She intended to go straight to her apartments and change, but intentions or no, she turned aside when she saw Reanne Corly walking in a crossing corridor where the floor tiles were all red. The servants’ reactions had nothing to do with it. She was not being stubborn. She was wet, and she wanted dry clothing and a warm towel in the worst way, but seeing the Kinswoman was a surprise, and the two women with Reanne also caught her eye. Birgitte muttered a curse before following her. swishing her bowstave sideways through the air as though thinking of striking someone. The bond carried a blend of long-suffering and irritability, soon stifled. Aviendha never left Elayne’s side, though busily trying to wring water out of her shawl. Despite all the rain she had seen, all the rivers since crossing the Spine of the World and the great cisterns beneath the city, Aviendha winced at the waste, the water splashing uselessly on the floor. The eight Guardswomen. left behind by her sudden swerve, hurried to catch up, stolid and silent except for the stamp of their boots on the floor tiles. Give anyone a sword and boots, and they began stamping.

One of the women with Reanne was Kara Defane, who had been the wise woman, or Healer, of a fishing village on Toman Head before the Seanchan collared her. Plump and merry-eyed in brown wool with embroidered blue and white flowers at her cuffs, Kara appeared little older than Elayne. though she was nearly fifty. The other was named Jillari. a former damane from Seanchan. Despite everything, the sight of her made Elayne’s flesh feel cold. Whatever else could be said of her, the woman was Seanchan. after all.

Not even Jillari herself knew how old she was, though she appeared just into her middle years. Slight of build, with long, fiery red hair and eyes as green as Aviendha’s. she and Marille, the other Seanchan-born damane who remained in the palace, persisted in maintaining that they still were damane. that they needed to be collared because of what they could do. Daily walks were one way the Kin were trying to accustom them to freedom. Carefully supervised walks, of course. They were always closely watched, day and night. Either might try to free the suldam, otherwise. For that matter, Kara herself was not trusted alone with any of the sul’dam. nor was Lemore, a young Taraboner noble collared when Tanchico fell. The notion would not come to them on its own, yet there was no saying what either would do if a suldam ordered her to help the woman escape. The habit of obedience remained strong in Kara and Lemore both.

Jillari’s eyes widened at the sight of Elayne. and she immediately fell to her knees with a thud. She tried to fold herself into a bundle on the floor, but Kara caught her shoulders and gently urged her back to her feet. Elayne tried not to let her distaste show. And hoped that if it did. everyone would take it for the kneeling and crouching. Some of it was. How could anyone want to be collared? She heard Lini’s voice again, and shivered. You can’t know another woman’s reasons until you’ve worn her dress for a year. Burn her if she had any desire to do that!

“No need for all that,” Kara said. “This is what we do.” She curtsied, not very gracefully. She had never seen a town larger than a few hundred people before the Seanchan took her. After a moment, the red-haired woman spread her own dark blue skirts more awkwardly still. She almost fell over, in fact, and blushed a bright crimson.

“Jillari is sorry,” she almost whispered, folding her hands at her waist. Her eyes, she kept meekly directed at the floor. “Jillari will try to remember.”

“ ‘I.’ “ Kara said. “Remember what I told you? I call you Jillari, but you call yourself’l’ or ’me.’ Try it. And look at me. You can do it.” She sounded as though she were encouraging a child.

The Seanchan woman wet her lips, giving Kara a sidelong look.

“I.” she said softly. And promptly began weeping, tears rolling down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away with her fingers. Kara enveloped her in a hug and made soothing noises. She seemed about to cry, too. Aviendha shifted uncomfortably. It was not the tears-men or women, Aiel wept unashamed when they felt the need-but for them, touching hands was a great display in public.

“Why don’t you two walk on alone for a while,” Reanne told the pair with a comforting smile that deepened the fine lines at the corners of her blue eyes. Her voice was high and lovely, suitable for singing. “I’ll catch you up, and we can eat together.” They offered her curtsies, too. Jillari still weeping, and turned away with Kara’s arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders. “If you care to, my Lady,” Reanne said before they had gone two steps, “we could talk on the way to your apartments.”

The woman’s face was calm, and her tone put no special freight on the words, yet Elayne’s jaw tightened. She forced it to relax. There was no point in being stubborn stupid. She was wet. And beginning to shiver, though the day could hardly be called cold. “An excellent suggestion.” she said, gathering her sodden gray skirts. “Come.”

“We could walk a little faster.” Birgitte muttered, not quite far enough under her breath.

“We could run,” Aviendha said, without trying to keep her voice low at all. “We might get dry from the exertion.”

Elayne ignored them and glided at a suitable pace. In her mother, it would have been called regal. She was not sure she managed that, but she was not about to run through the palace. Or even hurry. The sight of her rushing would start a dozen rumors if not a hundred, each one of some dire event worse than the one before. Too many rumors floated on every breath of air as it was. The worst was that the city was about to fall, that she planned to flee before it did. No, she would be seen to be utterly unruffled. Everyone had to believe her completely confident. Even if that was a false facade. Anything else, and she might as well yield to Arymilla. Fear of defeat had lost as many battles as weakness had, and she could not afford to lose a single one. “I thought the Captain-General had you out scouting, Reanne.”

Birgitte had been using two of the Kin for scouts, women who could not make a gateway large enough to admit a horse cart, but with circles of Kinswomen available to make gateways, for trade as well as moving soldiers, she had coopted the remaining six who could Travel on their own. An encircling army was no impediment to them. Yet Re-anne’s well-cut, fine blue wool, though unadorned save for a red-enameled circle pin on the high neck, was decidedly unsuited for skulking about the countryside.

“The Captain-General believes her scouts need rest. Unlike herself,” Reanne added blandly, raising an eyebrow at Birgitte. The bond carried a brief flash of annoyance. Aviendha laughed for some reason: Elayne still did not understand Aiel humor. “Tomorrow, I go out again. It takes me back to the days long ago when I was a pack-peddler with one mule.” The Kin all followed many crafts during their long lives, always changing location and craft before anyone took note of how slowly they aged. The oldest among them had mastered half a dozen crafts or more, shifting from one to another easily. “I decided to use my freeday helping Jillari settle on a surname.” Reanne grimaced. “It’s custom in Seanchan to strike a girl’s name from her family’s rolls when she’s collared, and the poor woman feels she has no right to the name she was born with. Jillari was given with the collar, but she wants to keep that.”

“There are more reasons to hate the Seanchan than I can count,” Elayne said heatedly. Then, belatedly, she caught up to the import of it all. Learning to curtsy. Choosing a new surname. Burn her. if pregnancy was making her slow-witted on top of everything else… ! “When did Jillari change her mind about the collar?” There was no reason to let everyone know she was being dense today.