“As long as no ruler scoffs, why should we care?” Myrelle said heatedly. The youngest of the six, not many years Aes Sedai, she sounded decidedly irritated.

“What ruler would dare?” Anaiya asked, much like a woman asking what child would dare track mud on her carpets. “In any case, no king or queen knows enough of what passes among Aes Sedai to understand. Only the sisters’ opinions need concern us, not theirs.”

“What worries me,” Carlinya replied coolly, “is that if she is easily guided by us, she may be as easily guided by others.” The pale, almost black-eyed White was always cool, some would say icy.

Whatever they were talking about, it was nothing they wanted to discuss in front of Elayne or the others; they fell silent just before reaching them.

Siuan and Leane’s reaction to the newcomers had been to turn their backs on each other sharply, as if they had been having words interrupted by the Aes Sedai’s arrival. For Elayne’s part, she quickly checked her dress. It was the proper banded white. She did not know how she felt about that, appearing in the right dress without thought; she would have wagered that Nynaeve had had to change her garb after appearing. But then, Nynaeve was far more intrepid than she, struggling against limits that she herself acquiesced to. How could she ever manage to rule Andor? If her mother was dead. If.

Sheriam, slightly plump and with high cheekbones, turned tilted green eyes on Siuan and Leane. For a moment she wore a blue-fringed shawl. “If you two cannot learn to get along, I vow I’ll send both of you to Tiana.” It had the sound of something said often and no longer really meant.

“You worked together long enough,” Beonin said in her heavy Taraboner accent. A pretty Gray with honey-colored hair in a multitude of braids, she had blue-gray eyes that constantly looked startled. Nothing surprised Beonin, though. She would not believe the sun came up in the morning until she saw for herself, yet if one morning it did not, Elayne doubted that Beonin would turn a hair. It would just confirm that she had been right to demand proof. “You can and must work together again.”

Beonin sounded as if she had said that so often that she hardly thought of it. All the Aes Sedai were long since used to Siuan and Leane. They had begun handling them as they might have managed two girls who could not stop squabbling. Aes Sedai did have a tendency to see anyone who was not as a child. Even these two who once had been sisters.