“…spawning like silverpike,” Siuan whispered under her breath. Moiraine only just heard, but the words deepened her blush. Why ever had she asked such a question in the first place?
“Cairhienin,” Meilyn breathed. She sounded very nearly…amused! But she went on in a serious tone. “When a man believes he may die, he wants to leave something of himself behind. When a woman believes her man may die, she wants that part of him desperately. The result is a great many babies born during wars. It’s illogical, given the hardship that comes if the man does die, or the woman, but the human heart is seldom logical.”
Which explained a great deal, and left Moiraine feeling that her face might burn off. There were things one did in public and talked about, and things that were done in private and definitely not talked about. She struggled to regain control of herself, performing mental exercises for seeking calm. She was the river, contained by the bank; she was the bank, containing the river. She was a flower bud, opening to the sun. It did not help that Elaida was studying her and Siuan like a sculptor hefting hammer and chisel, deciding which piece of stone to remove next in order to bring out the form she wanted.
“Yes, yes, Andro,” Meilyn said suddenly. “We will go in a moment.” She had not even looked back at her Warder, yet he nodded as though she had responded to something he had said. Lean and no taller than his Aes Sedai, he appeared youthful. Until you noticed his eyes.
Moiraine found herself gaping, embarrassment forgotten, and not because of Andro’s unblinking gaze. A sister and her bonded Warder could sense each other’s emotions and physical condition, and each knew exactly where the other was, if they were close enough, and at least a direction if they were far apart, but this seemed on the order of reading minds. Some said that full sisters could do that. There were a number of things that you were not taught until you had attained the shawl, after all. Such as the weave for bonding a Warder.
Meilyn looked straight into her eyes. “No,” she said softly, “I can’t read his thoughts.” Moiraine’s scalp prickled as though her hair were trying to stand on end. It must be true, since Meilyn had said it, yet…. “When you’ve had a Warder long enough, you will know what he is thinking, and he will know what you are. A matter of interpretation.” Elaida sniffed, though quietly. Alone among the Ajahs, the Red refused to bond Warders. Most Reds seemed to dislike men altogether.
“Logically,” Meilyn said, her serene gaze going to the other sister, “Reds have greater need of Warders than any except Greens, perhaps greater even than Greens. But no matter. The Ajahs choose as they will.” She lifted her fringed reins. “Are you coming, Elaida? We must reach as many of the children as possible. Some are certain to lose their heads and remain too long without a reminder. Remember, children; before dark.”
Moiraine expected some sort of
eruption from Elaida, or at least a flash of anger in her eyes. That comment about Warders came very close to violating the codes of courtesy and privacy that governed sisters’ lives, all the rules of what an Aes Sedai could say to or ask of another and what not. They were not laws, but rather customs stronger than law, and every Accepted had to memorize them. Surprisingly, Elaida merely turned her bay to follow.
Watching the two sisters leave the camp trailed by Andro, Siuan heaved a relieved sigh. “I was afraid she’d stay to supervise us.”
“Yes,” Moiraine said. There was no need to say which woman Siuan meant. It would have been right in Elaida’s character. Nothing they did could escape her demands for absolute perfection. “But why did she not?”
Siuan had no answer for that, and in any event, there was no time to discuss it. With Moiraine’s and her meal clearly finished, the women had taken their places in line again. And after Meilyn and Elaida’s visit, they no longer seemed so certain that the two were Aes Sedai. A level look and a firm voice failed to squelch argument, now. Siuan took to shouting when necessary, which it frequently was, and running her hands through her hair in frustration. Three times Moiraine had to threaten to cease taking down any names at all before a woman carrying a child that was obviously too old would leave the line. She might have been tempted had one of them resembled Susa, but they were well fed and plainly no poorer than anyone else, just greedy.
To cap it off, with above a dozen women still in front of the table, Steler appeared, helmet on his head and leading his mount. The other soldiers were not far behind, two of them holding the reins of Arrow and Siuan’s animal. “Time to go,” Steler said in that gravelly voice. “I left it as long as I could, but leave it any longer, and we’ll be hard-pressed to make the Tower by sunset.”
“Here now,” one of the women protested. “They’ve got to take our names!” Angry mutters rose from the rest.
“Look at the sun, man,” Siuan said, sounding harassed. She looked it, as well, with hair sticking up from the constant raking of her fingers. “We have plenty of time.”
Moiraine did look at the sun, sitting low in the west, and she was not so sure. It was six miles back to the Tower, the last of it through streets that would be just as crowded come nightfall as they had been that morning. Excuses would not be admitted.
Frowning, Steler opened his mouth, but abruptly the leathery-faced woman who had given them wine was right in front of him with six or seven others, all gray-haired or graying, crowding him and forcing him back. “You leave those girls be,” the lean woman shouted at him. “You hear me?”
More women came running from every direction, until Steler was surrounded ten deep, and his Guardsmen as well. Half the women seemed to be screaming and shaking fists, while the rest scowled in sullen silence and gripped the hilts of their belt knives. The anvils went still once more, the blacksmiths watching the crowd of women closely and hefting their hammers. Young men, boys really, began to gather, all hot-eyed and angry. Some had their belt knives drawn. Light, they were going to have a riot.
“Write!” Siuan commanded. “They won’t hold him long. Your name?” she demanded of the woman in front of her.
Moiraine wrote. The women waiting to give their names seemed to agree with Siuan. There were no more arguments. By this time, they knew the questions and spilled out the answers as soon as they came in front of her, some so quickly that she had to ask them to start over. When Steler and his men finally managed to push through the women encircling them without doing anything that would have brought the men and boys still in the camp running, Moiraine was blowing on the last name to dry the ink, and Siuan was hastily straightening her hair with her carved blackwood comb.
The bannerman’s face was grim behind the steel bars of his faceguard, but all he said was “We’ll need a bit of luck, now.”
He led them out of the camp at a trot, with the horses’ hooves flinging clods of snow and Siuan bouncing in her saddle so badly that he assigned men to ride on either side of her and keep her from falling. Clinging desperately to the tall pommel of her saddle, she grimaced at them, but she did not order them away. Moiraine realized that Siuan had never asked for the ointment; she was going to have more need of it than ever. After half a mile, Steler slowed to a walk, but only for another half mile, and then he picked up the trot again. Only the two soldiers kept Siuan in the saddle. Moiraine started to protest, but a glance at Siuan’s determined face—and another at the sun—held her quiet. Siuan would take days to forgive her calling attention to how badly she rode. She might never forgive her if she caused them to be called to Merean’s study for being late.
That was the pace Steler kept all the way back to the city, trot then walk, trot then walk, and Moiraine suspected he would have maintained it there if not for the crowded streets. A walk was the best they could manage in that throng. The sun was just a low dome of red-gold atop the walls of the Tower grounds when they rode into the yard of the West Stable. Grooms came out to take Arrow and Siuan’s mount, along with a sour-faced young under-lieutenant who scowled up at Steler even as he returned the bannerman’s salute, an arm laid across the chest.
“You’re the last,” he growled, sounding as if he wanted an excuse to lash out at anyone who was handy. “Did they cause problems?”
Helping a groaning Siuan dismount, Moiraine held her breath.
“No more than lambs,” Steler replied, and she exhaled. Stepping down from his horse, the bannerman turned to his men. “I want the horses rubbed down and the tack oiled before anybody even thinks of supper. You know why I’m looking at you, Malvin.”
Moiraine inquired of the young officer what they should do with the lapdesks. He glared at her before saying, “Leave them where they are. They’ll be collected.” And he stalked off so quickly that his cloak flared behind him.
“Why is he so angry?” she wondered aloud.
Steler glanced at the Guardsmen leading their animals into the stable, then answered in a voice too low for them to hear. “He wanted to go fight the Aiel.”
“I don’t care whether the fool man wanted to be a hero,” Siuan said sharply. She was leaning on Moiraine, who suspected that only her arm around the other woman’s waist was keeping her upright. “I want a hot wash and my bed, never mind supper.”