The Tower's lower levels smelled of old stone and secrets.
Spencer pressed himself into an alcove and watched Liandrin's thread pulse through walls three corridors away. The Red sister was meeting someone — a fainter thread, touched with black corruption but not a channeler. A messenger. A contact from outside the Tower's official networks.
She's coordinating something. Passing information or receiving orders.
And I have a tool that can expose her.
The patrol guard's thread moved through the corridor grid in predictable patterns — Tower security operated on schedules that Spencer had memorized over the past two weeks. In forty seconds, the guard would turn right at the junction, continuing his standard route. Away from Liandrin's meeting.
Spencer focused on the guard's thread and reached for the Twist.
Not a push. A pull. Redirect the thread's trajectory by adjusting its tension.
The sensation was different from Nudging — more precise, more deliberate. Where a Nudge felt like breathing on a candle flame, a Twist felt like tugging a single thread in a tapestry. Spencer adjusted the guard's path by thirty degrees.
[Weave Intervention: Twist executed. Target: Tower guard patrol thread. Effect: Route deviation (30°). Duration: Permanent until natural correction. Cost: 14 Stamina.]
The guard turned left instead of right.
Spencer held his breath as the man's footsteps carried him toward Liandrin's meeting corridor. Closer. Closer. The guard rounded the corner—
"Halt! Who goes there?"
Liandrin's voice, cold and commanding: "Tower business, guardsman. Return to your patrol."
"Aes Sedai, I—"
"Now."
The guard retreated. Spencer heard footsteps — two sets — moving in opposite directions. Liandrin's contact had vanished. The meeting was interrupted. The guard had witnessed something suspicious enough to file a report.
One small piece of evidence. Circumstantial. But it joins other pieces.
That's how you build a case against sixty enemies. One piece at a time.
Then Liandrin's thread flared.
Spencer felt it through Thread Sight — a sudden brightening, a searching quality. Liandrin was reaching out with saidar, sweeping the corridor for... something. She'd felt something. Not the Twist itself — Codex edits were invisible to the One Power — but the Pattern ripple it had created. A disturbance in the weave of fate that someone paranoid and hunting would notice.
Light. She's scanning.
Spencer killed his Thread Sight and flattened himself into the storage alcove. The stone pressed cold against his back. He didn't breathe. He didn't think. He became part of the wall.
Seconds crawled past like hours.
Liandrin's saidar-sweep passed over his position — a tingling pressure that made his skin crawl. The Codex stayed suppressed, its presence hidden behind whatever mechanism made it invisible to channelers. But if Spencer moved, if he made a sound, if anything drew her attention—
The sweep passed.
Footsteps receded.
Spencer stayed motionless for another sixty counts before allowing himself to breathe.
---
His hands shook for ten minutes afterward.
Spencer pressed them flat against the cool stone wall, counting breaths the way Lan had taught him in the days after Winternight. Four counts in. Seven counts hold. Eight counts out. The trembling gradually subsided, but the adrenaline lingered — a copper taste in his mouth, a tightness in his chest.
She felt the ripple. She knows something happened.
She doesn't know what. She doesn't know who. But she's one step closer.
The Twist had accomplished its goal. The guard had witnessed Liandrin's suspicious meeting. A report would be filed. Evidence would accumulate in Tower records that Verin could access and compile.
But the cost was higher than fourteen Stamina points.
Twists create ripples. Liandrin felt it.
My RES is too low to make subtle edits. Every Twist I use near a Black Ajah sister is a breadcrumb leading back to me.
Spencer pushed himself away from the wall and walked toward his quarters on deliberately casual legs. A guest returning from an evening walk. Nothing suspicious. Nothing worth noting.
I need to be more careful. No Twists near Black Ajah for at least a week. Let her paranoia fade. Focus on passive surveillance.
Or find a way to get better at hiding my tracks.
His journal waited on his desk. Spencer wrote one line before attempting sleep:
Twists create ripples. Liandrin felt it. Need subtlety I don't have yet.
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