But what was he doing now? Why had Moiraine not sent further word? Impatience hung so thick in the Hall now that she almost expected the air to sparkle. She kept a tight hold on her anger. Burn the woman! Why hasn’t she sent word?
The door crashed open, and she straightened furiously as more than a dozen women strode into her study, led by Elaida. All wore their shawls, most red-fringed, but cool-faced Alviarin, a White, was at Elaida’s side, and Joline Maza, a slender Green, and plump Shemerin of the Yellow came close behind with Danelle, her big blue eyes not dreamy at all. In fact, Siuan saw at least one woman from every Ajah except the Blue. Some looked nervous, but most wore grim determination, and Elaida’s dark eyes held stern confidence, even triumph.
“What is the meaning of this?” Siuan snapped, slapping the blackwood box shut with a sharp crack. She bounced to her feet and strode around the desk. First Moiraine and now this! “If this is about Tairen matters, Elaida, you know better than to bring others into it. And you know better than to walk in here as if this were your mother’s kitchen! Make your apologies and leave before I make you wish you were an ignorant novice again!”
Her cold rage should have sent them scurrying, but though a few shifted uneasily, none made a move toward the door. Little Danelle actually smirked at her. And Elaida calmly reached out and pulled the striped stole from Siuan’s shoulders. “You will not need this any longer,” she said. “You were never fit for it, Siuan.”
Shock turned Siuan’s tongue to stone. This was madness. This was impossible. In a rage she reached for saidar—and suffered her second shock. A barrier lay between her and the True Source, like a wall of thick glass. She stared at Elaida in disbelief.
As if to mock her, the radiance of saidar sprang up around Elaida. She stood helpless as the Red sister wove flows of Air around her from shoulders to waist, crushing her arms to her side. She could barely breathe. “You must be mad!” she rasped. “All of you! I’ll have your hides for this! Release me!” No one answered; they almost seemed to ignore her.
Alviarin ruffled through the papers on the table, quickly yet unhurriedly. Joline and Danelle and others began tilting up the books on the reading stands, shaking them to see if anything fell out from between the pages. The White sister gave a small hiss of vexation at not finding what she sough
t on the table, then flipped open the lid of the blackwood box. Instantly the box flared in a ball of flame.
Alviarin leaped back with a cry, shaking a hand where blisters were already forming. “Warded,” she muttered, as close to open anger as a White ever came. “So small that I never felt it until too late.” Nothing remained of the box and its contents but a heap of gray ash atop a square charred into the tabletop.
Elaida’s face showed no disappointment. “I promise you, Siuan, that you will tell me every word that burned, who it was meant for, and to what purpose.”
“You must be taken by the Dragon!” Siuan snapped. “I will have your hide for this, Elaida. All of your hides! You will be lucky if the Hall of the Tower doesn’t vote to still all of you!”
Elaida’s tiny smile did not touch her eyes. “The Hall convened not an hour ago—enough Sitters to meet our laws—and by unanimous vote, as required, you are no longer Amyrlin. It is done, and we are here to see it enforced.”
Siuan’s stomach turned to ice, and a small voice in the back of her head shrieked, What do they know? Light, how much do they know? Fool! Blind, fool woman! She kept her face smooth, though. This was not the first hard corner she had ever been in. A fifteen-year-old girl with nothing but her bait knife, hauled into an alley by four hard-eyed louts with their bellies full of cheap wine—that had been harder to escape than this. So she told herself.
“Enough to meet the laws?” she sneered. “A bare minimum, heavy with your friends and those you can influence or bully.” That Elaida had been able to convince even a relatively small number of Sitters was enough to dry her throat, but she would not let it show. “When the full Hall meets, with all the Sitters, you’ll learn your mistake. Too late! There has never been a rebellion inside the Tower; a thousand years from now they’ll be using your fate to teach novices what happens to rebels.” Tendrils of doubt crept onto some of those faces; it seemed Elaida did not have as tight a grip on her conspirators as she thought. “It’s time to stop trying to hack a hole in the hull, and start bailing. Even you can still mitigate your offense, Elaida.”
Elaida waited with chill calm until she was done. Then her full-armed slap exploded across Siuan’s face; she staggered, silver-black flecks dancing in her vision.
“You are finished,” Elaida said. “Did you think I—we—would allow you to destroy the Tower? Bring her!”
Siuan stumbled as two of the Reds pushed her forward. Barely keeping her feet, she glared at them, but went as they directed. Who did she need to get word to? Whatever charges had been brought, she could counter them, given time. Even charges involving Rand; they could not fasten more than rumors to her, and she had played the Great Game too long to be beaten by rumors. Unless they had Min; Min could clothe rumors in truth. She ground her teeth. Burn my soul, I’ll use this lot for fish bait!
In the antechamber, she stumbled again, but not from pushing, this time. She had half-hoped that Leane had been away from her post, but the Keeper stood as Siuan did, arms stiffly at her sides, mouth working soundlessly, furiously, around a gag of Air. She had certainly sensed Leane being bound and never realized it; in the Tower, there was always the feel of women channeling.
Yet it was not the sight of Leane that made her miss her step, but the tall, slender gray-haired man stretched on the floor with a knife rising from his back. Alric had been her Warder for close to twenty years, never complaining when her path kept them in the Tower, never muttering when being the Amyrlin’s Warder sent him hundreds of leagues from her, a thing none of the Gaidin liked.
She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky when she spoke. “I’ll have your hide salted and stretched in the sun for this, Elaida. I swear it!”
“Consider your own hide, Siuan,” Elaida said, moving closer to stare her in the eyes. “There is more to this than has been revealed so far. I know it. And you are going to tell me every last scrap of it. Every—last—scrap.” The sudden quiet in her voice was more frightening than all her hard stares had been. “I promise it, Siuan. Take her below!”
Clutching bolts of blue silk, Min strolled in through the North Gate near midday, her simper all ready for the guards with the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests, the girlish swirl of her green skirts that Elmindreda would give. She had actually begun before she realized there were no guards. The heavy iron-strapped door of the star-shaped guardhouse stood open; the guardhouse itself looked empty. It was impossible. No gate to the Tower grounds was ever unguarded. Halfway to the huge bone-white shaft of the Tower itself, a plume of smoke was rising above the trees. It seemed to be near the quarters for the young men who studied under the Warders. Maybe the fire had pulled the guards away.
Still feeling a little uneasy, she started down the unpaved path through the wooded part of the grounds, shifting the bolts of silk. She did not really want another dress, but how could she refuse when Laras pressed a purse of silver into her hands and told her to use it for this silk the stout woman had seen; she claimed it was just the color to set off “Elmindreda’s” complexion. Whether or not she wanted her complexion set off was less important than keeping Laras’s goodwill.
A rattle of swords reached her ears through the trees. The Warders must have their students practicing harder than usual.
It was all very irritating. Laras and her beauty hints, Gawyn and his jokes, Galad paying her compliments and never realizing what his face and smile did to a woman’s pulse. Was this how Rand wanted her? Would he actually see her, if she wore dresses and simpered at him like a brainless chit?
He has no right to expect it, she thought furiously. It was all his fault. She would not be there now, wearing a fool dress and smiling like an idiot, if not for him. I wear coat and breeches, and that is that! Maybe I’ll wear a dress once in a while—maybe!—but not to make some man look at me! I wager he’s staring at some Tairen woman with half her bosom exposed right this minute. I can wear a dress like that. Let’s see what he thinks when he sees me in this blue silk. I’ll have a neckline down to—What was she thinking? The man had robbed her of her wits! The Amyrlin Seat was keeping her here, useless, and Rand al’Thor was addling her brain! Burn him! Burn him for doing this to me!
The clash of swords came again from the distance, and she stopped as a horde of young men burst out of the trees ahead of her carrying spears and bared blades, Gawyn at their head. She recognized others from among those who had come to study with the Warders. Shouts rose somewhere else in the grounds, a roar of angry men.
“Gawyn! What is happening?”
He whirled at the sound of her voice. Worry and fear filled his blue eyes, and his face was a mask of determination not to give in to them. “Min. What are you doing—? Get out of the grounds, Min. It is dangerous.” A handful of the young men ran on, but most waited impatiently for him. It seemed to her that most of the Warders’ students were there.
“Tell me what’s happening, Gawyn!”