Merana supposed she herself had begun it, deferring to Verin. She had still been the head of the delegation, everyone still followed her orders, even Masuri and Rafela and Faeldrin. But they all knew. She was not certain yet whether Kiruna or Bera had taken charge—that one was born on a farm and the other in a palace mattered not at all; that had nothing to do with being Aes Sedai—but the one thing Merana was sure of was that the embassy was crumbling around her. It was the sort of thing that would never have happened when the White Tower was whole, when an ambassador had the full power of the Tower and the Amyrlin Seat behind her, and no matter if she had taken thirty years to reach the shawl and barely had enough strength to keep from being sent away. They were only a collection of Aes Sedai now, slipping into their relative places without thought.

As if speaking her name had been a summons, Alanna appeared just as Bera was opening her mouth. She and Kiruna rounded on Alanna together. “Al’Thor claims to have gone to Cairhien,” Bera said baldly. “Can you add anything?”

Alanna faced them proudly, a dangerous gleam in her dark eyes. They were speaking of her Warder, after all. “He is somewhere to the east. That is all I know. It could be Cairhien.”

“If you had to bond a man without asking him,” Kiruna demanded in that commanding voice, “why, by the Light most holy, have you not used the bond to bend him to your will? Compared to the other, that is only slapping his wrist.”

Alanna still had small control of her emotions. Color actually flooded her cheeks, partly in anger by the way her eyes flashed, and assuredly partly in shame. “Has no one told you?” she asked, too brightly. “I suppose no one wants to think of it. I certainly do not.” Faeldrin and Seonid looked at the floor, and they were not the only ones. “I tried to compel him moments after I bonded him,” Alanna continued as if noticing none of it. “Have you ever attempted to uproot an oak tree with your bare hands, Kiruna? It was much the same.”

Kiruna’s only reaction was a slow widening of her eyes, a slow deep breath. Bera actually muttered, “That’s impossible. Impossible.”

Alanna threw back her head and laughed. Her hands on her hips made the laughter seem contemptuous, which tightened Bera’s mouth and brought a cold gleam to Kiruna’s eyes. Verin peered at them, reminding Merana uncomfortably of a robin peering at worms. Somehow Verin seemed to defer without deferring, though Merana could not understand how.

“No one ever before has bonded a man who can channel,” Alanna said when her mirth subsided. “Perhaps that has something to do with it.”