“How much did you understand?”
“If you want to stay alive, you had better stay close to him.” Despite the heat, Min shivered. She had only ever had one other viewing with an “if” in it, and both had been potentially deadly. It was bad enough sometimes knowing what would happen; if she started knowing what might... “All I know is this. If he stays close to you, you live. If he gets too far away, for too long, you are going to die. Both of you. I don't know why I should have seen anything about you in his aura, but you seemed like part of it.”
Siuan's smile would have done to peel a pear. “I'd as soon sail in a rotting hull full of last month's eels.”
“I never thought he'd follow us. Are they really going to make us go with him?”
“Oh, no, Min. He is going to lead our armies to victory. And make my life the Pit of Doom! So he's going to save my life, is he? I don't know that it is worth it.” Taking a deep breath, she smoothed her skirts. “When you have those washed and ironed, bring them to me. I will take them up to him. You can clean his boots before you go to sleep tonight. We have a room — a cubbyhole — near him, so we will be close if he calls to have his bloody pillows plumped!” She was gone before Min could protest.
Staring down at the wadded shirts, Min was sure that she knew who was going to be doing all of Gareth Bryne's laundry, and it was not Siuan Sanche. Rand bloody al'Thor. Fall in love with a man, and you ended up doing laundry, even if it did belong to another man. When she marched into the kitchen to demand a washtub and hot water, she was snarling every bit as much as Siuan.
Chapter 29
(Ravens)
Memories of Saldaea
Lying on his bed in the dark, in his shirtsleeves, Kadere idly twirled one of his large kerchiefs between his hands. The wagon's open windows let in moonlight, but not much breeze. At least Cairhien was cooler than the Waste. Someday he hoped to return to Saldaea, to walk in the garden where his sister Teodora had taught him his first letters and numbers. He missed her as much as he did Saldaea, the deep winters when trees burst from their sap freezing and the only way to travel was by snowshoes or skis. In these southlands, spring felt like summer, and summer like the Pit of Doom. Sweat rolled out of him in streams.
With a heavy sigh, he pushed his fingers into a small gap where the bed was built into the wagon. The folded scrap of parchment rustled. He left it there. He knew the words on it by heart.
You are not alone among strangers. A way has been chosen.
Just that, without signature, of course. He had found it slipped under his door when he retired for the night. There was a town not a quarter of a mile away, Eianrod, but even if a soft bed remained empty there, he doubted whether the Aiel would allow him to spend a night away from the wagons. Or that the Aes Sedai would. For the moment, his plans fit in well enough with Moiraine's. Perhaps he would get to see Tar Valon again. A dangerous place, for his sort, but the work there was always important, and invigorating.
He put his mind back on the note, though he wished he could afford to ignore it. The word “chosen” made him sure it came from another Darkfriend. The first surprise had been receiving it now, after crossing most of Cairhien. Nearly two months ago, right after Jasin Natael attached himself to Rand al'Thor — for reasons the man had never deigned to explain — and his new partner Keille Shaogi had disappeared — he suspected she was buried in the Waste, with a thrust from Natael's knife through her heart, and small riddance — soon after that, he had been visited by one of the Chosen. By Lanfear herself. She had given him his instructions.
Automatically his hand went to his chest, feeling through his shirt the scars branded there. He mopped his face with the kerchief. Part of his mind thought coldly, as it had at least once a day since, that they were an effective way to prove to him that it had not been an ordinary dream. An ordinary nightmare. Another part of him almost gibbered with relief that she had not returned.
The second surprise of the note had been the hand. A woman's hand, unless he missed his guess by a mile, and some of the letters formed in what he now knew for an Aiel way. Natael had told him that there must be Darkfriends among the Aiel — there were Darkfriends in every land, among every people — but he had never wanted to find brothers in the Waste. Aiel would kill you as soon as look at you, and you could put a foot wrong with them by breathing.
Taken all in all, the note spelled disaster. Possibly Natael had told some Aiel Darkfriend who he was. Angrily twirling the kerchief to a long thin cord, he snapped it tight between his hands. If the gleeman and Keille had not had proofs that they stood high in Darkfriend councils, he would have killed them both before going near the Waste. The only other possibility made his stomach leaden. “A way has been chosen.” Maybe that had only been to put the word “chosen” down, and maybe it was meant to tell him that one of the Chosen had decided to use him. The note had not come from Lanfear; she would simply have spoken to him in
his dreams once more.
In spite of the heat, he shivered, yet he had to wipe his face again, too. He had the feeling that Lanfear was a jealous mistress to serve, but if another of the Chosen wanted him he would have no choice. Despite all the promises made when he had given his oaths as a boy, he was a man of few illusions. Caught between two of the Chosen, he could be flattened like a kitten beneath a wagon wheel, and they would notice as much as the wagon did. He wished he were home in Saldaea. He wished he could see Teodora again.
A scraping at the door brought him to his feet; for all his bulk, he was more agile than he let anyone see. Mopping his face and neck, he made his way past the brick stove that he certainly had no need for here, and the cabinets with their ornately carved and painted uprights. When he pulled the door open, a slender figure swathed in black robes scurried in past him. He took one quick look around the moonlit darkness to make certain no one was watching — the drivers were all snoring beneath the other wagons and the Aiel guards never came among the wagons themselves — and quickly shut the door again.
“You must be hot, Isendre,” he chuckled. “Take off that robe and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you, no,” she said bitterly from the shadowed depths of her cowl. She stood stiffly, but every now and then she twitched; the wool must be even itchier than usual tonight.
He chuckled again. “As you wish.” Beneath those robes, he suspected, the Maidens of the Spear still allowed her to wear nothing but the stolen jewelry, if that. She had become prudish in ways, since the Maidens had her. Why the woman had been stupid enough to steal, he could not understand. He had certainly made no objections when they dragged her screaming from the wagon by her hair; he was only glad that they had not thought he was involved. Her greediness had certainly made his task more difficult. “Have you anything to report on al'Thor or Natael?” A major part of Lanfear's instruction had been to keep a close eye on those two, and he knew no better way to keep an eye on a man than to put a woman in his bed. Any man told his bedmate things he had vowed to keep secret, boasted of his plans, revealed his weaknesses, even if he was the Dragon Reborn and this Dawn fellow the Aiel called him.
She shuddered visibly. “At least I can come near Natael.” Come near him? Once the Maidens had caught her sneaking to the man's tent, they had practically begun stuffing her into it every night. She always put the best face on matters. “Not that he tells me anything. Wait. Be patient. Keep silent. Make accommodation with fate, whatever that means. He says that every time I try to ask a question. For the most part, all he wants to do is play music I've never heard before and make love.” She never had anything more to say about the gleeman. For the hundredth time he wondered why Lanfear wanted Natael watched. The man was supposed to be as high as a Darkfriend could reach, only a step below the Chosen themselves.
“I take it that means you still have not managed to wriggle into al'Thor's bed?” he asked, brushing past her to sit down on the bed.
“No.” She writhed uncomfortably.
“Then you will have to try harder, won't you? I am growing tired of failure, Isendre, and our masters are not as patient as I. He's only a man, whatever his titles.” She had often boasted to him that she could have any man she wanted, and make him do whatever she wanted. She had shown him the truth of her boasts. She had not needed to steal jewelry; he would have bought her anything she wanted. He had bought her more than he could afford. “The bloody Maidens can't watch him every second, and once you are in his bed, he'll not let them harm you.” One taste of her would be enough for that. “I have full faith and confidence in your abilities.”
“No.” If anything, the word was shorter this time.
He rolled and unrolled the kerchief irritably. “'No' is not a word our masters like to hear, Isendre.” That meant their lords among the Darkfriends; not all lords or ladies by any means — a groom might give orders to lady, a beggar to a magistrate — but their commands were at least as strictly enforced as any noble's, and usually more so. “Not a word our mistress will like to hear.”
Isendre shuddered. She had not believed his tale until he showed her the burns on his chest, but since then, one mention of Lanfear had been enough to quell any rebellion on her part. This time, she began to weep.