She wore the plain white dress of a novice again—even her belt and pouch were white—but she felt no joy at having rid herself of the hated gray. Her room had become too much of a prison cell. What if they mean to keep me here. In this room. Like a cell. Like a collar and. . . .

She glanced at the door—the dark Accepted would still be standing guard on the other side, she knew—and rolled close to the white plastered wall. Just above the mattress was a small hole, almost invisible unless you knew where to look, drilled through into the next room by novices long ago. Egwene kept her voice to a whisper.

“Elayne?” There was no answer. “Elayne? Are you asleep?”

“How could I sleep?” came Elayne’s reply, a reedy whisper through the hole. “I thought we might be in some trouble, but I did not expect this. Egwene, what are they going to do to us?”

Egwene had no answer, and her guesses were not of the sort she wanted to voice aloud. She did not even want to think of them. “I actually thought we might be heroes, Elayne. We brought back the Horn of Valere safely. We discovered Liandrin is Black Ajah.” Her voice skipped on that. Aes Sedai had always denied the existence of a Black Ajah, an Ajah that served the Dark One, and were known to become angry with anyone who even suggested it was real. But we know it’s real. “We should be heroes, Elayne.”

“ ‘Should and would build no bridges,’ ” Elayne said. “Light, I used to hate it when Mother said that to me, but it’s true. Verin said we mustn’t speak of the Horn, or Liandrin, to anyone but her or the Amyrlin Seat. I do not think any of this will work out the way we thought. It is not fair. We’ve been through so much; you’ve been through so much. It just is not fair.”

“Verin says. Moiraine says. I know why people think Aes Sedai are puppetmasters. I can almost feel the strings on my arms and legs. Whatever they do, it will be what they decide is good for the White Tower, not what is good or fair for us.”

“But you still want to be Aes Sedai. Don’t you?”