A Crown of Swords (65 page)

The hours wore on. She read and re-read the short letter Mat had left with Tylin. Aviendha sat quietly beside her high-backed chair, cross-legged on the pale green floor tiles as usual, an ornately gilded leather-bound copy
of
The Travels of Jain Farstrider
open on her knees. No anxiety there, not to see, but then the woman would not turn a hair if someone stuffed a viper down her dress. Since returning to the palace she had donned the intricate silver necklace she wore nearly day and night. Except on the boat trip; she had said she did not want to risk it, then. Idly, Nynaeve wondered why she no longer wore her ivory bracelet. There had been an overheard conversation, something about not wearing it until Elayne had its like, which made little sense. And mattered as little as the bracelet, of course. The letter called from her lap. The sitting-room stand-lamps made reading easy, though Mat’s unformed, boyish hand did present difficulties. It was the contents that clenched Nynaeve’s middle into knots.

There’s nothing here but heat and flies, and we can find plenty of those in Caemlyn.

“Are you sure you didn’t tell him anything?” she demanded.

Across the room, Juilin paused with his hand over the stones board, giving her a look of outraged innocence. “How often must I say so?” Outraged innocence was one of the things men did best, especially when they were guilty as foxes in the henyard. Interesting that the carving around the board’s rim was of foxes.

Thom, seated across the lapis-inlaid table from the thief-catcher, looked as little the gleeman in his finely cut coat of bronze wool, as he did the man who had once been Queen Morgase’s lover. Gnarled and white-haired, with long mustaches and thick eyebrows, he was frustrated patience from his sharp blue eyes to his boot soles. “I can’t see how we could have, Nynaeve,” he said dryly, “given that you told us next to nothing until tonight. You should have sent Juilin and me.”

Nynaeve sniffed loudly. As if those two had not been running around like chickens with their heads off ever since they arrived, prying into her and Elayne’s affairs on Mat’s say-so. Those three could not be together two minutes without gossiping, either. Men never could. They. . . . The truth of it was, she admitted reluctantly, using the men had never occurred to them. “You’d have gone off carousing and drinking with him,” she muttered. “Don’t tell me you would not.” That must be where Mat was, leaving Birgitte to cool her feet at the inn. That man would find some way to set the whole scheme awry.

“And what if they had?” Leaning beside one of the tall arched windows,
peering out at the night through the white-painted iron balcony, Elayne giggled. She was tapping her foot, though how she could make out one tune from all those floating in the darkness was a wonder. “It is a night for . . . carousing.”

Nynaeve frowned at her back. Elayne had been increasingly peculiar all night. If she had not known better, she would have suspected the other woman had been sneaking out to snatch sips of wine. Gulps of it, actually. Even if Elayne had not been under her eye, though, that was impossible. Each of them had had a rather unfortunate experience with too much wine, and neither had again let herself have more than a single cup at a time.

“It is Jaichim Carridin who interests me,” Aviendha said, closing the book and setting it beside her. She refused to consider how odd she looked, sitting on the floor in a blue silk dress. “Among us, Shadowrunners are killed as soon as found, and not clan, sept, society or first-sister will raise a hand in protest. If Jaichim Carridin is a Shadow-runner, why does Tylin Mitsobar not kill him? Why do we not?”

“Matters are a little more complex here,” Nynaeve told her, though she had wondered the same. Not why Carridin was not killed, of course, but why he was still allowed to come and go as he wished. She had seen him in the palace that very day, after she had been handed Mat’s letter, after she had told Tylin what it contained. He had spoken with Tylin above an hour and departed with as much honor as when he arrived. She had meant to discuss it with Elayne, but the question of what Mat knew, and how, kept intruding. That man would make trouble. He would, somehow. This business was going to go wrong no matter what anyone said. Bad weather was coming.

Thom cleared his throat. “Tylin is a weak queen, and Carridin the ambassador of a power.” Placing a stone, he kept his eyes on the board. He sounded as though he was thinking aloud. “By definition, a Whitecloak Inquisitor cannot be a Darkfriend; at least, that’s how it is defined in the Fortress of the Light. If she arrests him, or even charges him, she’ll find a Whitecloak legion in Ebou Dar before she can blink. They might leave her the throne, but she’d be a puppet from then on, strings pulled from the Dome of Truth. Aren’t you ready to concede yet, Juilin?” The thief-catcher glared at him, then bent to a furious study of the board.

“I did not think her a coward,” Aviendha said disgustedly, and Thom gave her an amused smile.

“You have never faced something you could not fight, child,” he said gently, “something so strong your only choice is to flee or be consumed
alive. Try to hold judgment on Tylin till you have.” For some reason, Aviendha’s face reddened. Normally, she hid her emotions so well her face was like stone. “I know,” Elayne said suddenly. “We’ll find proof even Pedron Niall must accept.” She skipped back into the room. No, she danced. “We will disguise ourselves and follow him.”

Suddenly, it was no longer Elayne standing there in a green Ebou Dari gown, but a Domani woman in thin clinging blue. Nynaeve leaped up before she could stop, and her mouth tightened with exasperation at herself. Just because she could not see the weaves at the moment was no reason to be startled by Illusion. She darted a glance at Thom and Juilin. Even Thom’s mouth hung open. Unconsciously she took a firm grip on her braid. Elayne was going to reveal everything! What was the matter with her?

Illusion worked best the closer you stayed to what was there before, in shape and size at least, so bits of the Ebou Dari dress flashed through the Domani garment as Elayne whirled to examine herself in one of the room’s two large mirrors. She laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, he will never recognize me. Or you, near-sister.” Abruptly a Taraboner woman sat beside Nynaeve’s chair, with brown eyes and yellow braids strung with red beads just the shade of her snug-fitting dress of folded silk. She watched Elayne quizzically. Nynaeve’s hand tightened on her braid. “And we can’t forget you,” Elayne babbled on. “I know
just
the thing.”

This time, Nynaeve saw the glow around Elayne. She was furious. Seeing the flows being woven about herself did not tell her what image Elayne gave her, of course. It took looking into one of the mirrors to do that. A Sea Folk woman stared back at her, aghast, with a dozen begemmed rings in her ears and twice as many golden medallions dangling from the chain running to her nose ring. Aside from the jewelry, she wore wide trousers of brocaded green silk and not a stitch else, the way women of the Atha’an Miere did out of sight of land. It was just Illusion. She was still decently clothed under the weaving. But. . . . Beside her reflection she saw those of Thom and Juilin, both fighting grins.

A strangled squawk erupted from her throat. “Close your eyes!” she shouted at the men and began leaping about, waving her arms, anything to make her dress show through. “Close them, burn you!” Oh. They had. Bristling with indignation, she stopped capering. They were not fighting those grins anymore, though. For that matter, Aviendha was laughing quite openly, rocking to and fro.

Nynaeve gave her skirts a jerk—in the mirror, the Sea Folk woman
seemed to pluck at her trousers—and fixed Elayne with a glare. “Stop this, Elayne!” The Domani woman stared back, mouth open and eyes wide with incredulity. Only then did Nynaeve realize how angry she was; the True Source beckoned from just beyond the edge of sight. Embracing
saidar
, she slammed a shield between Elayne and the Source. Or rather, she tried to. Shielding someone who already held the Power was not easy even when you were the stronger. Once, as a girl, she had swung Master Luhhan’s hammer against his anvil as hard as she could, and the shiver of it ran all the way to her toes. This was about twice that. “Love of the Light, Elayne, are you drunk?”

The glow around the Domani woman faded away, and so did the Domani woman. Nynaeve knew the weave was gone from around herself, but she still glanced at the mirror and drew a relieved breath to see Nynaeve al’Meara there in yellow-slashed blue.

“No,” Elayne said slowly. Color burned in her face, but it was not embarrassment, or not entirely. Her chin rose, and her voice frosted. “I am not.”

The door to the corridor banged open, and Birgitte staggered in with a broad smile. Well, perhaps she did not quite stagger, but she was decidedly unsteady. “I did not expect you all to remain awake for me,” she said brightly. “Well, you’ll be interested to hear what I have to say. But first. . . .”

With the too steady steps of someone carrying considerable drink inside, she vanished into her room.

Thom stared at her door with a bemused grin, Juilin with an incredulous one. They knew who she was, the truth of it. Elayne just glared down her nose. From Birgitte’s bedchamber came a splashing, as if a pitcher had been upended on the floor. Nynaeve exchanged puzzled looks with Aviendha.

Birgitte reappeared with her face and hair dripping and her coat soaked from shoulders to elbows. “Now my wits are clearer,” she said, settling into one of the ball-footed chairs with a sigh. “That young man has a hollow leg and a hole in the bottom of his foot. He even out-drank Beslan, and I was beginning to think wine was water to that lad.”

“Beslan?” Nynaeve said, her voice rising. “Tylin’s son? What was he doing there?”

“Why did you allow it, Birgitte?” Elayne exclaimed. “Mat Cauthon will corrupt the boy, and his mother will blame us.”

“The
boy
is the same age as you,” Thom told her in stuffy tones.

A baffled look passed between Nynaeve and Elayne. What was his
point? Everyone knew that a man did not achieve his proper wits, such as they were, until ten years later than a woman.

The puzzlement faded from Elayne’s face, replaced by firmness and no little anger as she focused on Birgitte again. Words were going to be said, words both women might regret tomorrow.

“If you and Juilin will leave us now, Thom,” Nynaeve said quickly. It was extremely unlikely they would see the need on their own. “You need your sleep to be fresh first thing in the morning.” They sat there, gaping at her like belled fools, so she made her tone firmer. “Now?”

“This game was done twenty stones ago,” Thom said, glancing at the board. “What do you say we go down to our own room and start another? I’ll spot you ten stones to place as you will any time during the game.”

“Ten stones?” Juilin yelped, scraping back his chair. “Will you offer me fish broth and milk-bread, as well?”

They argued all the way out, but at the door, each of them glanced back in sullen resentment. She would not put it past them to remain awake all night just because she had sent them to bed.

“Mat won’t corrupt Beslan,” Birgitte said dryly as the door closed behind the men. “I doubt nine feather dancers with a shipload of brandy could corrupt him. They wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Nynaeve was relieved to hear it, though something was odd about the woman’s tone—likely the drink—but Beslan was not at all the issue. She said so, and Elayne added, “No, he isn’t. You got
drunk
, Birgitte! And
I
felt it. I
still
feel tipsy if I don’t concentrate. The bond is
not
supposed to work that way. Aes Sedai don’t fall over giggling if their Warders drink too much.” Nynaeve threw up her hands.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Birgitte said. “You know more than I do. Aes Sedai and Warders have always been men and women before. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe we are too alike.” Her grin was skewed slightly. There had not been near enough water in that pitcher. “That might be embarrassing, I suppose.”

“If we could stay with what is important?” Nynaeve said tightly. “Such as Mat?” Elayne had her mouth open for a retort to Birgitte, but she closed it quickly, the red spots in her cheeks most definitely chagrin this time. “Now,” Nynaeve went on. “Will Mat be here in the morning, or is he in the same revolting state as you?”

“He might come,” Birgitte said, taking a cup of mint tea from Aviendha, who of course sat down on the floor. Elayne frowned at her a moment, then, of all things, folded up her legs and sat beside her!

“What do you mean, he might?” Nynaeve demanded. She channeled, and the chair she had been sitting in floated over to her, and if it banged to the floor, she meant it to. Drinking too much, sitting on the floor. What was next? “If he expects us to come to him on hands and knees . . . !”

Birgitte took a sip of the tea with a grateful murmur, and oddly, when she looked at Nynaeve again, she did not seem so intoxicated. “I talked him out of that. I don’t think he was really serious. All he wants now is an apology and thanks.”

Nynaeve’s eyes popped. She had talked him
out
of that? Apologize? To Matrim Cauthon? “Never,” she growled.

“For what?” Elayne wanted to know, as if that mattered. She pretended not to see Nynaeve’s glare.

“The Stone of Tear,” Birgitte said, and Nynaeve’s head whipped around. The woman no longer sounded intoxicated at all. “He says he went into the Stone, him and Juilin, to free the pair of you from a dungeon you couldn’t escape on your own.” She shook her head slowly, in wonder. “I don’t know that I would have done that for anyone short of Gaidal. Not the Stone. He says you gave him a backhanded thanks and made him feel he ought to be grateful you didn’t kick him.”

It was true, in a way, but all distorted. There Mat had been with that mocking grin of his, saying he was there to pull their chestnuts off the fire or some such. Even then he had thought he could tell them what to do. “Only one of the Black sisters was on guard in the dungeon,” Nynaeve muttered, “and we had taken care of her.” True, they hadn’t yet been able to figure out how to open the door, shielded. “Be’lal wasn’t really interested in us, anyway—it was just to lure Rand. Moiraine may already have killed him, by then, for all we know.”