Lord of Chaos (129 page)

Bashere studied him up and down, then shook his head. “It might be a shame to kill you. We need some new blood. It’s getting thin in the House. My grandfather used to say we were all becoming soft, and he was right. I’m half the man he was, and much as it shames me to say it, Zarine is terribly soft. Not weak, mind . . .” He frowned hard for a moment, nodding when he saw Perrin was not going to say Faile was weak. “. . . but soft, just the same.”

And that shocked Perrin so, he sat down before he realized he had moved to the chair. He almost forgot to be angry. Was this man mad, changing about like that? And Faile, soft? She could be deliriously soft at times, true, but any man who thought she was soft in the way her father meant would probably have his head handed to him. Himself included.

Bashere picked up the crushed winecup, studied it, then replaced it and took the other chair. “Zarine told me a good bit about you before she went with her mother, all about Lord Perrin of the Two Rivers, Slayer of Trollocs. That’s good, that. I like a man who can stand toe to toe with a Trolloc and not back up. Now I want to know what kind of man you are.” He waited expectantly, sipping his wine.

Perrin wished he had some more of Rand’s melon punch, or even his winecup undented. His throat had gone dry. He wanted to make that good
impression, but he had to start with the truth. “The fact of it is, I am not really a lord. I’m a blacksmith. You see, when the Trollocs came. . . .” He trailed off because Bashere was laughing so hard the man had to wipe his eyes.

“Boy, the Creator never made the Houses. Some forget it, but go far enough back in any House, and you’ll find a commoner who showed uncommon courage or kept his head and took charge when everybody else was running around like plucked geese. Mind you, another thing some like to forget is the road down can be just as sudden. I’ve two maids in Tyr who would be ladies if their forebears two hundred years ago hadn’t been fools even a fool wouldn’t follow, and a woodcutter in Sidona who claims his ancestors were kings and queens before Artur Hawkwing. He might be telling the truth; he’s a good woodcutter. As many roads down as up, and the roads down as slippery as the others.” Bashere snorted hard enough to make his mustaches stir. “A fool moans when fortune takes him down, and it takes a true fool to moan when fortune takes him up. What I want to know about you isn’t what you were, or even so much what you are, as what you are inside. If my wife leaves Zarine with a whole hide, and I don’t kill you, do you know how to treat a wife? Well?”

Mindful of that good impression, Perrin decided not to explain that he would much rather be a blacksmith again. “I treat Faile as well as I know how,” he said carefully.

Bashere snorted again. “As well as you know how.” His flat tone became a growl. “You had better know well enough, boy, or I’ll. . . . You hear me. A wife isn’t a trooper to go running when you shout. In some ways, a woman is like a dove. You hold her half as hard as you think is necessary, or you might hurt her. You don’t want to hurt Zarine. You understand me?” He grinned suddenly, disconcertingly, and his voice grew almost friendly. “You might do very well for a son-in-law, Aybara, but if you make her unhappy. . . .” He was stroking his sword hilt again.

“I try to make her happy,” Perrin said seriously. “Hurting her is the last thing I’d want to do.”

“Good. Because it would be the last thing you do, boy.” That was delivered with a grin too, but Perrin had no doubts Bashere meant every word. “I think it’s time to take you to Deira. If she and Zarine haven’t finished their discussion by now, best we step in before one of them kills the other. They always did get a little carried away when they argued, and Zarine’s too big now for Deira to put an end to it by spanking her.” Bashere put his cup on the table, and went on as they started for the door. “One thing you have to
be aware of. Just because a woman says she believes something, doesn’t mean it is true. Oh, she’ll believe it, but a thing is not necessarily true just because a woman believes it is. You keep that in mind.”

“I will.” Perrin thought he understood what the man meant. Faile sometimes had only a passing acquaintance with the truth. Never about anything important, or at least not what she considered important, but if she promised to do something she did not want to do, she always managed to leave herself a hole to wriggle through and keep the letter of the promise while doing exactly as she wished. What he did not understand was what that could have to do with meeting Faile’s mother.

It was a long walk through the Palace, along colonnades and up flights of stairs. There did not seem to be many Saldaeans about, but a good many Aielmen and Maidens, not to mention red-and-white-liveried servants, who bowed or curtsied, and white-robed men and women like those who had taken the horses. Those last scurried along with trays or armloads of toweling, eyes down, and seemed to take no notice of anyone. With a start Perrin realized that a number of them wore the same length of scarlet cloth around their temples that many of the Aielmen did. They must be Aiel, too. He noticed a small thing as well. As many women as men in the white robes wore the headband, and men in the drab coats and breeches, but no Maidens that he saw. Gaul had told him a little about the Aiel, but he had never mentioned the headbands.

As he and Bashere entered a room with ivory-inlaid chairs and small tables set on a patterned carpet of red and gold and green, Perrin’s ears picked up the muffled sound of women’s voices raised in an inner room. He could not make out words through the thick door, but he could tell that one of them was Faile. Abruptly there was a slap, followed almost immediately by another, and he winced. Only a complete woolhead stepped between his wife and her mother when they were arguing—by what he had seen, usually they both rounded on the poor fool—and he knew very well that Faile could stand up for herself in normal circumstances. But then again, he had seen strong women, themselves mothers and even grandmothers, allow themselves to be treated like children by their own mothers.

Squaring his shoulders, he strode for the inner door, but Bashere was there before, rapping with his knuckles as if they had all the time in the world. Of course, Bashere could not hear what sounded to Perrin like two cats in a sack. Wet cats.

Bashere’s rap cut off the snarling as though with a knife. “You may come,” a composed voice said loudly.

It was all Perrin could do not to push past Bashere, and once he was inside, his eyes sought out Faile anxiously, where she sat in a wide-armed chair just where the light from the windows became less sharp. The carpet was mostly dark red in here, making him think of blood, and one of the two wall hangings showed a woman on horseback killing a leopard with a spear. The other was a furious battle swirling around a White Lion banner. Her scent was a jumble of emotions he could not separate, and her left cheek bore a red handprint, but she smiled at him, if faintly.

Faile’s mother made Perrin blink. With all Bashere’s talk of doves, he expected a fragile woman, but Lady Deira stood inches taller than her husband, and she was . . . statuesque. Not big like Mistress Luhhan, who was round, or like Daise Congar, who looked as if she could take over a blacksmith’s hammer. She was buxom, which a man certainly should not think of his mother-in-law, and he could see where Faile got her beauty. Faile’s face was her mother’s face, without the slash of white through her dark hair on her temples. If that was how Faile would look when she reached that age, he was a very fortunate man. On the other hand, that bold nose gave Lady Deira the look of an eagle as those dark tilted eyes fastened on him, a fiery-eyed eagle ready to sink talons deep into a particularly insolent rabbit. She smelled of fury and contempt. The real surprise, though, was the crimson handprint on her cheek.

“Father, we were just talking of you,” Faile said with an affectionate smile, gliding to him and taking his hands. She kissed his cheeks, and Perrin felt a sudden stab of disgruntlement; a father did not deserve all that when there was a husband standing right there with only one brief smile to sustain him.

“Should I ride away and hide then, Zarine?” Bashere chuckled. Oh, a very rich chuckle. The man did not even seem to see that his wife and daughter had hit each other!

“She prefers Faile, Davram,” Lady Deira said absently. Arms folded beneath that ample bosom, she eyed Perrin up and down without any effort to disguise it.

He heard Faile whisper softly to her father, “It depends on him, now.”

Perrin supposed it did, if she and her mother had come to blows. Squaring his shoulders, he prepared to tell Lady Deira that he would be as gentle with Faile as if she were a kitten, that he himself would be meek as a lamb. The last part would be a lie, of course—Faile would spit a meek man and roast him for dinner—but peace had to be maintained. Besides, he
did
try to be gentle with her. Maybe the Lady Deira was why Bashere
talked so about gentleness; no man would have the nerve to be anything else with this woman.

Before he could open his mouth, Faile’s mother said, “Yellow eyes do not make a wolf. Are you strong enough to handle my daughter, young man? From what she tells me, you’re a milksop, indulging her every whim, letting her twine you around her fingers whenever she wants to play cat’s cradle.”

Perrin stared. Bashere had taken the chair Faile had been sitting in, and now he was complacently studying his boots, one propped atop the toe of the other. Faile, seated on the broad arm of her father’s chair, gave her mother one indignant frown, then smiled at Perrin with all the confidence she had showed when telling him to stand up to Rand.

“I don’t think she twists me around her finger,” he said carefully. She tried, true, but he did not think he had ever let her. Except once in a while, to please her.

Lady Deira’s sniff spoke volumes. “Weaklings never think so. A woman wants a strong man, stronger than she, here.” Her finger poked his chest hard enough to make him grunt. “I’ll never forget the first time Davram took me by the scruff of the neck and showed me he was the stronger of us. It was magnificent!” Perrin blinked; that was an image his mind could not hold. “If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though . . .” She poked him again, even harder. “. . . she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be. You will have to prove to Faile that you’re strong.” Another poke, harder still. “The women of my family are leopards. If you cannot train her to hunt on your command, Faile will rake you as you deserve. Are you strong enough?” This time her finger drove Perrin back a step.

“Will you stop that?” he growled. He refrained from rubbing his chest. Faile was giving no help at all, merely smiling at him encouragingly. Bashere was studying him with pursed lips and a cocked eyebrow. “If I indulge her sometimes, it’s because I want to. I like to see her smile. If you expect me to trample on her, you can forget it.” Maybe he had lost with that. Faile’s mother began staring at him in a most peculiar way, and her scent was a tangle he could not make out, though anger was still in it, and icy disdain. But good impression or no, he was done with trying to say what Bashere and his wife wanted to hear. “I love her, and she loves me, and that’s the whole of it as far as I’m concerned.”

“He says,” Bashere said slowly, “that if you take our daughter away, he will take her back. He seems to think nine thousand Saldaean horse no match for a few hundred Two Rivers bowmen.”

His wife gazed at Perrin consideringly, then visibly took herself in hand, her head coming erect. “That is all very well, but any man can swing a sword. What I want to know is whether he can tame a willful, headstrong, disobedient—”

“Enough, Deira,” Bashere cut in mildly. “Since you’ve obviously decided Zarine . . . Faile . . . is no longer a child, I think Perrin will do well enough.”

To Perrin’s surprise, Bashere’s wife bowed her head meekly. “As you say, my heart.” Then she glared at Perrin, not meekly at all, as if to say that was the way a man should handle a woman.

Bashere murmured something under his breath about grandchildren and making the blood strong again. And Faile? She smiled at Perrin with an expression he had never seen on her face before, an expression that made him decidedly uncomfortable. With her hands folded and her ankles crossed and her head tilted to one side, she somehow managed to look . . . submissive. Faile! Maybe he had married into a family where
every
one was mad.

Closing the door on Perrin, Rand finished his goblet of punch, then sprawled in a chair, thinking. He hoped Perrin got on well with Bashere. But then, if they struck sparks, maybe Perrin would be more amenable to Tear. He needed either Perrin or Mat there to convince Sammael that that was the true attack. The thought brought a soft, bitter laugh. Light, what a way to think about a friend. Lews Therin was giggling and muttering indistinctly about friends and betrayal. Rand wished he could sleep for a year.

Min entered without knocking or being announced, of course. The Maidens sometimes looked at her oddly, but whatever Sulin had said, or maybe Melaine, Min was now on the short list of those sent on in whatever he was doing. She took advantage, too; once already she had insisted on taking a stool beside his bathtub and talking as if nothing were out of the ordinary at all. Now she just paused to fill herself a goblet of punch and dropped into his lap with a little bounce. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on her face. She would not even try to learn how to ignore the heat, just laughing and saying she was not Aes Sedai and had no plans to be. He had become her
favorite chair for these visits, it seemed, but he was certain if he merely pretended not to notice, she would give up her game sooner or later. That was why he had hid as best he could in his bathwater instead of blindfolding her with Air. Once she knew she was affecting him, she would never stop the joke. Besides, much as it shamed him to admit it about Min, having a girl on his knees did feel nice. He was not made of wood.