Silence answered him, broken only by the softly serene sounds of the harp in the background, each man waiting for another to speak, all coming as close as Aiel could to showing discomfort. Jheran frowned at his thumbnail, and Bruan toyed with one of the silvery tassels on his green cushion. Even Rhuarc studied the carpet.

Graceful, white-robed men and women moved into the hush, pouring worked silver goblets of wine to set beside each man, bringing small silver plates with olives, rare in the Waste, and white ewe’s-milk cheese, and the pale, wrinkled nuts the Aiel called pecara. The Aiel faces looking out of those pale cowls had downcast eyes and an unfamiliar meekness on their features.

Whether captured in battle or on a raid, the gai’shain were sworn to serve obediently for one year and a day, touching no weapon, doing no violence, at the end returning to their own clan and sept as if nothing had happened. A strange echo of the Way of the Leaf. Ji’e’toh, honor and obligation, required it, and breaking ji’e’toh was nearly the worst thing an Aiel could do. Perhaps the worst. It was possible that some of these men and women were serving their own clan chief, but neither would acknowledge it by the blink of an eye so long as the period of gai’shain held, not even for a son or daughter.

It struck Rand suddenly that this was the real reason that some Aiel took what he had revealed so hard. To those, it must seem that their ancestors had sworn gai’shain, not only for themselves but for all succeeding generations. And those generations—all, down to the present day—had broken ji’e’toh by taking up the spear. Had the men in front of him ever worried along those lines? Ji’e’toh was very serious business to an Aiel.

The gai’shain departed on soft slippered feet, barely making a sound. None of the clan chiefs touched their wine, or the food.

“Is there any hope that Couladin will meet with me?” Rand knew there was not; he had stopped sending requests for a meeting once he learned Couladin was having the messengers skinned alive. But it was a way to start the others talking.

Han snorted. “The only word we have had from him is that he means to flay you when next he sees you. Does that sound as if he will talk?”

“Can I break the Shaido away from him?”