Liandrin’s mouth tightened. The woman did not curtsy; she used no titles of respect. True, she did not know who Liandrin really was, but Gyldin certainly knew she was high enough to give orders and be obeyed, to send that fat merchant bowing and scraping and bundling his family off to some hovel. “You are supposed to be cleaning, yes? Not standing about? Well, clean! There is dust everywhere. If I find a speck of the dust this evening, you cow you, I will have you beaten!” She clamped her teeth shut. She had copied the manner in which nobles and the wealthy spoke for so long that sometimes she forgot her father had sold fruit from a barrow, yet in one moment of anger the speech of a commoner rolled off her tongue. Too much stress. Too much waiting. With a last, snapped, “Work!” she pushed into the withdrawing room and slammed the door behind her.
The others were not all there, which irritated her even more, but enough. Round-faced Eldrith Jhondar, seated at a lapis-inlaid table beneath a hanging on one white-plastered wall, was making careful notes from a tattered manuscript; sometimes she absently cleaned the nib of her pen on the sleeve of her dark wool dress. Marillin Gemalphin sat beside one of the narrow windows, blue eyes dreamily staring out at the tiny fountain tinkling in a little courtyard, idly scratching the ears of a scrawny yellow cat and apparently unaware of the hairs it shed all over her green silk dress. She and Eldrith were both Browns, but if Marillin ever found out that Eldrith was the reason the stray cats she brought in continually disappeared, there would be trouble.
They had been Browns. Sometimes it was difficult to remember they no longer were, or that she herself was no longer a Red. So much of what had marked them clearly as members of their old Ajahs remained even now that they were openly pledged to the Black. Take the two former Greens. Coppery-skinned, swan-necked Jeaine Caide wore the thinnest, most clinging silk dresses she could find—white, today—and laughed that the gowns would have to do, since there was nothing available in Tarabon to catch a man’s eye. Jeaine was from Arad Doman; Domani women were infamous for their scandalous clothes. Asne Zeramene, with her dark, tilted eyes and bold nose, looked almost demure in pale gray, plainly cut and high-necked, but Liandrin had heard her regret leaving her Warders behind more than once. And as for Rianna Andomeran … . Black hair with a stark white streak above her left ear framed a face with the cold, arrogant certainty only a White could assume.
“It is done,” Liandrin announced. “Jaichim Carridin will move his Whitecloaks to the Panarch’s Palace and hold it for us. He does not yet know we will have guests … of course.” There were a few grimaces; changing Ajahs had certainly not altered anyone’s feelings toward men who hated women who could channel. “There is an interesting thing. He believed I was there to kill him. For failing to kill Rand al’Thor.”
“That makes no sense,” Asne said, frowning. “We are to bind him, control him, not kill him.” She laughed suddenly, soft and low, and leaned back in her chair. “If there is a way to control him, I would not mind binding him to me. He is a good-looking young man, from the little I saw.” Liandrin sniffed; she had no liking for men at all.
Rianna shook her head worriedly. “It makes troubling sense. Our orders from the Tower were clear, yet it is also clear that Carridin has others. I can only postulate dissension among the Forsaken.”
“The Forsaken,” Jeaine muttered, folding her arms tightly; thin white silk molded her breasts even more revealingly. “What good are promises that we will rule the world when the Great Lord returns if we are crushed between warring Forsaken first? Does anyone believe we could stand against any of them?”
“Balefire.” Asne looked around, dark tilted eyes challenging. “Balefire will destroy even one of the Forsaken. And we have the means to produce it.” One of the ter’angreal they had removed from the Tower, a fluted black rod a pace long, had that use. None of them knew why they had been ordered to take it, not even Liandrin herself. Too many of the ter’angreal were like that, taken because they had been told to, with no reasons given, but some orders had to be obeyed. Liandrin wished they had been able to secure even one angreal.
Jeaine gave a sharp sniff. “If any of us could control it. Or have you forgotten that the one test we dared nearly killed me? And burned a hole through both sides of the ship before I could stop it? Fine good it would have done us to drown before reaching Tanchico.”
“What need have we of balefire?” Liandrin said. “If we can control the Dragon Reborn, let the Forsaken think how they will deal with us.” Suddenly she became aware of another presence in the room. The woman Gyldin, wiping down a carved, low-backed chair in one corner. “What are you doing here, woman?”
“Cleaning.” The dark-braided woman straightened unconcernedly. “You told me to clean.”
Liandrin almost struck out with the Power. Almost. But Gyldin certainly did not know they were Aes Sedai. How much had the woman heard? Nothing of importance. “You will go to the cook,” she said in a cold fury, “and tell him he is to strap you. Very hard! And you are to have nothing to eat until the dust it is all gone.” Again. The woman had made her speak like a commoner again.
Marillin stood, nuzzling the yellow cat’s nose with hers, and handed the creature to Gyldin. “See that he gets a dish of cream when the cook is done with you. And some of that nice lamb. Cut it small for him; he doesn’t have many teeth left, poor thing.” Gyldin looked at her, not blinking, and she added, “Is there something you don’t understand?”
“I understand.” Gyldin’s mouth was tight. Perhaps she did finally understand; she was a servant, not their equal.
Liandrin waited a moment after she left, the cat cradled in her arms, then snatched open one of the doors. The entry hall was empty. Gyldin was not eavesdropping. She did not trust the woman. But then, she could not think of anyone she did trust.
“We must be concerned with what concerns us,” she said tightly, closing the door. “Eldrith, have you found a new clue in those pages? Eldrith?”
The plump woman gave a start, then stared around at them, blinking. It was the first time she had raised her head from the battered yellow manuscript; she seemed surprised to see Liandrin. “What? Clue? Oh. No. It is difficult enough getting into the King’s Library; if I extracted so much as a page, the librarians would know it immediately. But if I disposed of them, I would never find anything. That place is a maze. No, I found this in a bookseller’s near the King’s Palace. It is an interesting treatise on—”
Embracing saidar, Liandrin sent the pages showering across the floor. “Unless they are a treatise on the controlling of Rand al’Thor, let them be burned! What have you learned about what we seek?”
Eldrith blinked at the scattered papers. “Well, it is in the Panarch’s Palace.”
“You learned that two days ago.”
“And it must be a ter’angreal. To control someone who can channel must require the Power, and since it is a specialized use that means a ter’angreal. We will find it in the exhibition room, or perhaps among the Panarch’s collection.”
“Something new, Eldrith.” With an effort Liandrin made her voice less shrill. “Have you found anything that is new? Anything?”
The round-faced woman blinked uncertainly. “Actually … . No.”
“It does not matter,” Marillin said. “In a few days, once they have invested their precious Panarch, we can begin searching, and if we must inspect every candlestick, we will fi
nd it. We are on the brink, Liandrin. We will put Rand al’Thor on a leash and teach him to sit up and roll over.”
“Oh, yes,” Eldrith said, smiling happily. “On a leash.”
Liandrin hoped it was so. She was tired of waiting, tired of hiding. Let the world know her. Let people bend knee as had been promised when she first forswore old oaths for new.
Egeanin knew she was not alone as soon as she stepped into her small house by the kitchen door, but she dropped her mask and the jute bag carelessly on the table and walked over to where a bucket of water stood beside the brick fireplace. As she bent to take the copper ladle, her right hand darted into a low hollow where two bricks had been removed behind the bucket; she spun erect, a small crossbow in her hand. No more than a foot long, it had little power or range, but she always kept it drawn, and the dark stain tipping the sharp steel bolt would kill in a heartbeat.
If the man leaning casually in the corner saw the crossbow, he gave no outward sign. He was pale-haired and blue-eyed, in his middle years, and good-looking if too slender for her taste. Clearly he had watched her cross the narrow yard through the iron-grilled window beside him. “Do you think that I threaten you?” he said after a moment.
She recognized the familiar accents of home, but she did not lower the crossbow. “Who are you?”