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everything that happens in Elaida’s study.” She bit at her lip and shrugged

uncomfortably. “Perhaps if we can meet her alone, away from her study—”

“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.”

Pevara turned calmly at the sudden voice behind them, but Yukiri gave a start and

muttered something pungent almost under her breath. If she kept this up, she would be as

bad as Doesine. Or Tsutama.

Seaine hurried down to them with the fringe of her shawl swinging and her thick black

eyebrows rising in surprise at Yukiri’s glare. How like a White, logical in everything and

often blind to the world around them. Half the time, Seaine seemed unaware they were in

any danger at all.

“You were looking for us?” Yukiri almost growled, planting her fists on her hips. Despite

her diminutive size, she gave a good impression of fierce looming. Doubtless part of that

was for being startled, but she still believed Seaine should be guarded closely for her own

protection, no matter what Saerin had decided, and here the woman was, out and about

alone.

“For you, for Saerin, for anyone,” Seaine replied calmly. Her earlier fears, that the Black

Ajah might know what work Elaida had assigned her, were quite gone. Her blue eyes

held warmth, yet otherwise she was back to being the prototypical White, a woman of icy

serenity. “I have urgent news,” she said as though it were anything but. “The lesser is

this. This morning I saw a letter from Ayako Norsoni that arrived several days ago. From

Cairhien. She and Toveine and all the others have been captured by the Asha’man

and….” Tilting her head to one side, she studied them in turn. “You aren’t surprised in

the slightest. Of course. You’ve seen letters, too. Well, there’s nothing to be done about it

now, anyway.”

Pevara exchanged looks with Yukiri, then said, “This is the less urgent, Seaine?”

The White Sitter’s composure faded into worry, tightening her mouth and creasing the

corners of her eyes. Her hands tightened into fists gripping her shawl. “For us, it is. I’ve

just come from answering a summons to Elaida. She wanted to know how I was getting

on.” Seaine took a deep breath. “With discovering proof that Alviarin entered a

treasonous correspondence with the Dragon Reborn. Really, she was so circumspect in

the beginning, so indirect, it’s no wonder I misunderstood what she wanted.”

“I think that fox is walking on my grave,” Yukiri murmured.

Pevara nodded. The notion of approaching Elaida had vanished like summer dew. Their

one assurance that Elaida was not herself Black Ajah had been that she instigated the

hunt for them, but since she had done no such thing…. At least the Black Ajah remained

in ignorance of them. At least they had that, still. But for how much longer?

“On mine, too,” she said softly.

Alviarin glided along the corridors of the lower Tower with an outward air of serenity

that she held on to hard. Night seemed to cling to the walls despite the mirrored stand-

lamps, the ghosts of shadows dancing where none should be. Imagination, surely, yet

they danced on the edges of vision. The hallways were very nearly empty, though the

second sitting of supper had just ended. Most sisters preferred to have food brought up to

their rooms, these days, but the hardier and the more defiant ventured to the dining halls

from time to time, and a handful still took many of their meals below. She would not risk

sisters seeing her appear flustered or hurried; she refused to let them believe she was

scuttling about furtively. In truth, she disliked anyone looking at her at all. Outwardly

calm, she seethed inside.

Abruptly she realized that she was fingering the spot on her forehead where Shaidar

Haran had touched her. Where the Great Lord himself had marked her as his. Hysteria

bubbled almost to the surface with that thought, but she maintained a smooth face by

sheer will and gathered her white silk skirts slightly. That should keep her hands

occupied. The Great Lord had marked her. Best not to think on that. But how to avoid it?

The Great Lord…. On the outside she displayed absolute composure, but within was a

swirling tangle of mortification and hatred and very near to gibbering terror. The external

calm was what mattered, though. And there was a seed of hope. That mattered, too. An

odd thing to think of as hopeful, yet she would hang on to anything that might keep her

alive.

Stopping in front of a tapestry that showed a woman wearing an elaborate crown kneeling

to some long-ago Amyrlin, she pretended to examine it while glancing quickly to left and

right. Aside from her, the corridor remained as barren of life as an abandoned tomb. Her

hand darted behind the edge of the tapestry, and in an instant she was walking on again,

clutching a folded message. A miracle that it had reached her so quickly. The paper

seemed to burn her palm, but she could not read it here. At a measured pace, she climbed

reluctantly to the White Ajah quarters. Calm and unfazed by anything, on the outside.

The Great Lord had marked her. Other sisters were going to look at her.

The White was the smallest of the Ajahs, and barely more than twenty of its sisters were

in the Tower at present, yet it seemed that nearly all of them were out in the main

hallway. The walk along the plain white floor tiles seemed like running a gauntlet.

Seaine and Ferane were heading out despite the hour, shawls draped along their arms, and

Seaine gave her a small smile of commiseration, which made her want to kill the Sitter,

always thrusting her sharp nose in where it was unwanted. Ferane held no sympathy. She

scowled with more open fury than any sister should have allowed herself to show. All

Alviarin could do was try to ignore the copper-skinned woman without being obvious.

Short and stout, with her usually mild round face and an ink smudge on her nose, Ferane

was no one’s image of a Domani, but the First Reasoner possessed a fierce Domani

temper. She was quite capable of handing down a penance for any slight, especially to a

sister who had “disgraced” both herself and the White.

The Ajah felt keenly the shame of her having been stripped of the Keeper’s stole. Most

felt anger at the loss of influence, as well. There were far too many glares, some from

sisters who stood far enough below her that they should leap to obey if she gave a

command. Others deliberately turned their backs.

She made her way through those frowns and snubs at a steady pace, unhurried, yet she

felt her cheeks beginning to heat. She tried to immerse herself in the soothing nature of

the White quarters. The plain white walls, lined with silvered stand-mirrors, held only a

few simple tapestries, images of snowcapped mountains, shady forests, stands of bamboo

with sunlight slanting through them. Ever since attaining the shawl she had used those

images to help her find serenity in times of stress. The Great Lord had marked her. She

clutched her skirts in fists to hold her hands at her sides. The message seemed to burn her

hand. A steady, measured pace.

Two of the sisters she passed ignored her simply because they did not see her. Astrelle

and Tesan were discussing food spoilage. Arguing, rather, faces smooth but eyes heated

and voices on the brink of heat. They were arithmetists, of all things, as if logic could be

reduced to numbers, and they seemed to be disagreeing on how those numbers were used.

“Calculating with Radun’s Standard of Deviation, the rate is eleven times what it should

be,” Astrelle said in tight tones. “Furthermore, this must indicate the intervention of the

Shadow—”

Tesan cut her off, beaded braids clicking as she shook her head. “The Shadow, yes, but

Radun’s Standard, it is outdated. You must use Covanen’s First Rule of Medians, and

calculate separately for rotting meat or rotten. The correct answers, as I said, are thirteen

and nine. I have not yet applied it to the flour or the beans and the lentils, but it seems

intuitively obvious—”

Astrelle swelled up, and since she was a plump woman with a formidable bosom, she

could swell impressively. “Covanen’s First Rule?” she practically spluttered, breaking in.

“That hasn’t been properly proven yet. Correct and proven methods are always preferable

to slipshod….”

Alviarin very nearly smiled as she moved on. So someone had finally noticed that the

Great Lord had laid his hand on the Tower. But knowing would not help them change

matters. Perhaps she had smiled, but if so, she crushed it as someone spoke.

“You’d grimace too, Ramesa, if you were being strapped every morning before

breakfast,” Norine said, much too loudly and plainly meaning for Alviarin to hear.

Ramesa, a tall slender woman with silver bells sewn down the sleeves of her white-

embroidered dress, looked startled at being addressed, and likely she was. Norine had few

friends, perhaps none. She went on, cutting her eyes toward Alviarin to see whether she

had noticed. “It is irrational to call a penance private and pretend nothing is happening

when the Amyrlin Seat has imposed it. But then, her rationality has always been

overrated, in my opinion.”

Fortunately, Alviarin had only a short way further to reach her rooms. Carefully she

closed the outer door and latched the latch. Not that anyone would disturb her, but she

had not survived by taking chances except where she had to. The lamps were lit, and a

small fire burned on the white marble hearth against the cool of an early spring evening.

At least the servants still performed their duties. But even the servants knew.

Silent tears of humiliation began to stream down her cheeks. She wanted to kill Silviana,

yet that would only mean a new Mistress of Novices laying the strap across her every

morning until Elaida relented. Except that Elaida would never relent. Killing her would

be more to the point, yet such killings had to be carefully rationed. Too many unexpected

deaths would cause questions, perhaps dangerous questions.

Still, she had done what she could against Elaida. Katerine’s news of this battle was

spreading through the Black Ajah, and beyond it already. She had overheard sisters who

were not Black talking of Dumai’s Wells in detail, and if the details had grown in the

telling, so much the better. Soon, the news from the Black Tower would have diffused

through the White Tower, too, likely expanding in the same way. A pity that neither

would be sufficient to see Elaida disgraced and deposed, with those cursed rebels

practically on the bridges, yet Dumai’s Wells and the disaster in Andor hanging over her

head would keep her from undoing what Alviarin had done. Break the White Tower from

within, she had been ordered. Plant discord and chaos in every corner of the Tower. Part

of her had felt pain at that command, a part of her still did, yet her greater loyalty was to

the Great Lord. Elaida herself had made the first break in the Tower, but she had

shattered half of it beyond mending.

Abruptly she realized that she was touching her forehead again and snatched her hand

down. There was no mark there, nothing to feel or see. Every time she glanced into a

mirror, she checked in spite of herself. And yet, sometimes she thought people were

looking at her forehead, seeing something that escaped her own eyes. That was

impossible, irrational, yet the thought crept in no matter how often she chased it away.

Dashing tears from her face with the hand holding the message from the tapestry, she

pulled the other two she had retrieved out of her belt pouch and went to the writing table,

standing against the wall.

It was a plain table, and unadorned like all of her furnishings, some of which she

suspected might be of indifferent workmanship. A trivial matter; so long as furniture did

what it was supposed to do, nothing more mattered. Dropping the three messages on the

table beside a small, beaten copper bowl, she produced a key from her pouch, unlocked a

brass-banded chest sitting on the floor beside the table, and sorted through the small

leatherbound books inside until she found the three she needed, each protected so that the

ink on the pages would vanish if any hand but hers touched them. There were far too

many ciphers in use for her to keep them in memory. Losing these books would be a

painful trial, replacing them arduous, hence the stout chest and the lock. A very good

lock. Good locks were not trivialities.

Quickly she stripped off the thin strips of paper wrapping the message recovered from