Alanna was already stalking back and forth in the small room, the silk of her divided skirts whispering like swords sliding from scabbards. There was no face of serenity now. “The gall of the man. The utter gall! Detaining us! Restricting us!”
Verin watched her for a few moments before speaking. It had taken her ten years to get over Balinor’s death and bond Tomas. Alanna’s emotions had been raw since Owein’s death, and she had held them in far too long. The occasional bouts of weeping she had allowed herself since departing the Two Rivers were not enough of a release. “I suppose he can keep us out of the Inner City with guards at the gate, but he cannot really hold us in Caemlyn.”
That got the withering glance it deserved. They could leave with little difficulty—however much Rand had taught himself, there was little chance he had managed to discover wards—but it would mean relinquishing the Two Rivers girls. No Aes Sedai had found a trove like the Two Rivers in . . . Verin could not imagine how long. Perhaps not since the Trolloc Wars. Even young women of eighteen—the limit they had set for themselves—often found it hard to accept the strictures of the novitiate, yet had they extended the limit only five years, she and Alanna could have brought out twice as many, if not more. Five of these girls—five!—had the spark inborn, including Mat’s sister and Wile and young Jancy; they would channel eventually whether anyone taught them or not and be very strong. She and Alanna had left two more behind to be gathered up in a year or so, when they were old enough to leave home. That was safe enough; a girl with the ability born in her very rarely manifested it before fifteen without training. The rest showed exceptional promise; all of them. The Two Rivers was a lode of pure gold.
Now that she had the other woman’s attention, Verin changed the subject. She certainly had no intention of abandoning those young women. Or of moving any further from Rand than she had to. “Do you think he is right about rebels?”
Alanna’s fists tightened for a moment on her skirts. “The possibility repels me! Could we really have come to . . . ?” She trailed off, sounding lost. Her shoulders slumped. Tears bubbled just beneath the surface, barely held in check.
Now that the other woman’s anger was dulled, Verin had questions to ask before sharpening it again. “Is there any prospect your butcher can tell you more of what has happened in Tar Valon, if you dig?” The woman was not really Alanna’s; she was a Green Ajah agent, discovered because Alanna had noticed an emergency signal of some sort outside her shop. Not that Alanna had told Verin what it was, of course. Verin certainly would not have revealed any Brown signal.
“No. She knows no more than the message she gave me, and that dried her mouth so, she was hardly able to form words. All loyal Aes Sedai to return to the Tower. All is forgiven.” That was the essence of it, anyway. A flash of anger lit Alanna’s eyes, but only for a moment and not as strong as before. “If not for all those rumors, I’d never have let you know who she is.” That, and her emotions being unbalanced. At least she had stopped pacing.
“I know,” Verin said, sitting down at the table, “and I will respect the confidence. Now. You must agree that message makes the rumors true. The Tower is broken. In all probability, there are rebels somewhere. The question is, what do we do about it?”
Alanna looked at her as if she were mad. Small wonder. Siuan had to have been deposed by the Hall of the Tower, according to Tower law. Even a suggestion of going against Tower law was unthinkable. But then, the Tower broken was unthinkable.
“If you have no answer now, think on it. And think on this. Siuan Sanche was part of finding young al’Thor in the first place.” Alanna opened her mouth—doubtless to ask how Verin knew, and whether she had been part of it, too—but Verin gave her no chance. “Only a simpleton would believe that role played no part in bringing her down. Coincidences that large do not exist. So think what Elaida’s view of Rand must be. She was Red, remember. While you are thinking, answer me this. What were you at, bonding him like that?”
The question should not have caught Alanna by surprise, yet it did. She hesitated, then drew out a chair and sat, arranging her skirts before she answered. “It was the logical thing to do, with him right there in front of us. It should have been done long ago. You could not—or would not.” Like most Greens, she was somewhat amused by other Ajahs’ insistence that each sister have only one Warder. What Greens thought of the Reds having none was better left unsaid. “They all should have been bonded at the first chance. They are too important to run loose, him most of all.” Color blossomed suddenly in her cheeks; it would be a good while yet before she had full control of her emotions again.
Verin knew what caused the blushes; Alanna had let her tongue run away with her. They had had Perrin under their eyes for long weeks while testing young women in the Two Rivers, but Alanna had quickly gone silent on the subject of bonding him. The reason was as simple as a heated promise from Faile—delivered well out of Perrin’s hearing—that if Alanna did any such thing, she would not leave the Two Rivers alive. Had Faile known more of the bond between Aes Sedai and Gaidin, that threat would not have worked, yet her ignorance if nothing else had stayed Alanna’s hand. Very likely it had been frustration over that, plus the frayed state of her nerves, that had led to what she did with Rand. Not only bonding him, but doing so without his permission. That had not been done in hundreds of years.
Well, Verin thought dryly, I have broken a few customs in my time. “Logical?” she said, smiling to take the sting from her words. “You sound like a White. Well. Now that you have him, what are you going to do with him? Considering the lessons he taught us. I am minded of a fireside tale when I was a girl, about a woman who put saddle and bridle on a lion. She found it a fine and wonderful ride, but then discovered she could never dismount and never sleep.”
Shivering, Alanna rubbed her arms. “I still cannot believe he is so strong. If only we had linked sooner. And I tried. . . . I failed. . . . He is so strong!”
Verin barely kept from shivering herself. They could not have linked sooner, not unless Alanna was suggesting they should have linked before she bonded him. Verin was not sure what the result of that would have been. In any case, it had been a series of extremely bad moments, from discovering that they could not cut him off from the True Source to the contemptuous ease with which he had shielded them, snapping their connections to saidar like thread. Both of them at once. Remarkable. How many would it take to shield and hold him? The full thirteen? That was only tradition, but it might be necessary with him. At any rate, that was speculation for another day. “And then there is the mat
