see. Somehow Domon caught her wrist in a big hand, twisted — there was a flurried instant where they seemed to be trying to hook each other's ankle with a foot; Egeanin attempted to strike him in the throat — then somehow, she was facedown on the floor, Domon's boot on her shoulder and her arm levered up hard against his knee. Despite that she snatched her belt knife free.
Elayne wove flows of Air around the pair before she even knew she had embraced saidar, freezing them where they were. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded in her best icy tone.
“How dare you, Master Domon?” Nynaeve's voice was equally cold. “Unhand her!” More warmly, worriedly, she added, “Egeanin, why did you try to hit him? I told you to release her, Domon!”
“He cannot, Nynaeve.” Elayne did wish the other woman could at least see flows clearly without being angry. She did try to hit him first. “Egeanin, why?”
The darkhaired woman lay there with eyes shut and mouth tight; her knuckles stood out bloodless from her grip on the knife hilt.
Domon glared from Elayne to Nynaeve, his odd Illianer beard nearly bristling. His head was all that Elayne had left free to move. “The woman do be Seanchan!” he growled.
Elayne exchanged startled looks with Nynaeve. Egeanin? Seanchan? It was impossible. It must be impossible.
“Are you certain?” Nynaeve asked slowly, quietly. She sounded as stunned as Elayne felt.
“I will never forget her face,” Domon replied firmly. “A ship captain. It did be she who did take me to Falme, me and my ship, captives to the Seanchan.”
Egeanin made no effort to deny it, only lay there gripping her knife. Seanchan. But I like her!
Carefully, Elayne shifted the weave of flows until Egeanin's knife hand lay uncovered to the wrist. “Let go of it, Egeanin,” she said, kneeling beside the woman. “Please.” After a moment, Egeanin's hand fell open. Elayne picked up the knife and backed away, loosing the flows completely. “Let her up, Master Domon.”
“She be Seanchan, Mistress,” he protested, “and hard as iron spikes.”
“Let her up.”
Muttering under his breath, he released Egeanin's wrist, moving, away from her quickly as if he expected she might come at him again. The darkhaired woman — the Seanchan woman — merely stood, though. She worked the shoulder he had wrenched, eyeing him thoughtfully, glanced at the door, then raised her head and waited with every outward appearance of calm. It was hard not to keep on admiring her.
“Seanchan,” Nynaeve growled. She clutched a fistful of her long braids, then gave her hand an odd stare and let go, but her brows were still furrowed and her eyes hard. “Seanchan! Worming your way into our friendship. I thought you had all gone back where you came from. Why are you here, Egeanin? Was our meeting really an accident? Why did you seek us out? Did you mean to lure us somewhere your filthy sul'dam could lock their leashes around our throats?” Egeanin's blue eyes widened fractionally. “Oh, yes,” Nynaeve told her sharply. “We know about you Seanchan and your sul'dam and damane. We know more than you. You chain women who channel, but those you use to control them can channel too, Egeanin. For every woman who can channel that you've leashed like an animal, you walk by another ten or twenty every day without realizing it.”
“I know,” Egeanin said simply, and Nynaeve's mouth fell open.
Elayne thought her own eyes were going to pop out of her head. “You know?” She took a breath and went on in something less like an incredulous squeal. “Egeanin, I think you are lying. I've not met many Seanchan before, and never for more than a few minutes, but I know someone who has. Seanchan don't even hate women who channel. They think they are animals. You'd not take it so easily if you knew, or even believed.”
“Women who can wear the bracelet are women who can learn to channel,” Egeanin said. “I did not know it could be learned — I was taught a woman either could or could not — but when you told me that girls must be guided if they are not born with it, I reasoned it out: May I sit down?” So cool.
Elayne nodded, and Domon set Egeanin's chair upright, standing behind it while she sat. Looking over her shoulder at him, the darkhaired woman said, “You were not so — difficult... an opponent the last time we met.”
“You did have twenty armored soldiers on my deck then, and a damane ready to break my ship apart with the Power. Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.” Surprisingly, he grinned at her, rubbing his side where she must have gotten in a blow Elayne had not seen. “You are no so easy an opponent yourself as I did think you would be without your armor and sword.”
The woman's world had to have been turned upside down by her own reasoning, but she was taking it matteroffactly. Elayne could not imagine what would spin her own world topsyturvy that way, but she hoped that if she ever found out she could face it with Egeanin's calm reserve. I have to stop liking her. She is Seanchan. They'd have collared me far a pet if they could. Light, how do you stop liking someone?
Nynaeve appeared to be having no such difficulty. Planting her fists on the table, she leaned toward Egeanin so fiercely her braids dangled among the small bowls. “Why are you here in Tanchico? I thought you had all fled after Falme. And why have you tried to wriggle your way into our trust like some eggeating snake? If you think you can collar us, think again!”
“That was never my intention,” Egeanin said stiffly. “All I ever wanted from you was to learn about Aes Sedai. I...” For the first time she seemed hesitant, unsure of herself. Compressing her lips, she looked from Nynaeve to Elayne and shook her head. “You are not as I was taught. The Light be upon me, I... like you.”
“You like us.” Nynaeve made it sound a crime. “That answers none of my questions.”
Egeanin hesitated again, then held her head up, defying them to do their worst. “Sul'dam were left behind at Falme. Some deserted after the disaster. A few of us were sent to bring them back. I only found one, but I discovered that an a'dam would hold her.” Seeing Nynaeve's fists tighten, she quickly added, “I let her go last night. I will pay dearly if that is ever discovered, but after talking with you, I could not...” Grimacing, she shook her head. “That is why I stayed with you after Elayne revealed herself. I knew Bethamin was a sul'dam. To discover the a'dam held her, that she could... I had to know, to understand, about women who could channel.” She took a deep breath. “What do you mean to do with me?” Her hands, folded on the table, did not tremble.
Nynaeve opened her mouth angrily, and closed it again slowly. Elayne knew her difficulty. Nynaeve might hate Egeanin now, but what were they to do with her? It was not clear she had committed any crime in Tanchico, and in any event the Civil Watch seemed interested in nothing beyond saving its own collective skin. She was Seanchan, she had used sul'dam and damane, but on the other hand, she claimed to have let this Bethamin go free. For what crime could they punish her? Asking questions they had answered fre
