“I must go,” she told the two apprentices. “There’s something I realize I have to do.” Surandha and Estair made noises about going with her—well, more than noises; if Aiel said something, they meant it—but they were caught up in the discussion and did not argue when she insisted they stay. Wrapping her shawl around her head again and leaving the rising voices behind—Mera was telling Estair in no uncertain tones that she might be a Wise One eventually, but until she was she could listen to a woman who had managed a husband and raised three daughters and two sons without a sister-wife to help—Egwene ducked back into the windblown dust.

In the city, she tried to creep through the crowded streets without appearing to creep, tried to look every way while seeming to watch only where she was going. The chances of walking into Nesune were small, but. . . . Ahead of her two women in sober dresses and prim aprons sidestepped to go around one another, but both moved the same way, and they came nose to nose. Murmured apologies, and each woman stepped aside again. In the same direction. More apologies, and as if dancing, they moved together once more. As Egwene passed them, they were still stepping from side to side in perfect unison, faces beginning to redden, apologies swallowed behind compressed lips. How long it might go on she had no idea, but it was well to remember that Rand was in the city. Light, when he was around, it would not be beyond belief for her to walk right up on all six Aes Sedai just as a gust of wind ripped the shawl from around her head and three people shouted her name and called her Aes Sedai. With him around, it would not be entirely beyond belief to walk into Elaida.

She hurried on, increasingly uneasy about being caught in one of his ta’veren swirls, increasingly wild-eyed. Fortunately, the sight of a wild-eyed Aiel with her face hidden—what did they know of the difference between a shawl and a veil?—made people move out of her way, which allowed her to speed along at a near trot, but she did not draw a peaceful breath until she slipped into the Sun Palace by a small servant’s door in the rear.

A strong smell of cooking hung in the narrow hallway, and liveried men and women scurried back and forth. Others, taking their ease in their shirtsleeves or flapping aprons to make a little breeze, stared at her in astonishment. Likely no one except other servants came this close to the kitchens from one year to the next. Certainly not an Aiel. They looked as though they expected her to produce a spear from under her skirts.

She pointed a finger at a round little man who was wiping his neck with a kerchief. “Do you know where Rand al’Thor is?”