A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time 7)

“I cannot do this, Colavaere,” the Aes Sedai said in a Taraboner accent, shifting her gray-fringed shawl. “I fear I have allowed you to misperceive my relationship to you.” Drawing a deep breath, she added, “There . . . there is no need for this, Master al’Thor.” Her voice became slightly unsteady for a moment. “Or my Lord Dragon, if you prefer. I assure you, I harbor no ill intentions toward you. If I did, I would have struck before you knew I was here.”

“You might well have died if you had,” Rand’s voice was icy steel; his face made it seem soft. “I’m not who has you shielded, Aes Sedai. Who are you? Why are you here? Answer me! I don’t have much patience with . . . your kind. Unless you want to be hauled out to the Aiel camp? I wager the Wise Ones can make you speak freely.”

This Annoura was not slow-witted. Her eyes darted to Aram, then to the aisle where the Asha’man stood. And she knew. They had to be who he meant, in their black coats, grim faces dry when every other but hers and Rand’s glistened. Young Jahar was watching her like a hawk watching a rabbit. Incongruously, Loial stood in the midst of them with his axe propped against his shoulder. One big hand managed to hold an ink bottle and an open book, pressed awkwardly against his chest, while the other scribbled as fast as he could dip a pen fatter than Perrin’s thumb. He was taking notes. Here!

The nobles heard Rand as well as Annoura did. They had been watching the veiled Maidens uneasily; now they crowded back from the Asha’man, pressing together like fish in a barrel. Here and there someone sagged in a faint, held up by the throng.

Shivering, Annoura adjusted her shawl, and regained all the vaunted Aes Sedai composure. “I am Annoura Larisen, my Lord Dragon. Of the Gray Ajah.” Nothing about her said that she was shielded, and in the presence of men who could channel. She seemed to answer as a favor. “I am the advisor to Berelain, First of Mayene.” So that was why Havien was grinning like a madman; he had recognized the woman. Perrin did not feel like grinning at all. “This has been kept secret, you understand,” she went on, “because of the attitude of Tear both toward Mayene and toward Aes Sedai, but I think me the time for secrets, it is past, yes?” Annoura turned to Colavaere, and her mouth firmed. “I let you think what you would think, but Aes Sedai do not become advisors simply because someone tells them they are. Most especially when they already advise someone else.”

“If Berelain confirms your story,” Rand said, “I will parole you to her custody.” Looking at the crown, he seemed to realize for the first time that the spray of gold and gems was still in his hand. Very gently he set it on the silk-covered seat of the Sun Throne. “I don’t think every Aes Sedai is my enemy, not entirely, but I won’t be schemed against, and I won’t be manipulated, not anymore. It’s your choice, Annoura, but if you make the wrong one, you will go to the Wise Ones. If you live long enough. I won’t hobble the Asha’man, and a mistake could cost you.”

“The Asha’man,” Annoura said calmly. “I quite understand.” But she touched her lips with her tongue.

“My Lord Dragon, Colavaere plotted to break her oath of fealty.” Perrin had wished so hard for Faile to speak that he jumped when she did, stepping out of the line of attendants. Choosing her words carefully, she confronted the would-be queen like a stooping eagle. Light, but she was beautiful! “Colavaere swore to obey you in all things and uphold your laws, but she has made plans to rid Cairhien of the Aiel, to send them south and return all to as it was before you came. She also said that if you ever returned, you would not dare change anything she had done. The woman she told these things, Maire, was one of her attendants. Maire vanished soon after telling me. I have no proof, but I believe she is dead. I believe Colavaere regretted revealing too much of her mind, too soon.”

Dobraine strode up the steps to the dais, his helmet under his arm. His face might have been cold iron. “Colavaere Saighan,” he announced in a formal voice that carried to every corner of the Grand Hall, “by my immortal soul, under the Light, I, Dobraine, High Seat of House Taborwin, do arraign and censure you of treason, the penalty for which is death.”

Rand’s head went back, eyes closed. His mouth moved slightly, but Perrin knew that only he and Rand heard what was said. “No. I cannot. I will not.” Perrin understood the delay now. Rand was searching for a way out. Perrin wished he could see one.

Colavaere certainly did not hear, but she wanted a way out, too. She looked around wildly, to the Sun Throne, to her other attendants, to the assembled nobility, as though they might step forward to defend her. Their feet could as well have been set in cement; a sea of carefully blank, sweaty faces confronted her, and eyes that avoided hers. Some of those eyes rolled toward the Asha’man, but not too openly. The already considerable space between nobles and Asha’man widened noticeably.

“Lies!” she hissed, hands knotted in her skirts. “All lies! You sneaking little —!” She took a step toward Faile. Rand stretched his arm between them, though Colavaere appeared not to see it, and Faile looked as though she wished he had not. Anyone who attacked her was in for a surprise.

“Faile does not lie!” Perrin growled. Well, not about something like this.

Once again Colavaere recovered herself. Slight as her height was, she drew up every inch of it. Perrin almost admired her. Except for Meilan, and Maringil, and this Maire, and the Light alone knew how many others. “I demand justice, my Lord Dragon.” Her voice was calm, stately. Royal. “There is no proof of any of this . . . this filth. A claim that someone who is no longer in Cairhien says I spoke words I never did? I demand the Lord Dragon’s justice. By your own laws, there must be proof.”

“How do you know she is no longer in Cairhien?” Dobraine demanded. “Where is she?”

“I assume she has gone,” She addressed her answer to Rand. “Maire left my service, and I replaced her with Reale, there.” She gestured toward the third attendant on the left: “I have no idea where she is. Bring her forward if she is in the city, and let her make these ridiculous charges to my face. I will fling her lies in her face.” Faile looked murder at her. Perrin hoped she would not produce one of those knives she kept hidden about her; she had a habit of doing that when she became angry enough.

Annoura cleared her throat. She had been studying Rand much too closely for Perrin’s comfort. She reminded him of Verin suddenly, that look of a bird examining a worm. “May I speak, Master . . . ah . . . my Lord Dragon?” At his curt nod, she went on, adjusting her shawl. “Of young Maire, I know nothing except that one morning she was here, and before nightfall, she was nowhere to be found and none knew where she had gone. But Lord Maringil and High Lord Meilan, they are a different matter. The First of Mayene, she brought with her two most excellent thief-catchers, men experienced in ferreting out crimes. They have brought before me two of the men who waylaid the High Lord Meilan in the streets, though both insist they only held his arms while others did the stabbing. Also they brought me the servant who put poison in the spiced wine Lord Maringil liked to drink at bedtime. She also protests her true innocence; her invalid mother would have died, and she herself, had Lord Maringil not. So she says, and in her case, I believe she speaks truly. Her solace at confession was not false, I think. Both the men and the woman agree in this: the orders for their actions came from the mouth of Lady Colavaere

herself.”

Word by word the defiance leached out of Colavaere. She still stood, yet it seemed a wonder; she appeared as limp as a damp rag. “They promised,” she mumbled to Rand. “They promised you would never return.” Too late, she clamped both hands over her mouth. Her eyes bulged. Perrin wished he could not hear the sounds coming from her throat. No one should make sounds like that.

“Treason and murder.” Dobraine sounded satisfied. Those whimpered screams did not touch him. “The penalty is the same, my Lord Dragon. Death. Except, by your new law, it is hanging for murder.” For some reason, Rand looked at Min. She returned his gaze with profound sadness. Not for Colavaere. For Rand. Perrin wondered whether a viewing was involved.

“I — I demand the headsman,” Colavaere managed in a strangled voice. Her face sagged. She had become old on the spot, and her eyes were mirrors of stark terror. But with nothing left, she fought on, for the scraps. “It is — it is my right. I will not be . . . hanged like some commoner!”

Rand seemed to struggle with himself, shaking his head in that disturbing way. When he spoke at last, his words were winter cold and anvil hard. “Colavaere Saighan, I strip you of your titles.” He drove the words like nails. “I strip of you of your lands and estates and possessions, of everything but the dress you stand in. Do you own — did you own a farm? A small farm?”

Each sentence staggered the woman. She swayed drunkenly on her feet, soundlessly mouthing the word “farm” as if she had never heard it before. Annoura, Faile, everyone stared at Rand in amazement or curiosity or both. Perrin not least. A farm? If there had been silence in the Grand Hall before, now it seemed that no one even breathed.

“Dobraine, did she own a small farm?”

“She owns . . . owned . . . many farms, my Lord Dragon,” the Cairhienin replied slowly. Clearly he understood no more than Perrin did. “Most are large. But the lands near the Dragonwall have always been divided into smallholdings, less than fifty hides. All of the tenants abandoned them during the Aiel War.”

Rand nodded. “Time to change that. Too much land has lain fallow too long. I want to move people back there, to farm again. Dobraine, you will find out which farm of those Colavaere owned near the Dragonwall is the smallest. Colavaere, I exile you to that farm. Dobraine will see you’re provided with what is needed to make a farm work, and with someone to teach you how to till the soil. And with guards to see that you never go farther from it than you can walk in a day, so long as you live. See to it, Dobraine. In a week I want her on her way.” A bewildered Dobraine hesitated before nodding. Perrin could catch murmurs from the assembly behind him now. This was unheard of. None understood why she was not to die. And the rest! Estates had been confiscated before, but never all, never nobility itself. Nobles had been exiled, even for life, but never to a farm.

Colavaere’s response was immediate. Eyes rolling up in her head, she collapsed, crumpling backward toward the steps.

Perrin darted to catch her, but someone was ahead of him. Before he had taken a full step, her fall simply stopped. She slumped in midair, slanting over the steps to the dais, head dangling. Slowly, her unconscious form rose, swung around and settled gently in front of the Sun Throne. Rand. Perrin was sure the Asha’man would have let her fall.

Annoura tsked. She did not appear surprised, or perturbed, except that her thumbs rubbed her forefingers nervously. “I suspect she would have preferred the headsman. I will see to her if you have your man, your . . . Asha’man . . . ”

“She’s not your concern,” Rand said roughly. “She is alive, and . . . She is alive.” He drew a long, ragged breath. Min was there before he let it out; she only stood near him, yet she looked as if she wanted to do something more. Slowly his face firmed. “Annoura, you will take me to Berelain. Release her, Jahar; she’ll be no trouble. Not with one of her and nine of us. I want to find out what has been going on while I was away, Annoura. And what Berelain means bringing you here behind my back. No, don’t speak. I’ll hear it from her. Perrin, I know you want some time with Faile. I — “