A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time 7)

Which Elayne would have had an easier time of if she had any notion what the woman was up to. Still, she did trust her. Mostly. “A small sacrifice,” she muttered. Aes Sedai did go without their rings when the need arose, and she had too, while passing for a sister, but it was hers by right, now. Removing that band of gold almost hurt physically.

“Talk to your friend, child,” the Anan woman told Nynaeve impatiently. “Reanne Corly won’t put up with all this sulky pouting, and if you make me waste my morning for nothing . . . Come along, come along. It’s lucky for you I like Lord Mat.”

Elayne held on to cool composure by a fingernail. Sulky pouting? Sulky pouting! When she had the chance, she was going to kick Nynaeve where it hurt!

Chapter 23

Next Door to a Weaver

* * *

Nynaeve did want to talk to Elayne, away from the innkeeper’s ears, but she did not find the chance right away. The woman marched them out of the room doing a fine imitation of a guard on prisoners, her stony impatience undented by the wary look she cast at Mat’s door. At the back of the inn a set of unrailed stone steps led down into a large hot kitchen full of baking smells, where the roundest woman Nynaeve had ever seen was wielding a large wooden spoon like a scepter, directing three others in sliding crusty brown loaves from the ovens and replacing them with rolls of pale dough. A large pot of the coarse white porridge that was eaten for breakfast hereabout bubbled gently on one of the white-tiled stoves.

“Enid,” Mistress Anan addressed the round woman, “I am going out for a little while. I need to take these two children to someone who has time to mother them properly.”

Wiping broad, floury hands on a piece of white toweling, Enid studied Nynaeve and Elayne disapprovingly. Everything about her was round, her sweaty olive-skinned face, her dark eyes, all of her; she seemed made of very large balls stuffed into a dress. The marriage knife she wore hanging outside her snowy apron sparkled with a full dozen stones. “Is this the pair of barkers Caira was chattering about, Mistress? Fancy bits for the young Lord’s taste, I’d have said. He likes them with a bit of wiggle.” That amused her, by her tone.

The innkeeper shook her head in vexation. “I told that girl to hold her tongue. I won’t let that sort of rumor touch The Wandering Woman. Remind Caira for me, Enid, and use your spoon to get her attention, if need be.” The gaze she turned on Nynaeve and Elayne was so disparaging that Nynaeve nearly gasped. “Would anyone with half their wits believe these two were Aes Sedai? Spent all their coin on dresses to impress the man, and now they’d starve unless they smile for him. Aes Sedai!” Giving Enid no chance to answer, she seized Nynaeve’s ear with her right hand, Elayne’s with her left, and in three quick steps had them out into the stableyard.

That was as long as Nynaeve’s shock held. Then she pulled free, or tried to, because the woman let go at the same instant and she stumbled half a dozen paces, glaring indignantly. She had not bargained for being dragged about. Elayne’s chin rose, her blue eyes so cold Nynaeve would not have been surprised to see frost forming in her curls.

Hands on hips, Mistress Anan seemed not to notice. Or perhaps she simply did not care. “I can hope no one in there believes Caira after that,” she said calmly. “If I could have been sure you had the wits to keep your mouths shut, I’d have said and done more, and made certain.” She was calm, but not at all pleasant or soft; they had troubled her morning. “Now follow me and don’t get lost. Or if you do, do not show your faces anywhere near my inn again, or I’ll send somebody to the palace to tell Merilille and Teslyn. They are two of the real sisters, and they’ll probably rip you each down the middle and share you out.”

Elayne shifted her gaze from the innkeeper to Nynaeve. Not a glare, or a frown, yet a very meaning look just the same. Nynaeve wondered whether she was going to be able to go through with this. The thought of Mat convinced her; any chance was better than that.

“We won’t lose ourselves, Mistress Anan,” she said, striving for meekness. She thought she did fairly well, considering how foreign meekness was to her. “Thank you for helping us.” Smiling at the innkeeper, she did her best to ignore Elayne, whose stare became more meaningful, hard as that was to credit. Looks or no looks, she had to make sure the woman continued to think them worth the trouble. “We are truly grateful, Mistress Anan.”

Mistress Anan eyed her askance, then sniffed and shook her head. When this was done, Nynaeve decided, she was going to drag the innkeeper to the palace, if need be, and make the other sisters acknowledge her in Mistress Anan’s presence.

This early, the stableyard was empty save for a lone boy of ten or twelve with a bucket and a sieve who sprinkled water to dampen the hard-packed ground against dust. The white plastered stable’s doors were wide open, and a barrow sat in front with a dung-fork resting across it. Sounds like a huge frog being stepped on floated out; Nynaeve decided it was a man singing. Would they have to ride to reach their destination? Even a short journey would not be pleasant; walking only across the square and meaning to be back before the sun rose very high, they had brought neither hats nor parasols nor hooded cloaks.

Mistress Anan led them through the stableyard, however, down a narrow alleyway between the stable and a high wall that had drought-bedraggled trees poking above the top. Someone’s garden, no doubt. A small gate at the end let into a dusty alley so cramped dawn had not completely reached it yet.

“You children keep up now, mind you,” the innkeeper told them, starting away down the dim alley. “You lose yourselves, and I vow I’ll go to the palace myself.”

Nynaeve took a grip on her braid with both hands as she followed, to keep them from the Anan woman’s throat. How she yearned for her first gray hairs. First the other Aes Sedai, then the Sea Folk — Light, she did not want to think about them! — and now an innkeeper! No one took you seriously until you had at least a little gray; even an Aes Sedai’s ageless face could not possibly do as well in her estimation.

Elayne was lifting her skirts out of the dust, though their slippers still kicked up little pu

ffs that settled on the hems of their dresses. “Let me see,” Elayne said softly, looking straight ahead. Softly, but coolly. Very coolly, in fact. She had a way of slashing someone to tatters without letting her tone heat that Nynaeve admired. Usually. Now, it just made her want to box the other woman’s ears. “We could be back in the palace drinking blueberry tea and enjoying the breezes while we waited for Master Cauthon to move his belongings. Perhaps Aviendha and Birgitte might return with something useful. We could finally be settling exactly what to do with the man. Do we simply follow him along the streets of the Rahad and see what happens, or take him into buildings that look likely, or let him choose? There must be a hundred worthwhile uses for this morning, including deciding whether it’s safe to go back to Egwene — ever — after that bargain the Sea Folk wrung out of us. We have to talk about that sooner or later; ignoring it won’t help. Instead, we are off on a walk of who knows what length, squinting into the sun the whole way if we keep on as we are, to visit women who feed runaways from the Tower. Myself, I don’t have much interest in catching runaways this morning or any morning. But I’m sure you can explain it so I will understand. I do so want to understand, Nynaeve. I would hate to think I’m going to kick you the length of the Mol Hara for nothing.”

Nynaeve’s eyebrows drew down. Kick her? Elayne really was becoming violent, spending so much time with Aviendha. Someone ought to slap some sense into that pair. “The sun isn’t high enough to make us squint yet,” she muttered. It would be soon, unfortunately. “Think, Elayne. Fifty women who can channel, helping wilders and women put out of the Tower.” She felt guilty sometimes, using the term wilders; in the mouths of most Aes Sedai, it was an insult, but she intended to make them speak it as a badge of pride one day. “And she called them ‘the Circle.’ That doesn’t sound like a few friends to me. It sounds organized.” The alley meandered between high walls and the backs of buildings, many showing bare brick through the plaster, between palace gardens and shops where an open back door revealed silversmiths or tailors or wood-carvers at work. Every so often Mistress Anan looked over her shoulder to make sure they still followed. Nynaeve gave her smiles and nods she hoped would convey eagerness.

“Nynaeve, if two women who could channel made a society, the Tower would fall on them like a pack of wolves. How would Mistress Anan know whether they can or not, anyway? Women who can and aren’t Aes Sedai do not go about making a show of themselves, you know. Not for very long, anyway. In any case, I can’t see it makes a difference. Egwene might want to bring every woman who can channel into the Tower somehow, but that is not what we are about here.” The frosty patience in Elayne’s voice tightened Nynaeve’s hands on her braid. How could the woman be so dense? She bared her teeth again for Mistress Anan, and managed not to scowl at the innkeeper’s back when her head turned forward once more.

“Fifty women isn’t two,” Nynaeve whispered fiercely. They could channel; they must be able to; everything hinged on that. “It’s beyond reason that this Circle can be in the same city with a storeroom packed full of angreal and such without at least knowing of it. And if they do . . . ” She could not keep satisfaction from honeying her voice. “ . . . we’ll have found the Bowl without Master Matrim Cauthon. We can forget those absurd promises.”

“They were not a bribe, Nynaeve,” Elayne said absently. “I will keep them, and so will you, if you have any honor, and I know you do.” She was spending entirely too much time with Aviendha. Nynaeve wished she knew why Elayne had begun thinking they all had to follow this preposterous Aiel ji-whatever-it-was.

Elayne bit her underlip, frowning. All that iciness seemed to have vanished; she was herself again, apparently. Finally she said, “We would never have gone to the inn without Master Cauthon, so we’d never have met the remarkable Mistress Anan or been taken to this Circle. So if the Circle does lead us to the Bowl, we have to say he was the root cause.”

Mat Cauthon; his name boiled in her head. Nynaeve stumbled over her own feet and let go of her braid to lift her skirts. The alley was hardly as smooth as a paved square much less a palace floor. At times, Elayne in a taking was better than Elayne thinking clearly. “Remarkable,” she muttered. “I’ll ‘remarkable’ her till her eyes cross. No one has ever treated us this way, Elayne, not even people who doubted, not even the Sea Folk. Most people would step wary if a ten-year-old said she was Aes Sedai.”

“Most people don’t really know what an Aes Sedai’s face looks like, Nynaeve. I think she went to the Tower once; she knows things she couldn’t, otherwise.”

Nynaeve snorted, glowering at the back of the woman striding ahead. Setalle Anan might have been to the Tower ten times, a hundred, but she was going to acknowledge Nynaeve al’Meara as Aes Sedai. And apologize. And learn what it was like to be hauled about by her ear, too! Mistress Anan glanced back, and Nynaeve flashed her a rigid smile, nodded as if her neck was a hinge. “Elayne? If these women do know where the Bowl is . . . We don’t have to tell Mat how we found it” That was not quite a question.

“I do not see why,” Elayne replied, then dashed all her hopes by adding, “But I’ll have to ask Aviendha to be sure.”