Siuan felt under no such restraints. Most of the time she did not. When the Aes Sedai were not looking at her, she bathed them all in a glower. Of course, if one of the three glanced in her direction, her face became meek acceptance in a twinkling. She was very practiced at that. A lion survives by being a lion, she had once told Elayne, and a mouse by being a mouse. Even so, Siuan made a poor and reluctant mouse.
Elayne thought she detected worry in Siuan’s eyes. This task had been Siuan’s since she proved to the Aes Sedai that she could use the ring safely—after secret lessons for her and Leane from Nynaeve and Elayne, true—and a prime source of information. It took time to reestablish contact with eyes-and-ears scattered across the nations, and redirect their reports from the Tower to Salidar. If Sheriam and the others meant to take this over, Siuan might be less useful. In the history of the Tower no network of agents had ever been run by any but a full sister until Siuan came to Salidar with her knowledge of the Amyrlin’s eyes-and-ears, and the Blue Ajah’s that she had run before becoming Amyrlin. Beonin and Carlinya were openly reluctant to depend on a woman who was no longer one of them, and the others were not far behind. Truth to tell, they were none of them comfortable around a woman who had been stilled.
There really was nothing for Elayne to do, either. The Aes Sedai might call this a lesson, they might even think of it so, but she knew from past experience that if she tried to do any teaching without being asked, she would have her nose snapped off in short order. She was there to answer any questions they might have and nothing more. She thought of a stool—it appeared, the legs carved in vines—and sat down to wait. A chair would have been more comfortable, but it might occasion comment. An Accepted sitting too comfortably was often considered an Accepted with not enough to do. After a moment Siuan made herself an almost identical stool. She gave Elayne a tight smile—and the Aes Sedai backs a scowl.
The first time Elayne had visited this room in Tel’aran’rhiod, there had been a semicircle of such stools, a dozen or more, in front of the heavily carved table. Each visit since had seen fewer, and now none. She was sure that indicated something, though she could not imagine what. She was sure Siuan thought so, too, and very likely had puzzled out a reason, but if she had, she had not shared it with Elayne or Nynaeve.
“The fighting in Shienar and Arafel is dying down,” Sheriam murmured half to herself, “but still nothing here to say why it began. Skirmishes only, yet Bordermen do not fight one another. They have the Blight.” She was Saldaean, and Saldaea was one of the Borderlands.
“At least the Blight is still quiet,” Myrelle said. “Almost too quiet. It cannot last. A good thing that Elaida has plenty of eyes-and-ears through the Borderlands.” Siuan managed to combine a wince with a glare at the Aes Sedai. Elayne did not think she had managed yet to make contact with any of her agents in the Borderlands; they lay a long way from Salidar.
“I would feel better if the same could be said of Tarabon.” The page in Beonin’s hand grew longer and wider; she glanced at it, sniffed, and tossed it aside. “The eyes-and-ears in Tarabon, they are still silent. All of them. The only word she has of Tarabon is rumors from Amadicia that Aes Sedai are involved in the war.” She shook her head at the absurdity of committing such rumors to paper. Aes Sedai did not involve themselves in civil wars. Not openly enough to be detected, at any rate. “And there are no more than a handful of confused reports from Arad Doman, it seems.”
“We will know about Tarabon soon enough ourselves,” Sheriam said soothingly. “A few more weeks.”
The search went on for hours. There was never any shortage of documents; the lacquered box never emptied. In fact, the stack inside sometimes increased with the removal of a paper. Of course, only the shortest held steady long enough to be read in full, but occasionally a letter or report that had already been scanned would come out of the box again. Long stretches passed in silence, yet some documents elicited comment; a few the Aes Sedai discussed. Siuan began stringing a cat’s-cradle between her hands, apparently paying no attention at all. Elayne wished she could do the same, or better yet read—a book appeared on the floor at her feet, The Travels of Jain Farstrider, before she made it go away—but women who were not Aes Sedai were granted more leeway than those training to be. Still, she learned a few things by listening.
Aes Sedai involvement in Tarabon was not the only rumor that had found its way to Elaida’s writing table. Pedron Niall’s ingathering of the Whitecloaks was rumored to have as its goal everything from seizing the throne of Amadicia—which he certainly had no need of—to crushing the wars and anarchy in Tarabon and Arad Doman, to supporting Rand. Elayne would believe that when the sun rose in the west. There were reports of strange occurrences in Illian and Cairhien—there might have been others, but those were the ones they saw—villages taken by madness, nightmares walking in daylight, two-headed calves that talked, Shadowspawn appearing out of thin air. Sheriam and the other two passed over those lightly; the same sort of stories drifted to Salidar from parts of Altara and Murandy and across the river from Amadicia. The Aes Sedai dismissed them as hysteria among people learning of the Dragon Reborn. Elayne was not so sure. She had seen things they had not, for all their years and experience. Her mother was rumored to be raising an army in the west of Andor—under the ancient flag of Manetheren, of all things!—as well as being held prisoner by Rand and fleeing to every nation imaginable, including the Borderlands and Amadicia, which last was purely unimaginable. Apparently the Tower believed none of it. Elayne wished she knew what to believe.
She stopped fretting over where her mother really was when she heard Sheriam mention her name. Not speaking to her; reading hurriedly from a square sheet of paper that became a long parchment with three seals at the bottom. Elayne Trakand was to be located and returned to the White Tower at all costs. If there was any more bungling, those who failed would “envy the Macura woman.” That made Elayne shiver; on their way to Salidar a woman named Ronde Macura had come within an eyelash of sending her and Nynaeve back to the Tower like bundles of wash to the laundry. The ruling house of Andor, Sheriam read, was “the key,” which made as little sense. The key to what?
None of the three Aes Sedai so much as glanced in her direction. They just exchanged glances and went on with what they were doing. Perhaps they had forgotten her, but then again, perhaps not. Aes Sedai did what they did. If she was to be shielded from Elaida, that was an Aes Sedai decision, and if they decided for some reason to hand her to Elaida bound hand and foot, that was their choice too. “The pike does not ask the frog’s permission before dining,” as s
