Nynaeve flung her hands into the air. “Light! We were heartbeats from the end, because of you. The end of everything. No more Pattern, no more world, nothing. Millions of lives could have winked out because of your carelessness.”

“I …” Leilwin’s failures seemed monumental, suddenly. Her life, lost. Her very name, lost. Her ship, stripped from her by the Daughter of the Nine Moons herself. All were immaterial in light of this.

“I did fight,” Bayle said more firmly. “I did fight with what I could give.”

“I should have joined you, it appears,” Leilwin said.

“I did try to explain that,” Bayle said grimly. “Many times now, burn me, but I did.”

“Bah,” Nynaeve said, raising a hand to her forehead. “What are you doing here, Egeanin? I had hoped you were dead. If you had died trying to keep your oath, then I could not have blamed you.”

I handed it to Suroth myself, Leilwin thought. A price paid for my life, the only way out.

“Well?” Nynaeve glared at her. “Out with it, Egeanin.”

“I no longer bear that name.” Leilwin went down on her knees. “I have had all stripped from me, including my honor, it now appears. I give myself to you as payment.”

Nynaeve snorted. “We don’t keep people as if they were animals, unlike you Seanchan.”

Leilwin continued kneeling. Bayle rested a hand on her shoulder, but did not try to pull her to her feet. He understood well enough now why she had to do as she had. He was quite nearly civilized.

“On your feet,” Nynaeve snapped. “Light, Egeanin. I remember you being so strong you could chew rocks and spit out sand.”

“It is my strength that compels me,” she said, lowering her eyes. Did Nynaeve not understand how difficult this was? It would be easier to slit her own throat, only she had not the honor left to demand such an easy end.

“Stand!”

Leilwin did as told.

Nynaeve grabbed her cloak off the bed and threw it on. “Come. We’ll take you to the Amyrlin. Maybe she’ll know what to do with you.”

Nynaeve barged out into the night, and Leilwin followed. Her decision had been made. There was only one path that made sense, one way to preserve a shred of honor, and perhaps to help her people survive the lies they had been telling themselves for so long.

Leilwin Shipless now belonged to the White Tower. Whatever they said, whatever they tried to do with her, that fact would not change. They owned her. She would be a da’covale to this Amyrlin, and would ride this storm like a ship whose sail had been shredded by the wind.

Perhaps, with what remained of her honor, she could earn this woman’s trust.

“It’s part of an old Borderlander relief for the pain,” Melten said, removing the bandage at Talmanes’ side. “The blisterleaf slows the taint left by the cursed metal.”

Melten was a lean, mop-haired man. He dressed like an Andoran woodsman, with a simple shirt and cloak, but spoke like a Borderlander. In his pouch he carried a set of colored balls that he’d sometimes juggle for the other members of the Band. In another life, he must have been a gleeman.