“It does attract men’s eyes,” Siuan replied. And giggled! She even gave her hips a twitch! Moiraine thought she might spend the whole day sighing.
When they went down, with their cloaks folded over their arms, the common room was nearly full of merchants chatting over breakfast, still all women. The two Kandori, one with three chains across her chest, the other with two, were eating hurriedly and beaming like women who foresaw a prosperous day ahead. Some had done business the night before, it seemed. One slender woman in dark gray was eyeing her plump, complacent companion with the sickly expression of someone who had been brought near financial ruin. The th
ree Domani picked at their plates, pushing the food around with their forks; by their tight eyes and pallid faces, they were all nursing sore heads from too much drink.
“A big breakfast, and then we can talk,” Siuan said, going on tiptoe to scan the room for an empty table. “The kitchens here make a fine breakfast.”
“Rolls that we can eat on the way,” Moiraine said firmly, and hurried toward Mistress Tolvina, who was giving instructions to a serving girl in a snowy apron with a blue border. The only way to win an argument with Siuan was to sweep her along. If you let up for an instant, you would find yourself the one being swept.
“Good morning, Mistress Tolvina,” she said as the innkeeper turned from the waiting girl. “We wish to hire two of your men to escort us for a few hours this morning.” The pair watching the door this morning were different from those who had been on duty last night, though just as large.
The lean woman’s eyebrows rose slightly, increasing her no-nonsense air. Again, there was no curtsy, though Moiraine had used the Power to make sure her dress looked fresh from the laundress. “Why? If you’ve gotten yourself engaged in a duel, I’ll have no part of it. A fool thing, these whip-duels and the like, and I’ll not abet you. You’d just come back lashed bloody, in any case. I certainly doubt you’ve ever fought before.”
Moiraine bit her tongue. Siuan said the innkeeper had all sorts of rules, from locking the outside doors at midnight to no male visitors in rooms, and enforced them strictly, but she would not have spoken so had she known they were Aes Sedai. “I wish to visit a banker,” she said once she could trust herself to speak. Getting them thrown out of Siuan’s room would not be a disaster, but it would be inconvenient. They had a great deal to do today. “A good and reputable banker. Do you know of one nearby?”
As it happened, Mistress Tolvina did, the one she herself used, and for that purpose, she was willing to have two of her “watchers,” as she called them, rousted from their rooms over the stable—for an amount Moiraine was sure at least doubled their daily wage. She paid at once, though. Objecting would only waste time, and might drive the price up. Ailene Tolvina did not look like a woman who bargained. Soon enough, she and Siuan were sitting facing each other in a large sedan chair borne by four wiry men who hardly looked strong enough to bear the weight, though they trotted up the crowded streets much more easily than the pair of tall men who escorted the chair carrying long, brass-studded cudgels.
“This isn’t going to work,” Siuan muttered between gnaws at a large, crusty roll. “If you think we need more money, all right. Though you do fling it around, Moiraine. But, burn me, this scheme of yours will never work. We’ll be netted right away. They’ll probably send for a sister. If there isn’t one there already. I tell you, we have to find another way.”
Moiraine pretended to be too busy eating her own roll, still warm from the oven, to answer. Besides, she was hungry. If they encountered another Aes Sedai…. That was a chasm they would have to cross when they came to it. She told herself the flutter in her belly was hunger, not fear. But you could think a lie. Her plan had to work. There was no other way.
As in Tar Valon, the bank resembled a small palace, this one glittering in the morning sunlight like the real palaces farther up the mountain, with golden tiles on every wall and two tall white domes. The doorman who bowed them inside wore a dark red coat embroidered on the cuffs with silver bees, and the footmen short black coats that exposed their bottoms in their tight breeches. Moiraine’s dress with the slashes of Cairhienin nobility on the front was enough to get them an interview with the banker herself rather than an underling, in a quiet, wood-paneled room with silvered stand-lamps and small lines of gilding on the furniture.
Kamile Noallin was a lovely slim woman in her middle years, with graying hair worn in four long braids and stern, questioning eyes. Kandor was a long way from Cairhien, after all, and from Tar Valon. Still, she had no call to use an enlarging glass to study Ilain Dormaile’s seal at the bottom of Moiraine’s letter-of-rights. At least the letter itself was only a little blurred from its immersion in that pond. It was not the largest she carried, yet even so it produced an imposing pile of gold in ten leather pouches stacked on the banker’s writing table, even after the steep discount for the distance between the two banks.
“You have bodyguards, I hope,” Mistress Noallin murmured politely. Large quantities of gold tended to bring courtesy.
“Is Chachin so lawless two women are not safe by daylight?” Moiraine asked her coolly. An enlarging glass! “I think our business is done.”
A pair of very large footmen carried the purses outside and placed them on the floor of the sedan chair, looking relieved at the sight of Mistress Tolvina’s two “watchers” with their cudgels. The bearers hoisted the extra weight effortlessly, it seemed.
“Even that blacksmith must have staggered, loaded down like a mule,” Siuan muttered, toeing the purses piled between them. “Who could have broken his back that way? Fish guts! Whatever the reason, Moiraine, it must be the Black Ajah.”
The bearers could hear that clearly, but they trotted along without faltering, ignorant of what the words Black Ajah meant, likely ignorant of what an Ajah was, for that matter. On the other hand, an imposing woman gliding by with ivory combs in her hair gave a start, then hiked her skirts to her knees and ran, leaving her two gaping servants to scramble after her through the crowd.
Moiraine directed a reproving look at Siuan. They could not depend on others’ ignorance for protection. Siuan flushed slightly, yet her blue eyes were defiant.
The Evening Star had a small strongroom where merchants could store their coin safely, those who did not keep strongboxes in their rooms, but placing most of the gold there did not bring any curtsies from Mistress Tolvina, even after Moiraine gave her a gold crown for her troubles. No doubt she had seen too many merchants lose everything to be impressed just because someone had coin at the moment.
“The best seamstress in Chachin would be Silene Dorelmin,” she said in answer to Moiraine’s question, “but she’s very dear, or so I hear. Very dear.” Moiraine took back one of the fat purses, though it dragged her belt down on one side when she tied the strings. That blacksmith must have staggered! No, Siuan was seeing jak o’the mists, that was all.
Silene proved to be a slim woman with a haughty air and a cool voice, in a shimmering blue dress with a neckline cut to show most of her cleavage. The garment barely clung to her shoulders! Moiraine did not worry over being pressed into that sort of dress, though. She intended to violate nearly every rule of propriety between a woman and her seamstress. She tolerated the measuring, since there was no way to hasten it, but Silene’s eyes narrowed at the speed with which she chose fabrics and colors. For a moment it seemed she would refuse to sew what Siuan needed, but Moiraine calmly said she would pay twice the usual rate. The woman’s eyes went almost to slits at the mention of price, yet she nodded. And Moiraine knew she would get what she wanted. Here, at least.
“I want them tomorrow,” she said. “Put all of your seamstresses to work.”
Silene’s eyes did not narrow at that. They widened, flashing with anger. Her voice became icy. “Impossible. At the end of the month, perhaps. Perhaps later. If I can find time at all. A great many ladies have ordered new gowns. The King of Malkier is visiting the Aesdaishar Palace.”
“The last King of Malkier died twenty-five years ago, Silene.” Taking up the fat purse, Moiraine upended it over the table in the measuring room, spilling out thirty gold crowns. She was ordering more than three dresses, but while silk was as expensive in Chachin as in Tar Valon, the sewing was much less, and that was the largest expense in a dress.
Silene eyed the fat coins greedily, and her eyes positively shone when she was told there would be as much again when the dresses were done.
“But I will keep six coins from the second thirty for each day it takes.” Suddenly it seemed that the dresses could be finished sooner than a month after all. Much sooner.
“You should have your dresses made like what that skinny trull was wearing,” Siuan said as they climbed back into the sedan chair. “Ready to fall off. You might as well enjoy men looking at you if you’re going to lay your fool head on the chopping block.”
Moiraine performed a novice exercise, imaging herself a rosebud in stillness, opening to the sun. Thankfully, it brought calm. Though holding on to it around Siuan could prove trying. She would crack a tooth if she kept grinding them. “There is no other way, Siuan.” The day was more than half gone, and much remained to be done. “Do you think Mistress Tolvina will hire out one of her strongarms for more than a few hours?” The King of Malkier? Light! The woman must have thought her a complete fool!
At midmorning two days after Moiraine arrived in Chachin, a yellow-lacquered carriage behind a team of four matched grays, driven by a fellow with shoulders like a bull, arrived at the Aesdaishar Palace, with two mares tied behind, a fine-necked bay and a lanky gray. The Lady Moiraine Damodred, colored slashes marching from the high neck of her dark blue gown to below her knees, was received with all due honor, by an upper servant with silvery keys embroidered behind the Red Horse on his shoulder. The name of House Damodred was known, of course, if not hers, and with Laman dead, any Damodred might ascend to the Sun Throne if another House did not seize it. They could not know how she hoped for that.