“That’s madness,” Sheriam said before anyone else could open her mouth. She sounded angry, and perhaps a little frightened. Well she might be. Her name was on a list of those marked for stilling. “None of them can really believe negotiation is possible.”

“I should hardly think so,” Anaiya put in dryly. Her plain face belonged on a farmwife rather than a Blue sister, and she dressed very simply, publicly at least, in good wool, but she handled her bay gelding as easily as Delana did her mare. Very little could ruffle Anaiya’s calm. Of course, there was no Blue among the Sitters talking negotiation. Anaiya looked an unlikely soldier, but for Blues, this was war to the knife, no quarter asked or given. “Elaida has made the situation quite clear.”

“Elaida is irrational,” Carlinya said with a toss of her head that made her cowl fall to her shoulders and shook her short dark curls. She pulled the hood back into place irritably. Carlinya seldom showed any hint of emotion, yet her pale cheeks were nearly as flushed as Sheriam’s, and heat filled her voice. “She cannot possibly believe that we will all come crawling back to her now. How can Saroiya believe she will accept anything less?”

“Crawling is what Elaida has demanded, though,” Morvrin muttered acridly. Her usually placid round face wore a sour expression, too, and her plump hands were tight on her reins. She scowled so hard at a flight of magpies, scattering from a stand of birch trees at the passage of horses, that it seemed they should fall out of the sky. “Takima likes the sound of her own voice, sometimes. She must be talking to hear herself.”

“Faiselle must, too,” Myrelle said darkly, glaring at Delana as though she were to blame. The olive-skinned woman was known for her temper, even among Greens. “I never expected to hear that sort of talk out of her. She’s never been a fool before.”

“I can’t believe Magla really means any such thing,” Nisao insisted, peering at each of them in turn. “She just can’t. For one thing, as much as I hate to say it, Romanda has Magla so tight under her thumb that Magla squeaks whenever Romanda sneezes, and the only doubt Romanda has is whether Elaida should be birched before she’s exiled.”