Light, but he should not be pleased that she was not going. Tossing the Dragon Scepter atop a table with gilded vine-carved legs, he undid his sword belt and added that. “Did Amys and the others tell you where Elayne is?”

For a long moment Aviendha stood in the middle of the blue-tiled floor looking at him, her expression unreadable. “They do not know,” she said finally. “I asked.” He had expected she would. She had not done it in months, but before coming to Caemlyn the first time with him, every second word out of her mouth had been a reminder that he belonged to Elayne. In her view he did, and what had happened between them beyond that gateway she had made clearly did not alter the fact, and would not happen again, something else she had made quite clear. Exactly as he wanted it; he was worse than a pig to feel regret. Ignoring all the fine gilded chairs, she settled cross-legged on the floor, arranging her skirts gracefully. “They did speak of you, though.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” he said dryly, and to his surprise her cheeks reddened. Aviendha was not a woman for blushes, and this made twice in one day.

“They have shared dreams, some of which concern you.” She sounded slightly strangled until she paused to clear her throat, then fixed him with a steady, determined gaze. “Melaine and Bair dreamed of you on a boat,” she said, the word still awkward after all these months in the wetlands, “with three women whose faces they could not see, and a scale tilting first one way then the other. Melaine and Amys dreamed of a man standing by your side with a dagger to your throat, but you did not see him. Bair and Amys dreamed of you cutting the wetlands in two with a sword.” For an instant her eyes darted contemptuously to the scabbarded blade lying atop the Dragon Scepter. Contemptuously, and a bit guiltily. She had given him that, once the property of King Laman, carefully wrapped in a blanket so she could not be said to have actually touched it. “They cannot interpret the dreams, but they thought you should know.”