Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11)

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11) Page 169

“I can see any sort of raid is out of the question, but I had hoped—” The Warder shifted, and Leane cut off, but he was merely sheathing his dagger. Folding his arms across his chest and stretching his legs out, he leaned back against the wall, his eyes on the doorway. He looked as if he could be on his feet in the blink of an eye. “Laras helped me escape once,” she went on softly, “but I don’t know that she would do it again.” She shivered, and there was nothing fake about it this time. She had been stilled when Laras helped her and Siuan escape. “She did it for Min more than for Siuan or me, anyway. Are you certain about this? A hard woman, Silviana Brehon. Fair, so I hear, but hard enough to break iron. Are you absolutely certain, Mother?” When Egwene said that she was, Leane sighed again. “Well, we’ll be two worms gnawing at the root then, won’t we.” It was not a question.

She visited Leane every night that exhaustion failed to drag her to her bed straight after supper, and found her astonishingly sanguine for a prisoner confined to a cell. Leane’s stream of visiting sisters was continuing, and she slipped the tidbits Egwene suggested into every conversation. Those visitors could not order an Aes Sedai punished, even one held in the open cells, though a few grew angry enough to wish they could, and besides, hearing those things from a sister carried more weight than hearing them from one they saw as a novice. Leane could even argue openly, at least until the visitors stalked out. But she reported that many did not. A few agreed with her. Cautiously, hesitantly, perhaps on one point and not others, but they agreed. Almost as important, to Leane at least, some of the Greens decided that since she had been stilled and thus was no longer Aes Sedai for a time, she had the right to ask admission to any Ajah once she was a sister again. Not all by any means, but “few” was better than “none.”

Egwene began to think that Leane in her cell was having more effect than she was roaming free. Well, free after a fashion. She was not exactly jealous. This was important work they were doing, and it did not matter which of them did it better so long as it got done. But there were times when it made the trek to Silviana’s study much harder. Still, she had successes. Of a sort.

That first afternoon, in Bennae Nalsad’s cluttered sitting room— books stood in haphazard stacks everywhere on the floor tiles, and the shelves were full of bones and skulls and the preserved skins of animals, birds and snakes along with stuffed examples of some of the smaller specimens: a large brown lizard was perched on the huge skull of a bear, so still you would have thought it stuffed as well until it blinked—that first afternoon, the Shienaran Brown asked her to perform an exhaustive set of weaves one after the other. Bennae sat in a high-backed chair on one side of the brown-streaked marble fireplace, Egwene, with decided discomfort, in one on the other. She had not been invited to sit, but neither had Bennae objected.

Egwene performed each weave as asked until Bennae casually asked for the weave for Traveling, and then she merely smiled and folded her hands in her lap. The sister leaned back and adjusted her deep brown silk skirts a hair. Bennae’s eyes were blue and sharp, her dark hair, caught in a silver net, liberally streaked with gray. Ink stains marked two of her fingers, and another smudged the side of her nose. She held a porcelain cup of tea, but she had not offered any to Egwene.

“I think there is little of the Power that remains for you to learn, child, especially considering your wonderful discoveries.” Egwene inclined her head, accepting the compliment. Some of those things truly were her discoveries, and it hardly mattered now in any case. “But that hardly means you have nothing to learn. You had few novice classes before you were. …” The Brown frowned at Egwene’s white dress and cleared her throat. “And fewer lessons as . . . well, later. Tell me if you can, what mistakes did Shein Chunla make that caused the Third War of Garen’s Wall? What were the causes of the Great Winter War between Andor and Cairhien? What caused the Weikin Rebellion and how did it end? Most of history seems to be the study of wars, and the important parts of that are how and why they began and how and why ended. A great many wars would never have taken place if people had paid attention to the mistakes others had made. Well?”

“Shein didn’t make any mistakes,” Egwene said slowly, “but you’re right. I do have a lot to learn. I don’t even know the names of those other wars.” Rising, she poured herself a cup of tea from the silver pitcher on the side table. Aside from the ropework silver tray, the tabletop held a stuffed lynx and the skull of a serpent. That was as big as a man’s skull!

Bennae frowned, but not for the tea. She hardly seemed to notice that. “What do you mean Shein didn’t make any mistakes, child? Why, she bungled the situation as badly as ever I’ve heard of.”

“Well before the Third War of Garen’s Wall,” Egwene said, returning to her chair, “Shein was doing exactly as the Hall told her and nothing they didn’t.” She might be lacking in other areas of history, but Siuan had tutored her thoroughly in the mistakes made by other Amyrlins. And this particular question gave her an opening. Sitting down normally took a great effort.

“What are you talking about?”

“She tried running the Tower with an iron hand, never a compromise on anything, running roughshod over any opposition. The Hall grew tired of it, but they couldn’t settle on a replacement, so rather than deposing her, they did worse. They left her in place and forced a penance on her whenever she tried to issue an order of any kind. Any kind at all.” She knew she was going on, sounding as if she were the one giving a lecture, but she had to get it all out. Not easing herself on the hard wood of the chair seat was difficult. Welcome the pain. “The Hall ran Shein and the Tower. But they mishandled a great deal themselves, largely because each Ajah had its own goals and there was no hand to shape them into a goal for the Tower. Shein’s reign was marked by wars all over the map. Eventually, the sisters themselves got tired of the Hall’s bungling. In one of the six mutinies in Tower history, Shein and the Hall were pulled down. I know she supposedly died in the Tower of natural causes, but, in fact, she was smothered in her bed in exile fifty-one years later after the discovery of a plot to put her back on the Amyrlin Seat.”

“Mutinies?” Bennae said incredulously. “Six of them? Exiled and smothered?”

“It’s all recorded in the secret histories, in the Thirteenth Depository. Though I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that.” Egwene took a sip of tea and grimaced. It was all but rancid. No wonder Be