A Crown of Swords

## Chapter 21

#### Swovan Night

Night came slowly over Ebou Dar, the glow of the white buildings resisting darkness. Small knots and bunches of Swovan Night revelers with little sprigs of evergreen in their hair danced in the streets beneath a bright three-quarter moon, few carrying so much as a lantern as they gamboled to the music of flutes and drums and horns that drifted from inns and palaces, dancing their way from one set of festivities to another, but for the most part the streets lay empty. A distant dog barked, and another, closer, answered furiously until it suddenly yelped and fell silent.

Balanced on his toes, Mat listened, eyes searching the moonshadows. Only a cat moved, slinking along the street. The slap of running bare feet faded. The owner of one pair should be staggering, and the other bleeding. As he bent, his foot kicked a club as long as his arm on the paving stones; heavy brass studs shone in the moonlight. That would have broken his skull for sure. Shaking his head, he wiped his knife on the ragged coat worn by the man at his feet. Open eyes stared at the night sky from a dirty, creased face. A beggar, by the look and smell of him. Mat had not heard of beggars attacking people, but maybe times were harder than he thought. A large jute sack lay near one outstretched hand. The fellows certainly had been optimistic about what they would find in his pockets. The thing could have covered him from head to knees.

To the north, above the city, light suddenly burst in the sky with a hollow boom as glittering streaks of green expanded in a ball, and then another eruption showered red sparkles through the first, then a blue, and a yellow. Illuminators’ nightflowers, not as spectacular as they would have been in a moonless, cloudy sky, yet still they took his breath. He could watch fireworks till he fell over from hunger. Nalesean had spoken of an Illuminator—Light, was that only this morning?—but no more nightflowers came. When Illuminators made the sky bloom, as they said, they planted more than four flowers. Plainly someone with coin had made a purchase for Swovan Night. He wished he knew who. An Illuminator who would sell nightflowers would sell more than that.

Slipping the knife back up his sleeve, he gathered his hat from the pavement and walked away hurriedly, his boots echoing, a sound empty as the street. Most shuttered windows here showed not a glimmer of light. A better place for murder probably could not be found in the city. The entire encounter with the three beggars had lasted only a minute or two and had been seen by no one. In this city, you could find three or four fights in a day if you were not careful, but the odds of facing two sets of robbers in one day seemed about as great as the odds of the Civil Guard refusing a bribe. What was happening to his luck? If only those bloody dice would stop rolling in his head. He did not run, but he did not dawdle either, one hand on a hilt beneath his coat and an eye open for anyone moving in the shadows. He saw nothing but a few clumps of people cavorting along the street, though.

In the common room of The Wandering Woman, the tables had been cleared away except for a few near the walls. The flutists and the drummer made shrill music for four laughing lines of people doing what appeared to be half pattern-dance and half jig. Watching, he copied a step. Outland merchants in fine woolens leaped right along with locals in brocaded silk vests or those useless coats slung on their shoulders. He marked out two of the merchants for the way they moved, one slender and one not, yet both with a light grace, and several local women wearing their best, the deep necklines outlined by a little lace or a great deal of embroidery, but none in silk. Not that he would refuse to dance with a woman in silk, of course—he had never turned down a dance with any woman of any age or station—but the rich were in the palaces tonight, or the homes of the wealthier merchants and moneylenders. Those folk near the walls, catching their breath for the next dance, had their faces buried in mugs often as not, or were snatching fresh mugs from trays carried by scurrying serving women. Mistress Anan likely would sell as much wine tonight as in an ordinary week. Ale, too; the local folk must have no taste to their tongues.

Trying another step of the dance, he caught Caira as she tried to hurry by with a tray, pitching his voice loud above the music to ask a few questions and finishing with an order for his dinner, gilded fish, a tangy dish that Mistress Anan’s cook prepared to perfection. A man needed his strength to keep up in the dance.

Caira flashed a sultry smile at a fellow in a yellow vest who grabbed a mug from her tray and dropped his coin on it, but for once she had no smile for Mat. In fact, she managed to compress her mouth to a thin line, no small feat. “Your little rabbit, am I?” With a telling sniff, she went on impatiently. “The boy is tucked into his bed, where he should be, and I don’t know where Lord Nalesean is, or Harnan, or Master Vanin, or anybody else. And Cook said she won’t fix anything but soup and bread for those as are drowning their tongues in wine. Though why my Lord wants gilded fish when he has a gilded woman waiting in his room, I’m sure I couldn’t say. If my Lord will excuse me, some people need to work for their crust.” She swooped away, proffering her tray and smiling fit to split her face at every man in sight.

Mat frowned after her. A gilded woman? In his room? The chest of gold rested now in a small hollow beneath the kitchen floor, in front of one of the stoves, but the dice in his head drummed like thunder suddenly.

The sounds of merriment faded a little as he slowly climbed the stairs. In front of his door, he paused, listening to the dice. Two attempts to rob him so far today. Twice his skull could have been broken. He was sure that Darkfriend had not seen him, and no one could call her gilded, but . . . He fingered a hilt under his coat, then took his hand away as a woman flared in his thoughts, a tall woman falling with the hilt of a knife protruding between her breasts. His knife. Luck would just have to be with him. Sighing, he pushed open the door.

The Hunter that Elayne had made her Warder turned, hefting his unstrung Two Rivers bow, her golden braid drawn over her shoulder. Her blue eyes fastened on him purposefully, and her face fixed itself in determination. She looked ready to drub him with the bow if she did not get what she wanted.

“If this is about Olver,” he began, and suddenly a twist of memory unfolded, a mist thinned over one day, one hour in his life.

There was no hope, with Seanchan to the west and Whitecloaks to the east, no hope and only one chance, so he raised the curled Horn and blew, not really knowing what to expect. The sound came golden as the Horn, so sweet he did not know whether to laugh or cry. It echoed, and the earth and heavens seemed to sing. While that one pure note hung in the air, a fog began to rise, appearing from nowhere, thin wisps, thickening, billowing higher, until all was obscured as if clouds covered the land. And down the clouds they rode, as though down a mountainside, the dead heroes of legend, bound to be called back by the Horn of Valere. Artur Hawkwing himself led, tall and hook-nosed, and behind came the rest, little more than a hundred. So few, but all those the Wheel would spin out again and again to guide the Pattern, to make legend and myth. Mikel of the Pure Heart, and Shivan the Hunter behind his black mask. He was said to herald the end of Ages, the destruction of what had been and the birth of what was to be, he and his sister Calian, called the Chooser, who rode red-masked at his side. Amaresu, with the Sword of the Sun glowing in her hands, and Paedrig, the golden-tongued peacemaker, and there, carrying the silver bow with which she never missed . . .

He pushed the door shut trying to lean against it. He felt dizzy, dazed. “You are she. Birgitte, for true. Burn my bones to ash, it’s impossible. How? How?”

The woman of legend gave a resigned sigh and propped his bow back in the corner next to his spear. “I was ripped out untimely, Hornsounder, cast out by Moghedien to die and saved by Elayne’s bonding.” She spoke slowly, studying him as if to be sure he understood. “I feared you might remember who I used to be.”

Still feeling hit between the eyes, he flung himself scowling into the armchair beside his table. Who she used to be, indeed. Fists on hips, she confronted him challengingly, no whit different from the Birgitte he had seen ride out of the sky. Even her clothes were the same, though this short coat was red and the wide trousers yellow. “Elayne and Nynaeve know and kept it from me, true? I weary of secrets, Birgitte, and they harbor secrets as a grain barn harbors rats. They’ve become Aes Sedai, eyes and hearts. Even Nynaeve is twice a stranger, now.”

“You have your own secrets.” Folding her arms under her breasts, she sat on the foot of his bed. The way she looked at him, you would have thought he was a tavern puzzle. “For one, you’ve not told them you blew the Horn of Valere. The smallest of your secrets from them, I think.”

Mat blinked. He had assumed they had told her. After all, she was Birgitte. “What secrets do I have? Those women know my toenails and dreams.” She was Birgitte. Of course. He leaned forward. “Make them see reason. You’re Birgitte Silverbow. You can make them do as you say. This city has a pit-trap at every crossing, and I fear the stakes grow sharper by the day. Make them come away before it’s too late.”

She laughed. Put a hand over her mouth and laughed! “You have the wrong end, Hornsounder. I do not command them. I am Elayne’s Warder. I obey.” Her smile became rueful. “Birgitte Silverbow. Faith of the Light, I’m not sure I still am that woman. So much of what I was and knew has faded like mist beneath the summer sun since my strange new birth. I’m no hero now, only another woman to make my way. And as for your secrets. What language do we speak, Hornsounder?”

He opened his mouth . . . and stopped, really hearing what she had just asked. Nosane iro gavane domorakoshi, Diynen’d’ma’purvene? Speak we what language, Sounder of the Horn? The hair on his neck tried to stand. “The old blood,” he said carefully. Not in the Old Tongue. “An Aes Sedai once told me the old blood runs strong in—What are you bloody well laughing at now?”

“You, Mat,” she managed while trying not to double over. At least she was not speaking the Old Tongue any more either. She knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye. “Some people speak a few words, a phrase or two, because of the old blood. Usually without understanding what they say, or not quite. But you . . . One sentence, you’re an Eharoni High Prince and the next a First Lord of Manetheren, accent and idiom perfect. No, don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” She hesitated. “Is mine with you?”

He waved a hand, still too flabbergasted to be offended. “Do I look like my tongue flaps?” he muttered. Birgitte! In the flesh! “Burn me, I could use a drink.” Before that was out of his mouth he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Women never—

“That sounds the right notion to me,” she said. “I could use a pitcher of wine, myself. Blood and ashes, when I saw you’d recognized me, I nearly swallowed my tongue.”

He sat up straight as if he had been jerked, staring.

She met his gaze with a merry twinkle and a grin. “There’s enough noise in the common room, we could talk without being overheard. Besides, I wouldn’t mind sitting and looking a bit. Elayne preaches like a Tovan councilor if I ogle a man for longer than a heartbeat.”

He nodded before he thought. Other men’s memories told him Tovans were a stark and disapproving people, abstemious to the point of pain; at least they had been, a thousand years gone and more. He was not sure whether to laugh or groan. On the one hand, a chance to talk with Birgitte—Birgitte! he doubted he would ever get over the shock—but on the other, he doubted he would be able to hear the music downstairs for the noise of those dice rattling in his skull. She must be a key to it, somehow. A man with any brains would climb out the window right now. “A pitcher or two sounds fine to me,” he told her.

A stiff salt breeze up from the bay carried a touch of coolness, for a wonder, but the night felt oppressive to Nynaeve. Music and snatches of laughter drifted into the palace, and faintly from within as well. She had been invited to the ball by Tylin herself, and Elayne and Aviendha too, but all declined, with varying degrees of politeness. Aviendha had said there was only one dance she was willing to do with wetlander men, which made Tylin blink uncertainly. For herself, Nynaeve would have liked to go—only a fool passed up any chance to dance—yet she knew if she had, she would have done exactly what she was doing, sat somewhere worrying and trying not to chew her knuckle to a nub.

So there they all were, closeted in their apartments with Thom and Juilin, anxious as caged cats, while everyone else in Ebou Dar made merry. Well, she was, anyway. What could be keeping Birgitte? How long did it take to tell a man to present himself first thing in the morning? Light, the whole effort was useless, and it was long past time for bed. Long past. If she could only sleep, she could put away memories of the morning’s horrible journeys by boat. Worst of all, her weather sense told her a storm was on the way, told her the wind should be howling outside and the rain sheeting down so thick no one could see ten feet. It had taken her some time to understand about the times she Listened to the Wind and seemed to hear lies. At least, she thought she understood. Another kind of storm was coming, not wind or rain. She had no proof, but she would eat her slippers if Mat Cauthon was not part of it somehow. She wanted to sleep for a month, a year, to forget worries until Lan wakened her with a kiss like the Sun King with Talia. Which was ridiculous, of course; that was only a story, and a very improper one at that, and anyway, she was not about to become any man’s pet, not even Lan’s. She would find him, though, somehow, and bond him hers. She would . . . Light! If she had not thought the others would stare at her, she would have paced the soles out of her slippers!

The hours wore on. She read and re-read the short letter Mat had left with Tylin. Aviendha sat quietly beside her high-backed chair, cross-legged on the pale green floor tiles as usual, an ornately gilded leather-bound copy of The Travels of Jain Farstrider open on her knees. No anxiety there, not to see, but then the woman would not turn a hair if someone stuffed a viper down her dress. Since returning to the palace she had donned the intricate silver necklace she wore nearly day and night. Except on the boat trip; she had said she did not want to risk it, then. Idly, Nynaeve wondered why she no longer wore her ivory bracelet. There had been an overheard conversation, something about not wearing it until Elayne had its like, which made little sense. And mattered as little as the bracelet, of course. The letter called from her lap.

The sitting-room stand-lamps made reading easy, though Mat’s unformed, boyish hand did present difficulties. It was the contents that clenched Nynaeve’s middle into knots.

There’s nothing here but heat and flies, and we can find plenty of those in Caemlyn.

“Are you sure you didn’t tell him anything?” she demanded.

Across the room, Juilin paused with his hand over the stones board, giving her a look of outraged innocence. “How often must I say so?” Outraged innocence was one of the things men did best, especially when they were guilty as foxes in the henyard. Interesting that the carving around the board’s rim was of foxes.

Thom, seated across the lapis-inlaid table from the thief-catcher, looked as little the gleeman in his finely cut coat of bronze wool, as he did the man who had once been Queen Morgase’s lover. Gnarled and white-haired, with long mustaches and thick eyebrows, he was frustrated patience from his sharp blue eyes to his boot soles. “I can’t see how we could have, Nynaeve,” he said dryly, “given that you told us next to nothing until tonight. You should have sent Juilin and me.”

Nynaeve sniffed loudly. As if those two had not been running around like chickens with their heads off ever since they arrived, prying into her and Elayne’s affairs on Mat’s say-so. Those three could not be together two minutes without gossiping, either. Men never could. They . . . The truth of it was, she admitted reluctantly, using the men had never occurred to them. “You’d have gone off carousing and drinking with him,” she muttered. “Don’t tell me you would not.” That must be where Mat was, leaving Birgitte to cool her feet at the inn. That man would find some way to set the whole scheme awry.

“And what if they had?” Leaning beside one of the tall arched windows, peering out at the night through the white-painted iron balcony, Elayne giggled. She was tapping her foot, though how she could make out one tune from all those floating in the darkness was a wonder. “It is a night for . . . carousing.”

Nynaeve frowned at her back. Elayne had been increasingly peculiar all night. If she had not known better, she would have suspected the other woman had been sneaking out to snatch sips of wine. Gulps of it, actually. Even if Elayne had not been under her eye, though, that was impossible. Each of them had had a rather unfortunate experience with too much wine, and neither had again let herself have more than a single cup at a time.

“It is Jaichim Carridin who interests me,” Aviendha said, closing the book and setting it beside her. She refused to consider how odd she looked, sitting on the floor in a blue silk dress. “Among us, Shadowrunners are killed as soon as found, and not clan, sept, society or first-sister will raise a hand in protest. If Jaichim Carridin is a Shadowrunner, why does Tylin Mitsobar not kill him? Why do we not?”

“Matters are a little more complex here,” Nynaeve told her, though she had wondered the same. Not why Carridin was not killed, of course, but why he was still allowed to come and go as he wished. She had seen him in the palace that very day, after she had been handed Mat’s letter, after she had told Tylin what it contained. He had spoken with Tylin above an hour and departed with as much honor as when he arrived. She had meant to discuss it with Elayne, but the question of what Mat knew, and how, kept intruding. That man would make trouble. He would, somehow. This business was going to go wrong no matter what anyone said. Bad weather was coming.

Thom cleared his throat. “Tylin is a weak queen, and Carridin the ambassador of a power.” Placing a stone, he kept his eyes on the board. He sounded as though he was thinking aloud. “By definition, a Whitecloak Inquisitor cannot be a Darkfriend; at least, that’s how it is defined in the Fortress of the Light. If she arrests him, or even charges him, she’ll find a Whitecloak legion in Ebou Dar before she can blink. They might leave her the throne, but she’d be a puppet from then on, strings pulled from the Dome of Truth. Aren’t you ready to concede yet, Juilin?” The thief-catcher glared at him, then bent to a furious study of the board.

“I did not think her a coward,” Aviendha said disgustedly, and Thom gave her an amused smile.

“You have never faced something you could not fight, child,” he said gently, “something so strong your only choice is to flee or be consumed alive. Try to hold judgment on Tylin till you have.” For some reason, Aviendha’s face reddened. Normally, she hid her emotions so well her face was like stone.

“I know,” Elayne said suddenly. “We’ll find proof even Pedron Niall must accept.” She skipped back into the room. No, she danced. “We will disguise ourselves and follow him.”

Suddenly, it was no longer Elayne standing there in a green Ebou Dari gown, but a Domani woman in thin clinging blue. Nynaeve leaped up before she could stop, and her mouth tightened with exasperation at herself. Just because she could not see the weaves at the moment was no reason to be startled by Illusion. She darted a glance at Thom and Juilin. Even Thom’s mouth hung open. Unconsciously she took a firm grip on her braid. Elayne was going to reveal everything! What was the matter with her?

Illusion worked best the closer you stayed to what was there before, in shape and size at least, so bits of the Ebou Dari dress flashed through the Domani garment as Elayne whirled to examine herself in one of the room’s two large mirrors. She laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, he will never recognize me. Or you, near-sister.” Abruptly a Taraboner woman sat beside Nynaeve’s chair, with brown eyes and yellow braids strung with red beads just the shade of her snug-fitting dress of folded silk. She watched Elayne quizzically. Nynaeve’s hand tightened on her braid. “And we can’t forget you,” Elayne babbled on. “I know just the thing.”

This time, Nynaeve saw the glow around Elayne. She was furious. Seeing the flows being woven about herself did not tell her what image Elayne gave her, of course. It took looking into one of the mirrors to do that. A Sea Folk woman stared back at her, aghast, with a dozen begemmed rings in her ears and twice as many golden medallions dangling from the chain running to her nose ring. Aside from the jewelry, she wore wide trousers of brocaded green silk and not a stitch else, the way women of the Atha’an Miere did out of sight of land. It was just Illusion. She was still decently clothed under the weaving. But . . . Beside her reflection she saw those of Thom and Juilin, both fighting grins.

A strangled squawk erupted from her throat. “Close your eyes!” she shouted at the men and began leaping about, waving her arms, anything to make her dress show through. “Close them, burn you!” Oh. They had. Bristling with indignation, she stopped capering. They were not fighting those grins anymore, though. For that matter, Aviendha was laughing quite openly, rocking to and fro.

Nynaeve gave her skirts a jerk—in the mirror, the Sea Folk woman seemed to pluck at her trousers—and fixed Elayne with a glare. “Stop this, Elayne!” The Domani woman stared back, mouth open and eyes wide with incredulity. Only then did Nynaeve realize how angry she was; the True Source beckoned from just beyond the edge of sight. Embracing saidar, she slammed a shield between Elayne and the Source. Or rather, she tried to. Shielding someone who already held the Power was not easy even when you were the stronger. Once, as a girl, she had swung Master Luhhan’s hammer against his anvil as hard as she could, and the shiver of it ran all the way to her toes. This was about twice that. “Love of the Light, Elayne, are you drunk?”

The glow around the Domani woman faded away, and so did the Domani woman. Nynaeve knew the weave was gone from around herself, but she still glanced at the mirror and drew a relieved breath to see Nynaeve al’Meara there in yellow-slashed blue.

“No,” Elayne said slowly. Color burned in her face, but it was not embarrassment, or not entirely. Her chin rose, and her voice frosted. “I am not.”

The door to the corridor banged open, and Birgitte staggered in with a broad smile. Well, perhaps she did not quite stagger, but she was decidedly unsteady. “I did not expect you all to remain awake for me,” she said brightly. “Well, you’ll be interested to hear what I have to say. But first . . . ” With the too steady steps of someone carrying considerable drink inside, she vanished into her room.

Thom stared at her door with a bemused grin, Juilin with an incredulous one. They knew who she was, the truth of it. Elayne just glared down her nose. From Birgitte’s bedchamber came a splashing, as if a pitcher had been upended on the floor. Nynaeve exchanged puzzled looks with Aviendha.

Birgitte reappeared with her face and hair dripping and her coat soaked from shoulders to elbows. “Now my wits are clearer,” she said, settling into one of the ball-footed chairs with a sigh. “That young man has a hollow leg and a hole in the bottom of his foot. He even out-drank Beslan, and I was beginning to think wine was water to that lad.”

“Beslan?” Nynaeve said, her voice rising. “Tylin’s son? What was he doing there?”

“Why did you allow it, Birgitte?” Elayne exclaimed. “Mat Cauthon will corrupt the boy, and his mother will blame us.”

“The boy is the same age as you,” Thom told her in stuffy tones.

A baffled look passed between Nynaeve and Elayne. What was his point? Everyone knew that a man did not achieve his proper wits, such as they were, until ten years later than a woman.

The puzzlement faded from Elayne’s face, replaced by firmness and no little anger as she focused on Birgitte again. Words were going to be said, words both women might regret tomorrow.

“If you and Juilin will leave us now, Thom,” Nynaeve said quickly. It was extremely unlikely they would see the need on their own. “You need your sleep to be fresh first thing in the morning.” They sat there, gaping at her like belled fools, so she made her tone firmer. “Now?”

“This game was done twenty stones ago,” Thom said, glancing at the board. “What do you say we go down to our own room and start another? I’ll spot you ten stones to place as you will any time during the game.”

“Ten stones?” Juilin yelped, scraping back his chair. “Will you offer me fish broth and milk-bread, as well?”

They argued all the way out, but at the door, each of them glanced back in sullen resentment. She would not put it past them to remain awake all night just because she had sent them to bed.

“Mat won’t corrupt Beslan,” Birgitte said dryly as the door closed behind the men. “I doubt nine feather dancers with a shipload of brandy could corrupt him. They wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Nynaeve was relieved to hear it, though something was odd about the woman’s tone—likely the drink—but Beslan was not at all the issue. She said so, and Elayne added, “No, he isn’t. You got drunk, Birgitte! And I felt it. I still feel tipsy if I don’t concentrate. The bond is not supposed to work that way. Aes Sedai don’t fall over giggling if their Warders drink too much.” Nynaeve threw up her hands.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Birgitte said. “You know more than I do. Aes Sedai and Warders have always been men and women before. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe we are too alike.” Her grin was skewed slightly. There had not been near enough water in that pitcher. “That might be embarrassing, I suppose.”

“If we could stay with what is important?” Nynaeve said tightly. “Such as Mat?” Elayne had her mourn open for a retort to Birgitte, but she closed it quickly, the red spots in her cheeks most definitely chagrin this time. “Now,” Nynaeve went on. “Will Mat be here in the morning, or is he in the same revolting state as you?”

“He might come,” Birgitte said, taking a cup of mint tea from Aviendha, who of course sat down on the floor. Elayne frowned at her a moment, then, of all things, folded up her legs and sat beside her!

“What do you mean, he might?” Nynaeve demanded. She channeled, and the chair she had been sitting in floated over to her, and if it banged to the floor, she meant it to. Drinking too much, sitting on the floor. What was next? “If he expects us to come to him on hands and knees . . . !”

Birgitte took a sip of the tea with a grateful murmur, and oddly, when she looked at Nynaeve again, she did not seem so intoxicated. “I talked him out of that. I don’t think he was really serious. All he wants now is an apology and thanks.”

Nynaeve’s eyes popped. She had talked him out of that? Apologize? To Matrim Cauthon? “Never,” she growled.

“For what?” Elayne wanted to know, as if that mattered. She pretended not to see Nynaeve’s glare.

“The Stone of Tear,” Birgitte said, and Nynaeve’s head whipped around. The woman no longer sounded intoxicated at all. “He says he went into the Stone, him and Juilin, to free the pair of you from a dungeon you couldn’t escape on your own.” She shook her head slowly, in wonder. “I don’t know that I would have done that for anyone short of Gaidal. Not the Stone. He says you gave him a backhanded thanks and made him feel he ought to be grateful you didn’t kick him.”

It was true, in a way, but all distorted. There Mat had been with that mocking grin of his, saying he was there to pull their chestnuts off the fire or some such. Even then he had thought he could tell them what to do. “Only one of the Black sisters was on guard in the dungeon,” Nynaeve muttered, “and we had taken care of her.” True, they hadn’t yet been able to figure out how to open the door, shielded. “Be’lal wasn’t really interested in us, anyway—it was just to lure Rand. Moiraine may already have killed him, by then, for all we know.”

“The Black Ajah.” Birgitte’s voice was flatter than the floor tiles. “And one of the Forsaken. Mat never mentioned them. You owe him thanks on your knees, Elayne. Both of you do. The man deserves it. And Juilin, as well.”

Blood rushed to Nynaeve’s face. He had never mentioned . . . ? That despicable, despicable man! “I will not apologize to Matrim Cauthon, not on my deathbed.”

Aviendha leaned toward Elayne, touching her knee. “Near-sister, I will say this delicately.” She looked and sounded about as delicate as a stone post. “If this is true, you have toh toward Mat Cauthon, you and Nynaeve. And you have made it worse since, just by the actions I have seen.”

“Toh!” Nynaeve exclaimed. Those two were always talking about this toh foolery. “We aren’t Aiel, Aviendha. And Mat Cauthon is a thorn in the foot to everybody he meets.”

But Elayne was nodding. “I see. You are right, Aviendha. But what must we do? You will have to help me, near-sister. I don’t intend to try to become Aiel, but I . . . I want you to be proud of me.”

“We will not apologize!” Nynaeve snapped.

“I have pride in knowing you,” Aviendha said, touching Elayne’s cheek lightly. “An apology is a beginning, yet not enough to meet toh, now.”

“Are you listening to me?” Nynaeve demanded. “I said, I will—not—apologize!”

They went right on talking. Only Birgitte looked at her, and the woman wore a smile not far from outright laughter. Nynaeve throttled her braid with both hands. She had known that they should have sent Thom and Juilin.