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shivered at that, and Verin nearly did. That little mess should have been stopped as soon as it started. “No, I fear you must make your own way, somehow. Deal with things as they are. You are quite alone in this. I know they don’t let you speak to the others. Quite alone,” she sighed. Wide eyes stared at her as they might have at a red adder. “There’s no need to make it worse than it must be. Let me Heal you.”
    She barely waited for the other woman’s pitiful nod before moving to kneel beside her and place hands on Beldeine’s head. The young woman was almost as ready as she could be. Opening herself to more of
saidar
, Verin wove the flows of Healing, and the Green gasped and quivered. The half-filled cup dropped from her hands, and a flailing arm knocked the pitcher onto its side. Now she
was
as ready as she could be.
    In the moments of confusion that gripped anyone after being Healed, while Beldeine still blinked and tried to come back to herself, Verin opened herself further, opened herself through the carved-flower
angreal
in her pouch. Not a very powerful
angreal
, but enough, and she needed every bit of the extra Power it gave her for this. The flows she began weaving bore no resemblance to Healing. Spirit predominated by far, but there was Wind and Water, Fire and Earth, the last of some difficulty for her, and even the skeins of Spirit had to be divided again and again, placed with an intricacy to boggle a weaver of fine carpets. Even if a Wise One poked her head into the tent, with the smallest of luck she would not possess the rare Talent needed to realize what Verin was doing. There would still be difficulties, perhaps painful difficulties one way and another, but she could live with anything short of true discovery.
    “What . . . ?” Beldeine said drowsily. Her head would have lolled except for Verin’s grip, and her eyelids were half-closed. “What are you . . . ? What is happening?”
    “Nothing that will harm you,” Verin told her reassuringly. The woman might die inside the year, or in ten, as a result of this, but the weave itself would not harm her. “I promise you, this is safe enough to use on an infant.” Of course, that depended on what you did with it.
    She needed to lay the flows in place thread by thread, but talking seemed to help rather than hinder. And too long a silence might rouse suspicion, if her twin guardians were listening. Her eyes darted frequently to the dangling doorflaps. She wanted some answers she had no intention of sharing, answers none of the women she questioned were likely to give freely even if they knew them. One of the smaller effects of this weave was to loosen the tongue and open the mind as well as any herb ever could, an effect that came on quickly.
    Dropping her voice almost to a whisper, she continued. “The al’Thor boy seems to think he has supporters of some kind inside the White Tower, Beldeine. In secret, of course; they must be.” Even a man with his ear pressed to the fabric of the tent should be able to hear only that they were talking. “Tell me anything you know about them.”
    “Supporters?” Beldeine murmured, attempting a frown that seemed beyond her ability. She stirred, though it hardly deserved the word agitation, feeble and uncoordinated. “For him? Among the sisters? It can’t be. Except for those of you who. . . . How could you, Verin? Why didn’t you fight it?”
    Verin
tsked
vexedly. Not for the foolish suggestion that she should have fought a
ta’veren
. The boy seemed so certain. Why? She kept her voice low. “Do you have no suspicions, Beldeine? Did you hear no rumors before you left Tar Valon? No whispers? No one who hinted at approaching him differently? Tell me.”
    “No one. Who could . . . ? No one would. . . . I admired Kiruna so.” There was a hint of loss in Beldeine’s sleepy voice, and tears leaking from her eyes made tracks through the dirt. Only Verin’s hands kept her sitting upright.
    Verin