“Ten,” the woman mumbled against the tabletop, then jerked erect, glaring in defiance. “I will not betray my sisters! I won’t —!” Abruptly she cut off, lips twisting bitterly as she realized she had done just that.
“Names!” Pevara barked. “Give me their names, or I will have your hide here and now!”
Names spilled from Zerah’s unwilling lips. At the command, certainly, more than the threat. Looking at Pevara’s grim face, though, Seaine was sure she needed little provocation to stripe Zerah like a novice caught stealing. Strangely, she herself did not feel the same animosity. Revulsion, yes, but clearly not as strong. The woman was a rebel who had helped break the White Tower when a sister must accept anything to keep the Tower whole, and yet... Very strange.
“You agree, Pevara?” she said when the list concluded. The stubborn woman gave her only a fierce nod for agreement. “Very well. Zerah, you will bring Bernaile to my rooms this afternoon.” There were two from each Ajah excepting the Blue and the Red, it seemed, but best to begin with the other White. “You will say only that I wish to speak to her on a private matter. You will give her no warning by word, deed, or omission. Then you will stand quietly and let Pevara and me do what is necessary. You are being recruited into a worthier cause than your misguided rebellion, Zerah.” Of course it was misguided. No matter how mad with power Elaida had become. “You are going to help us hunt down the Black Ajah.”
Zerah’s head jerked unwilling nods at each injunction, her face pained, but at mention of a hunt for the Black Ajah, she gasped. Light, her wits must have been totally unhinged by her experiences not to see that!
“And you will stop spreading these... stories,” Pevara put in sternly. “From this moment, you’ll not mention the Red Ajah and false Dragons together. Am I understood?”
Zerah’s face donned a mask of sullen stubbornness. Zerah’s mouth said, “I understand, Sitter.” She looked ready to begin weeping again from sheer frustration.
“Then get out of my sight,” Pevara told her, releasing the shield and saidar together. “And compose yourself! Wash your face and straighten your hair!” That last was directed at the back of the woman already darting from the table. Zerah had to pull her hands away from her hair to open the door. As the door squeaked shut behind her, Pevara snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past her to have gone to this Bernaile like a sloven, hoping to warn her that way.”
“A valid point,” Seaine admitted. “But who will we warn if we scowl right and left at these women? At the very least, we will attract notice.”
“The way matters are, Seaine, we wouldn’t attract notice kicking them across the Tower grounds.” Pevara sounded as if that were an attractive notion. “They are rebels, and I intend to hold them so hard they squeak if one of them so much as has a wrong thought!”
They went round and round about that. Seaine insisted that care in the orders they gave, leaving no loopholes, would be sufficient. Pevara pointed out that they were letting ten rebels — ten! — walk the Tower’s halls unpunished. Seaine said they would face punishment eventually, and Pevara growled that eventually was not soon enough. Seaine had always admired the other woman’s strength of will, but really, sometimes it was pure stubbornness.
A faint creak from a hinge was all the warning Seaine had to snatch the Oath Rod into her lap, hiding it in folds of her skirt as the door opened wide. She and Pevara embraced the Source almost as one.
Saerin walked into the room calmly, holding a lantern, and stood aside for Talene, who was followed by tiny Yukiri, with a second light, and boyishly slim Doesine, tall for a Cairhienin, who closed the door quite firmly and settled her back against it as if to keep anyone from leaving. Four Sitters, representing all the remaining Ajahs in the Tower. They seemed to ignore the fact that Seaine and Pevara held saidar. Suddenly, to Seaine, the room felt rather crowded. Imagination, and irrational, but...
“Strange to see the pair of you together,” Saerin said. Her face might be serene, but she slid fingers along the hilt of that curved knife behind her belt. She had held her chair forty years, longer than anyone else in the Hall, and everyone had learned to be careful of her temper.
“We might say the same of you,” Pevara replied dryly. Saerin’s temper never upset her. “Or did you come down here to help Doesine try to get some of her own back?” A sudden flush made the Yellow’s face look even more that of a pretty boy despite her elegant bearing, and told Seaine which Sitter had strayed too near the Red quarters with unfortunate results. “I wouldn’t have thought that would bring you together, though. Greens at Yellows’ throats, Browns at Grays’. Or did you just bring them down for a quiet duel, Saerin?”
Frantically, Seaine cast around for what reason would have these four this deep into the bedrock of Tar Valon. What could tie them together? Their Ajahs — all of the Ajahs — truly were at one another’s throats. All four had been handed penances by Elaida. No Sitter could enjoy Labor, especially when everyone knew exactly why she was scrubbing floors or pots, yet that was hardly a bond. What else? None were nobly born. Saerin and Yukiri were the daughters of innkeepers, Talene of farmers, while Doesine’s father had been a cutler. Saerin had been trained first by the Daughters of Silence, the only one of that lot to reach the shawl. Absolutely useless drivel. Suddenly, something did strike her, and dried her throat. Saerin with her temper often barely in rein. Doesine, who had actually run away three times as a novice, though she had only once made it as far as the bridges. Talene, who might have earned more punishments than any other novice in the history of the Tower. Yukiri, always the last Gray to join her sisters’ consensus when she wanted to go another way, the last to join the Hall’s, for that matter. All four were considered rebels, in a way, and Elaida had humiliated every one. Could they be thinking they had made a mistake, standing to depose Siuan and raise Elaida? Could they have found about Zerah and the others? And if so, what did they intend to do?
Mentally, Seaine prepared herself to weave saidar, though without much hope that she could escape. Pevara matched Saerin and Yukiri in strength, but she herself was weaker than any here save Doesine. She prepared herself, and Talene stepped forward and burst all of her logical deductions to flinders.
“Yukiri noticed you two sneaking about together, and we want to know why.” Her surprisingly deep voice held heat despite the ice that seemed to coat her face. “Did the heads of your Ajahs set you a secret task? In public, the Ajahs’ heads snarl at one another worse than anyone else, but they’ve been sneaking off into corners to talk, it seems. Whatever they’re scheming, the Hall h
