Winter's Heart

  Paitar shook his bald head. “You want us to enter Andor? Elayne Sedai—or should I call you Lady Elayne, now?—I wish you the Light’s blessing in your quest for Andor’s crown, but not enough to offer my men to fight for it.”

  “Elayne Sedai and Lady Elayne are one and the same,” she told them. “I do not ask you to fight for me. In truth, I hope with all my heart that you cross Andor without so much as a skirmish.” Raising her silver winecup, she wet her lips without drinking. A flash of caution surged through the Warder bond, and in spite of herself, Elayne laughed. Aviendha was watching her from the corner of her eye and frowning. Even now, they were going to look after the mother to be.

  “I am glad someone finds this amusing,” Ethenielle said wryly. “Try to think like a Southlander, Paitar. They play the Game of Houses here, and I think she is being very clever at it. She should be, I suppose; I’ve always heard that Aes Sedai created Daes Dae’mar.”

  “Think tactics, Paitar.” Easar was studying Elayne, wearing a small smile. “We move toward Caemlyn as invaders, so any Andoran will see it. Winter may be mild here, but we’ll still need weeks to ride that far. By the time we do, she will have rallied enough of the Andoran Houses against us, and to her, that she will have the Lion Throne, or near enough. At the least, enough strength will have been pledged to her that no one else will be able to stand long against her.” Tenobia shifted on her chair, frowning and adjusting her skirts, but there was a respect in her eyes when she looked at Elayne that had not been there before.

  “And when we reach Caemlyn, Elayne Sedai,” Ethenielle said, “you will . . . negotiate . . . us into leaving Andor without a battle being fought.” That came out as not quite a question, but almost. “Very clever indeed.”

  “If all works as she plans,” Easar said, his smile fading. He put out a hand without looking, and the old soldier placed a winecup in it. “Battles seldom do; even this bloodless sort, I think.”

  “I very much want it all to be bloodless,” Elayne said. Light, it had to be, or instead of saving her country from civil war, she had plunged it into worse. “I will work hard to see that it is. I expect you to do the same.”

  “Do you also happen to know where my Uncle Davram is, Elayne Sedai?” Tenobia said suddenly. “Davram Bashere? I would like to speak with him as much as with the Dragon Reborn.”

  “Lord Davram is not far from Caemlyn, Tenobia. I cannot promise he will still be there when you arrive, though. That is, if you agree?” Elayne made herself breathe, to hide her anxiety. She was beyond where she could turn back, now. They would move south now, she was certain, but without their agreement, there would be bloodshed.

  For a long moment there was silence in the tent except for a coal cracking in one of the braziers. Ethenielle exchanged glances with the two men.

  “So long as I get to see my uncle,” Tenobia said heatedly, “I am agreed.”

  “On my honor, I am agreed,” Easar said decisively, and almost atop him, if in a milder tone, Paitar said, “Under the Light, I am agreed.”

  “Then so are we all,” Ethenielle breathed. “And now your part, Elayne Sedai. Where do we find the Dragon Reborn?”

  A thrill shot through Elayne, and she could not say whether it was exhilaration, or fear. She had done what she had come for, risked the dangers for herself and for Andor, and only time would tell whether she had made the right decision. She answered without hesitation, “As I told you, I cannot say exactly where. A search in Murandy will be profitable, though.” Truth, though the profit would be hers, not theirs, if any came. Egwene had moved from Murandy today, taking away the army that had held Arathelle Renshar and the other nobles in the south. Perhaps the Borderlanders moving south would force Arathelle and Luan and Pelivar to decide as Dyelin believed they would, to support her. The Light send it so.

  Except for Tenobia, the Borderlanders did not seem at all exultant over learning where to find Rand. Ethenielle let out a long breath, almost a sigh, and Easar simply nodded and pursed his lips in thought. Paitar drank down half his wine, the first real drink he had taken. It very much seemed that however much they wanted to find the Dragon Reborn, they were not looking forward to meeting him. Tenobia, on the other hand, called for the old soldier to bring her wine and went on about how much she wanted to see her uncle. Elayne would not have thought the woman had so much family feeling.

  Night came early that time of year, and only a few hours of daylight remained, as Easar pointed out, offering beds for the night. Ethenielle suggested that her own tent would be more comfortable, yet they gave no sign of disappointment when Elayne said she must leave immediately.

  “Remarkable that you can cover such distance so quickly,” Ethenielle murmured. “I have heard Aes Sedai speak of a thing called Traveling. A lost Talent?”

  “Have you encountered many sisters on your journey?” Elayne asked.

  “Some,” Ethenielle replied. “There are Aes Sedai everywhere, it seems.” Even Tenobia was suddenly expressionless.

  Allowing Birgitte to lay the marten-lined cloak on her shoulders, Elayne nodded. “So there are. Would you have our horses brought?”

  None of them spoke again until they were out of the camp, riding through the trees. The horse-smell and latrine-stink had seemed mild in the camp, but their absence here made the air seem very fresh, and the snow whiter, somehow.

  “You were very quiet, Birgitte Trahelion,” Aviendha said, thumping her bay’s ribs with her heels. She always believed the animal would stop without reminders to keep going.

  “A Warder doesn’t speak for her Aes Sedai; she bloody listens and watches her back,” Birgitte replied dryly. It was unlikely the forest contained anyone who might threaten them, this near the Shienaran camp, but her bow remained uncovered, and her eyes scanned the trees.

  “A much hastier form of negotiation than I am used to, Elayne,” Merilille said. “Normally, these matters require days or weeks of talking, if not months, before anything is agreed. You were lucky they are not Domani. Or Cairhienin,” she admitted judiciously. “Borderlanders are refreshingly open and straightforward. Easy to deal with.”

  Open and straightforward? Elayne shook her head slightly. They wanted to find Rand, but concealed why. They concealed the presence of sisters, too. At least they would be moving away from him, once she had them on their way to Murandy. That would have to do, for now, but she had to warn him, once she could figure out how to do so without endangering him. Take care of him, Min, she thought. Take care of him for us.

  A few miles from the camp, she reined in to study the forest as assiduously as Birgitte. Especially behind them. The sun sat low on the treetops. A trotting white fox appeared for an instant and was gone. Something flickered on a bare gray branch, a bird perhaps, or a squirrel. A dark hawk suddenly plummeted out of the sky, and a thin squeal broke the air and ended suddenly. They were not being followed. It was not the Shienarans she worried about, but those hidden sisters. The weariness that had vanished earlier, with Merilille’s news, had returned with interest now that her meeting with the Borderlanders was done. She wanted nothing so much as to climb into her bed as soon as possible, but she did not want it enough to give the weave for Traveling to sisters she did not know.

  She could have woven a gateway to the Palace stableyard, but only at the risk of killing someone who happened to be crossing where it opened, so instead she wove one for another place she knew just as well. She was so tired that it required effort to weave, so tired that she did not think of the angreal pinned to her dress until the silvery slash had appeared in the air and opened onto a field covered with brown grass beaten flat by earlier snowfalls, a field just south of Caemlyn where Gareth Bryne had often taken her to watch the Queen’s Guards ride to command, breaking from columns to form a line four abreast at a shouted order.

  “Are you just going to look at it?” Birgitte demanded.

  Elayne blinked. Aviendha and Merilille were studying her with concern. Birgitte’s face gave nothing
away, but the bond carried worry, too.

  “I was just thinking,” Elayne said, and heeled Fireheart through the gateway. Bed would be wonderful.

  From the old practice field to the tall arched gates set in the pale, fifty-foot-high city walls was a short ride. The long market buildings lining the approach to the gates were empty at this hour, but sharp-eyed Guardsmen still kept a watch. They watched her and the others ride in apparently without recognizing her. Mercenaries, very likely. They would not know her unless they saw her on the Lion Throne. With the help of the Light, and luck, they would see her there.

  Twilight was fast approaching, the sky turning a deep gray and the shadows slanting long across the streets. Very few people were still out and about, a scattering of folk hurrying to finish their day’s work before going home to dinner and a warm fire. A pair of bearers carrying a merchant’s dark lacquered sedan-chair went trotting past along a street ahead, and a few moments later one of the big pump-wagons rumbled in the other direction behind eight running horses, its iron-shod wheels loud on the paving stones. Another fire, somewhere. They happened most often at night. A patrol of four Guardsman walked their horses toward her and on, without looking at her twice. They did not recognize her anymore than the men at the gates.

  Swaying in her saddle, she rode wishing for her bed.

  It was a shock to realize that she was being lifted down from her saddle. She opened eyes she did not remember closing and found herself being carried into the Palace in Birgitte’s arms.

  “Put me down,” she said tiredly. “I can still walk.”

  “You can hardly stand up,” Birgitte growled. “Be still.”

  “You cannot talk with her!” Aviendha said loudly.

  “She really does need sleep, Master Norry,” Merilille said in firm tones. “Tomorrow will have to do.”

  “Forgive me, but tomorrow will not do,” Norry replied, for a wonder sounding very firm himself. “It is urgent I speak with her now!”

  Elayne’s head wanted to wobble as she lifted it. Halwin Norry was clutching that leather folder to his skinny chest, as always, but the dry man who talked of crowned heads with the same dusty tone he used for speaking of the roof repairs was almost dancing on his toes in an effort to get by Aviendha and Merilille, who each had him by an arm, holding him back.

  “Put me down, Birgitte,” she said again, and for the second wonder in as many moments, Birgitte obeyed. She kept a supporting arm around Elayne, though, for which Elayne was grateful. She was not sure her legs would have supported her for very long. “What is it, Master Norry? Let the man go, Aviendha. Merilille?”

  The First Clerk darted forward as soon they let go of him. “Word began arriving soon after you left, my Lady,” he said, not sounding dusty at all. Worry pinched his brows. “There are four armies. . . . Small, I should say now, I suppose. Light, I recall when five thousand men was an army.” He rubbed a hand over his bald head, leaving the white tufts rising behind his ears in ruffled disarray. “There are four small armies approaching Caemlyn, from the east,” he went on in a more usual tone for him. Almost. “They will be here inside the week, I fear. Twenty thousand men. Perhaps thirty. I cannot be sure.” He half extended the folder to her as if offering to show her the papers inside. He was agitated.

  “Who?” she said. Elenia had estates, and forces, in the east, but so did Naean. But neither could raise twenty thousand men. And the snow and mud should have held them until spring. “Should” and “would” build no bridges, she seemed to hear Lini’s thin voice say.

  “I do not know, my Lady,” Norry replied, “not yet.”

  It did not matter, Elayne supposed. Whoever it was, they were coming, and now. “At first light, Master Norry, I want you to begin buying all the foodstuffs you can find outside the walls and get it brought in. Birgitte, have the bannerman announcing the signing bounty add that mercenaries have four days to sign with the Guards or they must leave the city. And have announcements made to the people, too, Master Norry. Whoever wants to leave before the siege begins should go now. It will cut down the number of mouths we have to feed, and it might lead a few more men to enlist in the Guards.” Pushing away from Birgitte’s support, she strode along the hallway, heading for her apartments. The others were forced to follow. “Merilille, let the Kinswomen know, and the Atha’an Miere. They may want to leave before it begins, too, Maps, Birgitte. Have the good maps brought to my apartments. And another thing, Master Norry . . .”

  There was no time for sleep, no time for weariness. She had a city to defend.

  CHAPTER

  28

  News in a Cloth Sack

  The morning after Mat promised to help Teslyn, if he could—and Joline, and this Edesina he had yet to lay eyes on!—Tylin announced that she was departing the city.

  “Suroth is going to show me how much of Altara I control now, pigeon,” she said. Her belt knife was stuck in the carved bedpost, and they were still lying on the rumpled linen sheets amid a tangle of bedding, him in only the silk scarf that hid the hanging scar around his neck, and her in her skin. A very fine skin it was, too, as smooth as he had ever touched. Idly she traced his other scars with a long, green-lacquered fingernail. One way and another, he had acquired quite a few, though not for want of trying to avoid them. His hide would not bring much at auction, that was for sure, but the scars fascinated her. “It wasn’t her idea, actually. Tuon thinks it will . . . help me . . . if I see with my own eyes instead of just on a map, and what that girl suggests, Suroth does. She would like to see it done yesterday, though. We’ll be going by to’raken, so to cover the ground quickly. As much as two hundred miles in a day, it seems. Oh, don’t look sick, piglet. I won’t make you climb on one of those things.”

  Mat heaved a sigh of relief. It had not been the prospect of flying that upset him. He thought he might actually like that. But if he was out of Ebou Dar for any length of time, the Light alone knew whether Teslyn or Joline or even this Edesina might grow impatient enough to do something stupid, or what idiocy Beslan might get up to. Beslan worried him almost as much as the women. Tylin, excited by her coming flight on one of the Seanchan beasts, looked more an eagle than ever.

  “I’ll be gone little more than a week, sweetling. Hmmm.” That green fingernail traced the foot-long puckering that slanted across his ribs. “Shall I tie you to the bed so I’ll know you will be safe till I return?”

  Returning her wicked smile with his most winning grin took a bit of effort. He was fairly sure she was joking, but only fairly. The clothes she chose today put him all in red brilliant enough to hurt the eye; all red except for the flowers worked on the coat and the cloak, anyway, and his black hat and scarf. The white lace at his neck and wrists only made the rest look redder. Still, he scrambled into them, eager to get out of her apartments. With Tylin, a man was wise not to be too sure of anything. She might not be joking, too.

  Tylin had not exaggerated Suroth’s impatience, it appeared. In little more than two hours by the jeweled cylinder-clock in Tylin’s sitting room, a gift from Suroth, he was accompanying the Queen to the docks. Well, Suroth and Tylin rode at the head of the twenty or so other Blood that were to accompany them, and their assorted so’jhin, men and women who bowed their half-shaved heads to the Blood and stared down their noses at everyone else, while he rode behind on Pips. An Altaran Queen’s “pretty” could not ride with the Blood, which included Tylin herself now, of course. It was not as if he was a hereditary servant or anything of that level.

  The Blood and most of the so’jhin were mounted on fine animals, sleek mares with arched necks and a delicate step, deep-chested geldings with fierce eyes and strong withers. His luck seemed to have no effect on horse racing, but he would have wagered on Pips against any of them. The blunt-nosed bay gelding was not showy, but Mat was sure he could outrun nearly all of those pretty animals in a sprint and all of them over a long haul. After so long in the stables, Pips wanted to frisk if he could not run, and it took all Mat??
?s skill—well, all the skill that had somehow come with those other men’s memories—to keep the animal in hand. Before they were halfway to the docks, though, his leg was aching to the hip. If he was to leave Ebou Dar any time soon, it would have to be by sea, or with Luca’s show. He had a good notion how to make the man leave before spring, if it came to that. A dangerous notion, maybe, but he did not see much choice. The alternative was riskier still.

  He was not alone at the rear. More than fifty men and women, blessedly wearing thick white woolen robes over the sheer garments they usually went around in, marched behind him in two rows, some leading packhorses with large wicker hampers full of delicacies. The Blood could not do without their servants; in fact, they seemed to think they would be sleeping rough, with so few. The da’covale seldom raised their eyes from the paving stones, and their faces were meek as milk. He had seen a da’covale sent for a strapping once, a yellow-haired man about his age, and the fellow had raced to bring the instrument of his own punishment. He had not even tried to delay or hide, much less escape the strapping. Mat could not understand people like that.

  Ahead of him rode six sul’dam, their short divided skirts showing their ankles. Very nice ankles on one or two, but the women sat their saddles as if they were of the Blood, too. The cowls of their lightning-paneled cloaks hung down their backs, and they let the cold gusts lift the cloaks as though the chill did not touch them, or would not dare. Two had leashed damane walking beside their horses.

  Mat studied the women surreptitiously. One of the damane, a short woman with pale blue eyes, was linked by a silvery a’dam to the plump olive-skinned sul’dam he had seen walking Teslyn. The dark-haired damane answered to the name Pura. The Aes Sedai agelessness was clear on her smooth face. He had not really believed Teslyn when she said the woman had become a true damane, but the graying sul’dam leaned low in her saddle to say something to the woman who had been Ryma Galfrey, and whatever it was the sul’dam murmured, Pura laughed and clapped her hands in delight.