A village was sliding past, or what had been a village once. Half the houses were only smoldering piles of rubble with chimneys sticking starkly out of the ruins. On the other houses, doors swung with the wind, and pieces of furniture, bits of clothing and houseware littered the dirt street, tumbled about as if thrown. Nothing living moved in the village except for one half-starved dog that ignored the passing ship as it trotted out of sight behind the toppled walls of what appeared to have been an inn. She could never see such a sight without a queasiness settling in her belly, but she tried to maintain the dispassionate serenity she thought an Aes Sedai might have. It did not help much. Beyond the village, a thick plume of smoke was rising into the sky. Three or four miles off, she estimated.

This was not the first such plume of smoke she had seen since the Erinin began to flow along the border of Cairhien, nor the first such village. At least this time there were no bodies in sight. Captain Ellisor sometimes had to sail close to the Cairhienin shore because of mudflats—he said they shifted in this part of the river—but however close he came, she had not seen a single living person.

The village and the smoke plume slipped away behind the ship, but already another column of smoke was coming into view ahead, further from the river. The forest was thinning, ash and leatherleaf and black elder giving way to willow and whitewood and wateroak, and some she did not recognize.

The wind caught her cloak, but she let it stream, feeling the cold cleanness of the air, feeling the freedom of wearing brown instead of any sort of white, though it had not been her first choice. Yet dress and cloak were of the best wool, well cut and well sewn.

Another sailor trotted by, bowing as he went. She vowed to learn at least some of what it was they were doing; she did not like feeling ignorant. Wearing her Great Serpent ring on her right hand made for a good deal of bowing with a captain and crew born mainly in Tar Valon.

She had won that argument with Nynaeve, though Nynaeve had been sure she herself was the only one of the three of them old enough for people to believe she was Aes Sedai. But Nynaeve had been wrong. Egwene was ready to admit that both she and Elayne had received startled looks on boarding the Blue Crane that afternoon at Southharbor, and Captain Ellisor’s eyebrows had climbed almost to where his hair would have begun had he had any, but he had been all smiles and bows.