She expected some might resent the fact that she continued to refuse to bend while they had been put back on the straight and narrow so quickly, but to the contrary, it only seemed to decrease the number who were angry or scornful and increase the respect. No one tried to become her friend, which was just as well. White dress or no white dress, she was Aes Sedai, and it was improper for an Aes Sedai to befriend a novice. There was too much risk the girl would start feeling above herself and get into trouble for it.
Novices began coming to her for advice, for help learning their lessons, though. Only a handful at first, but the number grew day by day. She was willing to help them learn, which was usually just a matter of strengthening a girl's confidence or convincing a young woman that caution was wise, or taking them patiently through the steps of a weave that was giving trouble. Novices were forbidden to channel without an Aes Sedai or Accepted present, though they nearly always did in secret anyway, but she was a sister. She refused to help more than one at a time, however. Word of groups would surely leak out, and she would not be the only one sent to Silviana. She would ma
ke that trip as often as necessary, but she did not want to earn it for others. And as for advice. . . . With the novices kept strictly clear of men, advice was easy. Though strains between pillow-friends could be as harsh as anything men ever caused.
One evening, returning from yet another session with Silviana, she overheard Nicola talking to two novices who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Egwene hardly remembered being that young. It seemed a lifetime ago. Marah was a stocky Murandian with mischievous blue eyes, Namene a tall, slim Domani who giggled incessantly.
"Ask the Mother," Nicola said. A few of the novices had taken to calling Egwene that, though never where anyone not wearing white could hear. They were foolish, but not utter fools. "She's always willing to give advice."
Namene giggled nervously and wriggled. "I wouldn't want to bother her."
"Besides," Marah said, a lilt in her voice, "they say she always gives the same advice, she does."
"And good advice it is, too." Nicola held up one hand to tick off fingers. "Obey the Aes Sedai. Obey the Accepted. Work hard. Then work harder."
Gliding on toward her room, Egwene smiled. She had been unable to make Nicola behave properly while she was openly Amyrlin, but it seemed she might have succeeded while masquerading as a novice herself. Remarkable.
There was one more thing she could do for them: comfort them. Impossible as it seemed at first, the interior of the Tower sometimes changed. People got lost trying to find rooms they had been to dozens of times. Women were seen walking out of walls, or into them, often in dresses of old-fashioned cut, sometimes in bizarre garb, dresses that seemed simply lengths of brightly colored cloth folded around the body, embroidered ankle-length tabards worn over wide trousers, stranger things still. Light, when could any woman have wanted to wear a dress that left her bosom completely exposed?
Egwene was able to discuss it with Siuan in Tel'aran'rhiod, so she knew that these things were signs of the approach of Tarmon Gai'don. An unpleasant thought, yet there was nothing to be done about it. What was, was, and it was not as if Rand himself was not a herald of the Last Battle. Some of the sisters in the Tower must have known what it all meant, too, but wrapped up in their own affairs they made no effort to comfort novices who were weeping with fright. Egwene did.
"The world is full of strange wonders," she told Coride, a pale-haired girl who was sobbing facedown on her bed. Only a year younger than herself, Coride was most definitely still a girl despite a year and a half in the Tower. "Why be surprised if some of those wonders appear in the White Tower? What better place?" She never mentioned the Last Battle to these girls. That was hardly likely to be any comfort.
"But she walked into a wall!" Coride wailed, raising her head. Her face was red and blotchy, and her cheeks glistened damply. "A wall! And then none of us could find the classroom, and Pedra couldn't either, and she got cross with us. Pedra never gets cross. She was frightened, too!"
"I'll wager Pedra didn't start crying, though." Egwene sat down on the edge of the girl's bed, and was pleased that she did not wince. Novice mattresses were not noted for softness. "The dead can't harm the living, Coride. They can't touch us. They don't even seem to see us. Besides, they were initiates of the Tower or else servants here. This was their home as much as it is ours. And as for rooms or hallways not being where they're supposed to be, just remember that the Tower is a place of wonders. Remember that, and they won't frighten you."
It seemed feeble to her, but Coride wiped her eyes and swore she would never be frightened again. Unfortunately, there were a hundred and two like her, not all so easily comforted. It was enough to make Egwene angrier at the sisters in the Tower than she already had been.
Her days were not all lessons and comforting novices and being punished by the Mistress of Novices, though the last did take up an unfortunate amount of each day. Silviana had been right to doubt that she would have much free time. Novices were always given chores. Often it was make-work, since the Tower had well over a thousand serving men and women without counting laborers, but physical work helped build character, so the Tower had always believed. Plus, it helped keep the novices too tired to think of men, supposedly. She was loaded down with chores beyond what the novices were given, though. Some were assigned by sisters who considered her a runaway, others by Silviana in the hope that weariness would dull the edge of her "rebellion."
Daily, after one meal or another, she scrubbed dirty pots with coarse salt and a stiff brush in the workroom off the main kitchen. From time to time Laras would put her head in, but she never spoke. And she never used her long spoon, even when Egwene was massaging the small of her back, aching from being head-down in a large kettle, rather than scrubbing. Laras dealt out smacks aplenty to scullions and undercooks who tried to play pranks on Egwene, as was customary with novices sent to work in the kitchen. Supposedly that was just because, as she announced loudly every time she gave a thwack, they had plenty of time to play when they were not supposed to be working, but Egwene noticed that Laras was not so quick when someone goosed one of the true novices or tipped a cup of cold water down the back of her neck. It seemed she did have an ally of sorts. If she could only figure out how to make use of her.
She hauled water in buckets hanging from the ends of a pole balanced across her shoulders, to the kitchen, to the novices' quarters, to the Accepted's quarters, all the way up to the Ajah's quarters. She carried meals to sisters in their rooms, raked garden paths, pulled weeds, ran errands for sisters, attended Sitters, swept floors, mopped floors, scrubbed floors on her hands and knees, and that was only a partial list. She never shirked at these tasks, and only in part because she would not give anyone an excuse to call her lazy. In a way, she viewed them as penance for not having prepared properly before turning the harbor chain to cuendillar. Penances were to be borne with dignity. As much dignity as anyone can have while scrubbing a floor, anyway.
Besides, visiting the Accepted's quarters gave her a chance to see how they viewed her. There were thirty-one in the Tower, but at any given time some were teaching novices and others taking lessons of their own, so she seldom found more than ten or twelve in their rooms around the nine-tiered well surrounding a small garden. Word of her arrival always spread quickly, though, and she never lacked an audience.
At first, many of them tried to overwhelm her with orders, especially Mair, a plump blue-eyed Arafellin, and Asseil, a slim Taraboner with pale hair and brown eyes. They had been novices when she came to the Tower, and already jealous of her quick rise to Accepted when she left. With them, every second sentence was fetch that, or carry this there. For all of them she was the "novice" who had caused so much difficulty, the "novice" who thought she was the Amyrlin Seat. She carried pails of water till her back ached, uncomplaining, yet she refused to obey their commands. Which earned her more visits to the Mistress of Novices, of course. As the days passed, as her continual trips to Silviana's study showed no effect, however, that flow of commands dwindled and finally ceased. Even Asseil and Mair had not really been trying to be mean, only to behave as they thought they should in the circumstances, and they were at a loss as to what to do with her.
Some of the Accepted showed signs of fright at the dead walking and the interior of the Tower changing, and whenever she saw a bloodless face or teary eyes she would say the same things she told the novices. Not addressing the woman directly, which might have gotten her back up rather than soothing her, but as if talking to herself. It worked as well with Accepted as with novices. Many gave a start when she began, or opened their mouths as though to tell her to be quiet, yet none did, and she always left a thoughtful expression behind. The Accepted continued to come out onto the stone-railed galleries when she entered, but they watched her in silence as though wondering what she was. Eventually she would teach them what she was. Them and the sisters. too.
Attending Sitters and sisters, a woman in white standing quietly in the corner quickly became part of the furniture even when she was not
orious. If they noticed her, they changed their conversation, yet she overheard many snippets, often of plots to avenge some slight given or wrong done by another Ajah. Oddly, most of the sisters seemed to see the other Ajahs inside the Tower as more their enemies than they did the sisters in the camp outside the city, and the Sitters were not much better. It made her want to slap them. True, it boded well for relations when the other sisters returned to the Tower, but still. . . .
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'veren 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."