The Wise Ones nodded and Mordre could almost hear their minds working. She was too exhausted to run to the grain storage without some rest, though. She'd be the last person to say so in front of this little gathering, though. She crossed her arms to give them something to do and contented herself with listening to the exchange she knew was coming. 

"Our work here must be kept secret as much as possible to keep from altering their plans, then. It's easier to catch a fiend if you know where they're going, next. You two make your way over there and see if you find any evidence of tampering," Shri turned to Mordre, pinning her with a look. "Do not use your gift unless it is absolutely necessary. Exhaustion leads to burn out and that's a terrible way to die." 

With a final nod, the Wise Ones bustled off, leaving Mordre with Madoc again. Mordre watched them go, not even having enough time to acknowledge the instructions from the older woman. She looked up at Madoc and sighed. "Ready?"

Edana grinned. "How did you know it was them?" she asked, not bothering to hide her mirth at his expense. 

Mordre accepted the water without comment, pointedly ignoring the looks from the other Wise Ones. When they were finished with the last well, she was ready to collapse and sleep for a month. Shri seemed to have other plans, though, and began asking them about other things they'd found. Mordre took a deep breath and explained the map they'd found and the evidence of some kind of plan they'd found before moving on to the wall. "We believe they're working towards the center of the Sept. There are people missing that seemed to have been targets. Then we found the wells..." 

Edana smirked at the image, trying to imagine Loraine doing something so silly. "You sent them to the Mistress of Novices?" she asked. "You couldn't have been a fully trained guard by then, unless I need to practice with my numbers more."

Mordre was slumping by the time the others arrived. Sweat had soaked her hair and she'd had to resort to moving her hands along with her weaves to form them properly. She'd finished the first well and moved on to the second, but her weaves were fizzling. Shri's hand on her shoulder broke her concentration and she gasped, the weave dissolving as she turned to defend herself. She relaxed only barely seeing who it was. "Good, Madoc got the bucket to you," she breathed. "I've cleaned the first well, but I'd appreciate someone with more experience going over it to make sure I didn't miss anything. Do you know what it is?" 

Shri explained while the other Wise One moved to the first well and started weaving. Mordre's eyes widened and she shook her head. "I was sure it was just something natural from the walls of the well..." She closed her eyes, shaking her head. She twisted the weave she'd been using together. "This is the weave I was using, is there a better one?" she asked, curling her legs under her as Shri examined her work. With a few tweaks to make it more efficient and an approving nod, they both turned to a well and continued the work she'd been doing to clean the water. 

Edana laughed and arched her eyebrow. "You know you have to explain most of that, right?" she smirked. It was hard to imagine the tiny Cairhienin woman getting the better of him.  "Start with the ants?" 

Edana laughed, trying to imagine Loraine the way he described her. "How long did it take before you got past that impression?" she asked, ignoring that he was right about her hatred of the wall she spent most of her time guarding. She much preferred to be DOING something, but it wasn't in her job description. "I'm having trouble imagining a world where you two weren't together." 

Mordre narrowed her eyes at him, then sat up and looked at the bucket. The water was gone, leaving a film of something white along the sides of the bucket. She leaned closer, taking the bucket in her hands. "How do I...?" she murmured, trying to think of how to identify the substance. Water would only make it wet again. Air would pick it up. Fire might burn it. Earth would bury it. Spirit would...

She tilted her head, weaving together a thin collection made of mostly Spirit with a few threads of Air so it would permeate the substance. She cautiously pushed the weave into the powdery residue and gasped as she felt the substance. Still not knowing exactly what it was, she pushed herself to her feet and ran back to the first bucket, pushing the same weave into the water and filtering the substance from it. She lifted it clear of the water and dumped it into the bucket still in her hands. Sweat beaded her forehead again and she leaned over the first well. She took a deep breath, then added strands to make the weave thicker before letting it fall into water still in the well. This took considerably more effort, and she had to lift the residue out more often. After a little while, she handed the bucket in her hands to Madoc. "Take this to the Wise Ones and see if they can identify it. I will stay and continue cleaning it out of the water." 

~Mordre

Sweat beaded her brow and she lost track of time. She vaguely noted that Madoc had returned, but paid him to mind other than that as she tried to find whatever was in the water that was different than the water itself. She tried weaves of Air, Water, and Spirit in different forms and had no luck with any of them. In irritation, she lashed out at the water with a weave of Fire and boiled it out of the bucket before falling back on the dirt in frustration. "I can't isolate it," she muttered, closing her eyes against the sun and the man waiting for her to have some magical answer to everything. "I know it's there, but I can't separate it from the water." 

~Mordre

Edana shook her head at the suggestion of an Aes Sedai. He knew how she felt about that idea. "Practicing with a sword is much safer," she quipped, turning her glass in circles on the table without picking it up. "Maybe she's crackers, but maybe she has a point. Some things you work towards and some things can't be forced or practiced. Would you have pursued Loraine if she turned away from you? You don't strike me as the sort, Kynwric. When things are right, they work, and when they're not, they won't. That's not to say that relationships aren't work, because they are, but there has to be something worth saving before you start fighting for it. Can you imagine being bonded to a woman who used you like a tool? Treated you like furniture? Some of the warders in that Tower have exactly that! They're miserable and can't even hide THAT from their Aes Sedai." She sighed and finally took a drink from the glass, but didn't lower it to the table again. "I can't be trapped that way, I'll never survive it." 

She held up a hand at the look on his face and sighed. "Yeah, I know. Getting to know her before you agree to it will go a long way in keeping that from happening and bonding someone who doesn't treat you that way is an option..." she rolled her hand as if to say, yada, yada, yada, then sighed. "It's not for me," she said flatly. "I'm a Guard. Have always been a guard, will always be a guard. I don't mind the wall, I don't mind protecting people I don't know, and I don't even mind being hauled across the countryside helping someone find or fight something they think is a good enough reason to die. But I do it because I choose to. Not because someone forced me to." 

~Edana

Mordre glared at him. He made it sound so easy and she truly wanted to throttle him until he understood that it wasn't as easy as all that. She waved him away. "Check the others, I will see what I can do," she muttered, folding her legs under her and formed a weave of Water and sank it angrily into the bucket in front of her. 

~Mordre

Edana lifted her glass at that. "I tried that once. To say it ended badly is a painful understatement." She took a drink and set her glass down again, looking out the window. "Most men are intimidated by me and the ones who aren't consider me more of a sister than a potential partner. My Aunt used to say that when things are meant to be they will happen. Perhaps it's just not meant to be." She shrugged and smirked. "Can you imagine me settling down and raising a family?" She snorted.

~Edana

Edana opened her mouth to complain about his taking the bottle, then shook her head. "And you answer questions like an Aes Sedai, Warder," she smirked. She took a drink and set the glass down, but didn't let go of it. "Your stakes and mine are slightly different, as are our methods of emptying our heads of... what did you call them? Useless notions? I prefer beating them into annoyances or drinking them under the table. Sometimes they're useless enough to require both." 

She sighed, swirling the whiskey in her glass. "A woman should be so lucky as to have a man as devoted as you are to your wife, Kynwric. I wonder how my life would've been different had I found one, myself." She snorted and lifted the glass again. "Alas, I probably drank more than he and bested him with my fists long ago and now he has no use for me." 

~Edana

Mordre looked down at the water again and sighed. "I don't know what it is, Madoc. I'm not sure I can isolate it without knowing what it is." She looked away, towards the other bucket. "Perhaps I can figure it out with time and then separate it from the other things. I'm not even sure it's not something that's always been in the water..." 

~Mordre

Edana smirked across the table at Kynwric. "A practice you also follow closely, Master Kynwric?" she grinned at him, refilling her glass. "Dare I wonder at what useless notions drift across your head that require emptying?" 

~Edana

Mordre smirked at his hand waving, shaking her head. She chewed her lip, trying to match a weave she knew to what he was asking her to do. While she thought about it, she sent the bucket down into the hole and raised it back up again, filled with water. It was still at a decent level in the well, so there was that. I smelled the water and didn't detect anything. The chewing grew more frustrated as she tested the water inside the bucket with a weave of Air, wishing she knew a weave to identify other... 

She twisted her head, her eyes focusing on the water in the bucket and sent the weave through it again. She set the bucket down without dumping it back into the well and did the same for the next well as he walked away from it. "Madoc," she said softly. "There is something in the water, but I cannot identify what it is. I have no idea whether it is usually in the water or not, because I have never done this to our water before now." 

She twisted a weave of Earth and Spirit together and eased it into the walls of the well she was standing by, trying to find something that felt like what was in the water. She shook her head as she looked back at him. "There is nothing in the well, itself, that matches whatever this is." She handed him the bucket and pointed back to the first well. "It feels the same as whatever is in that one, though." 

~Mordre

Edema tilted her head at him, lowering her glass. "You would do most of that for her even if you weren't bonded, Kynwric. I can hardly use your bond as a measuring stick. Those kinds of relationships don't come around every day." She shook her head, then, looking down at her fingers curled around the glass.

"I don't know that my confidence will ever be such that I feel I've earned that blade. I'll wear it, though perhaps after having one more fitting my fighting style made, to pay my respects to the man who lost it. That it all. My father's sword held the same respect in my eyes, and maybe they both need to occupy more space on my wall than in my head." 

She raised her glass again. "I'll never stop working on getting closer to earning it. Never."

~Edana

Mordre watched him run off, nodding. She followed, much slower, thinking of all the ways the well could be compromised and trying to match weaves that would negate them in her head. She didn't know nearly enough of these and she was chewing her lip as she caught up with him. "Are we too late?" she asked, already embracing the One Power to begin a weave.

~Mordre

Edana snorted, shaking her head. "Every time I've been close to someone, they nearly destroy me trying to get away. I don't think I'll ever trust anyone that much, again." She took a slow drink. "I will protect them all, bonded or not. I swore my oath to protect the Tower, defend every single one from the newest recruit to the oldest Aes Sedai. More than that, though..." 

She shook her head and,set the glass down. "I am not sure I'd survive anything else." Sandre leaving had brought all of the defeated emotions to the fore again, the lash of pain so familiar to the betryal of her brothers. She eyed the blade, again, still laying on the table. They would claim she had beguiled the owner, somehow, and, thus, not have earned the blade. Was that why she had such a hard time accepting it? "I've never earned anything in my life that I wasn't degraded by those around me for. I've become accustomed to everyone thinking I'm not worthy, I suppose. It's hard to accept that maybe I am. To be honest, I'm not sure I want to be worthy of more. It only paints a larger target on your back..."

~Edana

Mordre shook her head. "Podien," she said softly. "He took the duty of repairing the wall, so they are either his or he knows who the belong to. I have been distracted with my studies, so, more than that, I do not know." Not that she would've known those answers before becoming a Wise One, truthfully. It is something one of the others should've been able to supply, however. 

~Mordre

She refilled and,lifted her glass again, using the draining of it allow her time to think. She hadn't just stood there, forms were far from her thoughts as she fought him off, and she'd used her training on water to get the better of him. Why then did she feel like a fraud? Because he was dead by her hand? 

She sighed, setting the glass down with a few fingers still left. "I have reviewed every step, every breath, both while I was awake and asleep. Logic says you're right, that I bested him and that the sword is mine, by right." She swirled the whiskey in the glass without drinking it. "My conscience disagrees. I don't feel worthy of that sword. There are so many things I haven't learned or have only freshly learned. How is it possible to both earn the mark and still have so much left to do?" 

She took a drink and pulled the glass away without lowering it, looking at him over the rim. "And am I just being obstinate refusing to discuss bonding, now that I have it?"

Mordre watched him look at the repair work, her hand curled in on itself as if to trap the warmth of his hand, there. She shifted her eyes around the wall, her mind skimming what she knew to answer his question. "I do not know these gaishan," she had to admit. "Do you believe they would do this? They would only gain more toh, if they were caught."

~Mordre

"Light preserve us all, don't give her any ideas. I have enough problems being a woman in breeches without adding other women to the mess," She grumbled, pouring and emptying her glass again before picking at the food. "And if you start calling me Mistress, I'll add your other titles in there, too. You think I don't know your wife is a Lady, noble-born? HA!" 

She didn't move to take the sword or address her targets. Any target was a good target, just then, even if they didn't satisfy her need to... what? She wrinkled her brow in thought, burying it in the trencher in front of her. Why did she feel the need to fight? What was it about that blasted sword that...

"I didn't earn it," she murmured, staring at the offending blade. "I shouldn't have beaten him." 

She needed to fight to prove she was good enough for that blade on her hip. None of the Masters of the Tower had believed her worthy of it and, yet, here she was, lugging it around with her everywhere.  It was a ballast, an albatross. She could see it now, so clearly. She poured her glass full and drained it again, the alcohol finally making her nose a little numb. She would never feel she had earned that sword. It had almost been her life's blood in that fountain. She hadn't bested him, she'd gotten lucky. It settled like a stone in her gut and she continued staring at the sword on the table. "I don't think having a better suited sword made for me will be enough to rid myself of that knowledge, Kynwric."

~Edana

Mordre nodded, leaning over the map and tracking the damage. "Let's walk in through the West side," she said quietly, her stomach turning. She looked around once more and slowly moved down the tunnel again, the ball of fire hovering between them. "They didn't report any other trouble, but maybe they didn't connect the problems, either. I know they're working on the Wall again, so they're probably destroying any evidence that would've been visible there." 

She left the tunnel, moving the rock again and checking outside before leaving the cover it provided. When they came within sight of the wall, she curled her fingers through his. "They may as well think they're winning, right?" she asked, her voice holding the smile hovering on her lips. 

~Mordre

The fight didn't last nearly long enough, they never do. The heavy set sailor pushed the barmaid away when he saw the fist flying and only hesitated a second when he saw Ed's braid swinging along with it. His friends were content to let him handle "the little wench" at first, but when she cracked a wood trencher across his face, they seemed to take umbridge to it and leapt to his defense.  They didn't seem to have any compunction about beating up a woman, and it made Edana laugh as they tried. They didn't even do the gentlemanly thing and come at her one at a time. They tried collaborative brute force, which Ed turned back on them with a duck here and a punch there. She tried to save the furniture, but it was obvious that these sailors had no such decorum. They crashed a table, busted up a chair, and even tried breaking a window. After playing with them for a few minutes longer, she sighed, deciding that the damage was bad enough, nabbed the coin purse off one man's belt and tossed it on the bar, then tossed all three miscreants into the street outside the tavern a smile only slightly lifting her busted lip.

"Jackenape got a lucky shot in," she muttered, grabbing an upended chair with her free hand and setting it right. The barmaid reached for Kynwric's arm and clung tightly and Ed just laughed and dropped back into her chair, poured a few fingers of whiskey and returned the stare of some other patrons in the tavern. "Keep your hands to yourself or you'll be next," she glared at them, emptying the glass and tossing a nod at the bartender, who put his cudgel away and counted the coins in the purse. Satisfied it was enough, he slid it in his apron and had two plates of a thick brothed beef stew delivered to the table, saying the kind sailors had been generous enough with their apology that there was enough to buy a meal or two. 

Ed downed another whiskey and winced as the liquor touched her lip, which had stopped bleeding, at least. "It's a sad day when even a trio of sailors can't satisfy the need for a good fight," she said, eyeing Kynwric. "Seems the wee lass has an eye for you, Master Kynwric..." 

She grinned over the rim of her glass and shook her head. "If she only knew, eh?"

~Edana