Aviendha shook her head, but began fumbling at the other woman’s collar. “Hold still,” she growled as the damane, a pale-faced girl of sixteen or seventeen, tried to flinch back. If the leashed women had looked on Rand as a wild beast, they stared at Aviendha like a nightmare made flesh.

“She is marath’damane,” the pale girl wailed. “Save Seri, mistress! Please, mistress! Save Seri!” The other damane, older, almost motherly, began weeping uncontrollably. Aviendha glared at Rand as hard as she did the girl for some reason, muttering angrily under her breath as she worked at the collar.

“It is he, Lady Morsa,” the other damane’s sul’dam said suddenly in a soft drawl that Rand could barely understand. “I have borne the bracelet long, and I could tell if the marath’damane had done more than block Jini.”

Morsa did not look surprised. In fact, there seemed to be a light of horrified recognition in her blue eyes as she gazed at Rand. There was only one way that could be.

“You were at Falme,” he said. If he went through first, it meant leaving Aviendha behind, although only for a moment.

“I was.” The noblewoman looked faint, but her slow, slurring voice was coolly imperious. “I saw you, and what you did.”

“Take a care I don’t do the same here. Give me no trouble, and I will leave you in peace.” He could not send Aviendha first, into the Light knew what. If emotion had not been so distant, he would have grimaced the way she was grimacing over that collar. They had to go through together, and be ready to face anything.

“Much has been kept secret about what happened in the lands of the great Hawkwing, Lady Morsa,” the severe-faced woman said. Her dark eyes were as hard on Morsa as they had been on him. “Rumors fly that the Ever Victorious Army has tasted defeat.”

“Do you now seek truth in rumor, Jalindin?” Morsa asked in a cutting tone. “A Seeker above all should know when to keep silent. The Empress herself has forbidden speech of the Corenne until she calls it again. If you—or I—speak so much as the name of the city where that expedition landed, our tongues will be removed. Perhaps you would enjoy being tongueless, in the Tower of Ravens? Not even the Listeners would hear you scream for mercy, or pay heed.”

Rand understood no more than two words in three, and it was not the odd accents. He wished he had time to listen. Corenne. The Return. That was what the Seanchan in Falme had called their attempt to seize the lands beyond the Aryth Ocean—the lands where he lived—that they considered their birthright. The rest—Seeker, Listeners, the Tower of Ravens—were a mystery. But apparently the Return had been called off, for the time being at least. That was worth knowing.