Egwene slapped the embossed folder shut on the reports with a loud smack. Between the disgusting taste on her tongue and the sharp throb in her head—not to mention their incessant voices!—she could not keep her place to read anyway. The three sisters looked at her in surprise. She had made it clear long ago that she was in charge, but she tried not to show temper. Oaths of fealty or no oaths of fealty, a young woman displaying temper was too easy to dismiss as sulky. Which only made her angrier, which made her head hurt more, which …

“I’ve waited long enough,” she said, making an effort to keep her voice smooth. Her head gave it a slight edge of sharpness anyway. Perhaps Sheriam thought she was supposed to meet her at the Hall.

Gathering her cloak, she strode out into the cold while still swinging it around her shoulders, and Morvrin and the other two hesitated only a moment before following in her wake. Accompanying her to the Hall might seem a little like they were her entourage, but they were supposed to be watching her, and she suspected that even Morvrin was eager to hear what Akarrin had to report and what Moria and the rest intended to fashion from it.

Nothing too difficult to deal with, Egwene hoped, nothing like what Anaiya and Myrelle thought. If necessary, she could try applying the Law of War, but even if that was successful, ruling by edict had its disadvantages. When people had to obey you in one thing, they always found ways to wriggle away on others, and the more they were forced to obey, the more places they found for wriggling away. It was a natural balance you could not escape. Worse, she had learned just how addictive it was to have people jump when she spoke. You came to take it as the natural way of things, and then when they failed to jump, you were caught on the wrong foot. Besides, with her head pounding—it was pounding, now, not throbbing, though perhaps not as sharply—with her head, she was ready to snap at anyone who looked at her crosswise, and even when people had to swallow it, that never went down well.