Crossroads of Twilight

by Robert Jordan

  Before she could get her question out, though, the door to the outside opened. Murellin was large enough that he almost filled the doorway, yet icy cold still swirled in, a gust that made the small fire dance and sent sparks flying up the chimney until the big man pushed the door shut. He gave no sign that he felt the chill, but then, his brown coat looked thick as two cloaks. Besides, the man was not only the size of an ox, he had the wits of one. Setting a tall wooden mug down on the table with a thump, he tucked his thumbs behind his wide belt and eyed Hanlon resentfully. “You messing with my woman?” he muttered.

  Hanlon gave a start. Not from any fear of Murellin, not with the oaf on the other side of the table. What startled him was the Aes Sedai leaping from her chair and snatching up the wine pitcher. Dumping in the ginger and cloves, she added a scoop of honey and swirled the pitcher around as if that was going to mix everything, then used a fold of her skirt to pull the poker from the fire and shove it into the wine without checking to see whether it was hot enough yet. She never looked in Murellin’s direction at all.

  “Your woman?” Hanlon said carefully. That earned a smirk from the other man.

  “Near enough. The Lady figured I might as well use what you aren’t. Anyway, Fally and me keep each other warm nights.” Murellin started around the table, still grinning, but at the woman, now. A shout echoed in the hallway, and he stopped with a sigh, his grin fading.

  “Falion!” Shiaine’s distant voice called sharply. “Bring Hanlon up now and be quick about it!” Falion set the pitcher on the table hard enough to slop wine over the rim and was heading for the door before Shiaine finished. When the other woman spoke, Falion jumped.

  Hanlon jumped too, if for a different reason. Catching up to her, he seized her arm as she took the first step on the stairs. A quick glance back showed the kitchen door closed. Maybe Murellin did feel the cold. He kept his voice low anyway. “What was that all about?”

  “It is none of your business,” she said curtly. “Can you get me something that will make him sleep? Something I can put in his ale or wine? He will drink anything, however it tastes.”

  “If Shiaine thinks I’m not obeying orders, it bloody well is my business, and you ought to see it that way, too, if you have two bloody thoughts to rub together.”

  She tilted her head, staring down that long nose at him, cold as a fish. “This has nothing to do with you. As far as Shiaine is con­cerned, I will still belong to you when you are here. You see, certain matters changed.” Suddenly, something unseen grasped his wrist tightly and pulled his hand from her sleeve. Something else latched on to his throat, squeezing till he could not draw breath. Futilely, he scrabbled left-handed for his dagger. Her tone remained cool. “I thought certain other matters should change accordingly, but Shiaine does not see things logically. She says that when the Great Master Moridin wishes my punishment lessened, he will say so. Moridin gave me to her. Murellin is her way of mak­ing sure I understand that. Her way of making sure I know that I am her dog until she says otherwise.” Abruptly she drew a deep breath, and the pressure vanished from his wrist and throat. Air had never tasted so sweet. “You can get what I ask for?” she said, as calm as if she had not just tried to kill him with the bloody Power. Just the thought that that had been touching him made his skin crawl.

  “I can . . .” he began hoarsely, and stopped to swallow, rubbing at his throat. It felt as though it had been cinched in a hangman’s noose. “I can get you something that will put him in a sleep he’ll never wake from.” As soon as it was safe, he was going to gut her like a goose.

  She snorted derisively. “I would be the first Shiaine suspected, and I might as well cut my own wrists as object to anything she decided to do. It will be enough if he sleeps the nights through. Leave the thinking to me, and we will both be the better for it.” Resting a hand on the carved newelpost, she glanced up the stairs. “Come. When she says now, she means now.” A pity he could not hang her up like a goose to wait for the knife.

  Following her, his boots thumped on the treads, sending a clat­ter through the entry hall, and it struck him that he had not heard the visitor leave. Unless the house had some secret way out he did not know, there was only the front door, the one in the kitchen, and a second at the back that could only be reached by passing the kitchen. So it seemed he was to meet this soldier. Maybe it was supposed to come as a surprise. Surreptitiously, he eased his dagger in its sheath.

  As expected, the front sitting room had a fine blaze burning away in the wide fireplace of blue-veined marble. It was a room worth the looting, with Sea Folk porcelain vases on the gilt-edged side tables, and tapestries and carpets that would fetch a pretty price. Except that one of the carpets was likely worthless, now. A low blanket-covered mound lay near the middle of the room, and if the fellow that made it had not stained the carpet with his blood, Hanlon would eat the boots sticking out from one end.

  Shiaine herself was sitting in a carved armchair, a pretty woman in gold-embroidered blue silk with an ornate belt of woven gold and a heavy gold necklace around her slim neck. Glossy brown hair hung below her shoulders even caught in a net of intri­cate lace. She looked delicate at first glance, but there was something vulpine about her face, and her smile never touched those big brown eyes. She was using a lace-edged handkerchief to clean a small dagger capped with a firedrop on the pommel. “Go tell Murellin that I will have a . . . bundle . . . for him to dispose of later, Falion,” she said calmly.

  Falion’s face remained smooth as polished marble, but she made a curtsy that lacked little of cringing before she scuttled out of the room at a run.

  Watching the woman and her dagger from the corner of his eye, Hanlon moved to the covered mound and bent to lift a corner of the blanket. Glazed blue eyes stared out of a face that might have been hard, alive. The dead always looked softer. Apparently he had been neither as cautious nor as intelligent as Falion thought him. Hanlon let the blanket fall and straightened. “He said some­thing you objected to, my Lady?” he said mildly. “Who was he?”

  “He said several things I objected to.” She held her dagger up, studying the small blade to be sure it was clean, then slid it into a gold-worked sheath at her waist. “Tell me, is Elayne’s child yours?”

  “I don’t know who fathered the whelp,” he said wryly. “Why, my Lady? Do you think I’d go soft? The last chit who claimed I’d gotten a child on her, I stuffed her down a well to cool her head and made sure she stayed there.” There were a long-necked silver wine pitcher and two chased silver cups sitting on a tray on one of the side tables. “Is this safe?” he asked, peering into the cups. Both had wine in the bottom, but a little addition to one would have turned the dead man into easy prey.

  “Catrelle Mosenain, an ironmonger’s daughter from Maerone,” the woman said, just as smoothly as if it were common knowledge, and he very nearly flinched in surprise. “You split her head open with a rock before you pitched her down, no doubt to spare her drowning.” How did she know the wench’s name, much less about the rock? He had not remembered her name himself. “No, I doubt you would go soft, but I would hate to think you were kissing the Lady Elayne without letting me know. I would purely hate that.”

  Suddenly she frowned at the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand and rose gracefully to glide to the fireplace and toss it into the flames. She stood there warming herself, never even glancing in his direction. “Can you arrange for some of the Seanchan women to escape? Best if it can be both those called sul’dam and the ones called damane” she stumbled a little over the strange words, “but if you can’t do both, then a few of the sul’dam should do. They will free some of the others.”

  “Maybe.” Blood and bloody ashes, she was dancing from one thing to another worse than Falion tonight. “It won’t be easy, my Lady. They’re all guarded close.”

  “I didn’t ask whether it was easy,” she said, staring into the flames. “Can you shift guards away from the food warehouses? It would please me if some o
f those actually burned. I am tired of attempts that always fail.”

  “That I cannot do,” he muttered. “Not unless you expect me to go into hiding right after. They keep a record of orders that would make a Cairhienin wince. And it wouldn’t do any good any­way, not with those bloody gateways bringing in more wagons every bloody day.” In truth, he was not sorry for that. Queasy over the means used, certainly, but not sorry. He expected the palace would be the last place in Caemlyn to go hungry in any case, but he had lived out sieges on both sides of the lines, and he had no intention of ever boiling his boots for soup again. Shiaine wanted fires, though.

  “Another answer I did not ask for.” She shook her head, still looking into the fireplace, not at him. “But perhaps something can be done there. How close are you to actually . . . enjoying Elayne’s affections?” she finished primly.

  “Closer than the day I arrived in the palace,” he growled, glow­ering at her back. He tried never to offend those the Chosen had set above him, but the chit was trying him. He could snap that slender neck like a twig! To keep his hands from her throat, he filled one of the cups and held it with no intention of drinking. In his left hand, of course. Just because there was one dead man in the room already did not mean she had no plans to make it two corpses. “But I have to go slow. It isn’t as if I can back her into a corner and tickle her out of her shift.”

  “I suppose not,” Shiaine said in a muffled voice. “She is hardly the sort of woman you are used to.” Was she laughing! Was she amused at him? It was all he could do not to throw down the winecup and strangle the fox-faced bint.

  Suddenly she turned around, and he blinked as she casually slipped her dagger back into its sheath. He had never seen her draw the bloody thing! He took a swallow of wine without think­ing, and almost choked when he realized what he had done.

  “How would you like to see Caemlyn looted?” she asked.

  “Well enough, if I have a good company at my back and a clear path to the gates.” The wine had to be safe. Two cups meant she had drunk, too, and if he had picked up the dead man’s, there could not be enough poison left in it to sicken a mouse. “Is that what you want? I follow orders as well as the next man.” He did when he seemed likely to survive them, or when they came from the Chosen. As well die for a fool as disobey the Chosen. “But sometimes it helps to know more than ‘go there and do that.’ If you told me what you’re after here in Caemlyn, I might be able to help you reach it faster.”

  “Of course.” She smiled a toothy smile while her eyes stayed as flat as brown stones. “But first, tell me why there is fresh blood on your gauntlet?”

  He smiled back. “A footpad who got unlucky, my Lady.” Maybe she had sent the man and maybe not, but he added her throat to the list of those he intended to slit. And he might as well add Marillin Gemalphin, too. After all, a lone survivor was the only one who could tell the tale of what had happened.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Subject of Negotiations

  The morning sun sat on the horizon, leaving the nearer side of Tar Valon still wrapped in shadows, but the snow that covered everything gleamed brightly. The city itself seemed to shine behind its long white walls, all bravely towered and bannered, yet to Egwene, sitting her roan gelding on the river-bank above the city, it seemed even farther away than it really was. The Erinin widened to more than two miles here, and the Alindrelle Erinin and Osendrelle Erinin, flowing to either side of the island, were almost half that, so that Tar Valon appeared to sit in the middle of a great lake, unreachable despite the massive bridges that stood high above the waters so that ships could sail beneath them easily. The White Tower itself, a thick bone-white shaft ris­ing to an impossible height from the city’s heart, filled her own heart with a yearning for home. Not for the Two Rivers, but for the Tower. That was her home, now. A plume of smoke caught her eye, a faint black line rising from the far bank beyond the city, and she grimaced. Daishar stamped a hoof in the snow, but a pat on the neck sufficed to soothe the roan. It would take more to soothe his rider. Homesickness was the smallest part of it. Minuscule, com­pared to the rest.

  With a sigh, she rested her reins on the high pommel of her saddle and raised the long brass-bound looking glass. Her cloak fell back, slipping off one shoulder, but she ignored the cold that misted her breath and placed a gloved hand to shield the front lens against the sun’s glare. The city walls leaped closer in her sight. She focused on the tall curving arms of Northharbor that pushed out into the upstream currents. People moved purposefully atop the battlements that enfolded the harbor, but she could barely dis­cern men from women at that distance. Still, she was glad that she was not wearing her seven-striped stole, and that her face was deep within her cowl, just in case someone there had a stronger glass than she. The wide mouth of the man-made harbor was blocked by a massive iron chain drawn taut a few feet above the water. Tiny dots on the water, diving birds fishing in front of the harbor, gave the chain scale. One single pace-long link would have required two men to lift it. A rowboat might slip under that barrier, but no ves­sel of any size would enter unless the White Tower allowed. Of course, the chain was only intended to keep out enemies.

  “There they are, Mother,” Lord Gareth murmured, and she lowered the glass. Her general was a stocky man in a plain breast­plate worn over a plain brown coat, without any touch of gilt or embroidery anywhere. His face was bluff and weathered behind the bars of his helmet, and the years had given him a strange sort of comforting calmness. All you need do was look at Gareth Bryne to know that if the Pit of Doom opened in front of him, he would smother his fear and go about doing what needed doing. And other men would follow him. He had proved on battlefield after battlefield that following him was the path to victory. A good man to have following her. Her eyes followed his gauntleted hand, point­ing upriver.

  Just coming in sight around a point of land, five, six - no, seven - riverships were slicing furrows down the Erinin. Large ves­sels as such things were seen on the river, one with three masts, their triangular sails stood out tight, and their long sweeps cut hard through the blue-green water to add a little more speed. Everything about the craft spoke of a burning desire for speed, a desire to reach Tar Valon now! The river was deep enough here that ships could run within shouting distance of the banks in places, but these sailed in almost single file as close to the middle of the Erinin as the steersmen could manage and hold the wind. Sailors clinging to the mastheads kept watch along the shoreline, and not for mudbanks.

  In fact, they had nothing at all to fear so long as they kept out of bowshot. True, from where she sat her horse, she could have set fire to every one of those ships, or simply cut holes through their hulls and let them sink. The work of moments. Yet doing so surely meant some of those aboard would drown. The currents were strong, the water like ice, and the swim to shore long, for those who actually could swim. Even one death would make what she did using the Power as a weapon. She was trying to live as though already bound by the Three Oaths, and the Oaths protected those vessels from her or any other sister. A sister who had sworn on the Oath Rod would not be able to make herself set those weaves, per­haps not even to form them, unless she could convince herself she was in immediate danger from the ships. But neither captains nor crews believed that, apparently.

  As the riverships came closer, shouts thinned to threadbare by distance drifted across the water. The lookouts up on the masts pointed to her and Gareth, and it quickly became apparent they took her for an Aes Sedai with her Warder. Or at least, the captains were unwilling to take the chance she was not. After a moment, the beat of the sweeps increased. Only by a fraction, but the oars­men labored to find that fraction. A woman on the quarterdeck of the lead vessel, likely the captain, waved her arms as if demanding still more effort, and a handful of men began running up and down the deck, tightening this line or loosening that to change the angle of the sails, though Egwene could not see that they achieved any­thing. There were men on those decks oth
er than sailors, and most of those crowded to the railings, a handful raising looking glasses of their own. Some seemed to be measuring the distance left to cover before they reached the safety of the harbor.

  She thought about weaving a flare, a starburst of light, perhaps with a loud bang, just above each of the vessels. That would cer­tainly let anyone aboard with brains realize that neither speed nor distance kept them safe here, only a forbearance born of the Three Oaths. They should know that they were safe because of Aes Sedai.

  Exhaling heavily, she shook her head and mentally upbraided her­self. That simple weave would also attract attention in the city, cer­tainly more than the appearance of a single sister. Sisters often came to the riverbank to stare at Tar Valon and the Tower. Even if the only reaction to her flares was some sort of counterdisplay, once begun, that sort of contest could be very difficult to put a stop to. Once begun, matters might well escalate out of hand. There were too many opportunities for that, as it was, the more so these last five days.

  “The harbormaster hasn’t let above eight or nine ships in at one time since we arrived,” Gareth said as the first vessel drew abreast of them, “but the captains seemed to have worked out the timing. Another clutch will appear soon, and reach the city about the time the Tower Guards are sure these fellows actually came to enlist. Jimar Chubain knows enough to guard against me sneaking men in aboard ships. He has more of the Guards crowded into the har­bors than anywhere except at the bridge towers, and not many anywhere else, so far as I can learn. That will change, though. The flow of ships starts at first light and keeps up till near nightfall, here and at Southharbor too. This lot doesn’t seem to be carrying as many soldiers as most do. Every plan is brilliant until the day comes, Mother, but then you must adapt to circumstances or be ridden down.”