“He’s as overweening as a pig in a pea field.” Egwene shifted herself on the bed; she remembered it as hard, but the thin mattress felt softer than what she slept on in the tent. She did not want to talk about Rand. “Are you certain this fight will not cause more trouble?” A feud with this Latelle could not make their traveling easier.

“I do not think so. Latelle’s grievance against Nynaeve was that all the unattached men were no longer hers to pick and choose from. Some women do think that way, I suppose. Aludra keeps to herself, and Cerandin wouldn’t have said boo to a goose until I started teaching her to stand up for herself, and Clarine is married to Petra. But Nynaeve has made it clear that she’ll box the ears of any man who even thinks he can flirt with her, and she apologized to Latelle, so I hope that may settle it.”

“She apologized?”

The other woman nodded, her face as bemused as Egwene knew her own must be. “I thought she would thump Luca when he told her she must—he doesn’t seem to think her injunction holds to him, by the way—but she did it, after grumping about for an hour. Muttering about you, actually.” She hesitated, giving Egwene a sidelong look. “Did you say something to her at your last meeting? She has been . . . different . . . since then, and sometimes she talks to herself. Argues, really. About you, from the little I’ve heard.”

“I said nothing that did not have to be said.” So it was holding, whatever it was that had happened between them. Either that, or Nynaeve was storing up her anger for the next time they met. She was not going to put up with the woman’s temper anymore, not now that she knew she did not have to. “You tell her from me that she is too old to be rolling about on the ground fighting. If she gets into another, I’ll have worse to say to her. You tell her that exactly. It will be worse.” Let Nynaeve chew on that until next time. Either she would be mild as a lamb . . . Or else Egwene would just have to carry through on her threat. Nynaeve might be stronger in the Power, when she could channel, but here, Egwene was. One way or another, she was finished with Nynaeve’s tantrums.

“I will tell her,” Elayne said. “You have changed, too. There seems to be something of Rand’s attitude about you.”

It took Egwene a moment to realize what she meant, helped by that amused little smile. “Don’t be silly.”

Elayne laughed aloud and gave her another hug. “Oh, Egwene, you will be Amyrlin Seat one day, when I am Queen of Andor.”

“If there is a Tower then,” Egwene said soberly, and Elayne’s laughter faded.