Sevanna seemed taken aback by what Therava had said. “Why do you care who gave Couladin permission? No matter,” she said, waving a hand as though brushing away a fly, when she got no reply. “Couladin is dead. Rand al’Thor has the markings, however he got them. I will marry him, and I will make use of him. If the Aes Sedai could control him, and I saw them handling him like a babe, then I can. With a little help from you. And you will help. You agree that uniting the clans is worth doing no matter how it is done? You did once.” Somehow, there was more than a hint of threat in that. “We Shaido will become the most powerful of the clans in one leap.”

Lowering their cowls, the new gai’shain filed wordlessly along the tent walls, nine men and three women, one of them Maighdin. The sun-haired woman wore a grim expression that had been on her face since the day Therava had discovered her in the Wise One’s tent. Whatever Therava had done, all Maighdin would say of it was that she wanted to kill the other woman. Sometimes she whimpered in her sleep, though.

Therava kept whatever she thought about uniting the clans to herself. “There is much feeling against staying here. Many of the sept chiefs press the red disc on their nar’baha every morning. I advise you to heed the Wise Ones.”

Nar’baha. That would mean ‘box of fools.’ or something very near. But what could this be? Bain and Chiad were still teaching her about Aiel ways, when they could find time, and chey had never mentioned any such thing. Maighdin stopped beside Lusara. A slender Cairhienin nobleman named Doirmanes stopped beside Faile. He was young and very pretty, but he bit his lip nervously. If he learned about the oaths of fealty, he would have to be killed. She was certain he would run to Sevanna in a heartbeat.

“We remain here,” Sevanna said angrily, flinging her goblet to the carpets in a spray of wine. “I speak for the clan chief, and I have spoken!”

“You have spoken,” Therava agreed calmly. “Bendhuin, sept chief of the Green Salts, has received permission to go to Rhuidean. He left five days ago with twenty of his algai’d’siswai and four Wise Ones to stand witness.”

Not until one of the new gaishain stood beside each of those already there did Faile and the others raise their cowls and begin filing along the walls toward the doorflap. already gathering their robes to the knee. She had become quite sanguine about exposing her legs so.

“He seeks to replace me, and I was not even informed?”

“Not you, Sevanna. Couladin. As his widow, you speak for the clan chief until a new chief returns from Rhuidean, but you are not the clan chief.”

Faile stepped out into the cold, gray morning drizzle, and the tent-flap cut off whatever Sevanna said to that. What was going on between the two women? Sometimes, as this morning, they seemed antagonists, but at others they seemed reluctant conspirators bound together by something that gave neither any comfort. Or perhaps it was the being bound together itself that made them uncomfortable. Well, she could not see how knowing would help her escape, so it did not really matter. But the puzzle nagged at her.

Six Maidens stood clustered in front of the tent, veils hanging down onto their chests, spears thrust up through the harness of the bow cases on their backs. Bain and Chiad were contemptuous of Sevanna for using Maidens of the Spear for her guard of honor though she herself had never been a Maiden, and for having her tent always guarded, but there were never fewer than six, night or day. Those two were contemptuous of the Shaido Maidens for allowing it, too. Neither being a clan chief nor speaking for one gave you as much power as most nobles possessed. These Maidens’ hands were flashing in a rapid conversation. She caught the sign for Car’a’carn several times, but not sufficient else to make out what they were saying, or whether about al’Thor or Couladin.

Standing there long enough to find out, if she could find out, was beyond the question. With the others already hurrying away down the muddy street, the Maidens would become suspicious, for one thing, and then they might switch her themselves, or worse, use her own bootlaces. She had had a hard dose of that from some Maidens, for having “insolent eyes,” and she did not want another. Especially when it meant baring herself in public. Being Sevanna’s gai’shain gave no protection. Any Shaido could discipline any gai’shain they thought was behaving improperly. Even a child could, if the child was set to watch you carry out a chore. For another thing, the cold rain, light as it was, was going to soak through her woolen robes soon enough. She had only a short walk back to her tent, no more than a quarter of a mile, but she would not complete it without being stopped for a time.

A yawn cracked her jaw as she turned from the large red tent. She very much wanted her blankets and a few more hours sleep. There would be more chores come afternoon. What they might be, she did not know. Matters would be much simpler if Sevanna settled on who she wanted to do what when, but she seemed to choose names at random, and always at the last minute. It made planning anything, much less the escape, very difficult.

All sorts of tents surrounded Sevanna’s, low, dark Aiel tents, peaked tents, walled tents, tents of every sort and size in every color imaginable, separated by a tangle of dirt streets that were now rivers of mud. Lacking enough of their own, the Shaido snatched up every tent they could find. Fourteen septs were camped in a sprawl around Maiden now, a hundred thousand Shaido and as many gai’shain, and rumor said two more septs, the Morai and the White Cliff, would arrive within days. Aside from small children splashing through the mud with romping dogs, most of the people she could see as she walked wore mud-stained white and were carrying baskets or bulging sacks.

Most of the women did not hurry; they ran. Except for the blacksmiths, the Shaido seldom did any work themselves, and generally only out of boredom, she suspected. With so many gai’sbain, finding chores for them all was itself a chore. Sevanna was no longer the only Shaido to actually sit in a bathtub with a gai’sbain scrubbing her back. None of the Wise Ones had gone that far yet. but some of the others would not stir themselves two paces to pick something up when they could tell a gai’sbain to fetch it.

She was almost to the gai’sbain portion of the camp, hard against the gray stone walls of Maiden, when she saw a Wise One striding toward her with her dark shawl wrapped around her head against the rain. Faile did not stop, but she bent her knees a little. Meira was not so frightening as Therava, but the grim-faced woman was hard enough, and shorter than Faile. Her narrow mouth always grew even tighter when she was confronted with a woman taller than she. Faile would have thought that learning her own sept, the White Cliff, would be there soon, would brighten the woman’s mood, but the news had had no dis-cernable effect at all.

“So you were just lagging,” Meira said as she came close. Her eyes were as hard as the sapphires they resembled. “I left Rhiale listening to the others because I feared some drunken fool had pulled you into a tent.” She glared around her as though looking for a drunken fool about to do just that.

“No one accosted me, Wise One,” Faile said quickly. Several had in the last few weeks, some drunk and some not, but Rolan always appeared in the nick of time. Twice the big Mera’din had had to fight to save her. and once he had killed the other man. She had expected nine kinds of uproar and trouble, but the Wise Ones judged it a fair fight, and Rolan said her name had never been mentioned. For all that Bain and Chiad insisted it went against all custom, assault was a constant danger for gai’shain women here. She was sure that Alliandre had been assaulted once, before she and Maighdin also acquired Mera’din shadows. Rolan denied having asked them to help her people. He said they were just bored and looking for something to do. “I’m very sorry I was slow.”