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.

Despite the emotion she could feel in Birgitte, the other woman kept her face smooth and unconcerned. “The Forsaken,” she muttered dryly. And softly. That was not a name to bandy about. “Well, as long as it has nothing to do with us, we’re bloody all right.” A grunt that might have been a laugh gave her the lie. But then, although Birgitte said she had never been a soldier before, she had a soldier’s view. Long odds were usually the only odds you could find, but you still had to get the job done. “I wonder what they think of it?” she added, nodding toward the four Aes Sedai who had just stepped out of a crossing corridor down the hallway.