The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,230

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 just-washed 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, stone-face, 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 self-importance, 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