Winter's Heart

## Chapter 34

#### The Hummingbird’s Secret

Trying not to be too obvious about watching the alley beside the candlemaker’s, Nynaeve set the folded length of flat green braid back on the hawker’s tray and slipped her hand inside her cloak to help hold it shut against the wind. It was a finer cloak than any on the people walking by, but plain enough that no one more than glanced at her in passing. They would if they saw her belt, though. Women who wore jewels did not frequent Blue Carp Street, or buy from street peddlers. After standing there for her to finger every last bit of braid on the tray, the lean woman grimaced, but Nynaeve had already bought three pieces of braid, two lengths of ribbon and a packet of pins from hawkers, just for a reason to loiter. Pins were always useful, but she did not know what she was going to do with the rest.

Suddenly she heard a commotion down the street, in the direction of the watchstand, the racket of Street Guards’ rattles loud and growing louder. The Guardsman scrambled down from his perch. Passersby near the watchstand stared down the crossing street and further up Blue Carp Street, then hurriedly pressed themselves against the sides of the street as running Guardsmen appeared, swinging their wooden rattles overhead. Not a patrol of two or three, but a flood of armored men pounding down Blue Carp Street, and more joining the tide from the other street. People slow to get out of their way were shoved aside, and one man went down under their boots. They did not slow a step as they trampled him.

The braid-seller spilled half her tray scrambling to the side of the street, and Nynaeve was just as quick to squeeze herself against the stone housefront alongside the gaping woman. Filling the street, catchpoles and quarterstaffs jutting up like pikes, the mass of Guardsmen bumped her with shoulders, scraping her along the wall. The braid-seller yelled as her tray was ripped away and vanished, but the Guards were all staring ahead.

When the last man ran past, Nynaeve was a good ten paces farther down the street than she had been. The braid-seller shouted angrily and shook her fists at the men’s backs. Indignantly pulling her twisted cloak into some proper order, Nynaeve was of a mind to do more than shout. She was half of a mind to . . .

Abruptly her breath froze in her throat. The Street Guards had stopped in a mass, perhaps a hundred men shouting to one another as if they suddenly were uncertain what to do next. They were stopped in front of the bootmaker’s shop. Oh, Light, Lan. And Rand, too, always Rand, but first and foremost always the heart of her heart, Lan.

She made herself breathe. A hundred men. She touched the jeweled belt, the Well, around her waist. Less than half the saidar she had stored in it remained, but it might be enough. It would have to be enough, though she did not know for what exactly, yet. Tugging the cowl of her cloak up, she started toward the men in front of the bootmaker’s. None was looking her way. She could . . .

Hands seized her, dragging her backward and spinning her around to face the other direction.

Cadsuane had one of her arms, she realized, and Alivia the other, the pair of them hurrying her along the street. Away from the bootmaker’s. Walking beside Alivia, Min kept casting worried looks over her shoulder. Abruptly she flinched. “He . . . I think he fell,” she whispered. “I think he’s unconscious, but he’s hurt, I don’t know how badly.”

“We will do him no good here, or ourselves,” Cadsuane said calmly. The golden ornaments dangling from the front of her bun swung inside the hood of her cloak as she swivelled her head, her eyes searching through the people ahead of them. She held the deep cowl against the wind with her free hand, letting her cloak flap behind her. “I want to be away from here before one of those boys thinks of asking women to show their faces. Any Aes Sedai found near Blue Carp Street this afternoon will have questions to answer because of this child.”

“Let me go!” Nynaeve snapped, pulling against them. Lan. If Rand had been knocked unconscious, what of Lan? “I have to go back and help them!” The two women dragged her along with hands like iron. Everyone they passed was peering toward the bootmaker’s shop.

“You have done quite enough already, you fool girl.” Cadsuane’s voice was cold iron. “I told you about Far Madding’s watchdogs. Phaw! You’ve put a panic in the Counsels with your channeling where no one can channel. If the Guards have them, it is because of you.”

“I thought saidar wouldn’t matter,” Nynaeve said weakly. “It was only a little, and not for long. I . . . I thought maybe they wouldn’t even notice.”

Cadsuane gave her a disgusted glance. “This way, Alivia,” she said, pulling Nynaeve around the corner by the abandoned watchstand. Small knots of excited people dotted the street, jabbering. A man gestured vigorously as if wielding a catchpole. A woman pointed to the empty watchstand, shaking her head in wonder.

“Say something, Min,” Nynaeve pleaded. “We can’t just leave them.” She did not even think of addressing Alivia, who wore a face to make Cadsuane appear soft.

“Don’t expect sympathy from me.” Min’s low voice was almost as chill as Cadsuane’s. When she looked at Nynaeve, it was a sidelong glare before snapping her eyes back to the street ahead. “I begged you to help me stop them, but you had to be as woolheaded as they were. Now we have to depend on Cadsuane.”

Nynaeve sniffed. “What can she do? Do I need to remind you that Lan and Rand are behind us, and getting farther behind by the minute?”

“The boy isn’t the only one who needs lessons in manners,” Cadsuane muttered. “He hasn’t apologized to me, yet, but he told Verin he would, and I suppose I can accept that for the moment. Phaw! That boy puts me to more trouble than any ten I ever met before. I will do what I can, girl, which is a sight more than you could do trying to batter your way through the Street Guards. From here on, you will exactly as I say, or I will have Alivia sit on you!” Alivia nodded. So did Min!

Nynaeve grimaced. The woman was supposed to defer to her! Still, a guest of the First Counsel could do more than plain Nynaeve al’Meara, even if she donned her Great Serpent ring. For Lan, she could put up with Cadsuane.

But when she asked what Cadsuane planned to do to free the men, the only answer the woman would give was “Much more than I want to, girl, if I can do anything at all. But I made the boy promises, and I keep my promises. I hope he remembers that.” Delivered in a voice like ice, it was not a reply to inspire confidence.

Rand woke in darkness and pain, lying on his back. His gloves were gone, and he could feel a rough pallet beneath him. They had taken his boots, too. His gloves were gone. They knew who he was. Carefully, he sat up. His face felt bruised and every muscle in his body hurt as if he had been beaten, but nothing seemed to be broken.

Standing slowly, he felt his way along the stone wall beside the pallet, reaching a corner almost immediately, and then a door covered with rough iron straps. In the darkness his fingers traced a small flap, but he could not push it open. No hint of light seeped in around its edges. Inside his head, Lews Therin began to pant. Rand moved on, feeling his way, the floorstones cold beneath his bare feet. The next corner came almost immediately, and then a third, where his toes struck something that rattled on the stone floor. Keeping one hand on the wall, he bent and found a wooden bucket. He left it there and made himself complete the circuit, all the way back to the iron door. All the way. He was inside a black box three paces long and just over two paces wide. Raising one hand, he found the stone ceiling less than a foot above his head.

Closed in, Lews Therin panted hoarsely. It’s the box again. When those women put us in the box. We have to get out! he howled. We have to get out!

Ignoring the screaming voice in his head, Rand backed away from the door until he thought he was in the center of the cell, then lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor. He was as far from the walls as he could put himself, and in the dark he tried to imagine them farther away, but it seemed that if he reached out, he would not have to straighten his arm fully to touch stone. He could feel himself trembling, as if it were someone else’s body shaking uncontrollably. The walls seemed just beside him, the ceiling right over his head. He had to fight this, or he would be as mad as Lews Therin by the time anyone came to let him out. They would have to let him out eventually, if only to hand him over to whoever Elaida sent. How many months for a message to reach Tar Valon and Elaida’s emissaries to return? If there were sisters loyal to Elaida closer than Tar Valon, it might happen sooner. Horror added to his shudders as he realized that he was hoping those sisters were closer, were in the city already, so they could take him out of this box.

“I will not surrender!” he shouted. “I will be as hard as I need to be!” In that confined space, his voice boomed like thunder.

Moiraine had died because he was not hard enough to do what had to be done. Her name always headed the list engraved on his brain, the women who had died because of him. Moiraine Damodred. Every name on that list brought anguish that made him forget the pains of his body, forget the stone walls just beyond his fingertips. Colavaere Saighan, who died because he had stripped her of everything she valued. Liah, Maiden of the Spear, of the Cosaida Chareen, who died at his own hands because she followed him to Shadar Logoth. Jendhilin, a Maiden of the Cold Peak Miagoma who died because she wanted the honor of guarding his door. He had to be hard! One by one he summoned up the names on that long list, patiently forging his soul in the fires of pain.

Preparation took longer than Cadsuane had hoped, largely because she had to impress on various people that a grand rescue in the best traditions of gleemen’s tales was out of the question, so it was night before she found herself walking along the lamplit corridors of the Hall of the Counsels. Walking sedately, not hurrying. Hurry, and people assumed that you were anxious, that they had the upper hand. If ever in her life she had needed to keep the upper hand from the start, it was tonight.

The corridors should have been empty at this hour, but to day’s events had changed the normal course of things. Blue-coated clerks were scurrying everywhere, sometimes pausing to gape at her companions. Quite possibly, they had never seen four Aes Sedai at once—she was not willing to allow Nynaeve that title until she took the Three Oaths—and today’s commotion would have added to their confusion at the sight. The three men bringing up the rear earned almost as many stares, though. The clerks might not know the meaning of their black coats or the pins on their high collars, but it was very unlikely any of those clerks had ever seen three men wearing swords in these hallways. In any case, with a little luck, no one would go running to inform Aleis who was coming to break in on the Counsels sitting in closed session. It was a pity she could not have brought the men by themselves, but even Daigian had displayed backbone at the suggestion. A great pity that all of her companions were not displaying the composure showed by Merise and the other two sisters.

“This will never work,” Nynaeve grumbled, for perhaps the tenth time since leaving the Heights. “We should strike hard from the start!”

“We should have moved faster,” Min muttered darkly. “I can feel him changing. If he was a stone before, he’s iron, now! Light, what are they doing to him?” Along only because she was a link to the boy, she had been unceasing with her reports, each bleaker than the last. Cadsuane had not told her what the cells were like, not when the girl had broken down just telling her what the sisters who kidnapped the boy had done to him.

Cadsuane sighed. A ragtag army she had assembled, but even a makeshift army needed discipline. Especially with the battle just ahead. It would have been worse had she not forced the Sea Folk women to remain behind. “I can do this without either of you, if need be,” she said firmly. “No; don’t say anything, Nynaeve. Merise or Corele can wear that belt as well as you. So if you children do not stop whining, I will have Alivia take you back to the Heights and give you something to whine about.” That was the only reason she had brought the strange wilder. Alivia had a tendency to become very mild-mannered around those she could not stare down, but she stared very fiercely at those two chattering magpies.

Their heads swiveled toward the golden-haired woman as one, and the magpies fell blessedly silent. Silent, yet hardly accepting. Min could grind her teeth all she wanted, but Nynaeve’s sullen glower irritated Cadsuane. The girl had good material in her, but her training had been cut far too short. Her ability with Healing was little short of miraculous, her ability with almost anything else dismal. And she had not been put through the lessons that what must be endured, could be endured. In truth, Cadsuane sympathized with her. Somewhat. It was a lesson not everyone could learn in the Tower. She herself, full of pride in her new shawl and her own strength, had been taught by a near toothless wilder at a farm in the heart of the Black Hills. Oh, it was a very ragtag little army she had gathered to try standing Far Madding on its head.

Clerks and messengers half-filled the columned anteroom to the Counsels’ Chamber, but they were, after all, only clerks and messengers. The clerks hesitated in officious puzzlement, each waiting for another to speak first, but the red-coated messengers, who knew it was not their place to say anything, backed across the blue floortiles to the sides of the room, and the clerks parted in front of her, none quite daring to be the first to open his mouth. Even so, she heard a collective gasp when she opened one of the tall doors carved with the Hand and Sword.

The Counsels’ Chamber was not large. Four mirrored stand-lamps sufficed to light it, and a large Tairen carpet in red and blue and gold almost covered the floor tiles. A wide marble fireplace on one side of the room made a fair job of warming the air, though the glassed doors leading to the colonnade outside rattled in the night wind, loud enough to drown the ticking of the tall, gilded Illianer clock on the mantel. Thirteen carved and gilded chairs, very nearly thrones, made an arc facing the door, all occupied by worried-looking women.

Aleis, at the head of the arc, frowned when she saw Cadsuane lead her little parade into the chamber. “This session is closed, Aes Sedai,” she said, at once formal and cold. “We may ask you to speak to us later, but—”

“You know who you have in the cells,” Cadsuane cut in.

It was not a question, but Aleis tried to bluff her way past. “A number of men, I believe. Public drunkards, various foreigners arrested for fighting or stealing, a man from the Borderlands taken just today who may have murdered three men. I do not keep a personal record of arrests, Cadsuane Sedai.” Nynaeve drew a deep breath at mention of a man taken for murder, and her eyes glittered dangerously, but at the least the child had sense enough to keep her mouth shut.

“So you will try to conceal that you hold the Dragon Reborn,” Cadsuane said quietly. She had hoped—hoped fervently!—that Verin’s spadework would make them back away from this. Perhaps it could still be done simply, though. “I can take him off your hands. I have faced more than twenty men who could channel, over the years. He holds no fears for me.”

“We do thank you for the offer,” Aleis replied smoothly, “but we prefer to communicate with Tar Valon, first.” To negotiate his price, she meant. Well, what had to be, had to be. “Do you mind telling us how you learned—”

Cadsuane broke in again. “Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier, these men behind me are Asha’man.”

The three stepped forward then, as they had been instructed, and she had to admit they gave a dangerous appearance. Grizzled Damer looked a graying bear with sore teeth, pretty Jahar seemed a dark, sleek leopard, and Eben’s unblinking gaze was particularly ominous coming from that youthful face. They certainly had their effect on the Counsels. Some simply shifted in their chairs as if to draw back, but Cyprien let her mouth fall open, unfortunate with her protruding teeth. Sybaine, her hair as gray as Cadsuane’s, sagged back in her chair and began fanning herself with a slender hand, while Cumere’s mouth twisted as if she might vomit.

Aleis was made of sterner stuff, though she pressed both hands tight against her midriff. “I told you once that Asha’man were free to visit so long as they obeyed the law. We have no fear of Asha’man, Cadsuane, though I must say I am surprised to see you in their company. Particularly in view of the offer you have just made.”

So, she was plain Cadsuane now, was she? Still, she regretted the necessity to break Aleis. She led Far Madding well, but she might never recover from tonight. “Are you forgetting what else happened today, Aleis? Someone channeled inside the city.” Again Counsels shifted, and worried frowns creased more than one forehead.

“An aberration.” The coolness was gone from Aleis’ voice, replaced by anger, and maybe a touch of fear. Her eyes shone darkly. “Perhaps the guardians were in error. No one who was questioned saw anything to suggest—”

“Even what we think is perfect can have flaws, Aleis.” Cadsuane drew on her own Well, taking in saidar in a measured amount. She had practice; the little golden hummingbird could not hold near so much as Nynaeve’s belt. “Flaws can pass unnoticed for centuries before they are found.” The flow of Air she wove was just enough to lift the gem-encrusted coronet from Aleis’ head and set it on the carpet in front of the woman’s feet. “Once they are found, however, it seems that anyone who looks can find them.”

Thirteen sets of shocked eyes stared at the coronet. One and all, the Counsels seemed frozen, barely breathing.

“Not so much a flaw as a barn door, seems to me,” Damer announced. “I think it’s prettier on your head.”

The glow of the Power suddenly shone around Nynaeve, and the coronet flew toward Aleis, slowing at the last instant so that it settled above her bloodless face rather than cracking her head. The light of saidar did not vanish from the girl, though. Well, let her drain her Well.

“Will . . . ?” Aleis swallowed, but when she went on, her voice still cracked. “Will it be sufficient if we release him to you?” Whether she meant Cadsuane or the Asha’man was unclear, perhaps even to her.

“I think that it will,” Cadsuane said calmly, and Aleis sagged like a stringless puppet. Shocked as they were by the display of channeling, questioning looks passed between the other Counsels. Eyes darted toward Aleis, faces firmed, nods were exchanged. Cadsuane drew a deep breath. She had promised the boy that whatever she did would be for his good, not the good of the Tower or anyone else’s, and now she had broken a good woman for his good. “I am very sorry, Aleis,” she said. You are building up a large account already, boy, she thought.