She did pick up other things. The unbelievable disaster that had befallen an expedition sent against the Black Tower. Some of the sisters seemed not to believe it, yet they appeared to be trying to convince themselves it could not have happened. More sisters captured after a great battle and somehow forced to swear fealty to Rand. She had already had inklings of that, and she could not like it any more than she did sisters being bonded by Asha’man. Being ta’wren or the Dragon Reborn was no excuse. No Aes Sedai had ever before sworn fealty to any man. The sisters and Sitters argued over who was to blame, with Rand and the Asha’man at the head of the list. But one name came up again and again. Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan. They talked of Rand, too, of how to find him before Tarmon Gai’don. They knew it was coming despite their failure to console the novices and Accepted, and they were desperate to lay hands on him.

Sometimes she risked a comment, a mention of Shemerin being stripped of the shawl against all custom, a suggestion that Elaida’s edict regarding Rand was the best way in the world to make him dig in his heels. She offered sympathy for the sisters captured by the Asha’-man, for those taken at Dumai’s Wells-with Elaida’s name dropped in-or regretted the neglect that saw garbage rotting in the once pristine streets of Tar Valon. There was no need to mention Elaida there; they knew who was responsible for Tar Valon. At times, those comments earned her still more trips to Silviana’s study, and more chores besides, yet surprisingly often they did not. She made careful note of the sisters who merely told her to be quiet. Or better still, said nothing. Some even nodded agreement before they caught themselves.

Some of those chores led to interesting encounters.

On the morning of her second day she was using a long-handled bamboo rake to fish detritus from the ponds of the Water Garden. There had been a rainstorm the night before, and the heavy winds had deposited leaves and grasses in the ponds among the bright green lily pads and budding water irises, and even a dead sparrow that she calmly buried in one of the flower beds. A pair of Reds stood on one of the arching pond bridges, leaning on the lacy stone railing and watching her and the fish swirling below them in a flurry of red and gold and white. A half-dozen crows burst up out of one of the leatherleafs and silently winged their way north. Crows! The Tower grounds were supposed to be warded against crows and ravens. The Reds did not seem to have noticed.

She was squatting on her heels beside one of the ponds, washing the dirt from her hands after burying that pitiful bird, when Alviarin appeared, her white-fringed shawl wrapped tightly around her as if the morning were still windy rather than bright and fair. This was the third time she had seen Alviarin, and every time she had been alone rather than in company with other Whites. She had seen clusters of Whites in the hallways, though. Was there a clue in that? If so, she could not imagine to what, unless Alviarin was being shunned by her own Ajah for some reason. Surely the rot had not gone that deep.

Eyeing the Reds, Alviarin approached Egwene along the coarse gravel path that wound among the ponds. “You have fallen far,” she said when she was close. “You must feel it keenly.”

Egwene straightened and blotted her hands on her skirt, then picked up the rake. “I’m not the only one.” She had had another session with Silviana before dawn, and when she left the woman’s study, Alviarin had been waiting to go in again. That was a daily ritual for the White, and the talk of the novices’ quarters, with every tongue speculating on the why of it. “My mother always says, don’t weep over what can’t be mended. It seems good advice under the circumstances.”

Faint spots of color appeared in Alviarin’s cheeks. “But you seem to be weeping a good deal. Endlessly, by all reports. Surely you would escape that if you could.”

Egwene caught another oak leaf on the broom and brushed it off into the wooden pail of damp leaves at her feet. “Your loyalty to Elaida isn’t very strong, is it?”

“Why do you say that?” Alviarin said suspiciously. Glancing at the two Reds, who appeared to be paying more mind now to the fish than Egwene, she stepped closer, inviting lowered voices.

Egwene fished at a long strand of grass that had to have come all the way from the plains beyond the river. Should she mention the letter this woman had written to Rand practically promising him the White Tower at his feet? No, that piece of information might prove valuable, but it seemed the sort of thing that could only be used once. “She stripped you of the Keeper’s stole and ordered your penance. That’s hardly an inducement to loyalty.”

Alviarin’s face remained smooth, yet her shoulders relaxed visibly. Aes Sedai seldom showed so much. She must feel under phenomenal strain to be so little in control of herself. She darted a look at the Reds again. “Think on your situation,” she said in near a whisper. “If you want an escape from it, well, you may be able to find one.”

“I am content with my situation,” Egwene said simply.

Alviarin’s eyebrows quirked upward in disbelief, but with another glance at the Reds-one was watching them now rather than the fish- she glided away, a very fast glide on the verge of breaking into a trot.

Every two or three days she would appear while Egwene was doing chores, and while she never openly offered help with an escape, she used that word frequently, and she began to show frustration when Egwene refused to rise to her bait. Bait it was, to be sure. Egwene did not trust the woman. Perhaps it was that letter, surely designed to draw Rand to the Tower and into Elaida’s clutches, or maybe it was the way she kept waiting for Egwene to make the first move, to beg possibly. Likely Alviarin would try to set conditions, then. In any case, she had no intention of escaping unless there was no other choice, so she always gave the same response.

“I am content with my situation.”

Alviarin began grinding her teeth audibly when she heard that.

On the fourth day, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing blue-and-white floor tiles when the boots of three men accompanied by a sister in elaborately red-embroidered gray silk passed her. A few paces on, the boots stopped.

“That be her,” a man’s voice said in the accents of Illian. “She did be pointed out to me. I think me I will speak to her.”

“She’s only another novice, Mattin Stepaneos,” the sister told him. “You wanted to walk in the gardens.” Egwene dipped her scrub brush in the bucket of soapy water and began another stretch of tiles.

“Fortune stab me. Cariandre, this may be the White Tower, but I do still be the lawful King of Illian. and if I want to speak to her-with you for chaperone; all very proper and decent-then I will speak with her. I did be told she did grow up in the same village with al’Thor.” One set of boots, blacked till they glistened, approached Egwene.

Only then did she stand, the dripping brush in one hand. She used the back of the other to brush her hair out of her face. She refrained from knuckling the small of her back, much as she wanted to.

Mattin Stepaneos was stocky and almost entirely bald, with a neatly trimmed white beard in the Illianer fashion and a heavily creased face. His eyes were sharp, and angry. Armor would have suited him better than the green silk coat embroidered with golden bees on the sleeves and lapels. “Just another novice?” he murmured. “I think you be mistaken, Cariandre.”

The plump Red. her lips compressed, left the two serving men with the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests and joined the balding man. Her disapproving gaze touched Egwene briefly before shifting to him. “She’s a much-punished novice who has a floor to scrub. Come. The gardens should be very pleasant this morning.”