you forgot an </italics> after the first quote.

If this is the case, and it very well may be, it's annoying that she doesn't have much thought on it in her PoV... all to raise our tension and give a cliffhanger of sorts. Kind of unrealistic, IMO, if she's doing all this research and doesn't spare a thought for it.

That sort of happened in CoT too though. We didn't know anything about the bridge until the moment she did it (if my memory serves me right). Even though she was planning it throughout the book. She had all those Aes Sedai and others making cuendillar stuff and didn't even tell us about it.