The tables had been removed, except for one placed in front of the long brick fireplace. A blufffaced, stocky man, his hair thick with gray, sat facing them in a wellcut coat of dark green silk, hands folded in front of him on the tabletop. A slim woman who showed as much age stood beside the table in a fine, gray wool dress embroidered with white flowers around the neck. The local lord, Min supposed, and his lady; country nobility little better informed of the world than their tenants and crofters.
The guards situated them in front of the lord's table and melted into the watchers. The woman in gray stepped forward, and the murmurs died.
“All here attend and give ear,” the woman announced, “for justice will be meted today by Lord Gareth Bryne. Prisoners, you are called before the judgment of Lord Bryne.” Not the lord's lady, then; an official of some sort. Gareth Bryne? The last Min remembered, he was CaptainGeneral of the Queen's Guards, in Caemlyn. If it was the same man. She glanced at Siuan, but Siuan had her eyes locked on the wide floorboards in front of her feet. Whoever he was, this Bryne looked weary.
“You are charged,” the woman in gray went on, “with trespass by night, arson and destruction of a building and its contents, the killing of valuable livestock, assault on the person of Admer Nem, and the theft of a purse said to contain gold and silver. It is understood that the assault and theft were the work of your companion, who escaped, but you three are equally culpable under the law.”
She paused to let it sink in, and Min exchanged rueful glances with Leane. Logain would have to add theft to the stew. He was probably halfway to Murandy by now, if not more distant yet.
After a moment the woman began again. “Your accusers are here to face you.” She gestured to the cluster of Nems. “Admer Nem, you will give your testimony.”
The stout man eased forward in a blend of selfimportance and selfconsciousness, tugging at his coat where the wooden buttons strained over his middle, running his hands through thinning hair that kept dropping into his face. “Like I said, Lord Gareth, it was like this... ”
He gave a fairly straightforward account of discovering them in the hayloft and ordering them out, though he made Logain near a foot taller and turned the man's single blow into a fight, where Nem gave as good as he got. The lantern fell, the hay went up, and the rest of the family came spilling out of the farmhouse into the predawn; the prisoners were seized and the barn burned to the ground, and then the loss of the purse from the house was discovered. He did slight the part where Lord Bryne's retainer rode by as some of the family were bringing out ropes and eyeing tree limbs.
When he started on the “fight” again — this time he seemed to be winning — Bryne cut him off. “That will be enough, Master Nem. You may step back.”
Instead, a roundfaced one of the Nem women, of an age to be Admer's wife, joined him. Roundfaced, but not soft; round like a frying pan or a river rock. And flushed with something more than anger. “You whip these hussies good, Lord Gareth, hear? Whip them good, and ride them to Jornhill on a rail!”
“No one called on you to speak, Maigan,” the slim woman in gray said sharply. “This is a trial, not a petition meeting. You and Admer step back. Now.” They obeyed, Admer with a shade more alacrity than Maigan. The grayclad woman turned to Min and her companions. “If you wish to offer testimony, in defense or mitigation, you may now give it.” There was no sympathy in her voice, nor anything else for that matter.
Min expected Siuan to speak — she always took the lead, did the talking — but Siuan never stirred or raised her eyes. Instead, it was Leane who moved toward the table, her eyes on the man behind it.
She stood as straight as ever, but her usual walk — a graceful stride, but a stride — had become a sort of glide, with just a hint of willowy sway to it. Somehow her hips and bosom seemed more obvious. Not that she flaunted anything; the way she moved just made you aware. “My Lord, we are three helpless women, refugees from the storms that sweep the world.” Her usually brisk tones were gone, changed to a velvety soft caress. There was a light in her dark eyes, a sort of smoldering challenge. “Penniless and lost, we took shelter in Master Nem's barn. It was wrong, I know, but we were afraid of the night.” A small gesture, hands halfraised, the insides of her wrists to Bryne, made her seem for a moment utterly helpless. Only for that moment, though. “The man Dalyn was a stranger to us really, a man who offered us his protection. In these days, women alone must have a protector, my Lord, yet I fear we made a poor choice.” A widening of the eyes, an entreating look, said he could make a better for them. “It was indeed he who attacked Master Nem, my Lord; we would have fled, or worked to repay our night's lodging.” Stepping around the side of the table, she knelt gracefully beside Bryne's chair and gently rested the fingers of one hand on his wrist as she gazed up into his eyes. A tremble touched her voice, but her slight smile was enough to set any man's heart racing. It suggested. “My Lord, we are guilty of some small crime, yet not so much as we are charged with. We throw ourselves on your mercy. I beg you, my Lord, have pity on us, and protect us.”
For a long moment, Bryne stared back into her eyes. Then, clearing his throat roughly, he scraped back his chair, rose, and walked around the opposite end of the table from her. There was a stir among the villagers and farmers, men clearing their throats as their lord had done, women muttering under their breath. Bryne stopped in front of Min. “What is your name, girl?”
“Min, my Lord.” She caught a muffled grunt from Siuan and hastily added, “Serenla Min. Everyone calls me Serenla, my Lord.”
“Your mother must have had a premonition,” he murmured with a smile. He was not the first to react to the name in a like way. “Do you have any statement to make, Serenla?”
“Only that I am very sorry, my Lord, and it really wasn't our fault. Dalyn did it all. I ask for mercy, my Lord.” That did not seem much alongside Leane's plea — anything at all would seem insignificant beside Leane's performance — but it was the best she could find. Her mouth was as dry as the street outside. What if he did decide to hang them?
Nodding, he moved over to Siuan, who was still studying the floor. Cupping a hand under her chin, he raised her eyes to his. “And what is your name, girl?”
With a jerk of her head, Siuan pulled her chin free and took a step back. “Mara, my Lord,” she whispered. “Mara Tomanes.”
Min groaned softly. Siuan was plainly frightened, yet at the same time she stared at the man defiantly. Min more than halfexpected her to demand Bryne let them walk away on the instant. He asked her if she wished to make a statement, and she denied it in another unsteady whisper, but all the while looking at him as though she were the one in charge. She might be controlling her tongue, but certainly not her eyes.
After a time, Bryne turned away. “Take your place with your friends, girl,” he told Leane as he returned to his chair. She joined them with a look of open frustration, and what in anyone else Min would have called a touch of petulance.
“I have reached my decision,” Bryne said to the room at large. “The crimes are serious, and nothing I have heard alters the facts. If three men sneak into another's house to steal his candlesticks and one of them attacks the owner, all three are equally guilty. There must be recompense. Master Nem, I will give you the cost of rebuilding your barn, plus the price of six milkcows.” The stout farmer's eyes brightened, until Bryne added, “Caralin will disburse the coin to you when she is content as to costs and prices. Some of your cows were going dry, I hear.” The slim woman in gray nodded in satisfaction. “For the bump on your head, I award you one silver mark. Don't complain,” he said firmly as Nem opened his mouth. “Maigan has given you worse for drinking too much.” A ripple of laughter among the onlookers greeted that, not diminished at all by Nem's halfabashed glares, and perhaps spurred by the tightlipped look Maigan gave her husband. “I will also replace the amount of the stolen purse. Once Caralin has satisfied herself as to how much was in it.” Nem and his wife appeared equally disgruntled, but they held their tongues; it was plain he had given them what he would. Min began to feel hope.
Leaning his elbows on the table, Bryne turned his attention to her and the other two. His slow words tied her stomach into a knot. “You three will work for me, at the normal wages for whatever tasks you are given, until the coin I've paid out is repaid to me. Do not think I am being lenient. If you swear an oath that satisfies me you don't have to be guarded, you can work in my manor. If not, it means the fields, where you can be under someone's eyes every minute. Wages are lower in the fields, but it is your decision.”
Frantically she racked her brain for the weakest oath that might satisfy. She did not like breaking her word in any circumstances, but she meant to be gone as soon as a chance presented, and she did not want too heavy an oathbreaking on her conscience.
Leane seemed to be searching, too, but Siuan barely hesitated before kneeling and folding her hands over her heart. Her eyes seemed fastened to Bryne's, and the challenge had not faded one bit. “By the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth, I swear to serve you in whatever way you require for as long as you require, or may the Creator's face turn from me forever and darkness consume my soul.” She delivered the words in a breathy whisper, but they created a dead silence. There was no oath stronger, unless it was the one a woman took on being made Aes Sedai, and the Oath Rod bound her to that as surely as to a part of her flesh.
Leane stared at Siuan; then she was on her knees, too. “By the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth...”
Min floundered desperately, searching for some way out. Swearing a lesser oath than they did meant the fields for certain, and someone watching her every instant, but this oath... By what she had been taught, breaking it would be not much less than murder, maybe no less. Only there was no way out. The oath, or who knew how many years laboring in a field all day and probably locked up at night. Sinking down beside the other two women, she muttered the words, but inside she was howling. Siuan, you utter fool! What have you gotten me into now? I can't stay here! I have to go to Rand! Oh, Light, help me!
“Well,” Bryne breathed when the last word was spoken, “I did not expect that. But it does suffice. Caralin, would you take Master Nem somewhere and find out what he thinks his losses amount to? And clear everyone else but these three out of here, too. And make arrangements to transport them to the manor. Under the circumstances, I don't think guards will be necessary.”
The slim woman gave him a harassed look, but in short order she had everyone moving out in a milling throng. Admer Nem and his male kin stuck close to her, his face especially painted with avarice. The Nem women looked scarcely less greedy, but they still spared a few hard glowers for Min and the other two, who remained kneeling as the room emptied out. For herself, Min did not believe her legs could hold her up. The same phrases repeated over and over in her mind. Oh, Siuan, why? I can't stay here. I can't!
“We have had a few refugees through here,” Bryne said when the last of the villagers had gone. He leaned back in his chair, studying them. “But never as odd a threesome as you. A Domani. A Tairen?” Siuan nodded curtly. She and Leane stood up, the slender, copperyskinned woman delicately brushing her knees, Siuan simply standing. Min managed to join them, on wobbly legs. “And you, Serenla.” Once more he gave the ghost of a smile at the name. “Somewhere in the west of Andor, unless I mistake your accent.”