"It’s not good news," Perrin protested, "but you make it sound a death sentence. Once Rand shows himself, the rumors are done."

Rand scrubbed a hand through his hair. "If that was so, Sorilea wouldn’t look like she had swallowed a lizard." For that matter, Nandera and Sulin looked as though their lizards were still alive on the way down. "What haven’t you told me yet, Sorilea?"

The leather-faced woman gave him a thin, approving smile. "You see beyond what is said. Good." Her tone stayed flat as worked stone, though. "You return with Aes Sedai. Some will believe that means you did bend knee. Whatever you say or do, they will believe you wear an Aes Sedai halter. And that is before it is known you were a prisoner. Secrets find crevices a flea could not slip through, and a secret known by so many has wings."

Perrin eyed Dobraine and Nurelle, watching with their men, and swallowed queasily. How many of those who followed Rand did so because he had the weight of the Aiel massed behind him? Not all, certainly, but for every man who had chosen because Rand was the Dragon Reborn, five or even ten had come because the Light shone brightest on the strongest ranks. If the Aiel broke away, or splintered...

He did not want to think about that possibility. Defending the Two Rivers had stretched his abilities as far as they would go, maybe farther. Ta’verenor not, he had no illusions he was one of those men who ended up in the histories; that was for Rand. Village-sized problems were his limit. Yet he could not help himself. His mind churned. What to do if the worst came? Lists ran up in his head: who would remain loyal and who might try to slip away. The first list was sufficiently short and the second sufficiently long to dry his throat. Too many people still schemed for advantage as if they had never heard of the Prophecies of the Dragon or the Last Battle. He suspected some still would the day after Tarmon Gai’don began. The worst of it was, most would not be Darkfriends, just people looking out for their own interests first. Loial’s ears hung limp; he saw it, too.

No sooner did Sorilea finish speaking to Rand than her eyes whipped to one side in a glare to bore holes in iron. "You were told to remain in the wagon." Bera and Kiruna came to an abrupt halt, and Alanna nearly stumbled into them. "You were told not to touch the One Power without permission, but you listened to what was said here. You will learn that I mean what I say."

Despite Sorilea’s auguring stare, the three held their ground, Bera and Kiruna with icy dignity, Alanna with smoldering defiance. Loial’s huge eyes rolled toward them, then toward the Wise One; if his ears had been limp before, now they wilted completely, and his long eyebrows dropped to his cheeks. Poring uneasily over his mental lists, Perrin wondered absently how far the Aes Sedai intended to push. Eavesdropping with the Power! They might find a reaction from the Wise Ones worse than Sorilea’s bark. From Rand, too.

Not this time, however. Rand seemed unaware of them. He looked right through Sorilea. Or maybe listened to something nobody else could hear again. "What of the wetlanders?" he said finally. "Colavaere has been crowned queen, hasn’t she?" It was not really a question.

Sorilea nodded, thumb tapping the hilt of her belt knife, but her attention never left the Aes Sedai. Who was chosen king or queen among the wetlanders was of small concern to Aiel, especially among the treekilling Cairhienin.

An icicle stabbed into Perrin’s chest. That Colavaere of House Saighan wanted the Sun Throne was no secret; she had schemed for it from the day Galldrian Riatin was assassinated, before Rand had even declared himself the Dragon Reborn, and kept scheming after it became public knowledge that Rand meant the throne for Elayne. Few knew she was a cold-blooded murderer, however. And Faile was in the city. At least she was not alone. Bain and Chiad would be close to her. They were Maidens and her friends, maybe almost what the Aiel called near-sisters; they would not let her be harmed. The icicle would not go away, though. Colavaere hated Rand, and by extension anyone close to Rand. Such as, perhaps, the wife of a man who was Rand’s friend. No. Bain and Chiad would keep her safe.

"This is a delicate situation." Moving closer to Rand, remarkably, Kiruna ignored Sorilea. For such a scrawny woman, the Wise One had eyes like hammers. "Whatever you do can have serious repercussions. I — "

"What has Colavaere said about me?" Rand asked Sorilea in a too-casual tone. "Has she harmed Berelain?" Berelain, the First of Mayene, was who Rand had left in charge of Cairhien. Why did he not ask about Faile?

"Berelain sur Paendrag is well," Sorilea murmured, without stopping her study of the Aes Sedai. Outwardly Kiruna stayed calm despite being interrupted and ignored, but the gaze she fixed on Rand could have frozen a forge-fire solid with the bellows pumping. For the rest, Sorilea gestured to Feraighin.

The red-haired woman gave a start and cleared her throat; plainly she had not expected to be allowed a word. She put dignity back on like a hastily donned garment. "Colavaere Saighan says you have gone to Caemlyn, Car’a’carn, or maybe to Tear, but wherever you have gone, all must remember that you are the Dragon Reborn and must be obeyed." Feraighin sniffed; the Dragon Reborn was no part of Aiel prophecies, only the Car’a’carn. "She says you will return and confirm her on the throne. She speaks often to the chiefs, encouraging them to move the spears south. In obedience to you, she says. She does not see the Wise Ones, and hears only the wind when we speak." This time her sniff was a fair approximation of Sorilea’s. No one told the clan chiefs what to do, but angering the Wise Ones was a bad way to start convincing the chiefs of anything.

It made sense to Perrin, though, to the part of him that could think of anything besides Faile. Colavaere probably had never paid enough attention to the "savages" to realize the Wise Ones did more than dispense herbs, but she would want every last Aiel out of Cairhien. The question was, given the circumstances, had any of the chiefs listened to her? But the question Rand asked was not the obvious.

"What else has happened in the city? Anything you’ve heard, Feraighin. Maybe something that might only seem important to a wetlander."

She tossed her red mane contemptuously. "Wetlanders are like sandflies, Car’a’carn: who can know what they find important? Strange things sometimes happen in the city, so I have heard, as they do among the tents. People sometimes see things that cannot be, only for a time, what cannot be, is. Men, women, children have died." Perrin’s skin prickled: he knew she meant what Rand called "bubbles of evil," rising from the Dark One’s prison like froth in a fetid swamp, drifting along the Pattern till they burst. Perrin had been caught in one once; he never wanted to see another... "If you mean what the wetlanders do," she went on, "who has time to watch sandflies? Unless they bite. That minds me of one thing. I do not understand it, but perhaps you do. These sandflies will bite sooner or later."

"What sandflies? Wetlanders? What are you talking about?"

Feraighin was not as good as Sorilea at that level look, yet no Wise One that Perrin had seen appreciated others’ impatience. Not even the chief of chiefs’. Thrusting her chin up, she gathered her shawl and answered. "Three days ago the treekillers Caraline Damodred and Toram Riatin approached the city. They issued a proclamation that Colavaere Saighan is a usurper, but they sit in their camp south of the city and do nothing except send a few people into the city now and then. Away from their camp, a hundred of them will run from one algai’d’siswai, or even a gai’shain. The man called Darlin Sisnera and other Tairens arrived by ship below the city yesterday and joined them. They have been feasting and drinking ever since, as if celebrating something. Treekiller soldiers gather in the city at Colavaere Saighan’s command, yet they watch our tents more than they do the other wetlanders’ or the city itself. They watch, and do nothing. Perhaps you know the why of all this, Car’a’carn, but I do not, nor does Bair or Megana, or anyone else in the tents."