Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11)

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11) Page 168

After two more classes and two more visits to Silviana’s study—she refused to be made mock of, and if an Accepted did not want her doing a thing better than the Accepted herself could, the woman should not ask her to do it at all—plus her foreordained midday appointment between, the stern-faced woman decided that she was to have Healing to begin each day.

“Else you’ll soon be too bruised to spank without bringing blood. But don’t think this means I am going easy on you. If you require Healing three times a day, I’ll just spank all the harder to make up. If need be, I’ll go to the strap or the switch. Because I will make your head straight, child. Believe me on that.”

Those three classes, leaving three very embarrassed Accepted, had another result. Her teaching was shifted to sessions alone with Aes Sedai, something normally reserved for Accepted. That meant climbing the long, tapestry-lined spiraling corridors to the Ajah quarters, where sisters stood at the entrances like guards. They were guards, in truth. Visitors from other Ajahs were unwelcome, to say the least. In fact, she never saw any Aes Sedai near the quarters of another Ajah.

Except for Sitters, she seldom saw sisters in the hallways outside the quarters other than in groups, always wearing their shawls, usually with Warders following close behind, but this was not like the fear that gripped the encampment outside the walls. Here it was always sisters of the same Ajah together, and when two groups passed, they cut each other dead if they did not glare.

In the worst of summer the Tower remained cool, yet the air seemed feverish and gelid when sisters of different Ajahs came too close. Even the Sitters she recognized walked quickly. The few who realized who she was gave her long, studying looks, but most appeared distracted. Pevara Tazanovni, a plumply pretty Sitter for the Red, almost walked into her one day—she was not going to jump aside, even for Sitters—but Pevara hurried on as if she had not noticed. Another time Doesine Alwain, boyishly slim if elegantly dressed, did the same while deep in conversation with another Yellow sister. Neither glanced at her twice. She wished she had some idea who the other Yellow was.

She knew the names of the ten “ferrets” Sheriam and the others had sent into the Tower to try undermining Elaida, and she very much would have liked to make contact with them, but she did not know their faces, and asking after them would only draw attention to them. She hoped one of them would pull her aside or hand her a note, but none did. Her battle would have to be fought alone except for Leane unless she overheard something that put faces to some of those names.

She did not neglect Leane, of course. Her second night back in the Tower she went down to the open cells after supper despite her bone-deep weariness. Those half-dozen rooms in the first basement were where women who could channel were held if not to be closely confined. Each held a large cage of iron latticework that ran from stone floor to stone ceiling, with a space around it four paces wide and iron stand-lamps to provide light. At Leane’s cell, two Browns were sitting on benches against the wall with a Warder, a wide-shouldered man with a beautiful face and touches of white at his temples. He looked up when Egwene walked in, then returned to honing his dagger on a stone.

One of the Browns was Felaana Bevaine, slender with long yellow hair that gleamed as if she brushed it several times a day. She stopped writing in a leather-bound notebook on a lapdesk long enough to say in a raspy voice, “Oh. It’s you, is it? Well, Silviana said you can visit, child, but don’t give her anything without showing it to Dalevien or me, and don’t make any fuss.” She promptly returned to her writing. Dalevien, a stocky woman with gray streaking her short dark hair, never looked up from her comparison of the text of two books, one held open on either knee. The glow of saidar shone around her, and she was maintaining a shield on Leane, but there was no reason for her to look once it had been woven.

Egwene lost no time in rushing to thrust her hands through the iron lattice and clasp Leane’s. “Silviana told me they finally believe who you are,” she said, laughing, “but I didn’t expect to find you in such luxury.”

It was luxury only when held up alongside the small dark cells where a sister might be held for trial, with rushes on the floor for a mattress and a blanket only if you were lucky, yet Leane’s accommodations did appear reasonably comfortable. She had a small bed that looked softer than those in the novice quarters, a ladder-back chair with a tasseled blue cushion, and a table that held three books and a tray with the remains of her supper. There was even a washstand, though the white pitcher and bowl both had chips and the mirror was bubbled, and a privacy screen, opaque enough that she would be only a shadowy shape behind it, hid the chamber pot.

Leane laughed, too. “Oh, I am very popular,” she said briskly. Even the way she stood seemed languorous, the very image of a seductive Domani despite plain dark woolens, but that brisk voice remained from before she had decided to remake herself as she wanted to be. “I’ve had a steady stream of visitors all day, from every Ajah except the Red. Even the Greens try to convince me to teach them how to Travel, and they mainly want to get their hands on me because I ‘claim’ to be Green now.” She shivered much too ostentatiously for it to be real. “That would be as bad as being back with Melare and Desala. Dreadful woman, Desala.” Her smile faded away like mist in a noonday sun. “They told me they’d put you in white. Better than the alternatives, I suppose. They give you forkroot? Me, too.”

Surprised, Egwene glanced toward the sister holding the shield, and Leane snorted.

“Custom. If I weren’t shielded, I could swat a fly and not hurt it, but custom says a woman in the open cells is always shielded. But they just let you wander around otherwise?”

“Not exactly.” Egwene said dryly. “There are two Reds waiting outside to escort me to my room and shield me while I sleep.”

Leane sighed. “So, I’m in a cell, you are being watched, and we’re both full of forkroot tea.” She cast a sidelong look at the two Browns. Felaana was still intent on her writing. Dalevien turned pages in the two books on her knees and began muttering under her breath. The Warder must have intended to shave with that dagger, he was honing it so keen. His main attention seemed to be on the doorway, though. Leane lowered her voice. “So when do we escape?”

“We don’t,” Egwene told her, and related her reasons and her plan in a near whisper while watching the sisters out of the corner of her eye. She told Leane everything she had seen. And done. It was hard to tell how many times she had been spanked that day, and how she had behaved during, but necessary to convince the other woman tha