Four days later, Nicola knocked on Spencer's door.
She stood in the corridor with her novice whites rumpled from a day of chores, her dark hair escaping its braid, and an expression that mixed determination with the particular wariness of someone who expected to be dismissed.
"I need to talk to you," she said. "About the shimmer."
Spencer stepped aside. "Come in."
Nicola entered like she was walking into a trap — checking corners, noting the position of furniture, leaving the door slightly ajar. Seventeen years old, terrified, and too smart to trust easily.
Good instincts. She'll need them.
"Tea?" Spencer offered.
"No." Nicola sat on the edge of a chair, hands clasped tight in her lap. "I've been seeing more. Since we talked. And I don't know what it means, and everyone keeps telling me I'm imagining things, and you're the only one who—"
She stopped. Breathed. Started again.
"You're the only one who didn't act like I was crazy."
Spencer sat across from her and waited.
"The shimmer," Nicola said. "It's not just you. I see it around... some people. Like looking through hot air off a forge. The strongest ones pull at something in my chest, even when they're far away." She pressed a hand to her sternum. "There's one — somewhere south. Miles and miles away. He pulls like nothing I've ever felt."
Rand. She's sensing Rand's ta'veren nature from hundreds of miles away.
"Go on."
"Your shimmer is different. Not a pull. More like..." Nicola struggled for words. "Like someone sewed a patch onto the world and you're the thread holding it together. Does that make sense?"
She's describing my Narrative Weight. The Codex's influence on the Pattern. In the language of an untrained Talent.
"It makes sense," Spencer said quietly. "More than you know."
Nicola's eyes searched his face. "What am I?"
"Someone with a rare gift. Several rare gifts, actually. What else do you see?"
The girl's expression shifted. Something darker crept into her features — the look of someone describing a nightmare they couldn't escape.
"Soot," she whispered. "Around some people. Like... like a candle that's burning wrong. The flame looks normal, but there's soot gathering underneath. Darkness that shouldn't be there."
Spencer's blood went cold.
She can see Shadow corruption. Through her ta'veren-sight. A Talent nobody expects.
If the Black Ajah finds out...
"Nicola." Spencer leaned forward, holding her gaze. "What you're describing — the soot, the darkness — you cannot tell anyone else about it. Not your friends. Not Sheriam. Not any Aes Sedai. No one."
"Why?"
"Because the people with soot on their threads are dangerous. And if they learn you can see them, they will hurt you to protect themselves."
Nicola went pale. Her thread — that blazing dual-pattern silver-blue — contracted with fear.
"How dangerous?"
"Kill-you-in-your-sleep dangerous. Make-it-look-like-an-accident dangerous." Spencer kept his voice steady, brutal, honest. "The Tower has enemies inside its walls. You can see them. That makes you a threat they cannot allow to exist."
"But I didn't ask for this!" Nicola's voice cracked. "I just wanted to learn how to channel! I didn't want to see — to know—"
"I know." Spencer reached out and took her hands. They were cold, trembling. "I know you didn't ask. Neither did I. But we have what we have, and pretending otherwise gets people killed."
Nicola stared at him. In her eyes, he could see the shape of a different future — the scared girl who became the reckless woman, always pushing, always demanding more power, never understanding that her Talents made her vulnerable instead of safe.
In the books, she died at the Last Battle. Offscreen. A footnote.
Nobody helped her become what she could have been.
"You can see something similar," Nicola said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"That's why you're here. Why you're... what you are."
"Partly."
"And the shimmer — the patch-thread thing — that's connected to what you can do?"
Spencer hesitated. Telling her about the Codex would be too much. But giving her nothing would break the fragile trust they were building.
"I'm... not supposed to exist here. The world had to make room for me. What you see is the scar tissue."
Nicola absorbed this with the intense focus of someone cataloguing information for survival.
"The people with soot," she said finally. "How many are there? In the Tower?"
"More than you want to know."
"And you're hunting them."
It wasn't a question either. Spencer nodded.
"I want to help."
"No." The word came out harder than Spencer intended. "You're seventeen. You have no training. And if you get caught—"
"I can see them! I can help you identify—"
"You can help by staying alive." Spencer squeezed her hands. "By learning to control your sight so it doesn't control you. By keeping your head down and your mouth shut until you're strong enough to protect yourself."
Nicola's jaw tightened. The defiance in her thread blazed.
"I'm not a child."
"No. You're a weapon that doesn't know how to aim itself yet. And if you fire before you're ready, the recoil will kill you."
The words hit her hard. Spencer watched her process them — anger, fear, grudging acknowledgment.
"Fine," she said finally. "Then teach me."
"What?"
"Teach me to control it. You figured out your sight. Teach me to figure out mine."
Spencer sat back. The offer made sense — he'd spent weeks adapting his Thread Sight to Tower density, learning focus and filtering techniques through trial and error. Some of those methods might help Nicola.
And if I'm teaching her, I can keep her close. Keep her safe. Keep her from doing something reckless that gets her killed.
"I'm not a teacher."
"I don't care." Nicola's chin lifted. "You're the only person who believes what I see is real. That's enough."
Spencer looked at her — seventeen, terrified, prickly, stubborn, and carrying enough Talent to reshape nations if she survived long enough to develop it.
In another life, someone should have done this for her years ago.
In this life, I'm what she has.
"All right," he said. "We meet twice a week. You tell no one. And when I tell you something is dangerous, you listen without arguing."
"I can do that."
"Can you?"
Nicola almost smiled. "I can try."
---
After she left, Spencer sat for a long time.
His journal lay open on the desk. The hit list — five confirmed Black Ajah, sixty more suspected — filled several ciphered pages. The protection list was shorter. Siuan. Moiraine. Verin. The Hunt party.
He added Nicola's name.
A seventeen-year-old girl with Talents nobody understands, in a Tower full of enemies who would kill her for what she can see.
Another thread to protect. Another person who might die because I couldn't do enough.
The weight settled on his shoulders like a familiar burden. Spencer had carried guilt since Eldrin Cauthon died in Winternight's chaos — a boy he'd tried to save and failed. Adding Nicola to his responsibilities meant accepting that her survival was now tied to his choices.
Is this what it felt like for Moiraine? Twenty years ago, when she decided Rand was worth dying for?
Probably not. Moiraine always knew what she was doing. I'm making it up as I go.
Spencer reached for Thread Sight and extended his range south, searching for Rand's ta'veren blaze. The trace stretched across hundreds of miles—
And found something wrong.
Rand's thread flickered. Not the steady burn Spencer had seen for weeks, but an unstable pulse that suggested stress, conflict, channeling under pressure. And Mat's thread had moved in a direction that made no geographical sense — east when the Hunt should be heading south.
Portal Stone. They've used a Portal Stone.
Which means they're not in Shienar anymore. They could be anywhere.
Spencer released the trace and rubbed his temples. The Hunt party was off-map, operating in a realm of the story where his meta-knowledge became unreliable. Portal Stone travel meant alternate dimensions, time distortion, variables he couldn't predict.
And I'm stuck here, with sixty enemies and a girl who needs protection and allies who are counting on intelligence I'm not sure I can provide.
Welcome to the Tower, Spencer. Welcome to the war.
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