Crossroads of Twilight (88 page)

When to Wear Jewels

Perrin strode impatiently up and down the flowered carpets that floored the tent, shrugging with discomfort in the dark green silk coat he had seldom worn since Faile had had it made. She said the elaborate silver embroidery suited his shoulders, but the wide leather belt supporting his axe at his side, the one as plain as the other, only pointed up that he was a fool pretending to be more than he was. Sometimes he tugged his gauntlets tighter, or glared at his fur-lined cloak, lying across the back of a chair ready for him to put on. Twice, he pulled a sheet of paper from his sleeve and unfolded it to study the sketched map of Malden while he paced. That was the town where Faile was being held.

Jondyn and Get and Hu had caught up to the fleeing inhabitants of Malden, but the only useful thing they had gotten was this map, and making anyone pause long enough to provide that had been a chore. Those strong enough to fight were dead or wearing
gai’shain
white for the Shaido; those who remained to flee were the old and the very young, the sick and the lame. According to Jondyn, the thought that someone might force them to return and fight the Shaido had quickened their steps north toward Andor and safety. The map was a puzzle, with its maze of streets and the lady’s fortress and the great cistern in the northeast corner. It tantalized him with possibilities. But they were possibilities only if he found a solution to the greater puzzle that was not shown on the map, the huge mass of Shaido surrounding
the walled town, not to mention four or five hundred Shaido Wise Ones who could channel. So the map went back into his sleeve, and he continued to pace.

The red-striped tent itself made him chafe as much as the map, and so did the furnishings, the gilt-edged chairs that folded for storage and the mosaic-topped table that did not, the stand-mirror and the mirrored washstand and even the brass-bound chests standing in a row along an outer wall. It was barely light outside, and all twelve of the lamps were lit, mirrors sparkling. The braziers that had held off the night’s freezing cold still contained a few embers. He had even had Faile’s two silk hangings, worked with lines of birds and flowers, brought out and hung from the roof poles. He had let Lamgwin trim his beard and shave his cheeks and neck; he had washed and donned clean clothes. He had had the tent set up as if Faile were going to return any moment from a ride. All so everyone would look at him and see a bloody lord, look at him and feel confident. And every bit of it reminded him that Faile was not out riding. Tugging off one of his gauntlets, he felt in his coat pocket and ran his fingers along the rawhide cord tucked in there. Thirty-two knots, now. He did not need reminding of that, but sometimes he lay awake a whole night in the bedding that did not have Faile in it, counting those knots. Somehow, they had become a connection to her. Anyway, wakefulness was better than nightmares.

“If you don’t sit down, you are going to be too tired to ride to So Habor even with Neald’s help,” Berelain said, sounding faintly amused. “Just watching you is exhausting me.”

He managed not to glare at her. In a dark blue silk riding dress, a wide golden necklace studded with firedrops tight around her neck and the narrow crown of Mayene holding a golden hawk in flight above her brows, the First of Mayene was seated atop her crimson cloak on one of the folding chairs with her hands folded around red gloves in her lap. She looked as composed as an Aes Sedai, and she smelled . . . patient. He did not understand why she had stopped smelling as if he were a fat lamb caught in brambles for her meal, but he almost felt grateful to her. It was good to have someone he could talk to about missing Faile. She listened, and smelled of sympathy.

“I want to be here if . . . when Gaul and the Maidens bring in some prisoners.” The slip made him grimace as much as the delay. It was as if he doubted. Sooner or later they would capture some of the Shaido, yet apparently that was no easy matter. Taking prisoners did no good unless they could be brought away, and the Shaido were only careless compared to
other Aiel. Sulin had been patient, too, explaining it to him. It was getting so hard for him to be patient, though. “What’s keeping Arganda?” he growled.

As if the Ghealdanin’s name had summoned him at last, Arganda pushed through the entry flaps, his face like stone and his eyes sunken. He looked as though he slept as little as Perrin. The short man wore his silvery breastplate, but no helmet. He had not shaved yet this morning, and graying stubble grizzled his chin. Dangling from one gauntleted hand, a fat leather purse clinked as he set it on the table alongside two already there. “From the Queen’s strongbox,” he said sourly. He had said little the last ten days that was not sour. “Enough to cover our share and more. I had to break open the lock and put three men to guard the chest. It’s a temptation to the best of them, with the lock broken.”

“Good, good,” Perrin said, trying not to sound too impatient. He did not care whether Arganda had to set a hundred men guarding his queen’s strongbox. His own purse was the smallest of the three, and he had gleaned every bit of gold or silver he could find to make it up. Slinging his cloak around his shoulders, he picked up the purses and brushed past the man out into the gray morning.

To his disgust, the camp had taken a more permanent air, though it was not by design, and there was nothing he could do about it. Many of the Two Rivers men slept under tents now, pale brown patched canvas rather than striped red like his, but big enough for eight or ten men each, with their ill-assorted polearms stacked at the front, and the others had turned their temporary brush shelters into sturdy little huts of woven evergreen branches. The tents and huts made at best meandering rows, not at all like the rigid lines seen among the Ghealdanin and Mayeners, yet it still looked a little like a village, with paths and lanes through the snow trampled down to bare, frozen earth. A neat stone fire-ring surrounded each of the cookfires, where clusters of men stood cloaked and hooded against the cold, waiting for their breakfast.

It was what was in those black iron cookpots that had Perrin moving this morning. With so many men hunting, game was growing thin on the ground, and everything else was running out. They were down to searching for squirrels’ hoards of acorns to grind for stretching the oatmeal, and this late in the winter, what they found were old and dried out at best. The sour mixture filled the belly after a fashion, but you had to be hungry to get it down. Most of the faces Perrin could see were watching the cookpots eagerly. The last of the carts were rattling though a gap made in the ring
of sharpened stakes around the camp, the Cairhienin drivers swathed to their ears and hunched on their seats like dark sacks of wool. Everything the carts had held was stacked in the center of the camp. Empty, they lurched in the ruts left by the carts ahead, a single file disappearing into the surrounding forest.

Perrin’s appearance with Berelain and Arganda at his heels caused a stir, although not among the hungry Two Rivers men. Oh, a few made cautious nods in his direction—one or two fools gave rough bows!—but most still tried not to look at him when Berelain was in the vicinity. Idiots. Stone-brained idiots! There were plenty of other people, though, gathered a little way from the red-striped tent, crowding into the lanes between the other tents. An unarmored Mayener soldier in a gray coat came running with Berelain’s white mare, bowing and bending to hold her stirrup. Annoura was already up on a sleek mare almost as dark as Berelain’s mount was pale. Thin beaded braids hanging down her chest from the cowl of her cloak, the Aes Sedai barely seemed to notice the woman she was supposed to advise. Back stiff, she peered fixedly toward the low Aiel tents, where nothing moved but the thin wavering lines of smoke rising from the smoke holes. One-eyed Gallenne, in his red helmet and breastplate and eyepatch, made up for the Taraboner sister’s inattention, though. As soon as Berelain appeared, he barked an order that stiffened fifty of the Winged Guards to statues, long, red-streamered steel-tipped lances upright at their sides, and when she mounted, Gallenne snapped another command that put them on their horses so smoothly they seemed to move as one.

Arganda directed a frown toward the Aiel tents, frowned at the Mayeners, then stalked over to where as many Ghealdanin lancers waited, in shining armor and conical green helmets, and spoke softly to the fellow who would be commanding them, a lean man named Kireyin who Perrin suspected was nobly born from the haughty gaze visible behind the face-bars of his silvered helmet. Arganda was short enough that Kireyin had to bend to listen to what he had to say, and the necessity frosted the taller man’s face even more. One of the men behind Kireyin was carrying a staff with a red banner bearing the three six-pointed Silver Stars of Ghealdan instead of a green-streamered lance, and one of the Winged Guards carried Mayene’s Golden Hawk on blue.

Aram was there, too, though off to one side and not ready to ride. Wrapped in his putrid green cloak, sword hilt rising behind his shoulder, he shared his jealous scowls between the Mayeners and the Ghealdanin. When he saw Perrin, the man’s scowl turned sullen, and he hurried off,
blundering through the Two Rivers men waiting for their breakfast. He did not pause to offer apologies when he bumped someone. Aram had grown increasingly touchy, snapping and sneering at everyone but Perrin as the days passed and they sat and waited. Yesterday, he had almost come to blows with a pair of Ghealdanin over something none of them could quite recall once they were separated, except that Aram said the Ghealdanin had no respect and they said he had a bad mouth. That was why the former Tinker was staying behind this morning. Things were likely to be touchy enough in So Habor without Aram starting a fight when Perrin was not looking.

“Keep an eye on Aram,” he said quietly when Dannil brought up his bay. “And keep a close eye on Arganda,” he added, stuffing the purses into his saddlebags and buckling the flaps down tight. The weight of Berelain’s contribution balanced his and Arganda’s together very nicely. Well, she had cause to be generous. Her men were as hungry as anyone else. “Arganda looks a man ready to do something stupid, to me.” Stayer frisked a little and tossed his head as Perrin took the reins, but the stallion settled quickly under a firm, gentle hand.

Dannil rubbed his tusk-like mustaches with a cold-reddened knuckle and eyed Arganda sideways, then exhaled heavily in a mist. “I’ll watch him, Lord Perrin,” he muttered, giving his cloak a hitch, “but no matter what you said about me being in charge, as soon as you’re out of sight, he won’t listen to a thing I say.”

Unfortunately, that was true. Perrin would rather have taken Arganda with him and left Gallenne here, but neither had been willing to accept that. The Ghealdanin did accept that men and horses would begin starving soon unless food and fodder were found somewhere, but he could not make himself spend a day farther from his queen than he already was. In some ways, he seemed even more frantic than Perrin, or maybe just more ready to give in to it. Left to himself, Arganda would have been edging a little nearer the Shaido every day until he was right under their noses. Perrin was ready to die to free Faile. Arganda just seemed ready to die.