The bond was decidedly inconvenient at times. She had drunk nothing but half a cup of extremely well watered wine last night, but she was beginning to have Birgitte’s morning-after head and her sour stomach. None of the other Aes Sedai she had spoken to about the bond had mentioned anything of the kind, but she and Birgitte all too often mirrored one another, physically and emo­tionally. The last presented real problems when her moods were on a seesaw. Sometimes she managed to shrug it off, or fight it off, but today she knew she was going to have to suffer until Birgitte was Healed. She thought the mirroring must occur because they were both women. No one had heard of anyone bonding another woman before. Few had heard of it now, to tell the truth, and some of them seemed to believe it could not be true. A Warder was male as surely as a bull was male. Everyone knew that, and not many stopped to think that anything that “everyone knew” deserved close examination.

Being caught in a lie, when she was trying to follow Egwene’s dictate about living as if she had already taken the Three Oaths, made Elayne defensive, and that made her blunt. “Is Dyelin back?”

“No,” Birgitte said just as bluntly, and Elayne sighed. Dyelin had left the city days before Arymilla’s army appeared, taking Reanne Corly with her to make gateways and speed her travel, and a great deal depended on Dyelin’s return. On what news she brought back. On whether she brought anything besides news.

Choosing who would be Queen of Andor was quite simple, boiled down to essentials. There were over four hundred Houses in the realm, but only nineteen strong enough that others would fol­low where they led. Usually, all nineteen stood behind the Daughter-Heir, or most of them, unless she was plainly incompe­tent. House Mantear had lost the throne to Trakand when Mordrellen died only because Tigraine, the Daughter-Heir, had vanished and Mantear had begun running heavily to boy children. And because Morgase Trakand had gathered thirteen Houses in her support. Only ten of the nineteen were necessary to ascend the throne, by law and custom. Even claimants who still thought they should have the throne themselves usually fell in with the rest, or at least fell silent and gave up their pursuit, once another woman had ten Houses at her back.

Things had been bad enough when she had three declared rivals, but now Naean and Elenia were united behind Arymilla Marne, of all people, the least likely of the three to have succeeded, and that meant she had two Houses – two large enough to count; Matherin and those eighteen others she had visited were too small – her own Trakand and Dyelin’s Taravin, to face six. Oh, Dyelin insisted that Carand, Coelan and Renshar would come to Elayne, and Norwelyn and Pendar and Traemane besides, but the first three wanted Dyelin herself on the throne, and the last three seemed to have gone into hibernation. Dyelin was firm in her loy­alty, though, and tireless on Elayne’s behalf. She persisted in her belief that some of the Houses that were keeping silent could be convinced to support Elayne. Of course, Elayne could not approach them herself, but Dyelin could. And now the situation verged on desperate. Six Houses supporting Arymilla, and only a fool would think she had not sent feelers out toward the others. Or that some might listen just because she did have six already.

Despite the fact that Caseille and her Guards had vacated the courtyard, Elayne and the others had to thread their way across the paving stones though a crowd. The men from Matherin were finally down off their horses, but they were still moiling about, dropping their halberds and picking them up only to drop them again, trying to unload their packhorse there in the stableyard. One of the boys was chasing a chicken that somehow had gotten loose and was scuttling between the horses’ legs, while one of the wrinkled old men shouted encouragement, though whether for the boy or the chicken was unclear. A leather-faced bannerman with the merest fringe of white hair remaining, in a faded red coat that strained across his belly, was trying to establish order with the help of an only slightly younger Guardsman, both of them likely returned from their pensions, as a good many had, but another of the boys seemed about to lead his shaggy horse into the palace itself, and Birgitte had to order him out of the way before Elayne could enter. The boy, a fuzz-cheeked lad who could not have been above fourteen, gaped at Birgitte as widely as he had at the palace. She was certainly more picturesque in her uniform than the Daughter-Heir in a riding dress, and he had already seen the Daughter-Heir. Rasoria gave him a shove back toward the old ban­nerman, shaking her head.

“I don’t naming know what I can do with them,” Birgitte grumbled as a maid liveried in red-and-white took Elayne’s cloak and gloves in the small entry hall. Small in terms of the Royal Palace. With gilded stand-lamps flickering between narrow, fluted white columns, it was half again the size of Matherin’s main entry hall, though the ceiling was not so high. Another maid with the White Lion on the left breast of her dress, a girl not that much older than the boy who had tried to bring his horse inside, offered a ropework silver tray with tall cups of steaming spiced wine before simultaneous frowns from Aviendha and Birgitte made her shy back. “The flaming boys fall asleep if they’re put on guard,” Bir­gitte went on, scowling at the retreating maid. “The old men stay awake, but half can’t remember what they’re flaming supposed to do if they see somebody trying to scale the bloody wall, and the other half together couldn’t fight off six shepherds with a dog.” Aviendha raised an eyebrow at Elayne and nodded.

“They aren’t here to fight,” Elayne reminded them as they started down a blue-tiled corridor lined with mirrored stand-lamps and inlaid chests, Birgitte and Aviendha on either side of her and the Guardswomen spreading out a few paces ahead of them and behind. Light, she thought, I wouldn’t have taken the wine! Her head pounded in rhythm with Birgitte’s, and she touched her temple, wondering whether she should order her Warder to go find Heal­ing immediately.

Birgitte had other ideas, though. She eyed Rasoria and the oth­ers in front, then looked over her shoulder and motioned those fol­lowing to fall back a little more. That was strange. She had handpicked every last woman in the Guards, and she trusted them. Even so, when she spoke it was in a hurried near-whisper, bending her head close to Elayne. “Something happened just before you returned. I was asking Sumeko if she’d Heal me before you got back, and she suddenly fell over in a faint. Her eyes just rolled up in her head, and down she went. It isn’t only her. Nobody will admit a flaming thing, not to me, but the other Kin I’ve seen have been jumping out of their bloody skins, and the Windfinders, too. Not one of them could spit if she had to. You were back before I could find a sister, but I suspect they’d give me the fish eye, too. They’ll tell you, though.”

The palace required the population of a large village to keep running, and servants had begun to appear, liveried men and women scurrying along the corridors, flattening themselves against the walls or ducking into crossing hallways to make room for Elayne’s escort, so she explained the little she knew in as soft a voice and as few words as possible. Some rumors she did not mind reach­ing the streets, and inevitably Arymilla, but tales of Rand could be as bad as tales of the Forsaken by the time they were twisted through a few retellings. Worse, in a way. No one would believe the Forsaken were trying to put her on the throne as a puppet. “In any event,” she finished, “it’s nothing to do with us here.”

She thought she sounded very convincing, very cool and detached, but Aviendha reached out to squeeze her hand, for an Aiel as much as a comforting hug with so many people to see, and Birgitte’s sympathy flooded through the bond. It was more than commiseration; it was the shared feeling of a woman who had already suffered the loss she herself feared and more. Gaidal Cain was lost to Birgitte as surely as if he were dead, and on top of that, her memories of her past lives were fading. She remembered almost nothing clearly before the founding of the White Tower, and not all of that. Some nights, the fear that Gaidal would fade from her memory, too, that she would lose any remembrance of actually hav­ing known and loved him, left her unable to sleep until she drank as much brandy as she could hold. That was a poor solution, and Elayne wished she could offer a better, yet she knew her own mem­ories of Rand would not die until she did, and she could not imag­ine the horror of knowing those memories might leave her. Still, she hoped someone Healed Birgitte’s morning-after head soon, before her own split open like an over-ripe melon. Her ability with Healing fell short of the task, and Aviendha’s was no stronger.