The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,277

tried them. He made a picture in his head of himself wearing those breeches and one of those round straw hats, and chuckled at it.

“What do you find funny, Perrin?” Loial asked. His ears were drooping till their tufts were hidden in his hair, and he looked at the people in the street worriedly. “These folk look . . . defeated, Perrin. They did not look this way when I was here last. Even people who let their grove be cut down do not deserve to look like this.”

As Perrin began to study faces instead of just looking at everything at once, he saw that Loial was right. Something had gone out of too many of those faces. Hope, maybe. Curiosity. They barely glanced at the party riding by, except to get out of the way of the horses. The Ogier, mounted on an animal as big as a draft horse, might as well have been Lan, or Perrin.

The streets changed, gaining wide stone paving, after they passed inside the gates of the high, gray city wall, past the hard, dark eyes of soldiers in breastplates over red coats with wide sleeves ending in narrow white cuffs, and rimmed, round helmets with a ridge over the top. Instead of the baggy breeches other men wore, theirs were tight, and tucked into knee-high boots. The soldiers frowned at Lan’s sword and fingered their own, stared sharply at Perrin’s axe and his bow, but in a way, despite their frowns and sharp looks, there was something beaten in their faces, too, as if nothing were really worth the effort any longer.

The buildings were larger and taller inside the walls, though most were made no differently from those outside. The roofs looked a bit odd to Perrin, especially those that came to points, but he had seen so many different kinds of roof since leaving home that he only wondered what kind of nails they used with their tiles. In some places, the people did not use nails on their roof tiles at all.

Palaces and great buildings stood among the smaller and more ordinary, seemingly placed haphazardly; a structure of towers and squarish, white domes, surrounded on all sides by wide streets, might have shops and inns and houses on the other sides of those streets. A huge hall fronted by squared columns of marble four paces on a side, with fifty steps to climb to reach bronze doors five spans high, had a bakery one side and a tailor on the other.

More men wore coats and breeches like the soldiers’ here, though in brighter colors and without armor, and some even wore swords. None of them went barefoot, not even those in baggy breeches. The women’s dresses were often longer, their necklines lower to bare shoulders and even bosom, the cloth as likely to be silk as wool. The Sea Folk traded a good deal of silk through Tear. As many sedan chairs and carriages drawn by teams of horses moved through the streets as ox-carts and wagons. Yet too many of the faces had that same look of having given up.

The inn Lan chose, the Star, had a weaver’s shop on one side and a smithy on the other, with narrow alleyways between. The smithy was of undressed gray stone, the weaver’s and the inn of wood, though the Star stood four stories tall and had small windows in its roof as well. The rattle of looms was hard-pressed to compete with the clang of the smith’s hammer. They handed their horses over to stablemen, to be taken around back, and went inside the inn. There were fish smells from the kitchen, baking and perhaps stewing, and the scent of roast mutton. The men in the common room all wore the tight coats and loose breeches; Perrin did not think richer men—somehow he was sure the men in colorful coats with puffy sleeves and the bare-shouldered women in bright silk were all rich, or nobles—those folk would not put up with the noise. Perhaps that was why Lan had chosen it.

“How are we supposed to sleep with this racketing?” Zarine muttered.

“No questions?” he said with a smile. For a moment he thought she was going to stick out her tongue at him.

The innkeeper was a round-faced, balding man in a long, deep blue coat and those loose breeches, who bowed over hands clasped across his stout belly. His face had that look, a weary resignation. “The Light shine on you, mistresses,