The net sprang at midnight.
Spencer watched from the Tower's upper gallery as Verin's carefully arranged "coincidences" snapped closed on three women who'd spent decades believing they were untouchable.
Amico Nagoyin never reached the rendezvous point. A novice — one of Verin's carefully cultivated contacts — had delivered an "urgent summons" that pulled the Yellow sister away from the escape corridor fifteen minutes before the signal. When Amico finally realized the summons was false, Tower guards had already repositioned to block her route. She surrendered without channeling, her shallow corruption flickering with panic.
Joiya Byir triggered a ward she'd walked past a thousand times before. The ward had been "refreshed" that morning — Verin's work, disguised as routine maintenance. The Green Ajah sister's battle training kicked in, but the ward was designed for containment, not combat. By the time she broke free, six Aes Sedai stood ready to bind her.
Asne Zeramene ran into a dead-end corridor that hadn't been a dead-end yesterday. Spencer didn't know how Verin had managed that particular trick — perhaps an illusion, perhaps a relocated wall, perhaps simply a door locked from the other side. The result was the same: the Green sister cornered, outnumbered, and captured before she could Travel to safety.
Three caught. Just as the Foretelling had predicted.
---
The ten who escaped made their departure in a cascade of Pattern-tears.
Spencer watched through Thread Sight as Liandrin's thread blazed with triumph and terror. The Red sister opened a gateway — stolen ter'angreal glowing with twisted weaves — and stepped through with three objects clutched to her chest. Two more sisters followed through the same gateway before it snapped closed.
Other gateways opened across the Tower. Temaile's vicious thread vanished into a tear that smelled of burned air. Chesmal's ancient corruption disappeared toward the south. The escaping sisters scattered in six different directions, each one carrying whatever ter'angreal they'd managed to grab.
Spencer catalogued what he could see: Liandrin had taken something that pulsed with compulsion-energy, something else that flickered with dream-walking resonance, and a third item whose purpose he couldn't identify. The others carried smaller prizes — rings, rods, objects whose functions the Tower might not discover missing for years.
Ten Black Ajah sisters loose in the world. Armed with ter'angreal. Warned that the Tower knows about them.
And I helped make that happen.
The thought carried weight but not guilt. Three caught was better than zero caught. The Tower alerted was better than the Tower asleep. And the ten who fled would spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, knowing that someone had seen through their masks.
---
Dawn broke over a Tower in chaos.
Spencer stood on the roof and watched the city stir below. Tar Valon's bridges carried early-morning traffic — merchants, farmers, travelers unaware that the world had shifted overnight. The White Tower rose behind him, its pale stone catching the sunrise, its corridors humming with fear and fury.
The Hall of the Tower had been in emergency session since the captures. Siuan Sanche presided over the interrogations of three women who'd sworn oaths to the Shadow. The political shockwave was already spreading — whispers about who else might be Black Ajah, accusations between sisters who'd trusted each other for decades, the first cracks in an institution that had stood for three thousand years.
I did this. I provided the intelligence that made this possible.
Verin set the traps. The sisters walked into them. But I gave Verin the names.
The satisfaction lasted three seconds. Then Spencer's Thread Sight caught something that drove it away.
Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan's thread blazed with opportunity.
The Red Ajah sister stood in the Hall's gallery, watching Siuan address the assembled Sitters. But her attention wasn't on the Amyrlin — it was on the fractures. The fear. The doubt. Elaida was cataloguing weaknesses, identifying allies, calculating how to turn this crisis into advancement.
In the books, Elaida's coup happens in Book 5. Years from now. After a slow build of political dissatisfaction.
But I just handed her ammunition. The Black Ajah is real. The Tower has been infiltrated. Siuan didn't prevent it.
The coup timeline is accelerating.
Spencer descended from the roof with ice in his stomach.
---
Verin found him in the library that afternoon.
"Three caught," she said quietly, settling into the chair across from him. "You should be celebrating."
"Elaida is building a coalition."
Verin's expression shifted — the mild scholar giving way to the calculating operative. "I noticed. She's been talking to Red sisters since dawn. Some Browns, too. The conservatives who've always thought Siuan was too aggressive."
"The coup is coming. Not in years. In months, maybe weeks."
"You seem very certain."
Spencer met her eyes. "I have... impressions. About political patterns. The Black Ajah exposure gave Elaida exactly what she needed — proof that the Tower isn't safe, that Siuan's leadership has failed. She'll use it."
"And if she does?"
"Then everything changes. The Tower splits. Resources that should be fighting the Shadow fight each other instead. The Dragon Reborn faces a divided Aes Sedai instead of a united one."
Verin absorbed this with the stillness that meant she was thinking at full speed.
"You're describing catastrophe."
"I'm describing consequence." Spencer's voice was flat. "I helped expose the Black Ajah. That was necessary. But the exposure is going to cost more than three traitors caught. It's going to cost the Tower itself."
"You couldn't have known—"
"I should have predicted it." Spencer stood, pacing the narrow space between bookshelves. "I was so focused on the Black Ajah that I didn't think through the political implications. Siuan's enemies were always waiting for ammunition. I just gave them a cannon."
Verin watched him pace. Her thread pulsed with something that might have been sympathy or might have been assessment.
"The Tower would have learned eventually," she said. "The Black Ajah couldn't hide forever. Better to know now, while we still have time to prepare."
"Do we? Have time?"
"That depends on what we do next."
Spencer stopped pacing. The question he hadn't wanted to ask surfaced despite himself.
"Can Siuan survive this?"
Verin's silence was answer enough.
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