“Oh, foolishness, Mistress Mari. Just foolishness. You do truly wish to hear it? Dreams of Lord Brend in strange places, and walking bridges hanging in air. All fogged, these dreams do be, but near every night they do come. Did you ever hear of such? Foolishness, Fortune prick me! Yet, it do be odd. Bili does say he does dream the same dreams. I do think he does hear my dreams and copy them. Bili do be none too bright, sometimes, I do think.”
“You may do him an injustice,” Moiraine breathed.
Perrin stared at her dark hood. She had sounded shaken, even more shaken than when she thought a new false Dragon had risen in Ghealdan. He could not smell fear, but... Moiraine was frightened. It was a far more terrifying thought than Moiraine angry. He could imagine her angry; he could not begin to conceive of her afraid.
“How I do maunder on,” Nieda said, patting the rolled hair at the back of her neck. “As if my foolish dreams do be important.” She giggled again. A quick giggle; this was not as foolish as believing in snow. “You do sound tired, Mistress Mari. I will show you to your rooms. And then a good meal of freshcaught redstripe.”
Redstripe? A fish, he thought it must be; he could smell fish cooking.
“Rooms,” Moiraine said. “Yes. We will take rooms. The meal can wait. Ships. Nieda, what ships sail for Tear? Early on the morrow. I have that which I must do tonight.” Lan glanced at her, frowning.
“For Tear, Mistress Mari?” Nieda laughed. “Why, none for Tear. The Nine did forbid any ship to sail for Tear a month gone now, nor any from Tear to call here, though I do think the Sea Folk pay it no mind. But there do be no Sea Folk ship in the harbor. It do be odd, that. The order of the Nine, I do mean, and the King silent on it, when he does always raise his voice if they but take a step without his lead. Or perhaps it be no that, exactly. All talk do be of war with Tear, but the boatmen and wagoneers who do carry supplies to the army do say the soldiers do all look north, to Murandy.”
“The paths of the Shadow are tangled,” Moiraine said in a tight voice. “We will do what we must. The rooms, Nieda. And then we will eat that meal.”
Perrin's room was more comfortable than he expected, given the look of the rest of the Badger. The bed was wide, the mattress soft. The door was made of tilted slats, and when he opened the windows, a breeze crossed the room carrying the smells of the harbor. And something of the canals, too, but at least it was cooling. He hung his cloak on a peg along with his quiver and axe, and propped his bow in the corner. Everything else he left in the saddlebags and blanketroll. The night might not be restful.
If Moiraine had sounded afraid before, it had been nothing to when she said that something must be done tonight. For an instant then, fear scent had steamed from her as from a woman announcing that she was going to stick her hand in a hornets' nest and crush them with her bare fingers. What in the Light is she up to? If Moiraine is frightened, I should be terrified.
He was not, he realized. Not terrified, or even frightened. He felt... excited. Ready for something to happen, almost eager. Determined. He recognized the feelings. They were what wolves felt just before they fought. Burn me, I'd rather be afraid!
He was first back down to the common except for Loial. Nieda had arranged a large table for them, with ladderback chairs instead of benches. She had even found a chair big enough for Loial. The girl across the room was singing a song about a rich merchant who, having just lost his team of horses in an improbable way, had for some reason decided to pull his carriage himself. The men listening around her roared with laughter. The windows showed darkness coming on more quickly than he had expected; the air smelled as if it might be making up to rain.
“This inn has an Ogier room,” Loial said as Perrin sat down. “Apparently, every inn in Illian has one, in hopes of gaining Ogier custom when the stonemasons come. Nieda claims it is lucky, having an Ogier under the roof. I cannot think they get many. The masons always stay together when they go Outside to work. Humans are so hasty, and the Elders are always afraid tempers will flare and someone will put a long handle on his axe.” He eyed the men around the singer as if he suspected them of it. His ears were drooping again.
The rich merchant was in the process of losing his, carriage, to more laughter. “Did you find out whether any Ogier from Stedding Shangtai are in Illian?”
“There were, but Nieda said they left during the winter. She said they had not finished their work. I do not understand it. The masons would not have left work undone unless they were not paid, and Nieda said it was not that. One morning, they were just gone, though someone saw them walking down the Maredo Causeway in the night. Perrin, I do not like this city. I do not know why, but it makes me... uneasy.”
“Ogier,” Moiraine said, “are sensitive to some things.” She still had her face hidden, but Nieda had apparently sent someone to buy her a light cloak of dark blue linen. The fear smell was gone from her, but her voice sounded under tight control. Lan held her chair for her; his eyes looked worried.
Zarine was the last down, running her fingers through justwashed hair. The herbal scent was stronger around her than before. She stared at the platter Nieda placed on the table and muttered under her breath. “I hate fish.”
The stout woman had brought all the food on a small cart with shelves; it was dusty in places, as if it had been hastily brought out from the storeroom in Moiraine's honor. The dishes were Sea Folk porcelain, too, if chipped.
“Eat,” Moiraine said, looking straight at Zarine. “Remember that any meal can be your last. You chose to travel with us, so tonight you will eat fish. Tomorrow, you may die.”
Perrin did not recognize the nearly round white fish with red stripes, but they smelled good. He lifted two onto his plate with the serving fork, and grinned at Zarine around a mouthful. They tasted good, too, lightly spiced. Eat your nasty fish, falcon, he thought. He also thought that Zarine looked as if she might bite him.
“Do you wish me to stop the girl singing, Mistress Mari?” Nieda asked. She was setting bowls of peas and some sort of stiff yellow mush on the table. “So you can eat in quiet?”
Staring at her plate, Moiraine did not seem to hear.
Lan listened a moment — the merchant had already lost, in succession, his carriage, his cloak, his boots, his gold, and the rest of his clothes, and was now reduced to wrestling a pig for its dinner — and shook his head. “She will not bother us.” He looked close to smiling for a moment, before he glanced at Moiraine. Then the worry returned to his eyes.
“What is wrong?” Zarine said. She was ignoring the fish. “I know something is. I have not see that much expression on you, stoneface, since I met you.”
“No questions!” Moiraine said sharply. “You will know what I tell you and no more!”
“What will you tell me?” Zarine demanded.
The Aes Sedai smiled. “Eat your fish.”
The meal went on in near silence after that, except for the songs drifting across the room. There was one about a rich man whose wife and daughters made a fool of him time and again without ever deflating his selfimportance, another that concerned a young woman who decided to take a walk without any clothes, and one that told of a blacksmith who managed to shoe himself instead of the horse. Zarine nearly choked laughing at that one, forgot herself enough to take a bite of fish, and suddenly grimaced as if she had put mud in her mouth.
I won't laugh at her, Perrin told himself. However foolish she looks, I'll show her what manners are. “They taste good, don't they,” he said. Zarine gave him a bitter look, and Moiraine a frown for interrupting her thoughts, and that was all the talk there was.
Nieda was clearing away the dishes and setting an array of cheeses on the table when a stink of something vile lifted the hackles on the back of Perrin's neck. It was a smell of something that should not be, and he had smelled it twice before. He peered about the common room uneasily.