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way
    with words. And iron nerve. She was still mulling over names when she saw the woman
    she had come to meet, already at the appointed place, apparently studying a tall tapestry.
    Tiny and willowy, and regal in her pale silver silk with a slightly darker lace at her neck
    and wrists, Yukiri appeared throughly engrossed in the tapestry and quite at her ease.
    Pevara could only recall seeing her the slightest bit flustered on one occasion, and putting
    Talene to the question had been nerve-racking for everyone there. Yukiri was alone, of
    course, though of late she had been heard to say she was thinking of taking a Warder
    again. Doubtless that was equal parts the current times and their own present situation.
    Pevara could have done with a Warder or two herself.
    “Is there any truth in this, or is it all the weaver’s fancy?” she asked, joining the smaller
    woman. The tapestry showed a long-ago battle against Trollocs, or was purported to.
    Most such things were made long after the fact, and the weavers usually went by hearsay.
    This one was old enough to need the protection of a warding to keep it from falling apart.
    “I know as much about tapestries as a pig knows about blacksmithing, Pevara.” For all
    her elegance, Yukiri seldom let long pass without revealing her country origins. The
    silvery gray fringe of her shawl swung as she gathered it around her. “You’re late, so let’s
    be brief. I feel like a hen being watched by a fox. Marris broke this morning, and I gave
    her the oath of obedience myself, but as with the others, her ‘one other’ is out of the
    Tower. With the rebels, I think.” She fell silent as a pair of serving women approached up
    the hallway carrying a large wicker laundry basket with neatly folded bed linens bulging
    from the top.
    Pevara sighed. It had seemed so encouraging, at the start. Terrifying and nearly
    overwhelming, too, yet they had appeared to be making a good beginning. Talene had
    only known the name of one other Black sister actually in the Tower at present, but once
    Atuan had been kidnapped—Pevara would have liked to think of it as an arrest, yet she
    could not when they seemed to be violating half of Tower Law and a good many strong
    customs besides—once Atuan was safely in hand, she had soon been induced to surrender
    the names of her heart: Karale Sanghir, a Domani Gray, and Marris Thornhill, an
    Andoran Brown. Only Karale among them had a Warder, though he had turned out to be
    a Darkfriend, too. Luckily, soon after learning that his Aes Sedai had betrayed him, he

had managed to take poison in the basement room where he had been confined while
    Karale was questioned. Strange to think of that as lucky, but the Oath Rod only worked
    on those who could channel, and they were too few to guard and tend prisoners.
    It had been such a bright beginning, however fraught, and now they were at an impasse
    unless one of the others returned to the Tower, back to searching for discrepancies
    between what sisters claimed to have done and what it could be proven they actually had,
    something made harder by the inclination of most sisters to be oblique in nearly
    everything. Of course, Talene and the other three would pass along whatever they knew,
    whatever came into their hands—the oath of obedience took care of that—but any
    message very much more important than “take this and put it in that place” would be in a
    cipher known only to the woman who sent it and the woman it was directed to. Some
    were protected by a weave that made the ink vanish if the wrong hand broke the seal; that
    could be done with so little of the Power it might go unnoticed unless you were looking
    for it, and there appeared to be no way to circumvent the ward. If they were not at an
    impasse, then their flow of success was reduced to a creeping trickle. And always there
    was the danger that the hunted would learn of them and become the hunters. Invisible
    hunters, for all practical purposes,