Crossroads of Twilight

  He kept an eye out for patrols of Guardsmen as he walked, but he did not expect to see any. The strongarms and prowlers would have sought other hunting grounds if the Guards were about. Of course, he could send nosy Guardsmen on their way with a word, yet he wanted no observers of any kind, and no questions why he was so far from the palace afoot. His step hesitated as two heavily cloaked women appeared at a crossing well ahead, but they moved on without glancing his way, and he breathed more easily. Very few women would venture out at this time of night without a man along to wield sword or cudgel, and even without seeing their faces he would have wagered a fistful of gold to a horse apple that pair were Aes Sedai. Or else some of those strange women who filled most of the beds in the palace.

  The thought of that lot brought a scowl, and a prickling between his shoulder blades like the brush of nettles. Whatever was going on in the palace, it was enough to give him the grips. The Sea Folk women were bad enough, and not just because they went swaying along the halls in that seductive way, then pulled a knife on a man. He had not even thought of patting one on the bottom after he realized they and the Aes Sedai were staring at one another like strange cats in a box. And plainly, however impossi­bly, the Sea Folk were the larger cats. The others were worse, in a way. No matter what the rumors said, he knew the look of Aes Sedai, and it did not include wrinkles. Yet some of them could channel, and he had the disturbing notion that they all could. Which made no sense at all. Maybe the Sea Folk had some sort of peculiar dispensation, but as for these Kin, as Falion called them, everyone knew that if three women who could channel and were not Aes Sedai sat down at the same table, Aes Sedai would appear before they could finish a pitcher of wine and tell them to move on and never speak to one another again. And make sure they did it, besides. That was given. But there those women sat in the palace, over a hundred of them, holding their private meetings, walking around Aes Sedai without one frown between them. Until today, anyway, and whatever had set them huddling like frightened hens, the Aes Sedai had been every bit as anxious. There were too many oddities to suit him. When Aes Sedai behaved oddly, it was time for a man to look to the safety of his own skin.

  With a curse he jerked himself out of his reverie. A man needed to look out for his skin in the night, too, and letting his concentra­tion drift was no way to do it. At least he had not stopped, or even slowed. After a few more steps, he smiled a thin smile and thumbed the blade of his dagger. The wind sighed down the street and fell, whistled across rooftops and fell, and in the brief silences between he could hear the faint crunch of the boots that had been following him since shortly after he left the palace.

  At the next crossing street, he turned to his right at the same steady unhurried pace, then suddenly flattened his back against the front of a stable that stood hard on the corner. The wide stable doors were shut, and likely barred on the inside, but the smell of horse and horse dung hung in the icy air. The inn across the street was closed up tight, as well, its windows shuttered and dark, the only sound aside from the wind the creak of its swinging sign he could not make out in the night. No one to see what they should not.

  He had a moment’s warning, the sound of boots quickened in an effort not to let him out of sight too long, and then a cowled head was thrust cautiously around the corner. Not cautiously enough, of course. His left hand darted into the cowl to seize a throat at the same time his right made a practiced stop-thrust with the dagger. He half expected to find a breastplate, or a mail shirt under the man’s coat, and he was ready if he did, but an inch of steel sank easily beneath the fellow’s breastbone. He did not know why that seemed to paralyze a man’s lungs, so he could not cry out, until he had drowned in his own blood, but he knew that it did. Still, tonight he had no time to wait. No Guards in sight at pres­ent did not mean matters would stay that way for long. With a quick wrench, he slammed the man’s head against the stable’s stone wall hard enough to crack a skull, then shoved his dagger to the hilt, feeling the blade grate as it dug through the fellow’s spine.

  His breathing remained steady - killing was just a thing that, had to be done now and again, nothing to get excited over - but he hurriedly lowered the corpse to the snow against the wall and crouched beside it, wiping his blade on the dead man’s dark coat while sticking his other hand into his armpit to tug off his steel-backed gauntlet. Head swiveling, he watched the street both ways as he felt quickly across the man’s face in the darkness. A rasp of stubble under his fingers told him that it was a man, but no more. Man, woman or child made no difference to him - fools behaved as though children had no eyes to see or tongues to tell what they saw - yet he wished there had been a mustache or a bulbous nose, anything to spark a memory and tell him who this fellow had been. A squeeze at the dead man’s sleeve found thick wool, neither fine nor particularly rough, and a sinewy arm that could have belonged to clerk or wagon driver or footman. To any man, in short, just like the coat. Searching down the body, he rifled through the fellow’s pockets, finding a wooden comb and a ball of twine, which he tossed aside. At the man’s belt, his hand paused. A leather sheath hung there, empty. No man on earth could have drawn a dagger after Hanlon’s blade found his lungs. Of course, there was good cause for a man to carry his knife unsheathed when he walked out at night, but the reason that came most readily to mind right then was to stab someone in the back or cut a throat.

  It was only a fleeting pause, though. Wasting no time on spec­ulation, he sliced off the fellow’s purse beneath the drawstrings. The weight of the coins he spilled into his hand and hastily stuffed into his own pocket told him there was no gold, likely not even a piece of silver, but a cut purse and no coins would make whoever found the body think him the prey of strongarms. Straightening, he tugged on his gauntlet, and only moments after driving his blade home, he was striding along the slush-covered pavement once more, dagger held close to his side beneath his cloak and eyes wary. He did not relax until he was a street away from the dead man, and then he did not relax very far.

  Most people who heard of the killing would accept the tale of murder for theft that he had laid out for them, but not whoever had sent the fellow. Following all the way from the palace meant that he had been sent, but by whom? He was fairly sure that any of the Sea Folk who wanted a knife put in him would have done the deed herself. For all that the Kin troubled him just by being there, they seemed to keep quiet and walk small. True, people who prac­ticed avoiding notice were the most likely to resort to a hired knife in the night, but he had never exchanged more than three words at a time with any of them, and he certainly had never tried to finger one. The Aes Sedai seemed more likely, yet he was sure he had done nothing to rouse their suspicions. Still, any one of them might have her own reasons for wanting him dead. You could never tell with Aes Sedai. Birgitte Trahelion was a silly bint who seemed to think she really was a character out of a story, maybe even the real Birgitte, if there had ever been a real Birgitte, but she could well think he was a threat to her position. She might be a strumpet, wiggling around the corridors in those trousers the way she did, yet she had a cold eye. That one could order a throat slit without blinking. The last possibility was the one that worried him most, though. His own masters were not the most trusting of people, and not always the most trustworthy. And the Lady Shiaine Avarhin, who currently gave him his orders, was the one who had sent a summons that had pulled him into the night. Where a fellow just happened to be waiting to follow him, knife in hand. He did not believe in coincidence, no matter what people said about this al’Thor.

  Thoughts of turning back to the palace came and went in a flash. He had gold tucked away; he could bribe his way through the gates as easily as anyone else, or just order one opened long enough to let him ride out. But it would mean spending the rest of his life watching his back, and anyone who came inside arm’s length of him might be the one sent to kill him. Not so different from the way he lived now. Except for the certainty that someone would put poison in his soup or a knif
e through his ribs sooner or later. Besides, that stone-eyed trull Birgitte was the most likely culprit. Or an Aes Sedai. Or maybe he had offended these Kin somehow. Still, it always paid to be careful. His fingers flexed around the dagger’s hilt. Life was good at the moment, with plenty of comfort and plenty of women impressed or frightened into com­pliance by a Captain of the Guards, but life on the run was always preferable to death here and now.

  Finding the correct street, much less the correct house, was not easy - one narrow side street looked very like another when dark­ness swathed both - but he took a care and eventually found him­self pounding on the front doors of a tall, shadowed pile that could have belonged to a wealthy but discreet merchant. Except he knew now that it did not. Avarhin was a tiny House, extinct some said, but one daughter of it remained, and Shiaine possessed money.

  One of the doors swung open, and he flung up a hand against the sudden glare of light. His left hand; the dagger in his right, he kept concealed and ready. Squinting through his spread fingers, he recognized the woman at the door, in the plain dark dress of a maid. Not that that eased his mind by a hair.

  “Give us a kiss, Falion,” he said as he stepped inside. Leering, he reached for her. Left-handed, of course.

  The long-faced woman brushed his hand aside and shut the door firmly behind him. “Shiaine is closeted with a visitor in the front sitting room upstairs,” she said calmly, “and the cook is in her bedchamber. There is no one else in the house. Hang your cloak on the rack. I will let her know you are here, but you may have to wait.”

  Hanlon let his leer vanish and his hand drop. For all of her age­less face, handsome was the best that Falion could be called, and even that might be stretching the truth, with her cold gaze and a colder manner in the bargain. She was hardly the sort of woman he would have chosen to fondle, but it seemed she was being punished by one of the Chosen and he was supposed to be part of the punish­ment, which altered matters. To some extent. Tumbling a woman who had no choice had never troubled him, and Falion certainly had none. Her maid’s dress was simple truth; she did the work of four or five women by herself, maids and scullions and spit-girl, sleeping when she could and truckling whenever Shiaine frowned. Her hands were rough and red from doing laundry and scrubbing floors. Yet she was likely to survive her punishment, and the last thing he wanted was an Aes Sedai with a personal grudge against Daved Hanlon. Not when circumstances might well change before he had an opportunity to put a knife through her heart, anyway. Reaching an accommodation with her had been easy, though. She seemed to have a practical view. When others could see, he rum­pled her every time she came in reach, and when there was time, he bundled her up to her tiny maid’s room under the eaves. Where they mussed the bedclothes, then sat on the narrow bed in the cold and exchanged information. Though at her urging, he did give her a few bruises, just in case Shiaine chose to check. He hoped she remembered that it was at her urging.

  “Where are the others?” he said, swinging his cloak off and hanging it on the leopard-carved cloak rack. The sound of his boots on the floor tiles bounced from the entry hall’s high ceiling. It was a fine space, with painted plaster cornices and several rich wall hangings on carved panels that were polished to a faint glow, well lit by mirrored stand-lamps with enough gilding for the Royal Palace itself, but burn him if it was much warmer than outside. Falion raised an eyebrow at the dagger in his hand, and he sheathed it with a tight smile. He could have it out again faster than anyone would believe, and his sword near as fast. “The streets are full of thieves at night.” Despite the chill, he removed his gauntlets and tucked them behind his sword belt. Anything else might make it appear he thought himself in danger. The breastplate should be enough anyway, come the worst.

  “I do not know where Marillin is,” she said over her shoulder, already turning away and gathering her skirts for the stairsteps. “She went out before sunset. Murellin is in the stables with his pipe. We can talk after I inform Shiaine you’ve arrived.”

  Watching her climb the stairs, he grunted. Murellin, a hulking fellow Hanlon did not like at his back, was banished to the stables behind the house whenever he wanted to smoke his pipe, because Shiaine disliked the smell of the rough tabac he used, and since he usually took a pot of ale with him, or even a pitcher, he should not be coming in any time soon. Marillin worried him more. She was Aes Sedai, too, apparently as much under Shiaine’s orders as Falion,

  or himself, but he had no agreements with her. No arguments, either, yet he distrusted any Aes Sedai on principle, Black Ajah or not. Where had she gone? To do what? What a man did not know could kill him, and Marillin Gemalphin spent entirely too much time off doing things he knew nothing about. He was coming to the conclusion that there were entirely too many things in Caemlyn he knew nothing about. Past time he learned, if he wanted to

  live.

  fWith Falion gone, he went from the icy entry hall straight to the kitchen at the back of the house. The brick-walled room was empty, of course - the cook knew better than to poke her nose out of her room in the basement once she was sent away for the night - and the black iron stove and the ovens stood cold, but a small blaze on the long stone hearth made the kitchen one of the few rooms in the house that would be warm. Compared to the rest, at least. Shiaine was a stingy woman, except when it came to her own comforts. The fire here was only in case she happened to want mulled wine in the night, or a heated egg-milk.

  He had been in this house above half a dozen times since com­ing to Caemlyn, and he knew which cabinets held the spices and which room off the kitchen always held a cask of wine. Always good wine. Shiaine never stinted there. Not with that she intended to drink herself, anyway. By the time Falion returned, he had the honeypot and a dish of ginger and cloves sitting on the wide kitchen table with a pitcher full of wine, and a poker thrust into the fire. Shiaine might say “come now” and mean “now,” but when she wanted to make a man wait, it could be near daylight before she saw him. These calls always cost him sleep, burn the woman!

  “Who is the visitor?” he asked.

  “He gave no name, not to me,” Falion said, propping the door to the hall open with a chair. That let some of the sparse warmth leak out, but she would want to be able to hear if Shiaine sum­moned her. Or maybe she wanted to make sure the other woman was not able to eavesdrop. “A lean man, tall and hard, with the look of a soldier. An officer of some rank, maybe a noble, by his manner, and Andoran by his accents. He seems intelligent and cau­tious. His clothes are quite plain, though costly, and he wears no rings or pins.” Frowning at the table, she turned to one of the tall open-front cabinets beside the door to the hallway and added a sec­ond pewter cup to the one he had set out for himself. It had never occurred to him to set out two. Bad enough he had to fix his own wine. Aes Sedai or no Aes Sedai, she was the maid. But she took a chair at the table and pushed the dish of spices away from her for all the world as though she expected him to serve.

  “Shiaine had two visitors yesterday, however, more careless than this fellow,” she went on. “One, in the morning, had the Golden Boars of Sarand on the cuff of his gauntlets. He probably thought no one would notice small-work, if he thought at all. A plump, yellow-haired man in his middle years who looked down his nose at everything, complimented the wine as though surprised to find a decent vintage in the house, and wanted Shiaine to have me beaten for showing insufficient respect.” She said even that in a cold, measured voice. The only time she had had any heat in her was when Shiaine put the strap to her. He had heard her howl right enough then. “A countryman who has seldom been to Caemlyn but believes he knows how his betters behave, I should say. You can mark him by a wart on his chin and a small half-moon scar beside his left eye. The fellow in the afternoon was short and dark, with a sharp nose and wary eyes, and no scars or marks I could see, though he wore a ring with a square garnet on his left hand. He was spar­ing with words, very mindful to give away nothing in the little I heard, but he carried a dagger with the
Four Moons of House Marne on the pommel.”

  Folding his arms, Hanlon leaned against the side of the fire­ place and kept his face smooth despite a desire to scowl. He had been sure that the plan was for Elayne to take the throne, though what came after remained a mystery. She had been promised to him as a queen. Whether or not she wore a crown when he took her mattered not a whit to him except for the spice it added – breaking that long-legged bit to saddle would be pure pleasure if she had been a farmer’s daughter, especially after the chit cut a slice off him today in front of all those other women! - but dealings with Sarand and Marne said maybe Elayne was meant to die uncrowned. Maybe, in spite of all the promises that he could romp a queen, he had been placed where he was so he could kill her at some selected moment, when her death would bring some specific result sought by Shiaine. Or rather by the Chosen who had given her her orders. Moridin, the fellow was called, a name Hanlon had never heard before coming to this house. That did not trouble him. If a man had the nerve

  to call himself one of the Chosen, Hanlon was not fool enough to question it. The likelihood that he was no more than a dagger in this did trouble him. So long as a dagger did the job, what matter if it broke in the doing? Much better to be the fist on the hilt than the blade.

  “Did you see any gold change hands?” he asked. “Did you hear anything?”

  “I would have said,” she replied thinly. “And by our agreement, it is my turn for a question.”

  He managed to mask his irritation behind an expectant look. The fool woman always asked about the Aes Sedai in the palace or those she called the Kin, or about the Sea Folk. Silly questions. Who was friendly with whom, and who unfriendly. Who exchanged private words and who avoided one another. What he had heard them say. As if he had nothing to do with his time but lurk around the hallways spying on them. He never lied to her - there was too much chance she might learn the truth, even mired here in this house as a maid; she was Aes Sedai, after all - but it was growing difficult to come up with something he had not already told her, and she was adamant that he give information if he expected to receive any. Still, he had a few tidbits to offer today, some of the Sea Folk going off, and the whole lot of them jumping for most of the day as if they had icicles shoved down their backs. She would have to settle for that. What he needed to know was important, not bloody gossip.