Elayne sneezed, banging her head on the side of the overturned cauldron. The smell of burned soup filled her nose. The midmorning sun had heated the dark interior of the big cookpot until it felt as if it still sat on a fire; sweat dripped off her. No, it poured off. Dropping the coarse pumice stone, she backed out on her knees and glared at the woman next to her. Or rather, at the half of a woman sticking out of a slightly smaller kettle lying on its side. She poked Nynaeve in the hip, and smiled grimly when the poke produced the bang of a head against iron and a yelp. Nynaeve backed out with a baleful stare, not hindered at all by a yawn she stifled behind a grimy hand. Elayne gave her no chance to speak.

“You just had to blow up, didn’t you? You couldn’t hold on to your temper for five minutes. We had everything in our hands, and you had to kick us in the ankles.”

“They wouldn’t have let us go to Ebou Dar anyway,” Nynaeve muttered. “And I didn’t do all the kicking of ankles.” She shoved her chin up in a ridiculous fashion, so she had to look down her nose to see Elayne. “ ‘Aes Sedai rule their fear,’ ” she said in tones that might have done for berating a drunken layabout who had staggered into your horse, “ ‘they do not allow it to rule them. Lead, and we will follow gladly, but you must lead, not cower, hoping that something will make your troubles vanish.’ ”

Elayne’s cheeks heated. She had not looked anything like that. And she certainly had not sounded like that. “Well, perhaps we both overstepped good sense, but—” She cut off at the sound of a footstep.

“So the Aes Sedai’s golden children have decided to take a rest, have they?” Faolain’s smile was as far from friendly as it was possible for a smile to be. “I am not here for the joy of it, you know. I meant to spend today working on something of my own, something not terribly inferior to what you golden children have done, I think. Instead, I must watch Accepted scrub pots for their sins. Watch so you don’t sneak off like the wretched novices the pair of you should be. Now back to work. I can’t leave until you’re done, and I do not intend to spend the whole day here.”