“I don’t understand, Mother,” Egwene said after a moment.

“I suppose you don’t, at that. You are the only two in the Tower I can be absolutely sure are not Black Ajah.” The Amyrlin’s mouth still twisted around those words. “Liandrin and her twelve went, but did all of them go? Or did they leave some of their number behind, like a stub in shallow water that you don’t see till it puts a hole in your boat? It may be I’ll not find that out until it is too late, but I will not let Liandrin and the others get away with what they did. Not the theft, and especially not the murders. No one kills my people and walks away unscathed. And I’ll not let thirteen trained Aes Sedai serve the Shadow. I mean to find them, and still them!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with us,” Nynaeve said slowly. She did not look as if she liked what she was thinking.

“Just this, child. You two are to be my hounds, hunting the Black Ajah. No one will believe it of you, not a pair of half-trained Accepted I humiliated publicly.”

“That is crazy!” Nynaeve’s eyes had opened wide by the time the Amyrlin reached the words “Black Ajah,” and her knuckles were white from her grip on her braid. She bit her words off and spat them: “They are all full Aes Sedai. Egwene hasn’t even been raised to Accepted yet, and you know I cannot channel enough to light a candle unless I am angry, not of my own free will. What chance would we have?”

Egwene nodded agreement. Her tongue had stuck to the roof of her mouth. Hunt the Black Ajah? I’d rather hunt a bear with a switch! She’s just trying to scare us, to punish us more. She has to be! If that was what the Amyrlin was trying, she was succeeding all too well.

The Amyrlin was nodding, too. “Every word you say is true. But each of you is more than a match for Liandrin in sheer power, and she is the strongest of them. Yet they are trained, and you are not, and you, Nynaeve, do have limitations, as yet. But when you don’t have an oar, child, any plank will do to paddle the boat ashore.”

“But I would be useless,” Egwene blurted. Her voice came out as a squeak, but she was too afraid to be ashamed. She means it! Oh, Light, she means it! Liandrin gave me to the Seanchan, and now she wants me to hunt thirteen like her? “My studies, my lessons, working in the kitchens. Anaiya Sedai will surely want to continue testing me to see if I am a Dreamer. I’ll barely have time left over to sleep and eat. How can I hunt anything?”