Crossroads of Twilight

  Karede wanted a clearer look at the man’s face. He was inured to insult - that was part of the training - but this. . . . Pushing back his chair, he stood and sat at the edge of the writing table. Mor stared at him unblinking, tensed to defend against an attack, and Karede drew a deep breath to still his anger. “Why did you come to me if you believe the Deathwatch Guards are implicated in this?” The effort of keeping his voice level almost strangled him. Since the first Deathwatch Guards swore on the corpse of Luthair Paendrag to defend his son, there had never been treason among the Guards! Never!

  Mor relaxed by increments as he realized that Karede did not intend to kill him, at least not right then, but there was a haze of sweat on his forehead. “I have heard it said a Deathwatch Guard can see a butterfly’s breath. Do you have anything to drink?”

  Karede gestured curtly to the brick hearth, where a silver cup and pitcher sat near the flames, to keep warm. They had been there, untouched, since Ajimbura brought them when Karede awoke. “The wine may be cool by now, but be free of it. And when your throat is wet, you will answer my question. Either you suspect Guardsmen, or you wish to play me in some game of your own, and by my eyes, I will know which, and why.”

  The fellow sidled to the hearth, watching him from the corner of his eye, but as Mor bent for the pitcher, he frowned and then gave a small start. What appeared to be a silver-rimmed bowl with a ram’s-horn-patterned silver base sat beside the cup. Light of heaven, Ajimbura had been told often enough to keep that thing out of sight! There was no doubt that Mor recognized it for what it was.

  The man considered treason possible for the Guards? “Pour for me as well, if you will.”

  Mor blinked, showing a faint consternation - he held the only obvious cup - and then a light of understanding appeared in his eyes. An uneasy light. He filled the bowl, too, a trifle unsteadily, and wiped his hand on his coat before taking it up. Every man had his limits, even a Seeker, and a man pushed to them was especially dangerous, but he was also off balance.

  Accepting the skull-cup with both hands, Karede raised it high and lowered his head. “To the Empress, may she live forever in honor and glory. Death and shame to her enemies.”

  “To the Empress, may she live forever in honor and glory,” Mor echoed, bowing his head and lifting his cup. “Death and shame to her enemies.”

  Putting Ajimbura’s cup to his lips, Karede was aware of the other man watching him drink. The wine was indeed cool, the spices bitter, and there was a faint, acrid hint of silver polish; he told himself the taste of dead man’s dust was his imagination.

  Mor dashed off half his own wine in hurried gulps, then stared at his cup, seemed to realize what he had done, and made a visible effort to regain control of himself. “Furyk Karede,” he said briskly. “Born forty-two years ago to weavers, the property of one Jalid Magonine, a craftsman in Ancarid. Chosen at fifteen for training in the Deathwatch Guards. Cited twice for heroism and mentioned in dispatches three times, then, as a seven-year veteran, named to the bodyguard of the High Lady Tuon upon her birth.” That had not been her name then, of course, but mentioning her birth-name would have been an insult. “That same year, as one of three sur­vivors of the first known attempt on her life, chosen for training as an officer. Service during the Muyami Uprising and the Jianmin Incident, more citations for heroism, more mentions in dispatches, and assignment back to the High Lady’s bodyguard just before her first true-name day.” Mor peered into his wine, then looked up suddenly. “At your request. Unusual, that. The following year, you took three serious wounds shielding her with your body against another set of assassins. She gave you her most precious possession, a doll. After more distinguished service, with further citations and mentions, you were selected for the bodyguard of the Empress her­self, may she live forever, and served there until named to accom­pany the High Lord Turak to these lands with the Hailene. Times change, and men change, but before going to guard the throne, you made two other requests for assignment to the High Lady Tuon’s bodyguard. Most unusual. And you kept the doll until it was destroyed in the Great Fire of Sohima, a matter often years.”

  Not for the first time, Karede was glad of the training that allowed him to maintain a smooth face no matter what. Careless expressions gave away too much to an opponent. He remembered the face of the small girl who had laid that doll on his litter. He could hear her still. You have protected my life, so you must take Emela to watch over you in turn, she said. She can’t really protect you, of course; she’s only a doll. But keep her to remind you that I will always hear if you speak my name. If I’m still alive, of course.

  “My honor is loyalty,” he said, setting Ajimbura’s cup on the writing table carefully, so as not to slop wine onto his papers. However often the fellow polished the silver, Karede did not think he bothered to wash the thing. “Loyalty to the throne. Why did you come to me?”

  Mor moved slightly, so the armchair was between them. No doubt he thought he was standing casually, but he was clearly ready to throw the winecup. He had a knife under his coat in the small of his back, and probably at least one other. “Three requests to join the High Lady Tuon’s bodyguard. And you kept the doll.”

  “That much, I understand,” Karede told him dryly. The Guards were not supposed to form attachments to those they were sent to guard. The Deathwatch Guard served only the Crystal Throne, served whoever succeeded to the throne, with a whole heart and a whole faith. But he remembered that serious child’s face, already aware she might not live to do her duty yet trying to do it anyway, and he had kept the doll. “But there’s more to it than rumor of a girl, isn’t there?”

  “A butterfly’s breath,” the fellow murmured. “It is a pleasure to talk to someone who sees deeply. On the night that Tylin was mur­dered, two damane were taken from the Tarasin Palace kennels. Both were formerly Aes Sedai. Do you not find the coincidence too much?”

  “I find any coincidence suspect, Almurat. But what has that to do with rumors and . . . other matters?”

  “This web is more tangled than you imagine. Several others left the palace that night, among them a young man who was appar­ently Tylin’s pet, four men who were certainly soldiers, and an older man, one Thorn Merrilin, or so he called himself, who was supposedly a servant, but who displayed much more education than would be expected. At one time or another, they were all seen with Aes Sedai who were in the city before the Empire reclaimed it.” Intent, the Seeker leaned forward slightly over the back of the armchair. “Perhaps Tylin was not murdered because she swore fealty, but because she had learned of things that were dangerous. She might have been careless in what she revealed to the boy on the pillows, and he carried word to Merrilin. We can call him that until we learn a better name. The more I learn of that one, the more intriguing he is: knowledgeable of the world, well-spoken, at ease with nobles and crowns. A courtier, in fact, if you didn’t know he was a servant. If the White Tower had certain plans in Ebou Dar, they might send such a man to carry them out.”

  Plans. Unthinking, Karede picked up Ajimbura’s cup and almost drank before he realized what he was doing. He continued to hold the cup, though, so as not to give away his turmoil. Every­one - those who knew, anyway - was sure the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was part of the contest to succeed the Empress, might she live forever. Such was life in the Imperial family. If the High Lady were dead, after all, a new heir must be named. If she were dead. And if not. . . . The White Tower would have sent their best, if they planned to carry her away. If the Seeker was not play­ing him in some game of his own. Seekers could try to snare any­one short of the Empress herself, might she live forever. “You have taken this notion to your superiors, and they rejected it, or you would not come to me. That, or. . . . You haven’t mentioned it to them, have you? Why not?”

  “Much more tangled than you can imagine,” Mor said softly, eyeing the door as if suspecting eavesdroppers. Why did he grow cautious now? “There are many . . . complications. The two damane
were removed by the Lady Egeanin Tamarath, who has had deal­ings with Aes Sedai before. Close dealings, in fact. Very close. Clearly, she released the other damane to cover her escape. Egeanin left the city that same night, with three damane in her entourage, and also, we believe, Merrilin and the others. We don’t know who the third damane was - we suspect someone important among the Atha’an Miere, or perhaps an Aes Sedai who was hiding in the city - but we have identified the sul’dam she used, and two have close connections with Suroth. Who herself has many connections to Aes Sedai.” For all his wariness, Mor said that as if it were not a lightning bolt. No wonder he was on edge.

  So. Suroth plotted with Aes Sedai and had corrupted at least some of the Seekers above Mor, and the White Tower had placed men under one of their best to carry out certain actions. It was all believable. When Karede was sent with the Forerunners, he had been tasked to watch the Blood for over-ambition. There had always been a possibility, this far from the Empire, that they would try to set up their own kingdoms. And he himself had sent men into a city he knew would fall whatever was done to defend it, so they could harm the enemy from within.

  “You have a direction, Almurat?”

  Mor shook his head. “They went north, and Jehannah was mentioned in the palace stables, but that seems an obvious attempt at deception. They will have changed direction at the first oppor­tunity. We have checked on boats large enough to have carried the party across the river, but vessels of that size come and go all the time. There is no order in this place, no control.”

  “This gives me a great deal to think on.”

  The Seeker grimaced, a slight twisting of his mouth, but he seemed to realize he had gotten as much commitment as Karede would make. He nodded once. “Whatever you choose to do, you should know this. You may wonder how the girl extorted anything from these merchants. It seems two or three soldiers always accom­panied her. The description of their armor was also very precise.” He half stretched out a hand as though to touch Karede’s robe, but wisely let it fall back to his side. “Most people call that black. You understand me? Whatever you choose to do, do not delay.” Mor raised his cup. “Your health, Banner-General. Furyk. Your health, and the health of the Empire.”

  Karede drained Ajimbura’s cup without hesitation.

  The Seeker departed as abruptly as he had entered, and moments after the door closed behind him, it opened to admit Ajimbura. The little man stared accusingly at the skull-cup in Karede’s hands.

  “You know this rumor, Ajimbura?” As well ask whether the sun rose in the morning as ask whether the fellow had been listen­ing. He did not deny it, in any case.

  “I would not soil my tongue with such filth, high one,” he said, drawing himself up.

  Karede permitted himself a sigh. Whether the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was her own doing or some other’s, she was in great danger. And if the rumor was some ploy by Mor, the best way to defeat another’s game was to make the game your own. “Lay out my razor.” Sitting down, he reached for his pen, holding the sleeve of his robe clear of the ink with his left hand. “Then you will find Captain Musenge, when he is alone, and give him this. Return quickly; I will have more instructions for you.”

  Shortly after noon on the following day, he was crossing the harbor on the ferry that departed each hour, according to the strict ringing of bells. It was a lumbering barge that heaved as long sweeps propelled it across the harbor’s choppy surface. The ropes lashing a merchant’s half-dozen canvas-covered wagons to the cleats on the deck creaked with every shift, the horses stamped their hooves nervously, and the oarsmen had to fend off wagon drivers and hired guards who wanted to empty their bellies over the side. Some men had no stomach for the motion of water. The merchant herself, a plump-faced woman with a coppery skin, stood in the bow wrapped in her dark cloak, balancing easily with the ferry’s movements, staring fixedly at the approaching landing and ignoring Karede beside her. She might know that he was Seanchan, from the saddle on his bay gelding if nothing else, but a plain gray cloak covered his red-trimmed green coat, so if she thought of him at all, it was as an ordinary soldier. Not a settler, with a sword on his hip. There might have been sharper eyes back in the city, despite all he had done to evade them, but there was nothing he could do about that. With luck, he had a day, perhaps two, before anyone realized he would not be returning to the inn any time soon.

  Swinging into his saddle as soon as the ferry bumped hard against the landing dock’s leather-padded posts, he was first off when the loading gate swung aside, the merchant was still chivvy­ing her drivers to the wagons and the ferrymen unlashing wheels. He kept Aldazar to a slow walk across the stones, still slippery with the morning’s rain, a litter of horse dung, and the leavings of a flock of sheep, and let the bay’s pace increase only when he reached the Illian Road

  itself, though he kept short of a trot even then. Impatience was a vice when beginning a journey of unknown length.

  Inns lined the road beyond the landing, flat-roofed buildings, covered in cracked and flaking white plaster and with faded signs out front or none at all. This road marked the northern edge of the Rahad, and roughly dressed men slouching on benches in front of the inns sullenly watched him pass. Not because he was Seanchan; he suspected they would have been no brighter for anyone on horseback. Anyone who had two coins to rub, for that matter. Soon he left them behind, though, and the next few hours took him past olive orchards and small farms where the workers were accustomed enough to passersby on the road that they did not look up from their labors. The traffic was sparse in any case, a handful of high-wheeled farmers’ carts and twice a merchant’s train rumbling toward Ebou Dar, surrounded by hired guards. Many of the drivers and both merchants wore those distinctive Illianer beards. It seemed strange that Illian continued to send its trade to Ebou Dar while fighting to resist the Empire, but people on this side of the Eastern Sea were often peculiar, with odd customs, and little like the stories told of the great Hawkwing’s homeland. Often nothing like. They must be understood, of course, if they were to be brought into the Empire, but understanding was for others, higher than he. He had his duty.

  The farms gave way to woodlands and fields of scrub, and his shadow was lengthening in front of him, the sun more than halfway to the horizon, by the time he saw what he was looking for. Just ahead, Ajimbura was squatting on the north side of the road, playing a reed flute, the image of an idler shirking. Before Karede reached him, he tucked the flute behind his belt, gathered his brown cloak and vanished into the brush and trees. Glancing behind to make sure the road was empty in that direction as well, Karede turned Aldazar into the woodland at the same point.

  The little man was waiting just out of sight of the road, among a stand of some sort of large pine tree, the tallest easily a hundred feet. He made his hunch-shouldered bow and scrambled into the saddle of a lean chestnut with four white feet. He insisted that white feet on a horse were lucky. “This way, high one?” he said, and at Karede’s gesture of permission, turned his mount deeper into the forest.

  They had only a short way to ride, no more than half a mile, but no one passing on the road could have suspected what waited there in a large clearing. Musenge had brought a hundred of the Guard on good horses and twenty Ogier Gardeners, all in full armor, along with pack animals to carry supplies for two weeks. The packhorse Ajimbura had brought out yesterday, with Karede’s armor, would be among them. A cluster of sul’dam were standing beside their own mounts, some petting the six leashed damane. When Musenge rode forward to meet Karede with Hartha, the First Gardener, striding grim-faced beside him with his green-tasseled axe over his shoulder. One of the women, Melitene, the High Lady Tuon’s der’sul’dam, stepped into her saddle and joined them.

  Musenge and Hartha touched fists to heart, and Karede returned their salute, but his eyes went to the damane. To one in particular, a small woman whose hair was being stroked by a dark, square-faced sul’dam. A damam’s face was always deceptive - they age
d slowly and lived a very long time - but this one had a differ­ence he had learned to recognize as belonging to those who called themselves Aes Sedai. “What excuse did you use to get all of them out of the city at once?” he asked.

  “Exercise, Banner-General,” Melitene replied with a wry smile. “Everyone always believes exercise.” It was said the High Lady Tuon in truth needed no der’sul’dam to train her property or her sul’dam, but Melitene, with less black than gray in her long hair, was experienced in more than her craft, and she knew what he was really asking. He had requested that Musenge bring a pair of damane, if he could. “None of us would be left behind, Banner-General. Never for this. As for Mylen. . . .” That must be the for­mer Aes Sedai. “After we left the city, we told the damane why we were going. It’s always best if they know what’s expected. We’ve been calming Mylen ever since. She loves the High Lady. They all do, but Mylen worships her as though she already sat on the Crys­tal Throne. If Mylen gets her hands on one of these ‘Aes Sedai,’“ she chuckled, “we’ll have to be quick to keep the woman from being too battered to be worth leashing.”

  “I see no cause for laughter,” Hartha rumbled. The Ogier was even more weathered and grizzled than Musenge, with long gray mustaches and eyes like black stones staring out of his helmet. He had been a Gardener since before Karede’s father was born, maybe before his grandfather. “We have no target. We are trying to catch the wind in a net.” Melitene sobered quickly, and Musenge began to look grimmer than Hartha, if that was possible.

  In ten days, the people they sought would have put many miles behind them. The best the White Tower could send would not be so blatant as to head due east after trying the ruse of Jehannah, nor so stupid to as to head too close to north, yet that left a vast and ever expanding area to be searched. “Then we must begin spread­ing our nets without delay,” Karede said, “and spread them finely.”