Takima’s smile slid sideways when Janya stood as soon as the question left Egwene’s mouth. “Even a slim branch is better than no branch when you’re drowning,” Janya said. “I’d rather try than trust to hope until I go under.” She had the habit of speaking when she was not supposed to.
Samalin rose to stand beside Malind, and suddenly there was a rush, Salita and Berana and Aledrin together, with Kwamesa only a tick behind. Nine Sitters on their feet, and there it hung as the moments stretched out. Egwene realized she was biting her lip and stopped hurriedly, hoping no one had noticed. She could still feel the impression of her teeth. She hoped she had not drawn blood. Not that anyone was looking at her. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
Romanda sat frowning up at Salita, who was staring straight ahead, her face gray and her lips trembling. The Tairen sister might not be able to hide her fear, but she was going ahead. Romanda nodded slowly and then, shockingly, stood. She, too, decided to violate custom. “Sometimes,” she said, looking straight at Lelaine, “we must do things we would rather not.”
Lelaine met the gray-haired Yellow’s eyes without blinking.
Her face might have been cast in porcelain. Her chin rose by slow increments. And suddenly, she stood, glancing down impatiently at Lyrelle, who gaped at her a moment before coming to her feet.
Everyone stared. No one made a sound. It was done.
Almost done, anyway. Egwene cleared her throat, trying to catch Sheriam’s attention. The next part was the Keeper’s, but Sheriam stood scrubbing the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and running her eyes along the benches as if counting how many Sitters were standing and hoping to find she had miscounted. Egwene cleared her throat more loudly, and the green-eyed woman gave a start and turned to stare at her. Even then, it seemed to take forever before she recalled herself to her duty.
“The lesser consensus standing,” she announced in an unsteady voice, “an agreement will be sought with . . . with the Black Tower.” Inhaling deeply, she straightened to her full height, and her voice gained strength. She was back onto familiar ground. “In the interest of unity, I ask for the greater consensus to stand.”
That was a powerful call. Even on matters that could be decided by the lesser consensus, unanimity was always preferred, always strived for. Hours of discussion, days, might go into reaching it, but the effort would not stop until every Sitter agreed or it was clear as well water that there could be no agreement. A powerful call, one that tugged at every sister. Delana rose like a puppet drawn up against her will, looking around uncertainly.
“I cannot stand for this,” Takima said, against all decorum. “No matter what anyone says, no matter how long we sit, I cannot and I will not! I - will - not!”
No one else stood, either. Oh, Faiselle shifted on her bench, half moved as if to stand, adjusted her shawl, twitched again as if she might stand. That was as close as anyone came. Saroiya was biting her knuckle with an expression of horror, and Varilin wore the look of a woman who had been hit between the eyes with a hammer. Magla gripped the ends of her bench, holding herself in place and staring bleakly at the carpets in front of her. Plainly, she was aware of the scowl Romanda was aiming at the back of her neck, but her only response was to hunch her shoulders.
Takima should have been the end of it. There was no point in seeking the greater consensus when someone made it plain she would not stand. But Egwene decided to make her own break with decorum and protocol. “Is there anyone who feels she must leave her chair over this?” she asked in a loud, clear voice.
Gasps filled the pavilion, but she was holding her breath. This could shatter them, but better to have it out in the open now, if that was what was to come of it. Saroiya looked at her wildly, but no one moved.
“Then we will go forward,” she said. “Carefully. It will take time to plan exactly who is to approach the Black Tower, and what they are to say.” Time for her to plant a few safeguards, it was to be hoped. Light, she was going to have to scramble to deal with this. “First, are there suggestions for our . . . embassy?”
CHAPTER 20
In the Night
Long before the sitting ended, in spite of the cloak folded beneath her, Egwene’s bottom was quite numb from the hard wooden bench. After listening to endless discussion, she wished her ears were numb, as well. Sheriam, forced to stand, had begun shifting her feet as if wishing for a chair. Or maybe just to sit down on the carpets. Egwene could have left, freeing herself and Sheriam. Nothing required the Amyrlin to stay, and at best her comments were listened to politely. After which the Hall galloped off in its own direction. This had nothing to do with the war, and with the bit between their teeth, the Hall was not about to let her get a hand on the reins. She could have walked out at any time - with a slight interruption in the discussions for the required ceremonies - but if she did, she feared that first thing in the morning she might be handed a fully fledged plan, one the Sitters we
re already carrying out, and her with no idea what was coming until she read it. At least, that was her fear in the beginning.
Who spoke at the greatest length was no surprise, not any longer. Magla and Saroiya, Takima and Faiselle and Varilin, each fretting visibly when another Sitter had the floor. Oh, they accepted the decision of the Hall, at least on the surface. There was nothing else for them to do except resign their chairs; however hard the Hall might be willing to struggle for consensus if need be, once a course of action was decided, by whatever consensus, then everyone was expected to follow, or at the very least not hinder. That was the rub. What, exactly, constituted hindrance? None of the five spoke against a Sitter from her own Ajah, of course, but the other four leaped to their feet when any Sitter took her bench again, and all five if the Sitter was Blue. And whoever got the floor spoke very persuasively as to why the previous speaker’s suggestions were utterly wrong and perhaps a recipe for disaster. Not that there was any real sign of collusion that Egwene could see. They eyed each other as warily as they did anyone else, frowned at each other as hard if not harder and, plainly, trusted none of the others to make her arguments.
In any event, little of what was suggested came close to conformity. The Sitters disagreed on how many sisters should be sent to the Black Tower and how many from each Ajah, on when those sisters were to be sent, what they must demand, what they should be allowed to agree to and what ordered to refuse entirely. In a matter this delicate, any error could lead to disaster. On top of which, every Ajah except the Yellow considered itself uniquely qualified to provide the leadership of the mission, from Kwamesa’s insistence that the goal was negotiating a treaty, of sorts, to Escaralde’s claim that historical knowledge was a necessity for such an unprecedented undertaking. Berana even pointed out that an agreement of this nature must be reached by absolute rationality; dealing with the Asha’man was sure to inflame passions, and anything except cold logic would surely lead to disaster on the spot. She grew rather heated about it, in fact. Romanda did want the party led by a Yellow, yet since it hardly seemed there would be any great need for Healing, she was reduced to a stubborn insistence that anyone else might be swayed by her Ajah’s special interests and forget the point of what they were doing.
Sitters of the same Ajah supported one another only to the extent of not openly opposing, and no two Ajahs were willing to stand together on much beyond the fact that they had agreed to send an embassy to the Black Tower. Whether it should be called an embassy remained in dispute, even by some who had stood in its favor at the start. Moria herself seemed taken aback by the very idea.
Egwene was not the only one who found the constant argument and counterargument wearing, the points chopped so fine that nothing remained and everything had to begin over. Sisters drifted away from behind the benches. Others replaced them and then drifted away in turn after a few hours. By the time Sheriam uttered the ritual “Depart now in the Light,” night had descended, and only a few dozen remained besides Egwene and the Sitters, several of whom sagged as though they had been run through a mangle like damp bed-linens. And nothing at all had been decided except that more talk was necessary before anything could be decided.
Outside, a pale half-moon hung in a velvet-black sky dusted with glittering stars, and the air was bitter cold. Her breath curling a pale mist in the darkness, Egwene walked away from the Hall smiling as she listened to the Sitters scattering behind her, some still arguing. Romanda and Lelaine were walking together, but the Yellow’s clear high voice rose perilously close to shouting, and the Blue’s was not far behind. They usually argued when forced into one another’s company, but this was the first time Egwene had seen them choose it when they did not have to. Sheriam halfheartedly offered to fetch the reports on wagon repairs and fodder that she had asked for that morning, but the weary-eyed woman did not attempt to hide her relief when Egwene sent her off to her bed. With a hurried curtsy, she went scurrying away into the night clutching her cloak around her. Most of the tents stood dark, shadows in the moonlight. Few sisters remained awake long after nightfall. Lamp-oil and candles were never in generous supply.
For the moment, delay suited Egwene perfectly, but that was not the only reason for her smile. Somewhere in all that argument, her headache had gone away entirely. She would have no difficulty at all going to sleep this night. Halima always remedied that, yet her dreams were always troubled after one of Halima’s massages. Well, few of her dreams were light, but these were darker than any others, and, strangely, she could never remember anything except that they were dark and troubled. Doubtless both things came from some remnant of the pains that Halima’s fingers would not reach, yet the last was disturbing in itself. She had learned to remember every dream. She had to remember every dream. Still, with no headache tonight, she should have no problems, and dreaming was the least of what she had to do.
Like the Hall and her study, her tent stood in a little clearing with its own strip of wooden walkway, the nearest tents a dozen spans off to give the Amyrlin a bit of privacy. At least, that was how the spacing was explained. It might even have been the truth, now. Egwene al’Vere was certainly not irrelevant anymore. The tent was not large, short of four paces on a side, and crowded inside, with four brass-bound chests full of clothing stacked against one wall, two cots and a tiny round table, a bronze brazier, a washstand, a stand-mirror and one of the few real chairs in the camp. A simple piece with a little plain carving, it took up entirely too much room, but it was comfortable, and a great luxury when she wanted to curl her feet beneath her and read. When she had time to read anything for pleasure. The second cot was Halima’s, and she was surprised to see the woman was not already there waiting on her. The tent was not unoccupied, however.
“You had nothing but bread for breakfast, Mother,” Chesa said in a mildly accusing voice as Egwene ducked through the entry flaps. Not far from stout in her plain gray dress, Egwene’s maid was sitting on the tent’s stool, darning stockings by the light of an oil lamp. She was a pretty woman, without a touch of gray in her hair, yet sometimes it seemed that Chesa had been in her employ forever rather than just since Salidar. She certainly took all the liberties of an old servant, including the right to scold. “You ate nothing at all midday, as far as I can learn,” she went on, holding up a snowy silk stocking to study the patch she was making in the heel, “and your dinner’s gone cold there on the table an hour ago at least. Nobody’s asked me, but if they did, I’d say those heads of yours come from not eating. You’re much too skinny.”
With that, she finally put the stocking down atop her mending basket and rose to take Egwene’s cloak. And to exclaim that Egwene was cold as ice. That was another cause of headaches, in her book. Aes Sedai went around ignoring freezing cold or steaming heat, but your body knew whether you did or not. Best to bundle up warm. And wear red shifts. Everyone knew red was warmest. Eating helped, too. An empty belly always led to shivering. You never saw her shivering, now did you?
“Thank you, Mother,” Egwene said lightly, which earned a soft snort of laughter. And a shocked look. For all her liberties, Chesa was a stickler for the proprieties to make Aledrin seem lax. The spirit, anyway, if often not the letter. “I don’t have a headache tonight, thanks to that tea of yours.” Maybe it had been the tea. Vile as that tasted, as a cure, it was no worse than sitting through a session of the Hall lasting more than half a day. “And I’m not very hungry, really. A roll will be enough.”
Of course, it was not quite so simple as that. The relationship between mistress and servant was never simple. You lived in one another’s sleeve, and she saw you at your worst, knew all your faults and foibles. There was no such thing as privacy from your maid. Chesa muttered and grumbled under her breath the whole time she was helping Egwene undress, and in the end, wrapped in a robe - red silk, to be sure, edged with frothy Murandian lace and embroidered with summery flowers; a gift from Anaiya - Egwene let her remove the linen cloth covering the tray on the little round table.
The lentil stew was a congealed mass in the bowl, but a little channeling fixed that, and with the first spoonful, Egwene discovered she did have some appetite. She ate every scrap, and the piece of blue-veined white cheese, and the somewhat shriveled olives, and the two crusty brown rolls, though she had to pick weevils out of both. Since she did not want to fall asleep too quickly, she drank only one cup of the spiced wine, which needed reheating, too, and had a slight bitterness for it, but Chesa beamed with approval as if she had cleaned the tray. Peering at the dishes, empty except for the olive pits and a few crumbs, she realized she had, at that.