Sheriam’s head whipped around with a startled expression. “Why, child, whatever gave you that notion?” She still had an arm around Siuan, who was dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief in considerable embarrassment. “If anyone could break any rule they chose, do whatever they chose, and escape punishment merely by doing some good to balance it, the world would be chaos.”
Nynaeve sighed heavily. She should have known.
Stepping out from the other Yellows, Nisao cleared her throat, and in passing shot Nynaeve a glare that could only be called accusatory. “I suppose this means we will have to gentle Logain again.” She sounded as though she wanted to deny any of it had happened.
Heads began nodding, and then Carlinya spoke, like an icicle stabbed into the room. “Can we?” Every eye turned to her, but she went on calmly, coolly. “Ethically, can we consider supporting a man who can channel, a man trying to gather other men who can, while at the same time we go on as before, gentling those we find? Practically, what effect will it have on him when he learns? Distressing as it may be, as matters stand, he will see us as separate from the Tower, and more importantly, from Elaida and the Red Ajah. If we gentle even one man, we may lose that distinction, and with it our chance to gain a hold on him before Elaida does.”
Silence cloaked the room when she stopped. Aes Sedai exchanged troubled looks, and those directed at Nynaeve made Nisao’s look laudatory. Sisters had died in capturing Logain, and even if he was safely shielded again, she had given them him to deal with all over again, and a worse pickle besides.
“I think you should go,” Sheriam said softly.
Nynaeve was not about to argue. She made her curtsies as quickly and carefully as she could, and did her best not to run in leaving.
Outside, Elayne rose from the stone step. “I’m sorry, Nynaeve,” she said, brushing her skirt. “I was so excited, I blurted out everything to Sheriam before I realized Romanda and Delana were there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nynaeve said heavily, starting down the crowded street. “It would have gotten out sooner or later.” It just was not fair, though. I did something they said couldn’t be done, and I still have to scrub pots! “Elayne, I don’t care what you say; we have to go. Carlinya was talking about getting a ‘hold’ on Rand. This lot won’t be any better than Elaida. Thom or Juilin will get horses for us, and Birgitte can just bite her elbow.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” Elayne said miserably. “Word is spreading already.”
Larissa Lyndel and Zenare Ghodar swooped down from opposite directions like hawks on either side of Nynaeve. Larissa was a bony woman whose plainness almost overcame Aes Sedai agelessness, Zenare slightly plump and haughty enough for two queens, but both wore faces of eager anticipation. They were Yellow Ajah, though neither had been in the room when she Healed Siuan and Leane.
“I want to see you go through everything step by step, Nynaeve,” Larissa said, laying hold of an arm.
“Nynaeve,” Zenare said, seizing the other arm, “I wager that I will find a hundred things you never thought of, if you repeat the weave often enough.”
Salita Toranes, Tairen and almost as dark as one of the Sea Folk, seemed to pop out of nowhere. “Others ahead of me, I see. Well, burn my soul if I’ll wait in line.”
“I was here first, Salita,” Zenare said firmly. And tightened her grip.
“I was first,” Larissa said, tightening hers.
Nynaeve shot a look of pure horror at Elayne, and got commiseration in return, and a shrug. This was what Elayne had meant about too late. She would not have a waking moment to herself after this.
“. . . angry?” Zenare was saying. “I know fifty ways at the front of my head to make her angry enough to chew rocks.”
“I can think of a hundred,” Larissa said. “I intend to break her block if it’s the last thing I do.”
Magla Daronos shouldered her way into the group, and she had the shoulders for it. She looked as if she worked the sword, or a blacksmith’s hammer. “You will break it, Larissa? Hah! I do have several ways in mind already to draw it out of her.”
Nynaeve just wanted to scream.
It was all Siuan could do not to embrace saidar and hold it, but she thought she might start crying again. That would never do. Besides, it would seem like some fool novice’s display to the women crowding around her in the waiting room. Every expression of wonder and delight, every warm welcome as if she had been away for years, came as balm, especially from those who had been friends before she became Amyrlin, before time and duty pulled them apart. Lelaine and Delana wrapped their arms around her as they had not in long years. Moiraine had been the only one closer, the only one beside Leane she had managed to keep after donning the stole, and duty had helped keep them together.
“It is so good to have you back,” Lelaine laughed.
“So very good,” Delana murmured warmly.
Siuan laughed, and had to scrub tears from her cheeks. Light, what was the matter with her? She had not wept this easily as a child!
Maybe it was just joy, at regaining saidar, at all the warmth around her. The Light knew, altogether it was enough to unsettle anybody. She had never dared dream this day might come, and now that it had, she held nothing against any of these women, not their cold distance before, not their insistence that she remember her place. The line between Aes Sedai and not Aes Sedai was clear—she had insisted on it before she was stilled, and it went without saying that she would again—and she knew how stilled women had to be dealt with for their own good and the good of those who could still channel. Had had to be dealt with. How strange it was that that would never be so again.
From the corner of her eye she saw Gareth Bryne trotting up the stairs at the side of the room. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, and hurried after him.
Even hurrying meant stopping every two steps to accept another congratulation all the way to the stairs, so she did not catch up until he was striding down a corridor on the second floor. Rushing ahead, she planted herself in front of him. His mostly gray hair was windblown, his square face and worn buff coat dusty. He looked as solid as stone.
Lifting a sheaf of papers, he said, “I have to drop this off, Siuan,” and tried to step around her.
She moved to block him. “I’ve been Healed. I