Outside, Elayne rose from the stone step. "I’m sorry, Nynaeve," she said, brushing her skirt. "I was so excited, I blurted out everything to Sheriam before I realized Romanda and Delana were there."

"It doesn’t matter," Nynaeve said heavily, starting down the crowded street. "It would have gotten out sooner or later." It just was not fair, though. I did something they said couldn’t be done, and I still have to scrub pots!"Elayne, I don’t care what you say; we have to go. Carlinya was talking about getting a ‘hold’ on Rand. This lot won’t be any better than Elaida. Thom or Juilin will get horses for us, and Birgitte can just bite her elbow."

"I’m afraid it’s too late," Elayne said miserably. "Word is spreading already."

Larissa Lyndel and Zenare Ghodar swooped down from opposite directions like hawks on either side of Nynaeve. Larissa was a bony woman whose plainness almost overcame Aes Sedai agelessness, Zenare slightly plump and haughty enough for two queens, but both wore faces of eager anticipation. They were Yellow Ajah, though neither had been in the room when she Healed Siuan and Leane.

"I want to see you go through everything step by step, Nynaeve," Larissa said, laying hold of an arm.

"Nynaeve," Zenare said, seizing the other arm, "I wager that I will find a hundred things you never thought of, if you repeat the weave often enough."

Salita Toranes, Tairen and almost as dark as one of the Sea Folk, seemed to pop out of nowhere. "Others ahead of me, I see. Well, burn my soul if I’ll wait in line."

"I was here first, Salita," Zenare said firmly. And tightened her grip.

"Iwas first," Larissa said, tightening hers.

Nynaeve shot a look of pure horror at Elayne, and got commiseration in return, and a shrug. This was what Elayne had meant about too late. She would not have a waking moment to herself after this.

"... angry?" Zenare was saying. "I know fifty ways at the front of my head to make her angry enough to chew rocks."

"Ican think of a hundred" Larissa said. "I intend to break her block if it’s the last thing I do."

Magla Daronos shouldered her way into the group, and she had the shoulders for it. She looked as if she worked the sword, or a blacksmith’s hammer. "You will break it, Larissa? Hah! I do have several ways in mind already to draw it out of her."

Nynaeve just wanted to scream.

It was all Siuan could do not to embrace saidarand hold it, but she thought she might start crying again. That would never do. Besides, it would seem like some fool novice’s display to the women crowding around her in the waiting room. Every expression of wonder and delight, every warm welcome as if she had been away for years, came as balm, especially from those who had been friends before she became Amyrlin, before time and duty pulled them apart. Lelaine and Delana wrapped their arms around her as they had not in long years. Moiraine had been the only one closer, the only one beside Leane she had managed to keep after donning the stole, and duty had helped keep them together.

"It is so good to have you back," Lelaine laughed.

"So very good," Delana murmured warmly.

Siuan laughed, and had to scrub tears from her cheeks. Light, what was the matter with her? She had not wept this easily as a child!

Maybe it was just joy, at regaining saidar, at all the warmth around her. The Light knew, altogether it was enough to unsettle anybody. She had never dared dream this day might come, and now that it had, she held nothing against any of these women, not their cold distance before, not their insistence that she remember her place. The line between Aes Sedai and not Aes Sedai was clear – she had insisted on it before she was stilled, and it went without saying that she would again – and she knew how stilled women had to be dealt with for their own good and the good of those who could still channel. Had had to be dealt with. How strange it was that that would never be so again.

From the corner of her eye she saw Gareth Bryne trotting up the stairs at the side of the room. "Excuse me a moment," she said, and hurried after him.

Even hurrying meant stopping every two steps to accept another congratulation all the way to the stairs, so she did not catch up until he was striding down a corridor on the second floor. Rushing ahead, she planted herself in front of him. His mostly gray hair was windblown, his square face and worn buff coat dusty. He looked as solid as stone.

Lifting a sheaf of papers, he said, "I have to drop this off, Siuan," and tried to step around her.

She moved to block him. "I’ve been Healed. I can channel again."

He nodded; just nodded! "I heard some talk. I suppose this means you’ll be channeling my shirts clean from now on. Maybe they actually will be clean now. I’ve regretted letting Min go so easily."

Siuan stared at him. The man was no fool. Why was he pretending not to understand? "I am Aes Sedai again. Do you really expect an Aes Sedai to do your laundry?"

Just to drive it home, she embraced saidar– that missed sweetness was so wonderful she shivered – wrapped him in flows of Air, and lifted him. Tried to lift him. Gaping, she drew more, tried harder, until the sweetness stabbed like a thousand hooks. His boots never stirred from the floor.

It was impossible. True, the simple act of picking something up was one of the hardest in channeling, but she had been able to lift nearly three times her own weight.

"Is this supposed to impress me," Bryne said calmly, "or frighten me? Sheriam and her friends gave their word, the Hall gave its word, and more importantly, you gave yours, Siuan. I wouldn’t let you get away from me if you were the Amyrlin again. Now undo whatever it is you’ve done, or when I get free of it, I’ll turn you upside down and smack you for being childish. You’re very seldom childish, so you needn’t think I will let you start now."

In a near daze, she released the Source. Not for his threat – he was capable of it; he had done it before; but not for that – and not for shock at being unable to pick him up. Tears seemed to well up in her like a fountain; she hoped that letting go of saidarmight stop them. A few still slid down her cheeks, though, however hard she blinked.

Gareth was cupping her face in his hands before she knew he had moved. "Light, woman, don’t tell me I frightened you. I didn’t think being dropped in a pit with a pack of leopards would frighten you."

"I am not frightened," she said stiffly. Good; she could still lie. Tears, building inside.

"We have to work out some way not to be at one another’s throat all the time," he said quietly.

"There is no reason for us to work out anything." They were coming. They were coming. Oh, Light, she could not let him see. "Just leave me alone, please. Please, just go." For a wonder, he hesitated only a moment before doing as she asked

With the sound of his boots behind her, she managed to make it around the corner into the crossing hallway before the dam burst and she sank to her knees weeping piteously. She knew what it was, now. Alric, her Warder. Her dead Warder murdered when Elaida deposed her. She could lie – the Three Oaths were still gone – but some part of her bond to Alric, a bond flesh to flesh and mind to mind, had been resurrected. The pain of his death, the pain first masked by the shock of what Elaida intended and then buried by stilling, that pain filled her to the brim. Huddled against the wall, bawling, she was only glad Gareth was not seeing this. I have no time to fall in love, burn him!

The thought was a bucket of cold water in her face. The pain remained, but the tears stopped, and she scrambled to her feet. Love? That was as impossible as... as... She could not think of anything impossible enough. The manwas impossible!