“No Guards,” Rand agreed. Mat nodded vigorously while stuffing a fork into his mouth and got gravy on his chin.
“Trouble is, you're caught up in the fringes of politics, lad, even if it's none of your doing, and politics is a foggy mire full of snakes.”
“What about —” Rand began, but the innkeeper grimaced suddenly, his chair creaking under his bulk as he sat up straight.
The cook was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands with her apron. When she saw the innkeeper looking she motioned for him to come, then vanished back into the kitchen.
“Might as well be married to her.” Master Gill sighed. “Finds things that need fixing before I know there's anything wrong. If it's not the drains stopped up, or the downspouts clogged, it's rats. I keep a clean place, you understand, but with so many people in the city, rats are everywhere. Crowd people together and you get rats, and Caemlyn has a plague of them all of a sudden. You wouldn't believe what a good cat, a prime ratter, fetches these days. Your room is in the attic. I'll tell the girls which; any of them can show you to it. And don't worry about Darkfriends. I can't say much good about the Whitecloaks, but between them and the Guards, that sort won't dare show their filthy faces in Caemlyn.” His chair squeaked again as he pushed it back and stood. “I hope it isn't the drains again.”
Rand went back to his food, but he saw that Mat had stopped eating. “I thought you were hungry,” he said. Mat kept staring at his plate, pushing one piece of potato in a circle with his fork. “You have to eat, Mat. We need to keep up our strength if we're going to reach Tar Valon.”
Mat let out a low, bitter laugh. “Tar Valon! All this time it's been Caemlyn. Moiraine would be waiting for us in Caemlyn. We'd find Perrin and Egwene in Caemlyn. Everything would be all right if we only got to Caemlyn. Well, here we are, and nothing's right. No Moiraine, no Perrin, no anybody. Now it's everything will be all right if we only get to Tar Valon. ”
“We're alive,” Rand said, more sharply than he had intended. He took a deep breath and tried to moderate his tone. “We are alive. That much is all right. And I intend to stay alive. I intend to find out why we're so important. I won't give up.”
“All these people, and any of them could be Darkfriends. Master Gill promised to help us awfully quick. What kind of man just shrugs off Aes Sedai and Darkfriends? It isn't natural. Any decent person would tell us to get out, or . . . or ... or something.”
“Eat,” Rand said gently, and watched until Mat began chewing a piece of beef.
He left his own hands resting beside his plate for a minute, pressing them against the table to keep them from shaking. He was scared. Not about Master Gill, of course, but there was enough without that. Those tall city walls would not stop a Fade. Maybe he should tell the innkeeper about that. But even if Gill believed, would he be as willing to help if he thought a Fade might show up at The Queen's Blessing? And the rats. Maybe rats did thrive where there were a lot of people, but he remembered the dream that was not a dream in Baerlon, and a small spine snapping. Sometimes the Dark One uses carrion eaters as his eyes, Lan had said. Ravens, crows, rats... He ate, but when he was done he could not remember tasting a single bite.
A serving maid, the one who had been polishing candlesticks when they came in, showed them up to the attic room. A dormer window pierced the slanting outer wall, with a bed on either side of it and pegs beside the door for hanging their belongings. The darkeyed girl had a tendency to twist her skirt and giggle whenever she looked at Rand. She was pretty, but he knew if he said anything to her he would just make a fool of himself. She made him wish he had Perrin's way with girls; he was glad when she left.
He expected some comment from Mat, but as soon as she was gone, Mat threw himself on one of the beds, still in his cloak and boots, and turned his face to the wall.
Rand hung his things up, watching Mat's back. He thought Mat had his hand under his coat, clutching that dagger again.
“You just going to lie up here hiding?” he said finally.
“I'm tired,” Mat mumbled.
“We have questions to ask Master Gill, yet. He might even be able to tell us how to find Egwene, and Perrin. They could be in Caemlyn already if they managed to hang onto their horses.”
“They're dead,” Mat said to the wall.
Rand hesitated, then gave up. He closed the door softly behind him, hoping Mat really would sleep.
Downstairs, however, Master Gill was nowhere to be found, though the sharp look in the cook's eye said she was looking for him, too. For a while Rand sat in the common room, but he found himself eyeing every patron who came in, every stranger who could be anyone — or anything — especially in the moment when he was first silhouetted as a cloaked black shape in the doorway. A Fade in the room would be like a fox in a chicken coop.
A Guardsman entered from the street. The reduniformed man stopped just inside the door, running a cool eye over those in the room who were obviously from outside the city. Rand studied the tabletop when the Guardsman's eyes fell on him; when he looked up again, the man was gone.
The darkeyed maid was passing with her arms full of towels. “They do that sometimes,” she said in a confiding tone as she went by. “Just to see there's no trouble. They look after good Queen's folk, they do. Nothing for you to worry about.” She giggled.
Rand shook his head. Nothing for him to worry about. It was not as if the Guardsman would have come over and demanded to know if he knew Thom Merrilin. He was getting as bad as Mat. He scraped back his chair.
Another maid was checking the oil in the lamps along the wall.
“Is there another room where I could sit?” he asked her. He did not want to go back upstairs and shut himself up with Mat's sullen withdrawal. “Maybe a private dining room that's not being used?”
“There's the library.” She pointed to a door. “Through there, to your right, at the end of the hall. Might be empty, this hour.”
“Thank you. If you see Master Gill, would you tell him Rand al'Thor needs to talk to him if he can spare a minute?”
“I'll tell him,” she said, then grinned. “Cook wants to talk to him, too.”
The innkeeper was probably hiding, he thought as he turned away from her.
When he stepped into the room to which she had directed him, he stopped and stared. The shelves must have held three or four hundred books, more than he had ever seen in one place before. Clothbound, leatherbound with gilded spines. Only a few had wooden covers. His eyes gobbled up the titles, picking out old favorites. The Travels of Jain Farstrider. The Essays of Willim of Maneches. His breath caught at the sight of a leather bound copy of Voyager Among the Sea Folk. Tam had always wanted to read that.