“You channeled,” she said to Elayne through her teeth. Wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, she resisted the urge to dash it to the slowly heaving deck. The other passengers left a clear space for the two of them and Birgitte a few paces across, but she still kept her voice low, and as affable as she could manage. Her stomach seemed to move a heartbeat behind the ship’s roll; that hardly improved her temper. “This wind is your doing.” She hoped there was enough red fennel in her scrip.

From Elayne’s damply glowing countenance and wide eyes, milk and honey should have fountained from her mouth. “You are turning into a frightened rabbit. Pull yourself together. Samara is miles behind us. No one could sense anything useful from that far. She would have to be on the ship with us to know. I was very quick.”

Nynaeve thought her own face might crack if she held her smile any longer, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Neres, studying his passengers and shaking his head. Angry as she was at that moment, she could also see the almost faded residue of the other woman’s weaving. Working weather was like rolling a stone downhill; it tended to keep going the way you started it. When it bounced away from the path, as it would sooner or later, you just had to twitch it back. Moghedien might have felt a weave of that size from Samara—maybe—but certainly not well enough to say where it had been done. She herself was a match for Moghedien in raw strength, and if she was not strong enough to do something, it seemed safe to say the Forsaken was not either. And she did want to travel as quickly as possible; right then, one day more than necessary in close quarters with the other two held as much attraction for her as sharing the cabin with Neres. For that matter, an extra day on water was nothing to look forward to. How could a ship move in such a fashion when the river looked so flat?

Smiling was beginning to make her lips ache. “You should have asked, Elayne. You always go and do things without asking, without thinking. It’s time you realized if you fall into a hole running blindly, your old nurse isn’t going to come pick you up and wash your face.” By the last word, Elayne’s eyes were as round as teacups, and her bared teeth looked ready to bite.

Birgitte put a hand on each of them, leaning close and beaming as though joy had her by the throat. “If you two don’t stop this, I’m going to tip you both into the river to cool off. You are both acting like Shago barmaids with winteritch!”