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Caemlyn, 996

“I am going to need your cooperation on this,” Siuan was saying as she and Elaida walked through the slate-paved courtyard of the palace in Caemlyn. They were trailed by Andoran guards and by Siuan’s own retinue, who bore her baggage, but Siuan waved them off and ushered Elaida into a deserted passageway that she thought led to an interior garden.

Nearly ten years on the Amyrlin Seat, and it still alarmed her to find that she knew palaces and villas and estates well enough to navigate them unaided now. The Tower was one thing, but it still felt uncanny to be able to walk into a palace and know where to go.

Elaida followed, saying, “What would you have me do, Mother?” The contempt dripped from her voice, but the words were proper.

“Morgase trusts you? Where do you sit in her favor?”

Elaida straightened the embroidered collar of her burgundy dress as they walked, managing to make the action seem smug. When Siuan looked more closely, she realized that the gold threadwork running up Elaida’s neck formed a row of tiny lions. Elaida had very much taken to local customs, it seemed.

“I sit as high in her council as ever, and higher in her personal confidence.”

“And at the same time, you are mindful of your higher duty to the Tower?” Siuan asked.

“Always.” A stiff breeze accompanied their exit into a grassy courtyard. The wind swirled off the high stone walls and played at Siuan’s skirts, echoing the ice in Elaida’s answer.

Elaida’s air irked Siuan, but she could never be sure whether she was allowing her personal distaste for Elaida to color her reactions to the woman. Were her tiny slights intended, or had Siuan willfully fabricated them? In either case, Siuan would try to remain civil. “Then you will support my proposal to Morgase. Make her see that what I ask is for the good of the whole region. She won’t take it that way at first.”

“And what is the proposal you wish me to support?”

“I think that we have a chance to unify Murandy. That should appeal to you.” Siuan watched Elaida for some reaction. Implying that an Aes Sedai’s home country impacted her loyalties was frowned upon, but Elaida needed a reminder that she did not work primarily for Andor. Unsurprisingly, this particular reminder was met with a superior glare, which Siuan noted but ignored as she settled onto a granite bench beside a rose bed and fountain.

“These are lovely,” Siuan said, running her finger along the petals of a yellow blossom that grew beside the bench. “Is this your work? Most roses would have died back by now in this cold.”

Elaida scoffed but sat beside her. “What of Murandy, then?”

“Morgase needs to pull her troops back from the border with Murandy. For a year. Twenty miles will be enough. Don’t respond to raids; just leave it be. In the meantime, I will sort things out on the Murandian side. At the end of the year, things will go back to the way they are now, and Morgase will have a stable Murandy on her border with fewer raids for her trouble.”

That was all Siuan would tell Elaida if she could get away with it.

She did not want to have to explain that the unprecedented opportunity to unify Murandy came in the form of Dulain, a young border lord in whom Siuan had taken a particular interest. Siuan had not managed to lay eyes on him yet, but his smooth ascendance, gathering followers in eastern Murandy, smacked of a ta’veren. Slowly, he was consolidating political power in a region that had been a disparate collection of towns ever since Aldeshar and Nerevan dissolved in the War of the Hundred Years.

It was safe to tell Morgase and Elaida of an ambitious border lord. It was not safe to tell them—or nearly anyone—of a ta’veren. When rumors of ta’veren flew unchecked, innocent boys died, though the losses did not sting as they had. After nearly two decades, the sorrow she had used to feel each time she failed to intercept one had shifted into a sense of mounting urgency. One of these boys would be the Dragon. Of course that had always been the entire point. But now he would begin channeling soon whether she found him first or not, which would draw the attention of the Red, if not the Black. In her less charitable moments, she suspected the two Ajahs were one and the same.

Siuan maintained what she liked to think was a healthy level of suspicion of every sister. It was harder to mistrust some, those who had been her friends, Sheriam and Leane and the like. In some ways, the Seat made it easier. No one sought to gain her confidence, and she was expected to withhold information. But Siuan remained acutely aware of how her predecessors had died, even though the rest of the Tower was ignorant, excepting those who had perpetrated it.

Elaida though … Red Ajah at best, Black Ajah at worst, Siuan would not tell Elaida anything that she did not have to. She tried to separate her personal enmity with the woman from her duty, and she had done so in coming here at all. But dealing with Elaida demanded a level of caution that surpassed what she used with other sisters.

And yet Siuan still needed to convince Elaida to help Morgase see Murandy her way, or to silence her. And she seemed far from accomplishing either.

“But that is absurd,” Elaida protested. “You have come here to encourage me to undermine Andor’s interests to benefit another nation?”

“We are Aes Sedai,” Siuan said in reprimand. “We serve all, not a single nation or a single ruler. Regardless of how … fond … we may become of those we advise.”

“What you are asking me to do risks more than you know.” Elaida did not look at Siuan, but up towards the massive walls and roofs of the Andoran palace, as if she could see through them to someone inside. “If my position here is compromised, if I lose the confidence of the royal family …” She trailed off and looked sharply at Siuan as if she had said something she should not have.

So Elaida had a secret. Siuan had more than her own share, but this was different. Siuan was Amyrlin, and, more importantly, Siuan knew all of her own secrets.

“If you know of some larger threat,” Siuan said slowly, eyeing Elaida’s smooth features for any hint of reaction, “it is your responsibility to report it to me.”

Elaida reacted not so much in a hint as in a rush. Her face reddened, her brow crumpled, and she opened her mouth in retort. Elaida could no longer strike and berate Siuan as she once had. Or rather, she technically could, but Siuan’s station and power protected her now as they had not when she was Accepted. But for a moment, Siuan felt a trickle of fear run from her throat down to her stomach. Whatever was afoot here, Elaida was deadly serious about it.

“I would think very carefully, daughter, about what you are about to say to me. I am your Amyrlin.” She wanted to embrace the Source, but Elaida would feel that and take it as a threat. She held herself on the precipice, though, suddenly aware of how she and Elaida were alone in the courtyard.

If Elaida was Black Ajah …

“You do not know,” Elaida whispered through her teeth. “You do not know what you are compromising.”

Siuan leaned back, away from Elaida, and stood. She had no doubt, Black Ajah or not, that Elaida would hurt or kill her if she could get away with it.

Siuan had the distinct impression that she had inadvertently walked out of the shallows and off a steep drop into the depths. She had never had the upper hand with Elaida, not truly. Today she had rank, but rank had not saved prior Amyrlins from murder by their daughters. For a second, she wished fervently that she had brought Alric with her, then scolded herself for thinking that a sword could do anything against an Aes Sedai freed from the oaths. Siuan had fully expected Elaida to be hostile to her person and to her suggestion, but the fervency of her opposition startled her.

She needed to get away, and then she needed to convince Morgase to follow her recommendations without Elaida’s support.

“I do not think you will be needed in the audience with Morgase later,” Siuan said with her back to Elaida as she glided toward the fountain. Water bubbled merrily over the carved roses, reassuring her for a moment before she headed back down the colonnade.

“The queen has already requested my presence,” Elaida said, following.

Siuan walked faster down the row of columns, and Elaida kept pace. Light, she would not run, but her neck prickled with the sensation of pursuit, whether the feeling was warranted or not. Abruptly, she stopped, turned, and faced Elaida head on, forcing her to also halt. “I will rest alone prior to the meeting. Please go, daughter.” She emphasized the final word. There was power in formality, and Siuan would wield it.

Elaida hesitated for a moment, bowed slightly and hurried off with a quiet, “Mother.” Off to find Morgase, or Siuan was fit to be strung up and salted. She was paddling upstream with those two, but she had not capsized yet. Or at least that was what Siuan would tell herself.

“The Murandian raiders are transgressing Andor’s borders, and I have the right—or rather, the duty—to prevent harm to my subjects and their property. In what way is that the White Tower’s affair?” Morgase set her saucer down on the varnished table with a click and ran her gaze between Elaida and Siuan.

It was an hour later, and they were gathered in one of Morgase’s sitting rooms. The presentation of her request to the queen had gone about as well as Siuan had expected, which was to say poorly. Elaida, present at Morgase’s insistence as promised, had at least had the decency to remain silent throughout, but if a person could thrum with anger and distress, she was doing so now.

“I have no intention of compromising your sovereignty. I am only asking you to remove Andoran garrisons from the border with Murandy temporarily. Allow a span of only twenty miles to remain free of your army for the duration of one year.” Siuan said it briskly to make it seem like a small request, though she knew that it was not. Still, it never hurt to begin by at least attempting to pass an order off as reasonable in hopes that others would follow her lead. She was not optimistic that it would work on Morgase. The White Tower’s tricks did not always work on the White Tower’s scions.

And indeed, Morgase answered, “And yet what you propose—demand—is a compromise of my sovereignty. I can station my troops as I please within my own borders or they will cease to be Andor’s borders!

“The raids have grown bolder over the past months, not less. I have just ordered more men down there a few weeks ago in response. Withdrawing troops is antithetical to protecting Andorans right now.”

Dulain’s activities on the border had caught Morgase’s attention as well, then, and not in a good way.

Siuan’s task could have been so much easier if she could have only explained her true aim to Morgase. Her goal was so simple. All she needed was for the boy Dulain to survive long enough for her to get him studied properly, to see how things played out around him. Usually Siuan did this entirely from the shadows and handled the whole affair with no one but herself—and, sometimes, Moiraine—the wiser, even the boy himself.

Instead, the Light-forsaken Dulain boy had gotten himself involved in a border dispute and had pretensions to a crown, or she had those pretensions on his behalf. If the situation was not an undesirable one for the White Tower, it still necessitated Siuan involving Morgase, to whom it was patently intolerable.

And now Siuan sat across the table from an incredulous queen who was looking at her as if she had fishbait for brains to even suggest that Morgase let this challenge to her sovereignty pass.

Since Morgase had already noted him, could Siuan not just tell her … ?

Morgase was no darkfriend. Siuan would bet on it. Morgase was proud, haughty even, but not a darkfriend. But telling Morgase her purpose would either be as good as telling the whole Andoran court or, if Morgase kept it to herself, it would serve only to ensnare her in the same mess Siuan had been trapped in.

More to the point, telling Morgase was much the same as telling Elaida, and Elaida was quickly rising on the list of the people in the presence of whom Siuan least wished to speak Dulain’s name, if it was not already too late for concealment.

As if in illustration of this, Morgase turned pointedly to Elaida in an appeal for her advisor to intercede on Andor’s behalf. Elaida reached out to rest on the queen’s back, somewhere between reassuring and protective. Well, Elaida had said that she had the queen’s confidence.

Elaida looked Siuan full in the face, smiled indulgently, and said, “I guard the Tower’s interests in Andor, but I fail to see how this benefits either the Tower or Andor.” Then she shot a glance back toward Morgase to see if she approved.

Siuan could have skewered her onto a spit. The pretension, the gall, to contradict her in front of a ruler, to side with Morgase over the Tower. She was surprised that Elaida could get the claim past her oaths, if she was still held by the oaths, but Elaida had always been able to convince herself that the facts supported her own way of thinking, whether they did or not.

Or perhaps Elaida’s secret, whatever it was, was some indication that Dulain did risk both Andor and the Tower.

Siuan turned to face Elaida and put a simpering smile onto her own lips. “It is by my leave that you are part of this conversation at all, daughter,” Siuan said warningly.

“There are sensitivities to Andor’s situation with regards to both Murandy and to the White Tower of which you may be unaware. I am well-positioned to advise on both, and in this case, with all due respect—”

Siuan interrupted, “If there are issues of which I am unaware, then Morgase can enlighten me.” “With all due respect?” Elaida had not respected her for a moment of her life. How did she get that one past her oaths either, honestly? “Until then, daughter, I will not require your opinion unless I seek it.”

Elaida’s fingertips turned white where they pressed into the table, but her face did not break as it had that morning. Instead, she stared dangerously at Siuan. The fear that had come upon Siuan earlier came creeping back.

Just because you dislike a woman does not mean that she is Black Ajah, Siuan reminded herself. It helped, some, but not as much as it would have if she believed it.

Siuan would have dismissed Elaida if doing so would not have further antagonized Morgase. Instead, Siuan shifted her whole body back towards Morgase, pushing herself fully out of her chair with her fingertips to do it.

She lifted her hands to the table, then tapped each finger on the glossy surface in sequence to busy herself while Morgase and Elaida both fumed. Siuan would talk. She would say as much as she could safely, perhaps more; the damage had already been done in telling Elaida earlier.

“I’ll speak frankly to you because I respect you, Morgase,” Siuan said. “I am not doing this for Andor. I have reason to believe that Murandy has its best chance in a century to unite. If they can manage it, it will bring stability to the region, and ultimately advantage Andor—stopping your border raids, for one—but we need time. I need time. And I need your cooperation to see if it can happen.”

“It seems that you should be having this discussion with the Murandians, not with me,” Morgase answered.

“I will. I have taken a personal interest.”

“No. This is simply not Andor’s affair,” Morgase said with finality. “I will not entertain it. Now, regarding Elayne …” Morgase beamed at Siuan now, as if the prior conversation had not occurred. “I think she should wait a further year or two before going to Tar Valon—”

Siuan cut her off. “Seeing as you mention Elayne … Facing occasional requests of the sort I bring to you today is part of retaining the special relationship between Caemlyn and the White Tower, embodied here by Elaida herself, and by yourself and the ring you also wear.” Siuan flashed her great serpent ring and nodded meaningfully at Morgase’s.

“Appeals to my affection to the White Tower will not work, my indebtedness to the institution notwithstanding.”

“Remember that when Elayne and the boys do come to the Tower, they will be under my jurisdiction.”

“Are you threatening my children, Siuan? You will find that any fondness I have for the Tower will not go far at all should that happen.”

Morgase’s backbone was well intact, it seemed, but so was her nerve. Siuan’s point had been made. It was time to sweeten the deal again.

“I am sure that it will not come to a split between Andor and the Tower. You will benefit from this arrangement, but only because I will make sure that you do. You will be compensated, or, rather, your farmers on the border will be, for losses suffered in raids during the one year period during which you will remove your garrisons, and for half a year thereafter. I’ll have a clerk sent to register their claims,” Siuan said.

“And when a raid does more than steal cattle, but burns a family’s barn and home, or slaughters its inhabitants? What then? What answer will the White Tower have for the displaced, hurt, or killed? The people who cannot wait for Tar Valon to ‘compensate,’ not when I have a garrison ready to prevent harm from befalling them at all.”

There would be innocent casualties, both in the border skirmishes and in their aftermath. Siuan could not change this. People would die because of choices she made on the chance that it might save the world. More than likely it would not. That was something that not even Moiraine could understand. Siuan acted on the scale of nations, Moiraine on the scale of individuals. Siuan could only do as much as she could.

“The Tower will monitor the situation granularly. I will send a small contingent of sisters to provide direct aid for the term of the year. It will be covert, but they will be present.” She would see pushback in Tar Valon for this, but she would persuade the Greens, Yellows, and perhaps the Grays to send one each. It would not be so much of a sacrifice for any but the sisters assigned to go.

“Mother,” Elaida broke in, “is acting as Andor’s army and relief force not an inappropriate use of Tower resources when they are more than ready to provide their own defense?”

What did Elaida think she would accomplish by this? Surely she didn’t need to ingratiate herself to Morgase any further, judging by the way Morgase looked to her. “I begin to question your loyalties, Elaida. Perhaps a new assignment would suit you better than remaining in Caemlyn?”

“That will hardly be necessary,” Morgase inserted. “Elaida’s service here is, and always has been, crucial.”

“I will decide that,” Siuan said. And she would; that decision lay entirely within her purview as Amyrlin. But it seemed that Elaida could be used as a bargaining chip with Morgase, perhaps a better one than she had expected. For all that Siuan doubted Elaida, that would be worth keeping in mind.

Elaida raised her eyebrows insolently in challenge to Siuan but remained silent.

“Compensation for all losses. Direct protection and aid in the form of sisters for a year-long term. Relief for your own army, which can now be deployed elsewhere. The chance at a stable neighbor. This is what I have to offer you.” She tapped the table with each point. It was a lot to offer, in fact. Siuan might even have taken the deal herself, had she been in Morgase’s place.

“Elaida and I will need to discuss this in private, I think. I will announce my decision to the court in an hour.” Morgase rose and gestured to Elaida to retreat further into Morgase’s private apartments. Elaida gave the queen a half smile and gave Siuan another condescending look. If Elaida managed to undo whatever headway Siuan had made … She put it from her mind. Morgase would be rational.

“I don’t suppose that I need to ask you what I should say,” Morgase said, dropping onto the velvet couch. The action crushed her brocade gown, like it always did, but it was nothing Elaida could not straighten for her before they emerged.

They had safely withdrawn into Morgase’s personal sitting room. “Are you considering it?” Elaida asked, largely to buy herself time. Siuan’s comment that she might withdraw Elaida from Caemlyn had roiled her stomach. She could not be recalled. At the cost of everything, that could not happen. Elaida did a turn of the room to gather herself, putting up wards and igniting the fresh cut pine in the fireplace against the chill before settling more carefully in the chair beside Morgase’s couch.

Morgase sighed and draped her arm over the back of the couch. The gray afternoon light shone pale across her chest. “I need to consider something. Your Amyrlin is trying to back me into a corner, threatening to remove you, to do who knows what to the children … What is the relationship with the Tower worth?”

Everything, Elaida thought. As little more than a girl, she had Foretold that the royal line of Andor was their hope for winning the Last Battle, and Morgase was the royal line of Andor. Elaida had built her career on it, tied herself as tightly as one could to Morgase at first opportunity, and now Siuan thought that she could rip that away over a border dispute.

The fact that she, Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, was answerable to Siuan Sanche, that she could be recalled … nothing could vex her more.

“I do not like what Siuan has asked of you,” Elaida said. She leaned forward in the chair to rest her forearms on her thighs, bringing her closer to Morgase. “I do not like it at all. But it might not be entirely without advantage to Andor, although she did a poor job of showing you how.”

Burn it all, Elaida was backed into having to defend Siuan’s harebrained plan to Morgase or face removal, and, without her to guide Andor, potential ruin in the Last Battle. It was almost as if Siuan Sanche had been put on earth to personally aggravate and stymy her. If Elaida had gotten herself chosen Amyrlin instead of focusing on Morgase, perhaps then the Tower would be better equipped to support Andor in Tarmon Gai’don. But she had made her choice.

“It did not seem that you thought that the offer was advantageous to Andor back in the meeting,” Morgase said. She studied Elaida with narrowed eyes, stroking the wood grain on her seat back with her thumb all the while. Morgase liked to do that when she was thinking. Elaida had always found it endearing.

“Siuan could not be let to think that either you or I would be convinced too easily. She might have offered a worse deal if I had seemed to agree with her. What she did offer was substantial, if ill-advised for the Tower.” That much was true. Her proposal was a flagrant misuse of Tower funds on what seemed like an arbitrary vanity project. Perhaps Siuan wanted to be some great peacemaker.

“The offer is good, but it is playing stones behind the scenes with my subjects’ lives.”

“You are being exceedingly forthright. A delightful quality,” Elaida said, “but consider: what would helping the Tower in this get Andor?”

“An even deeper relationship with the Aes Sedai and an Amyrlin who is indebted to me, perhaps personally. I know all of this. I simply don’t think it is worth putting Andor on the back foot for a whole year while Murandy sends incursions into our lands. What I need is a way to refuse it without destroying the bond we have built with the White Tower.”

Siuan had backed Elaida into a Light-forsaken corner by first making her oppose her proposal because it seemed senseless, and then turning around and pulling rank so that now she had to support it. Still, it did offer its opportunities …

“What I mean is, think what would happen if this plan succeeds.” She laid her hand on Morgase’s thigh. Her leg was warm through the gown. “Say that Murandy does unify. You will have facilitated that. You can use it as a bargaining piece with the new ruler of Murandy, whoever they are—and I would bet that Siuan has them picked out—and you can use it with the Tower. Andor comes out of this with more durable relations with two powers and in a place of strength. It is all right there. Siuan was just too proud to admit it.”

For that matter, perhaps Siuan would have been better off considering Elaida herself for queen of Murandy if she was in the business of handing out crowns now. At least Elaida was from a noble house. Who knew who Siuan’s candidate was?

“It is not that I do not see the potential benefits to Andor’s diplomatic ties. It is just … She is asking me to spend a year waiting for a foreign power to coalesce. The Murandians will spend that harrying my people. We know this.” Morgase let her head fall back and exhaled hard through her nose.

“A foreign power which we can make sure will be friendly to Andor,” Elaida said again. Morgase was coming around, which was what Elaida wanted now, but ... She could stab Siuan with one of her knitting needles.

Morgase sat up straight on the couch and straightened the deep neckline of her gown. It was a simple change of posture, but all of her queenly authority rose back up in her. Her gaze sharpened and fixed on Elaida, so stern and self-possessed that she withdrew her hand.

“I am not going to give her a year. I’ll give her something, let her play her little game, take her Aes Sedai and her money, but she can’t have a year.”

“A reasonable stance.” There, it was done.

“Yes,” Morgase mused. “Gareth will have a fit.”

“Gareth Bryne has to follow your orders.” Just like how Elaida had to follow Siuan’s if it came down to it. It wouldn’t today, though. “I am glad now that you have agreed, you know. There is some potential here. Besides, I could not bear the idea of a different Aes Sedai advising you.”

Morgase smiled back at Elaida. “You have been here since the beginning. I won’t let her take you.” She reached across the small space between them to Elaida’s clasped hands and ran her thumb over her knuckles.

Light, let Siuan not have backed them both into ruin. Once again, Elaida had chosen her Foretelling over logic, had chosen to remain near Morgase. This was the best thing for Andor, for everyone, in the end. But if Elaida were Amyrlin instead of the Sanche girl, she would have found another, better way.

The dark walnut doors opened before Morgase. As she strode into her small audience chamber, the warm, humid breeze of Elaida weaving fire and water skimmed through her skirts, straightening the rumples. Smoothing them once more herself, the queen looked about the chamber for the Amyrlin. In expectation of an announcement, the room had filled with half the court, who milled about in muted conversation as they waited.

Siuan detached herself from a conference with Ellorian Traemane and Abelle Pendar and swept towards Morgase, scattering the courtiers between them.

“Six months,” Morgase said under her breath when the Amyrlin reached her. “I will give you six months. The same terms. I get the sisters to provide aid and protection for a year. Elaida stays.”

Siuan nodded in acceptance. Not joy, but acceptance. For all her bluster, Siuan had not been certain that she would get Morgase’s agreement at all, it appeared.

Gareth Bryne waited on the floor before the dais in his military livery. By the time Morgase was settled, the noble houses had arranged themselves in makeshift rows and were looking expectantly at her, and Elaida and Siuan stood flanking her small, replica Lion Throne, Elaida ever so slightly behind. Morgase could see Elaida’s hand resting on the back of the throne, her Aes Sedai ring glittering in Morgase’s periphery.

“Lord Bryne,” Morgase began, pitching her voice so that it could be heard throughout the hall, “the Amyrlin has come to us with a proposal, which I have accepted. As a testament to our close diplomatic ties to the White Tower, you will withdraw our garrisons from the Murandian border to a distance of twenty miles and absent them for a period of six months. Tar Valon will compensate us generously for this, and I believe that it will be for the good of Andor.”

Siuan exhaled slowly beside Morgase, but Bryne stepped up onto the dais in a fury.

“What kind of shortsighted, ill-conceived proposal is this? I would have thought better of you, Morgase,” Bryne said.

“She is your queen,” Elaida warned from behind her. Morgase could hear her step forward unbidden.

“And I am her Captain-General, and—”

Morgase raised her hand, silencing both. “This is how it will be,” she began. She laid out the terms of Siuan’s offer and her rationale, as far as was appropriate, for agreeing.

As she spoke, the faces of the gathered courtiers clouded. Dyelin, whose family lands had been harried by Murandian raiders in decades past, scowled defiantly.

She had expected this position to be unpopular. Being queen meant taking unpopular positions at times. Yet she noticed a few more of those unfriendly gazes fixating upon Siuan rather than on herself, a few suspicious pairs of eyes flitting between Elaida, Siuan and herself.

Her own eyes caught on the carved marble figures that emerged as if in life from the walls in the gaps where tapestries did not hang thick against the autumn chill. In one carving, a deer hit by an arrow roved through woods unaware, all while the fatal shaft caught in its side. She hoped dearly that she was not like that animal, wandering guilelessly, yet already fixed by the thing that would be her ruin.

But she talked on, because one must commit to the course one has decided to take. She was in the midst of explaining the utility of a friendly Murandy to Andor when Gareth Bryne interrupted her.

“I won’t do it,” Bryne broke in.

“You will do exactly as I command,” Morgase said.

“What you command is dangerous. Let us talk about this in private. You can reconsider. As your general, it is my duty to—”

Siuan stepped forward and looked straight up into Bryne’s face. “You are her general. Not her advisor, not her consort, her general only. You take orders.”

“Not your orders,” he replied impudently.

“Not mine. Hers. I asked. She agreed. Your job is solely to comply, and if you cannot do that, you are worth about as much as a general as a bucket of fishbait.”

“Who will make sure that Andor does not suffer for this?”

“I will, personally. And you would know this if you had let your queen speak.”

“Why does Tar Valon think that it can command Andor?” His voice echoed off the marble walls and darted through the room.

Murmurs flew around the hall in answer, likely saying what Morgase had begun to fear. She was her own woman, and she was doing this for her own reasons, but she knew how it would look, herself flanked by two Aes Sedai, one her long-standing advisor and the other the Amyrlin Seat. Elaida had started to move to the front of the dais at Bryne’s comment. It was growing crowded up there.

But she was no one’s pawn.

Morgase stepped off the dais, pulling Bryne down by the arm along with her.

“Apologize to her,” Morgase said loudly enough to be overheard.

“To whom? And for what?”

“To the Amyrlin Seat for your insolence. I should not have to tell you.” When he looked prepared to gainsay her again, she raised her voice even louder and threatened, “You will not retain your post if you are unable to follow orders.”

Siuan stood taller than Bryne now that he was on the floor. She raised her brows expectantly, an ironic smile twisting her lips.

“I beg your pardon. I was merely trying to do my duty.” The man managed to sound sincere, his chin tilted downwards in respect, though Morgase doubted it.

“Your duty,” Morgase said, “is to serve your queen. I have decided how that service will look for these coming months. You may go.”

Bryne shook his head but said nothing and stalked out.

“He will do it,” Elaida said from behind her, speaking to Morgase alone.

“I know he will.” Morgase looked between Siuan and Elaida, who appeared to be studiously maintaining a distance of three paces between them. Morgase rejoined them, then surveyed the nobility. In clutches of two or three, they muttered in Bryne’s wake, darting glances at the three women at the head of the room.

The picture of their queen united with Aes Sedai signaled to all that Morgase had thrown Andor’s lot in with the White Tower. And so she had. There was value in working with Tar Valon; Elaida had shown her that over the years, and the rewards in this case would be handsome. Dyelin’s glare would melt when the Tar Valon aid—or should she say reward—arrived on the border.

There was value in partnership with the Tower. That was what Andor knew that other kingdoms had not quite managed to realize. It just needed time to play out.

Morgase twisted her Great Serpent Ring on its finger behind her back, where no one could see. Elaida caught her hand and squeezed it for a moment before releasing her, just as Siuan gave her a satisfied nod. Yes, she was in it.