“The Bridge of Flowers,” Lan announced as they crossed yet another low bridge. He inhaled deeply. “And now we are in the Perfumed Quarter. The Illianers are a poetic people.”
Zarine stifled a laugh against Perrin's back.
As if he were suddenly impatient with the slow pace of Illian, the Warder led them quickly through the streets to an inn, two stories of rough, greenveined stone topped with pale green tiles. Evening was coming on, the light growing softer as the sun settled. It gave a little relief from the heat, but not much. Boys seated on mounting blocks in front of the inn hopped up to take their horses. One blackhaired lad about ten asked Loial if he were an Ogier, and when Loial said he was, the boy said, “I did think you did be,” with a selfsatisfied nod. He led Loial's big horse away, tossing the copper Loial had given him into the air and catching it.
Perrin frowned up at the inn sign for a moment before following the others in. A whitestriped badger danced on its hind legs with a man carrying what seemed to be a silver shovel. Easing the Badger, it read. It must be some story I never heard.
The common room had sawdust on the floor, and tabac smoke filled the air. It also smelled of wine, and fish cooking in the kitchen, and a heavy, flowered perfume. The exposed beams of the high ceiling were roughhewn and agedark. This early in the evening, no more than a quarter of the stools and benches were filled, by men in workmen's plain coats and vests, some with the bare feet of sailors. All of them sat clustered as close as they could manage around one table where a pretty, darkeyed girl, the wearer of the perfume, sang to the strumming of a twelvestring bittern and danced on the tabletop with swirls of her skirt. Her loose, white blouse had an extremely low neck. Perrin recognized the tune — “The Dancing Lass” — but the words the girl sang were different from what he knew.
"A Lugard girl, she came to town, to see what she could see.
With a wink of her eye, and a smile on her lip,
she snagged a boy or three, or three.
With an ankle slim, and skin so pale,
she caught the owner of a ship, a ship.
With a soft little sigh, and a gay little laugh,
she made her way so free.
So free."
She launched into another verse, and when Perrin realized what she was singing, his face grew hot. He had thought nothing could shock him after seeing Tinker girls dance, but that had only hinted at things. This girl was singing them right out.
Zarine was nodding in time to the music and grinning. Her grin widened when she looked at him. “Why, farmboy, I do not think I ever knew a man your age who could still blush.”
He glared at her and barely stopped himself from saying something he knew would be stupid. This bloody woman has me jumping before I can think. Light, I'll wager she thinks I never even kissed a girl! He tried not to listen to any more of what the girl was singing. If he could not get the red out of his face, Zarine was sure to make more of it.
A flash of startlement had passed across the face of the proprietress when they entered. A large, round woman with her hair in a thick roll at the back of her neck and a smell of strong soap about her, she suppressed her surprise quickly, though, and hurried to Moiraine.
“Mistress Mari,” she said, “I did never think to see you here today.” She hesitated, eyeing Perrin and Zarine, glanced once at Loial, but not in the searching way she looked at them. Her eyes actually brightened at the sight of the Ogier, but her real attention was all on “Mistress Mari,” She lowered her voice, “Have my pigeons no arrived safely?” Lan, she seemed to accept as a part of Moiraine.
“I am sure they have, Nieda,” Moiraine said. “I have been away, but I am sure Adine has noted down everything you reported.” She eyed the girl singing on the table with no outward disapproval, nor any other expression. “The Badger was considerably quieter when last I was here.”
“Aye, Mistress Mari, it did be that. But the louts have no gotten over the winter yet, it does seem. I have no had a fight in the Badger in ten years, till the tail of this winter gone.” She nodded toward the one man not sitting near the singer, a fellow even bigger than Perrin, standing against the wall with his thick arms folded, tapping his foot to the music. “Even Bili did have a hard time keeping them down, so I did hire the girl to take their minds from anger. From some place in Altara, she does come.” She tilted her head, listening for a moment. “A fair voice, but I did sing it better — aye, and dance better, too — when I did be her age.”
Perrin gaped at the thought of this huge woman capering on a table, singing that song — a bit of it came through; “I'll wear no shift at all. At all” — until Zarine fisted him hard in the short ribs. He grunted.
Nieda looked his way. “I'll mix you some honey and sulphur, lad, for that throat. You'll no want to take a chill before the weather warms, no with a pretty girl like that one on your arm.”
Moiraine gave him a look that said he was interfering with her. “Strange that you should suffer fights,” she said. “I well remember how your nephew stops such. Has something occurred to make people more irritable?”
Nieda mused for a moment. “Perhaps. It do be hard to say. The young lordlings do always come down to the docks for the wenching and carousing they can no get away with where the air does smell fresher. Perhaps they do come more often, now, since the hard of the winter. Perhaps. And others do snap at each other more, too. It did be a hard winter. That does make men angrier, and women as well. All that rain, and cold. Why, I did wake two mornings to find ice in my washbasin. No so hard as the last winter, of course, but that did be a winter for a thousand years. Almost enough to make me believe those travelers' tales of frozen water falling from the sky.” She giggled to show how little she believed that. It was an odd sound from such a large woman.
Perrin shook his head. She doesn't believe in snow? But if she thought this weather was cool, he could believe it of her.
Moiraine bent her head in thought, her hood shadowing her face.
The girl on the table was beginning a new verse, and Perrin found himself listening in spite of himself. He had never heard of any woman doing anything remotely like what, the girl was singing about, but it did sound interesting. He noticed Zarine watching him listen, and tried to pretend he had not been.
“What has occurred out of the ordinary in Illian of late?” Moiraine said finally.
“I do suppose you could call Lord Brend's ascension to the Council of Nine unusual,” Nieda said. “Fortune prick me, I can no remember ever hearing his name before the winter, but he did come to the city — from somewhere near the Murandian border, it be rumored — and did be raised inside a week. It do be said he be a good man, and strongest of the Nine — they all do follow his lead, it be said, though he be newest and unknown — but sometimes I do have strange dreams of him.”
Moiraine had opened her mouth — to tell Nieda she had meant in the last few nights, Perrin was sure — but she hesitated, and instead said, “What sort of strange dreams, Nieda?”