Crossroads of Twilight (38 page)

Just as Faile was about to turn back around, she noticed a dark-haired Aiel woman facing the other way. Not just dark hair, but hair black as a raven’s wing, a great rarity among Aiel. Even from behind, Faile thought she recognized Alarys, another of the Wise Ones. There were over four hundred Wise Ones in the camp, but she had learned quickly to know all of them on sight. Mistaking a Wise One for a weaver or a potter was a quick way to earn a switching.

It might have meant nothing that Alarys was standing stock-still and looking in the same direction as Someryn, or that she had let her shawl slide to the ground, except that just beyond her, Faile recognized still another Wise One, also looking off to the north and west, and slapping at people who walked in front of her. That had to be Jesain, a woman who would have been called short even if she were not Aiel, with a great mass of hair red enough to make fire look pale and a temper to match. Masalin was talking to the man with the horse and gesturing to the animal. She could not channel, but three Wise Ones who could were all staring in the same direction. Only one thing could account for it; they saw someone channeling up there on the forested ridgeline beyond the camp. A Wise One channeling surely would not make any of them stare. Could it be an Aes Sedai? Or more than one? Better not to get her hopes up. It was too soon.

A clout on the head staggered her, and she nearly dropped the basket.

“Why are you standing like a lump?” Someryn snarled. “Go on with your work. Go, before I . . . !”

Faile went, balancing the basket with one hand, lifting the skirts of her robe out of the muddy snow with the other, and moving as quickly as she could without slipping and falling in the muck. Someryn never hit
anyone, and she never raised her voice. If she was doing both, it was best to be out of her way with no delay. Humbly and obediently.

Pride said to maintain a cool defiance, a quiet refusal to yield, yet sense said that was the way to find herself guarded twice as closely as she was. The Shaido might take the wetlander
gai’shain
for domesticated animals, but they were not completely blind. They must think that she had accepted her captivity as inescapable if she were to be able to escape, and that was very much on her mind. The sooner, the better. Certainly before Perrin caught up. She had never doubted that Perrin was following her, that he would find her somehow—the man would walk through a wall if he took it into his head!—but she had to escape before that. She was a soldier’s daughter. She knew the Shaido’s numbers, she knew the strength Perrin had to call on, and she knew she had to reach him before that clash could take place. There was just the little matter of getting free of the Shaido, first.

What had the Wise Ones been looking at—the Aes Sedai or Wise Ones with Perrin? Light, she hoped not, not yet! But other matters took precedence, the laundry not least. She carried the basket toward what remained of the city of Malden, weaving through a steady flow of
gai’shain.
Those leaving the city each carried a pair of heavy buckets balanced on the ends of a pole carried across the shoulders, while the buckets of those going in swayed, empty, on their poles. As many people as were in the camp required a great deal of water, and this was how it came to them, bucket by bucket. It was easy to tell the
gai’shain
who had been inhabitants of Malden. This far north in Altara, they were fair rather than olive-complected, and some even had blue eyes, but all stumbled along in a daze. Shaido climbing the city walls in the night had overwhelmed the defenses before most of the residents knew they were in danger, and they still seemed unable to believe what their lives had come to.

Faile searched for a particular face, though, someone she hoped would not be carrying water today. She had been looking ever since the Shaido made camp here, four days ago. Just outside the city gates, which stood open and shoved back against the granite walls, she found her, a white-clad woman taller than herself with a flat basket of bread on her hip and her hood pushed back just enough to show a bit of dark reddish hair. Chiad appeared to be studying the iron-strapped gates that had failed to protect Malden, but she turned away from them as soon as Faile approached. They paused side by side, not really looking at one another while they pretended to shift their baskets. There was no reason two
gai’shain
should not talk to
one another, but no one should remember that they had been captured together. Bain and Chiad were not watched as closely as
gai’shain
serving Sevanna, but that might change if anyone remembered. Almost everyone in sight was
gai’shain,
and from west of the Dragonwall besides, yet too many had learned to curry favor by carrying tales and rumors. Most people did what they must to survive, and some always tried to feather their own nests, whatever the circumstances.

“They got away the first night here,” Chiad murmured. “Bain and I led them out to the trees and obscured the tracks coming back. No one seems to realize they are gone, as far as I can see. With so many
gai’shain,
it seems a wonder these Shaido notice any who run away.”

Faile heaved a small sigh of relief. Three days gone. The Shaido did notice runaways. Few managed a full day of freedom, but the chances of success increased with every day uncaught, and it seemed certain the Shaido would move on tomorrow, or the next day. They had not halted as long as this since Faile was captured. She suspected they might be trying to march back to the Dragonwall and recross into the Waste.

It had not been easy talking Lacile and Arrela into leaving without her. What finally convinced them had been the argument that they could carry word to Perrin of where Faile was, along with a warning of how many Shaido there were and a claim that Faile already had her own escape well in hand and any interference by him might endanger that and her. She was sure she had made them believe all of that—she did have her escape in hand, in a way; she had several plans, in fact, and one of them had to work—but until this minute she had been half convinced the two women would decide their oaths to her required them to stay. Water oaths were tighter than oaths of fealty in some ways, yet they left considerable room for stupidity in the name of honor. In truth, she did not know whether the pair could find Perrin, but either way, they were free and she had only two other women to worry about. Of course, the absence of three of Sevanna’s servants would be noticed very quickly, within hours, and the best trackers would be sent to bring them back. Faile was accustomed to the woods, but she knew better than to pit herself against Aiel trackers. It was very unpleasant for “ordinary”
gai’shain
who ran away and were recaptured. For Sevanna’s
gai’shain,
it might be better to die in the attempt. At best, they would never be allowed the opportunity for a second try.

“The rest of us would have a better chance if you and Bain came with us,” she said in a low voice. The flow of men and women in white carrying water by them continued, no one seeming to more than glance their way,
but wariness had become ingrained in her these last two weeks. Light, it seemed more like two years! “What difference can there be between helping Lacile and Arrela reach the forest and helping the rest of us get further?” That was despair talking. She knew the difference—Bain and Chiad were her friends and had taught her about Aiel ways, about
ji’e’toh
and even a little Maiden handtalk—and it did not surprise her when Chiad turned her head slightly to regard her with gray eyes that had nothing of
gai’shain
meekness in them. Nor did her voice, though she still spoke quietly.

“I will help you as far as I can because it is not right for the Shaido to hold you. You do not follow
ji’e’toh.
I do. If I cast aside my honor and my obligations just because the Shaido have, then I allow them to decide how I will act. I will wear white for a year and a day and then they will release me, or I will walk away, but I will not throw away who I am.” Without another word, Chiad strode off into the throngs of
gai’shain.

Faile half-raised a hand to stop her, then let it fall. She had asked that question before, receiving a gentler answer, and in asking again, she had insulted her friend. She would have to apologize. Not to keep Chiad’s help—the woman would not withdraw that—but because she had her own honor, even if she did not follow
ji’e’toh.
You did not insult friends and simply forget it, or expect them to. Apologies must wait, though. They dared not be seen talking too long.

Malden had been a prosperous city, a producer of good wool and great quantities of fair-quality wine, but an empty ruin inside the walls, now. As many of the slate-roofed houses were timber as were stone, and fire had gotten loose during the looting. The southern end of the city was half piles of blackened timbers decorated with icicles, half scorched, roofless walls. The streets everywhere, whether stone-paved or dirt, were gray with windblown ash trampled into the snow, and the whole city stank of charred wood. Water was one thing Malden apparently never ran short of, but like all Aiel, the Shaido placed a very high value on it, and they knew nothing of fighting fires. There was little in the Aiel Waste that
could
burn. They might have let the entire city be consumed had they been finished with stealing, and as it was, they dithered over the waste of water before forcing
gai’shain
into bucket lines at spearpoint and letting the men of Malden bring out their pump-wagons. Faile would have thought the Shaido would at least have rewarded those men by allowing them to leave with the people who had escaped being chosen for
gai’shain,
but the men who worked the pumps were young and fit, just the sort the Shaido wanted for their
gai’shain.
The Shaido kept some of the rules regarding
gai’shain
—women
who were pregnant or had children under the age of ten had been let go, and youths under sixteen, and the city’s blacksmiths, who had been both mystified and grateful—but gratitude never entered into it.

Furniture littered the streets, large overturned tables and ornate chests and chairs, and sometimes a crumpled wall hanging or broken dishes. Bits of clothing lay everywhere, coats and breeches and dresses, most sliced to tatters. The Shaido had seized anything made of gold or silver, anything that had gems, anything useful or edible, but the furnishings must have been hauled outside in the frenzy of looting, then abandoned when whoever was carrying them decided that a little gilded edging or fine carving did not make them worth the effort. Aiel did not use chairs in any case, except for chiefs, and there was no room on the carts and wagons for any of those heavy tables. A few Shaido still wandered through, searching the houses and inns and shops for anything they might have missed, yet most people she saw were
gai’shain
carrying buckets. Aiel had no interest in cities except as storehouses to be plundered. A pair of Maidens passed her, using the butts of their spears to drive a naked, wild-eyed man, his arms bound behind him, toward the gates. Doubtless he had thought he could hide in a basement or attic until the Shaido were gone. Doubtless the Maidens had thought to find a cache of coin or plate. When a huge man in the
cadin’sor
of an
algai’d’siswai
stepped in front of her, she swerved to go around him as smoothly as she could. A
gai’shain
always made way for any Shaido.

“You are very pretty,” he said, putting himself in her way. He was the biggest man she had ever seen, perhaps seven feet tall and thick in proportion. Not fat—she had never seen a fat Aiel—but very wide. He belched, and she smelled wine fumes. Drunken Aiel she had seen, since they found all those casks of wine here in Malden. She felt no fear, though.
Gai’shain
might be punished for any number of infractions, often for transgressions few of the wetlanders understood, but the white robes gave a certain protection, too, and she had another layer besides.

“I am
gai’shain
to the Wise One Sevanna,” she said in as obsequious a tone as she could manage. To her disgust, she had gotten so she could manage it very well. “Sevanna would be displeased if I shirked my duties to talk.” She tried again to step around him, and gasped when he seized her arm in a hand that could have wrapped around it twice with inches to spare.

“Sevanna has hundreds of
gai’shain.
She will not miss one for an hour or two.”

The basket fell to the street as he plucked her into the air as easily as
picking up a pillow. Before she knew what was happening, he had her tucked beneath his arm, her own arms trapped at her sides. She opened her mouth to scream, and he used his free hand to press her face flat against his chest. The smell of sweaty wool filled her nose. All she could see was gray-brown wool. Where were those two Maidens? Maidens of the Spear would not let him do this!
Any
Aiel who saw would step in! She never expected help from any of the
gai’shain.
One or two might run for help, if she was lucky, but the very first lesson a
gai’shain
learned was that even a threat of violence got you hung up by the ankles and beaten till you howled. The first lesson wetlanders learned, at least; Aiel already knew: a
gai’shain
was forbidden to offer violence for any reason.
Any
reason. Which did not stop her from kicking at the man furiously. She might as well have been kicking a wall for all the impression it made. He was moving, carrying her somewhere. She bit as hard down as hard as she could, and got a mouthful of coarse dirty wool for her pains, her teeth sliding over muscle with no slack to give her purchase. He seemed made of stone. She screamed, but her shriek sounded muffled even to her own ears.

Abruptly, the monster carrying her stopped.

“I made this one
gai’shain,
Nadric,” another man’s deep voice said.

Faile felt a rumble of laughter in the chest against her face even before she heard it. She did not stop her kicking, never stopped writhing or trying to shout, yet her captor seemed unaware of her efforts. “She belongs to Sevanna now, Brotherless,” the huge man—Nadric?—said contemptuously. “Sevanna takes what she wants, and I take what I want. It is the new way.”