Crossroads of Twilight (The Wheel of Time 10)

think we are flirting.” She pushed the basket at him with one crimson-gloved hand. “This should make you smile, at least. I hear you forget to eat.” Her nose wrin­kled. “And to wash, it seems. Your beard needs trimming, too. A careworn, somewhat disheveled husband rescuing his wife is a romantic figure, but she might not think so well of a dirty raga­muffin. No woman will ever forgive you ruining her image of you.”

Suddenly confused, Perrin took the basket, sitting it in front of him on the tall pommel of his saddle, and unconsciously rubbed at his nose. He was accustomed to certain smells from Berelain, usu­ally those of a hunting she-wolf, and he was the intended prey, but today she gave off no hunting scent. Not a whisker of it. She smelled patient as stone, and amused, with undercurrents of fear. The woman certainly had never been afraid of him that he recalled. And what did she have to be patient about? For that matter, what did she have to amused about? A ridge cat smelling like a lamb would not have confounded him more.

Confusion or no, his stomach rumbled at the aromas drifting from the lidded basket. Roasted woodhen, unless he was much mistaken, and bread still warm from the baking. Flour was in short supply, and bread almost as rare as meat. It was true that he missed eating some days. He really did forget, sometimes, and when he remembered, eating was a chore, for he had to run the gauntlet of Lini and Breane or be given the cold shoulder by people he had grown up with just to get a meal. Food right under his nose made his mouth water. Would it be disloyal to eat food brought by Bere­lain?

“Thank you for the loaf and the woodhen,” he said roughly, “but the last thing on earth I want is for anyone to think we’re flirting. And I wash when I can, if it’s any of your business. It isn’t easy in this weather. Besides, nobody else smells any better than I do.” She did, he realized suddenly. There was no hint of sweat or dirt under her light, flowery perfume. It irritated him that he had noticed she was wearing perfume, or that she smelled clean. It seemed a betrayal.

Berelain’s eyes widened momentarily in startlement - why? - but then she sighed through her smile, which was beginning to look fixed, and a thread of irritation entered her scent. “Have your tent set up. I know there’s a good copper bathtub in one of your carts. You won’t have thrown that out. People expect a noble to look like a noble, Perrin, and that includes being presentable, even when it takes extra effort. It’s a bargain between you and them. You must give them what they expect as well as what they need or want, or they lose respect and start resenting you for making them lose it. Frankly, none of us can afford for you to let that happen. We’re all far from our homes, surrounded by enemies, and I very much believe that you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes, may be our only chance of living to reach our homes again. Without you, every­thing falls apart. Now smile, because if we’re flirting, then we aren’t talking about something else.”

Perrin bared his teeth. The Mayeners and the Wise Ones were watching, but at fifty paces, in this gloom, it would be taken for a smile. Lose respect? Berelain had helped strip him of any respect he once had from the Two Rivers folk, not to mention Faile’s servants. Worse, Faile had given him some version of that lecture about a noble’s duty to give people what they expected more than once. What be resented was hearing this woman, of all people, echo his wife. “What are we talking about, then, that you don’t trust your own people to know?”

Her face remained smooth and smiling, yet the undercurrent of fear in her scent strengthened. It was nowhere near panic, but she believed herself in danger. Her gloved hands were tight on the bay’s reins. “I’ve had my thief-catchers nosing about in Masema’s camp, making ‘friends.’ Not as good as having eyes-and-ears there, but they took wine they supposedly stole from me, and they learned a little by listening.” For an instant she regarded him quizzically, tilting her head. Light! She knew Faile used Selande and those other idiots as spies! It had been Berelain who told him about them in the first place. Likely Gendar and Santes, her thief-catchers, had seen Haviar and Nerion in Masema’s camp. Balwer would have to be warned before he tried to set Medore on Berelain and Annoura. That would certainly make a fine tangle.

When he said nothing, she went on. “I put something in that basket besides bread and a woodhen. A . . . document . . . that Santes found early yesterday, locked away in Masema’s camp desk. The fool never saw a lock without wanting to know what it hid. If he had to meddle with what Masema kept under lock and key, he should have memorized the thing instead of taking it, but what’s done is done. Don’t let anyone see you reading it after I went to all this trouble to hide it!” she added sharply as he lifted the basket’s lid, revealing a cloth-wrapped bundle and releasing stronger smells of roasted bird and warm bread. “I’ve seen Masema’s men following you before. They could be watching now!”

“I’m not a fool,” he growled. He knew about Masema’s watchers. Most of the man’s followers were townsmen, and most of the rest awkward enough in the woods to shame a ten-year-old back home. Which was not to say one or two might not be hiding some­where among the trees close enough to spy from among the shad­ows. They always kept their distance, since his eyes made them believe he was some sort of half-tame Shadowspawn, so he seldom detected their scents, and he had had other things on his mind this morning.

Fingering the cloth aside to expose the woodhen, almost as large as a fair-sized chicken, with its skin crisply browned, he tore off one of the bird’s legs while feeling under the bundle and sliding out a piece of heavy, cream-colored paper folded in four. Careless of grease-spots, he unfolded the paper atop the bird, a little clumsily in his gauntlets, and read while nibbling on the leg. To everyone watching, he would appear to be studying what part of the wood-hen to attack next. A thick green wax seal, cracked on one side, held an impression of what he decided were three hands, each with the forefinger and little finger raised and the others folded. The let­ters written on the paper in a flowing script were oddly formed, some unrecognizable, but the thing was readable with a little effort.

The bearer of this stands under my personal protection. In the name of the Empress, may she live forever, give him whatever aid he requires in service to the Empire and speak of it to none but me.

By her seal

Suroth Sabelle Meldarath

of Asinbayar and Barsabba

High Lady

“The Empress,” he said softly, soft like iron brushing silk. Con­firmation of Masema’s dealings with the Seanchan, though for him­self, he had needed none. It was not the sort of thing Berelain would have lied about. Suroth Sabelle Meldarath must be someone impor­tant, to be handing out this kind of document. “This will finish him, once Santes testified where he found it.” Service to the Empire?

Masema knew Rand had fought the Seanchan! That rainbow burst into his head, and was swept away. The man was a traitor!

Berelain laughed as if he had said something witty, but her smile definitely looked forced, now. “Santes told me no one saw him in the bustle of setting up camp, so I allowed him and Gendar to go back with my last cask of good Tunaighan. They were sup­posed to return by an hour after dark, but neither has. I suppose they could be sleeping it off, but they’ve never - ”

She broke off with a startled sound, staring at him, and he real­ized that he had bitten the thighbone in half. Light, he had stripped all the flesh from the leg without noticing. “I’m hungrier than I thought,” he muttered. Spitting the nub of bone into the palm of his gauntlet, he dropped the pieces to the ground. “It’s safe to assume Masema knows you have this. I hope you’re keeping a heavy guard around you all the time, not just when you ride out.”

“Gallenne has fifty men sleeping around my tent as of last night,” she said, still staring, and he sighed. You would think she had never seen anybody bite a bone in two before.

“What has Annoura told you?”

“She wanted me to give it to her to destroy, so if I was asked, I could say I didn’t have it and didn’t know where it was, and she could support my word. I doubt that would satisf

y Masema, though.”

“No, I doubt it would.” Annoura had to know that, too. Aes Sedai could be wrongheaded, or even foolish upon occasion, but they were never stupid. “Did she say she would destroy it, or that if you gave it to her, she could?”

Berelain’s brow furrowed in thought, and it took her a moment to say, “That she would.” The bay danced a few impatient steps, but she brought him under control easily, without paying atten­tion. “I can’t think what else she would want it for,” she said after another pause. “Masema is hardly likely to be susceptible to . . . pressure.” Blackmail, she meant. Perrin could not see Masema standing still for that either. Especially blackmail by an Aes Sedai.

Under cover of tearing the other leg loose from the bird, he man­aged to refold the piece of paper and tuck it into his sleeve, where his gauntlet would keep it from falling out. It was still evidence. But of what? How could the man be both a fanatic for the Dragon Reborn and a traitor? Could he have taken the document from . . . ? Who? Some collaborator he had captured? But why would Masema keep it locked away unless it had been meant for him? He had met with Seanchan. And how had he intended to use it? Who could tell what a thing this would allow a man to call on? Perrin sighed heavily. He had too many questions, and no answers. Answers required a quicker mind than his. Maybe Balwer would have a notion.

With a taste of food in it, his stomach wanted him to devour the leg in his hand and the rest of the bird too, but he closed the lid firmly and tried to take measured bites. There was one thing he could find out for himself. “What else has Annoura said? About Masema.”

“Nothing, besides that he’s dangerous and I should avoid him, as if I didn’t know that already. She dislikes him and talking about him.” Another brief hesitation, and Berelain added, “Why?” The First of Mayene was used to intrigues, and she listened for what was not said.

Perrin took another bite to give himself a moment while he chewed and swallowed. He was not used to intrigues, yet he had been exposed to enough of them to know that saying too much could be dangerous. So could saying too little, no matter what Bal­wer thought. “Annoura has been meeting with Masema in secret. So has Masuri.”

Berelain’s fixed smile remained in place, but alarm entered her scent. She started to twist in her saddle as if to look back at the two Aes Sedai, and stopped herself, licking her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Aes Sedai always have their reasons” was all she said. So, was she alarmed over her advisor meeting Masema, or alarmed that Perrin knew, or . . . ? He hated all these complications. They just got in the way of what was important. Light, he had managed to clean the second leg already! Hoping Berelain had not noticed, he hastily tossed the bones aside. His belly growled for more.