“He is not damaged,” Coine said, climbing the ladder. “I can sail within the hour, if it pleases you. Well within, if a Tairen pilot can be found. I will sail without him, if not, though it means never returning to Tear.” She followed their gaze to the two men. “They ask passage, the gleeman to Tanchico, and the thief-catcher to wherever you travel. I cannot refuse them, and yet … .” Her dark eyes came back to Elayne and Nynaeve. “I will do so, if you ask it.” Reluctance to break custom battled in her voice with … . Desire to help them? To serve the Coramoor? “The thief-catcher is a good man, even considering that he is shorebound. No offense to you, under the Light. The gleeman I do not know, yet a gleeman can enliven a voyage and lighten tired hours.”
“You know Master Sandar?” Nynaeve said.
“Twice he has found those who pilfered from us, and found them quickly. Another shoreman would have taken longer so he might ask more for the work. It is obvious that you know him, as well. Do you wish me to refuse passage?” Her reluctance was still there.
“Let us see why they are here first,” Nynaeve said in a flat voice that did not bode well for either man.
“Perhaps I should do the talking,” Elayne suggested, gently but firmly. “That way, you can watch to see if they are hiding anything.” She did not say that that way Nynaeve’s temper would not get the better of her, but the wry smile the other woman gave her said she had heard it anyway.
“Very well, Elayne. I will watch them. Perhaps you might study how I keep calm. You know how you are when you become overwrought.”
Elayne had to laugh.
The two men straightened as she and Nynaeve approached. Around them the crew bustled, swarming into the rigging, hauling ropes, lashing some things down and unlashing others, to orders relayed from the Sailmistress. They moved around the four shorepeople with barely a glance.
Elayne frowned at Thom Merrilin thoughtfully. She was sure she had never seen the gleeman before his appearance in the Stone, yet even then she had been struck by something familiar about him. Not that that was likely. Gleemen were village performers, in the main; her mother had certainly never had one at the palace in Caemlyn. The only gleemen Elayne could remember seeing had been in the villages near her mother’s country estates, and this white-haired hawk of a man had surely never been there.
She decided to speak to the thief-catcher first. He insisted on that, she remembered; what was a thief-taker elsewhere was a thief-catcher in Tear, and the distinction seemed important to him.
“Master Sandar,” she said gravely. “You may not remember us. I am Elayne Trakand, and this is my friend, Nynaeve al’Meara. I understand that you wish to travel to the same destination as we. Might I ask why? The last time we saw you, you had not served us very well.”
The man did not blink at the suggestion he might not remember them. His eyes flickered across their hands, noting the absence of rings. Those dark eyes noted everything, and recorded it indelibly. “I do remember, Mistress Trakand, and well. But, if you will forgive me, the last time I served you was in the company of Mat Cauthon, when we pulled you both out of the water before the silverpike could get you.”
Nynaeve harrumphed, but not loudly. It had been a cell, not the water, and the Black Ajah, not silverpike. Nynaeve in particular did not like being reminded that they had needed help that time. Of course, they would not have been in that cell without Juilin Sandar. No, that was not entirely fair. True, but not completely fair.
“That is all very well,” Elayne said briskly, “but you still haven’t said why you want to go to Tanchico.”
He drew a deep breath and eyed Nynaeve warily. Elayne was not sure that she liked him being more careful of the other woman than of her. “I was rousted out of my house no more than half an hour gone,” he said carefully, “by a man you know, I think. A tall, stone-faced man calling himself Lan.” Nynaeve’s eyebrows rose slightly. “He came on behalf of another man you know. A … shepherd, I was told. I was given a great quantity of gold and told to accompany you. Both of you. I was told that if you do not return safely from this journey … . Shall we just say it would be better to drown myself than come back? Lan was emphatic, and the … shepherd no less so in his message. The Sailmistress tells me I cannot have passage unless you agree. I am not without certain skills that can be useful.” The staff whirled in his hands, a whistling blur, and was still. His fingers touched the sword-breaker on his hip, like a short sword but unsharpened, its slots meant to catch a blade.
“Men will find ways to get ’round what you tell them to do,” Nynaeve murmured, sounding not unpleased.
Elayne only frowned vexedly. Rand had sent him? He must not have read the second letter before he did. Burn him! Why does he leap about so? No time to send another letter, and it would probably only confuse him more if I did. And make me look a bigger fool. Burn him!
“And you, Master Merrilin?” Nynaeve said. “Did the shepherd send a gleeman after us, too? Or the other man? To keep us amused with your juggling and fire-eating, perhaps.”
Thom had been scrutinizing Sandar closely, but he shifted his attentions smoothly and made an elegant bow, only spoiling it with a too-elaborate flourish of that patch-covered cloak. “Not the shepherd, Mistress al’Meara. A lady of our mutual acquaintance asked—asked—me to accompany you. The lady who found you and the shepherd in Emond’s Field.”
“Why?” Nynaeve said suspiciously.
“I, too, have useful skills,” Thom told her with a glance at the thief-catcher. “Other than juggling, that is. And I have been to Tanchico several times. I know the city well. I can tell you where to find a good inn, and what districts are dangerous in daylight as well as after dark, and who must be bribed so the Civil Watch does not take too close an interest in your doings. They are keen on watching outlanders. I can help you with a good many things.”
That familiarity tickled at Elayne’s mind again. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached up and tugged at one of his long white mustaches. He gave a start, and she clapped both hands to her mouth, flushing crimson. “Forgive me. I … I seemed to remember doing that before. I mean … . I am sorry.” Light, why did I do that? He must think me an imbecile.
“I … would remember,” he said, very stiffly.
She hoped he was not affronted. It was hard to tell from his expression. Men could be offended when they should be amused, and amused when they should be offended. If they were going to be traveling together … . That was the first time she realized that she had decided they could come. “Nynaeve?” she said.
The other woman understood the unspoken question, of course. She studied the two men thoroughly, then nodded. “They may come. As long as they agree to do as they are told. I’ll not have some wool-brained man going his own way and endangering us.”
“As you command, Mistress al’Meara,” Sandar said immediately, with a bow, but Thom said, “A gleeman is a free soul, Nynaeve, but I can promise I will not endanger you. Far from it.”
“As you are told,” Nynaeve said pointedly. “Your word on it, or you will watch this ship sail from the dock.”
“The Atha’an Miere do not refuse passage to anyone, Nynaeve.”
“Do you think not? Was the thief-taker”—Sandar winced—“the only one told he needed our permission? As you are told, Master Merrilin.”
Thom tossed his white head like a fractious horse and breathed heavily, but finally he nodded. “My word on it, Mistress al’Meara.”
“Very well then,” Nynaeve said in a bracing voice. “It is settled. You two find the Sailmistress now, and tell her I said to find the pair of you a cubbyhole somewhere if she can, out of our way. Off with you, now. Quickly.”
Sandar bowed again and left; Thom quivered visibly before joining him, stiff-backed.
“Are you not being too hard on them?” Elayne said as soon as they were out of earshot. That was not far, with all the hurly-burly on deck. “We do have to travel together, after all. ‘Smooth words make smoot
h companions.’”
“Best to begin as we mean to go on. Elayne, Thom Merrilin knows very well we are not full Aes Sedai.” She lowered her voice and glanced around as she said it. None of the crew was even looking at them, except for the Sailmistress, back near the sterndeck where she was listening to the tall gleeman and the thief-catcher. “Men talk—they always do—so Sandar will know it soon enough, as well. They’d present no trouble to Aes Sedai, but two Accepted … ? Given half a chance, they would both be doing things they thought for the best no matter what we said. I do not mean to give them even that half-chance.”
“Perhaps you are right. Do you think they know why we are going to Tanchico?”
Nynaeve sniffed. “No, or they’d not be so sanguine, I think. And I would rather not tell them until we must.” She gave Elayne a meaningful look; there was no need for her to say she would not have told the Sailmistress, either, had it been left to her. “Here is a saying for you. ‘Borrow trouble, and you repay tenfold.’”
“You speak as if you don’t trust them, Nynaeve.” She would have said the other woman was behaving like Moiraine, but Nynaeve would not appreciate the comparison.
“Can we? Juilin Sandar betrayed us once before. Yes, yes, I know no man could have avoided it, but there it is just the same. And Liandrin and the others know his face. We will have to put him in different clothes. Perhaps make him let his hair grow longer. Perhaps a mustache, like that thing infesting the gleeman’s face. It might do.”
“And Thom Merrilin?” Elayne asked. “I think we can trust him. I don’t know why, but I do.”
“He admitted being sent by Moiraine,” Nynaeve said wearily. “What has he not admitted, though? What did she tell him that he hasn’t told us? Is he meant to help us, or something else? Moiraine plays her own game so often, I trust her this much more than I do Liandrin.” She held her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. “She will use us—you and me both—use us up, if it helps Rand. Or rather, if it helps whatever she has planned for Rand. She would leash him for a lapdog if she could.”
“Moiraine knows what has to be done, Nynaeve.” For once she was reluctant to admit that. What Moiraine knew had to be done might well speed Rand on his way toward Tarmon Gai’don that much faster. On his way toward death, perhaps. Rand balanced against the world. It was silly—foolish and childish—that those scales should tremble so evenly for her. Yet she did not dare make them swing, even in her mind, because she was not sure which way she would send them. “She knows it better than he does,” she said, making her voice firm. “Better than we.”
“Perhaps.” Nynaeve sighed. “But I do not have to like it.”
Ropes were cast off at the bow, where triangular sails suddenly broke out, and Wavedancer heeled away from the dock. More sails appeared, great white squares and triangles, the sternlines were cast off, and the ship curled out into the river in a great arc through the anchored ships awaiting their turn at the docks, a smooth curve that ended heading south, downriver. The Sea Folk handled their ship as a master horseman would a fine steed. That peculiar spoked wheel worked the rudder, somehow, as one of the bare-chested crewmen turned it. A man, Elayne was relieved to see. Sailmistress and Windfinder stood to one side of the wheel, Coine issuing occasional orders, sometimes after a murmured consultation with her sister. Toram watched for a time, with a face that might have been carved from a deck plank, then stalked below.
There was a Tairen on the sterndeck, a plump, dejected-looking man in a dull yellow coat with puffy gray sleeves, rubbing his hands nervously. He had been hustled aboard just as the gangway was being hauled up, a pilot who was supposed to guide Wavedancer downriver; according to Tairen law, no ship could pass through the Fingers of the Dragon without a Tairen pilot aboard. His dejection certainly came from doing nothing, for if he gave any directions, the Sea Folk paid them no heed.
Muttering about seeing what their cabin was like, Nynaeve went downstairs—below—but Elayne was enjoying the breeze across the deck and the feel of starting out. To travel, to see places she had not seen before, was a joy in itself. She had never expected to, not like this. The Daughter-Heir of Andor might make a few state visits, and she would make more once she succeeded to the throne, but they would be bounded about with ceremony and propriety. Not like this at all. Barefoot Sea Folk and a ship headed to sea.
The riverbank slid by quite quickly as the sun climbed, an occasional cluster of huddled stone farmhouses and barns, bleak and lonely, appearing and vanishing behind. No villages, though. Tear would not allow the smallest village on the river between the city and the sea, for even the tiniest might one day become competition for the capital. The High Lords controlled the size of villages and towns throughout the country with a buildings tax that grew heavier the more buildings there were. Elayne was sure they would never have allowed Godan to thrive, on the Bay of Remara, if not for the supposed necessity of a strong presence overlooking Mayene. In a way it was a relief to be leaving such foolish people behind. If only she did not have to leave one foolish man behind as well.
The number of fishing boats, most small and all surrounded by clouds of hopeful gulls and fisher-birds, increased the farther south Wavedancer went, especially once the vessel entered the maze of waterways called the Fingers of the Dragon. Often the birds overhead and the long poles that held the nets were all that was visible besides plains of reeds and knifegrass rippling in the breezes, dotted with low islands where odd, twisted trees grew with spidery tangles of roots exposed to the air. Many boats worked right in the reeds, though not with nets. Once Elayne saw some of them close to clear water, men and women dropping hooked lines into the watery growth and pulling up wriggling, dark-striped fish as long as a man’s arm.
The Tairen pilot began to pace anxiously once they were in the delta, with the sun overhead, turning up his nose at an offered bowl of thick spicy fish stew and bread. Elayne ate hers hungrily, wiping her pottery bowl with the last scrap of bread, though she shared his unease. Passages broad and narrow ran in every direction. Some ended abruptly, in plain sight, against a wall of reeds. There was no way to tell which of the others might not vanish just as suddenly around the next bend. Coine did not slow Wavedancer, regardless, or hesitate at choosing a way. Obviously she knew the channels to take, or the Windfinder did, but the pilot still muttered to himself as if he expected to run aground any moment.
It was late afternoon when the river mouth suddenly appeared ahead, and the endless stretch of the Sea of Storms beyond. The Sea Folk did something with the sails, and the ship shuddered softly to a dead halt. It was only then that Elayne noticed a large rowboat skittering like a many-legged waterbug out from an island where a few forlorn stone buildings stood around the base of a tall narrow tower where men stood small at the top beneath the banner of Tear, three white crescents on a field of red and gold. The pilot took the purse Coine proffered without a word and scrambled down a rope ladder to the boat. As soon as he was aboard, the sails were swung about again, and Wavedancer breasted the first rollers of open sea, rising slightly, slicing through. Sea Folk scampered through the rigging, setting more sails, as the ship sped south and west, away from the land.
When the last thin strip of land dropped below the horizon, the Sea Folk women doffed their blouses. All of them, even the Sailmistress and the Windfinder. Elayne did not know where to look. All those women walking about half-dressed and completely unconcerned by the men all around them. Juilin Sandar seemed to be having as hard a time as she was, alternating between staring at the women wide-eyed and staring at his feet until he finally all but ran below. Elayne would not let herself be routed that way. She opted for staring over the side at the sea, instead.
Different customs, she reminded herself. As long they don’t expect me to do the same. The very thought nearly made her laugh hysterically. Somehow, the Black Ajah was easier to contemplate than that. Different customs. Light!
The sky grew purple, with a dull golden sun on the horizon. Scores of
dolphins escorted the vessel, rolling and arching alongside, and farther out some sort of sparkling silver-blue fish rose above the surface in schools, gliding on outstretched fins a span across for fifty paces or more before plunging back into the swelling gray-green water. Elayne watched in amazement for a dozen flights before they did not appear again.
But the dolphins, great sleek shapes, were wondrous enough, a guard of honor taking Wavedancer back where he belonged. Those she recognized from descriptions in books; it was said if they found you drowning, they would push you to shore. She was not sure she believed it, but it was a pretty story. She followed them along the side of the ship, to the bow, where they frolicked in the bow wave, rolling on their sides to look up at her without losing an inch.
She was almost in the narrowest point of the bow before she realized Thom Merrilin was there before her, smiling down at the dolphins a bit sadly, his cloak catching the wind like the cloud of sails above. He had rid himself of his belongings. He did seem familiar; truly he did. “Are you not happy, Master Merrilin?”
He glanced at her sideways. “Please, call me Thom, my Lady.”
“Thom, then. But not my Lady. I am only Mistress Trakand here.”
“As you say, Mistress Trakand,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“How can you look at these dolphins and be unhappy, Thom?”
“They are free,” he murmured, in such a tone that she was not sure he was answering her. “They have no decisions to make, no prices to pay. Not a worry in the world, except finding fish to eat. And sharks, I suppose. And lionfish. And likely a hundred more things I don’t know. Perhaps it is not such an enviable life at that.”
“Do you envy them?” He did not answer, but that was the wrong question anyway. She needed to make him smile again. No, laugh. For some reason she was sure if she could make him laugh, she would remember where she had seen him before. She chose another topic, one that should be nearer his heart. “Do you mean to compose the epic of Rand, Thom?” Epics were for bards, not gleemen, but there could be no harm in a little flattery. “The epic of the Dragon Reborn. Loial means to write a book, you know.”
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