A Crown of Swords

by Jordan, Robert

  “Fretting will do no good,” Elayne told her, much more calmly than Aviendha could have managed if she thought one of the Shadowsouled had marked her out. “We will just have to do as Egwene said and be careful.” Nynaeve muttered something inaudible, which was probably just as well.

  Silence descended again, Elayne settling to a browner study than before, Birgitte propping her chin on one hand as she frowned at nothing. Nynaeve kept right on grumbling under her breath, but she had both hands pressed to her middle now, and from time to time she paused to swallow. The splashing of water seemed louder than ever, and the cries of the birds.

  “I have been thinking too, near-sister.” She and Elayne had not reached the point of adopting each other as first-sisters yet, but she was sure they would, now. Already they brushed each other’s hair, and every night in the dark shared another secret never told to anyone else. This Min woman, though. . . . That was for later, when they were alone.

  “About what?” Elayne asked absently.

  “Our search. We prepare for success, but we are as far away as when we began. Does it make sense not to use every weapon at hand? Mat Cauthon is ta’veren, yet we work to avoid him. Why not take him with us? With him, we might find the bowl at last.”

  “Mat?” Nynaeve exclaimed incredulously. “As well stuff your shift full of nettles! I would not endure the man if he had the bowl in his coat pocket.”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Nynaeve,” Elayne murmured, without any heat. She shook her head wonderingly, taking no notice of the other’s sudden glower. “Prickly” only began to describe Nynaeve, but they were all used to her ways. “Why didn’t I think of that? It is so obvious!”

  “Maybe,” Birgitte murmured dryly, “you had Mat the scoundrel set so hard in your mind, you couldn’t see he had any use.” Elayne gave her a cool stare, chin raised, then abruptly grimaced, and nodded reluctantly. She did not accept criticism easily.

  “No,” Nynaeve said in a voice that somehow managed to be sharp and weak at the same time. The sickly cast of her face had deepened, but it no longer seemed caused by the boat’s heaving. “You cannot possibly mean it! Elayne, you know what a torment he can be, how stubborn he is. He’ll insist on bringing those soldiers of his like a feastday parade. Try finding anything in the Rahad with soldiers at your shoulder. Just try! Inside two steps, he’ll try to take charge, flaunting that ter’angreal at us. He’s a thousand times worse than Vandene or Adeleas, or even Merilille. The way he behaves, you would think we’d walk into a bear’s den just to see the bear!”

  Birgitte made a noise in her throat that might have been amusement, and received a darted glare. She returned such a look of bland innocence that Nynaeve began to sound as if she were choking.

  Elayne was more soothing; she probably would try to make peace in a water-feud. “He is ta’veren, Nynaeve. He alters the Pattern, alters chance, just being there. I’m ready to admit we need luck, and a ta’veren is more than luck. Besides, we can snare two birds at once. We should not have been letting him run loose all this time, no matter how busy we were. That’s done no one any good, him least of all. He needs to be made fit for decent company. We will put him on a short rein from the start.”

  Nynaeve smoothed her skirts with considerable vigor. She claimed to have no more interest in dresses than Aviendha—in what they looked like, anyway; she was always muttering about good plain wool being fine enough for anybody—yet her own blue dress was slashed with yellow on the skirts and sleeves, and she herself had chosen its design. Every stitch she owned was silk or embroidered or both, all cut with what Aviendha had learned to recognize as fine care.

  For once Nynaeve appeared to understand she would not get her way. Sometimes she threw amazing tantrums until she did, not that she would admit that was what they were. The glower faded to a grumpy sulk. “Who will ask him? Whoever does, he will make her beg. You know he will. I’d sooner marry him!”

  Elayne hesitated, then said firmly, “Birgitte will. And she won’t beg; she will tell him. Most men will do as you say if you use a firm, confident voice.” Nynaeve looked doubtful, and Birgitte jerked erect on her bench, startled for the first time Aviendha had ever seen. With anyone else, Aviendha might have said she looked a little afraid, too. Birgitte would have done very well as Far Dareis Mai, for a wetlander. She had remarkable skill with a bow.

  “You are the clear choice, Birgitte,” Elayne went on quickly. “Nynaeve and I are Aes Sedai, and Aviendha might as well be. We cannot possibly do it. Not and maintain proper dignity. Not with him. You know what he is like.” What had happened to all that talk of a firm, confident voice? Not that Aviendha had ever noticed that working for anyone except Sorilea. It surely had not so far on Mat Cauthon that she had seen. “Birgitte, he can’t have recognized you. If he had, he would have said something by now.”

  Whatever that meant, Birgitte leaned back against the wall and laced her fingers over her stomach. “I should have known you’d get back at me ever since I said it was a good thing your bottom wasn’t any—” She stopped, and a faint satisfied smile appeared on her lips. Nothing changed in Elayne’s expression, but plainly Birgitte thought she had gained a measure of revenge. It must have been something felt through the Warder bond. How Elayne’s bottom entered into anything, though, Aviendha could not puzzle out. Wetlanders were so . . . odd . . . at times. Birgitte continued, still wearing that smile. “What I don’t understand is why he starts chafing as soon as he sees you two. It can’t be that you snagged him off here. Egwene was as deep in that as you, but I saw him treat her with more respect than most of the sisters do. Besides, the times I’ve glimpsed him coming out of The Wandering Woman, he looked to be enjoying himself.” Her smile became a grin that made Elayne sniff disapprovingly.

  “That is one thing we need to change. A decent woman cannot be in the room with him. Oh, do wipe that smirk off your face, Birgitte. I vow, you are as bad as he, sometimes.”

  “The man was born just to be a trial,” Nynaeve muttered sourly.

  Suddenly Aviendha was forcibly reminded that she was on a boat as everything lurched, swaying and swinging around to a halt. Rising and straightening dresses, they gathered the light cloaks they had brought. She did not don hers; the sunlight here was not so bright that she needed the hood to keep it from her eyes. Birgitte only draped hers over one shoulder and pushed open the door, following up the three steps after Nynaeve had rushed past her with a hand clapped over her mouth.

  Elayne paused to tie her cloak ribbons and arrange the hood around her face, red-gold curls peeking out all around. “You did not say much, near-sister.”

  “I said what I had to say. The decision was yours.”

  “The key thought was yours, though. Sometimes I think the rest of us are turning into half-wits. Well.” Half turning to the steps, not quite looking at her, Elayne paused. “Distances bother me, sometimes, over water. I think I will look only at the ship, myself. Nothing else.” Aviendha nodded—her near-sister had a fine delicacy—and they went up.

  On the deck, Nynaeve was just shaking off Birgitte’s offer of help and pushing herself up from the railing. The two oarsmen looked on in amusement as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Shirtless fellows with a brass hoop in each ear, they must have had frequent use for the curved daggers shoved behind their sashes. Most of their attention went to working their pairs of long sweeps, though, walking back and forth on the deck to hold the heaving boat in place near a ship that almost took Aviendha’s breath with its size, looming above their suddenly very tiny vessel, its three great masts reaching taller than most trees she had seen even here in the wetlands. They had chosen it because it was the largest of the hundreds of Sea Folk ships anchored in the bay. On a ship that big, surely it must be possible to forget all the surrounding water. Except. . . .

  Elayne had not really acknowledged her shame, and if she had, a near-sister could know your deepest humiliation without it mattering, but. . . . Amys said she had too much pride. She
made herself turn and look away from the boat.

  She had never seen so much water in her life, not if every drop seen before had been gathered in one place, all of it rolling gray-green and here and there frothing white. Her eyes darted, trying to avoid taking it in. Even the sky seemed larger here, immense, with a liquid gold sun crawling up from the east. A gusting wind blew, somewhat cooler than on the land and never failing entirely. Clouds of birds flurried in the air, gray and white and sometimes splotched with black, giving those shrill cries. One, all black except for its head, skimmed along the surface with its long lower beak slicing through the water, and a slanted line of ungainly brown birds—pelicans, Elayne had named them—suddenly folded their wings one by one and plummeted with great splashes, bobbing back to the top, where they floated, tilting up beaks of incredible size. There were ships everywhere, many almost as large as the one behind her, not all belonging to the Atha’an Miere, and smaller vessels with one or two masts moving under triangular sails. Smaller ships still, mastless like the boat she was on, with a high sharp peak at the front and a low flat house at the back, spidered across the water on oars, one pair or two, or sometimes three. One long, narrow boat that must have had twenty to a side looked like a hundred-legs skittering along. And there was land. Maybe seven or eight miles distant, sunlight gleamed off the white-plastered buildings of the city. Seven or eight miles of water.

  Swallowing, she turned back more swiftly than she had turned away. She thought her cheeks must be greener than Nynaeve’s had been. Elayne was watching her, trying to keep a smooth face, but wetlanders showed their emotions so plainly her concern was visible. “I am a fool, Elayne.” Even with her, using no more of her name made Aviendha feel uneasy; when they were first-sisters, when they were sister-wives, it would be easier. “A wise woman listens to wise advice.”

  “You are braver than I will ever be,” Elayne replied, quite seriously. She was another who kept denying that she had any courage. Maybe that was also a wetlander custom? No, Aviendha had heard wetlanders speak of their own bravery; these Ebou Dari, for one, seemed unable to utter three words without boasting. Elayne drew a deep breath, steeling herself. “Tonight we will talk about Rand.”

  Aviendha nodded, but she did not see how that followed from talk of courage. How could sister-wives manage a husband if they did not talk of him in detail? That was what the older women told her, anyway, and the Wise Ones. They were not always so forthcoming, of course. When she complained to Amys and Bair that she must be ill because she felt as though Rand al’Thor was carrying some part of her around with him, they had fallen down laughing. You will learn, they cackled at her, and, You would have learned sooner had you grown up in skirts. As if she had ever wanted any life but that of a Maiden, running with her spear-sisters. Maybe Elayne felt something of the same emptiness. Speaking of him did seem to make the hollowness grow even while filling it.

  For some time she had been aware of voices rising, and now she heard the words.

  “. . . you earringed buffoon!” Nynaeve was shaking her fist at a very dark man peering down at her from over the tall side of the ship. He looked calm, but then, he could not see the glow of saidar surrounding her. “We are not after the gift of passage, so it doesn’t matter whether you refuse it to Aes Sedai! You let down a ladder this instant!” The men at the oars were missing their grins. Apparently they had failed to see the serpent rings back at the stone landing, and they did not look pleased to learn they had Aes Sedai aboard.

  “Oh, dear,” Elayne sighed. “I must retrieve this, Aviendha, or we’ve wasted the morning just so she could lose her breakfast porridge.” Gliding across the deck—Aviendha was proud of knowing the proper names for things on boats—Elayne addressed the man up on the ship. “I am Elayne Trakand, Daughter-Heir of Andor and Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah. My companion is quite truthful. We do not seek the gift of passage. But we must speak with your Windfinder on a matter of urgency. Tell her we know of the Weaving of Winds. Tell her we know of Windfinders.”

  The man above frowned down at her, then abruptly vanished without a word.

  “The woman will probably think you mean to blab her secrets,” Nynaeve muttered, jerking her cloak into place. She tied the ribbons fiercely. “You know how afraid they are that Aes Sedai will haul them all off to the Tower, if it’s known most can channel. Only a ninny thinks she can threaten people, Elayne, and still get anywhere.”

  Aviendha burst out laughing. By the startled look Nynaeve gave her, she did not see the joke she had made on herself. Elayne’s lips quivered, though, however she tried to hold them. You could never be sure about wetlander humor; they found strange things funny and missed the best.

  Whether or not the Windfinder felt threatened, by the time Elayne had paid the boatmen and cautioned them to wait for their return—with Nynaeve grumbling over the amount and telling them she would box their ears if they left, and how she was to manage that nearly set Aviendha laughing again—by the time all that was done, it seemed a decision had been reached to allow them on. No ladder was lowered, but instead a flat piece of wood, the two ropes it hung from becoming one and running up to a thick pole swung out over the side from one of the masts. Nynaeve took her place sitting on the board with dire warnings for the boatmen if they even thought of trying to look up her skirts, and Elayne blushed and held hers tightly around her legs, hunched over so she appeared ready to fall off headfirst as she wobbled into the air and disappeared from sight onto the ship. One of the fellows looked upward anyway, until Birgitte struck him on the nose with her fist. They certainly did not watch her ascent.

  Aviendha’s belt knife was small, with a blade not half a foot long, but the oarsmen frowned worriedly when she drew it. Her arm went back, and they fell sprawling to the deck as the knife whirled over their heads to sink with a solid thunk into the thick wooden post at the front of the boat. Looping the cloak over her arms like a shawl, she hoisted her skirts well above her knees so she could climb over the oars and retrieve her blade, then took her place on the dangling board. She did not replace the knife in its sheath. For some reason the two men exchanged confused looks, but they kept their eyes down as she was lifted up. Perhaps she was beginning to get a feel for wetlander customs.

  Settling onto the great ship’s deck, she gaped, almost forgetting to climb off the narrow seat. She had read of the Atha’an Miere, but reading and seeing was as different as reading of saltwater and tasting it. They were all dark, for one thing, much darker than the Ebou Dari, even darker than most Tairens, with straight black hair and black eyes and tattooed hands. Bare-chested, barefoot men with bright narrow sashes holding up baggy breeches of some dark cloth that had an oily look to it, and women in blouses as brilliantly colored as their sashes, all with a sway to their movements, gliding gracefully with the rocking of the ship. Sea Folk women had very strange customs when it came to men, according to what she had read, dancing with no more than a single scarf for covering and worse, but it was the earrings that made her stare. Most had three or four, often with polished stones, and several actually had a small ring in one side of their noses! The men did, too, the earrings at least, and just as many heavy gold and silver chains around their necks. Men! Some wetlander men wore rings in their ears, true—most Ebou Dari men seemed to—but so many! And necklaces! Wetlanders did have strange ways. The Sea Folk never left their ships—never—so she had read, and supposedly they ate their dead. She had not been quite able to credit that, but if the men wore necklaces, who could say what else they did?

  The woman who came to meet them wore breeches and blouse and sash like the others, but hers were of brocaded yellow silk, the sash knotted intricately with ends trailing to her knee, and one of her necklaces bore a small golden box of intricate piercework. A sweetly musky scent surrounded her. Gray streaked her hair heavily, and she had a grave face. Five small fat golden rings decorated each of her ears, and a fine chain connected one to a similar ring in her nose. Tiny medallions of polished gold d
angling from the chain flashed in the sunlight as she studied them.

  Aviendha pulled her hand down from her own nose—to wear that chain, always tugging!—and barely managed to suppress a laugh. Wetlander customs were odd beyond belief, and surely no one deserved the name better than the Sea Folk.

  “I am Malin din Toral Breaking Wave,” the woman said, “Wavemistress of Clan Somarin and Sailmistress of Windrunner.” A Wavemistress was important, like a clan chief, yet she seemed at a loss, looking from one face to the next, until her eye fell on the Great Serpent rings Elayne and Nynaeve wore, and then she exhaled in resignation. “If it pleases you to come with me, Aes Sedai?” she said to Nynaeve.

  The back of the ship was raised, and she led the way inside that by a door, then down a hallway to a large room—a cabin—with a low ceiling. Aviendha doubted Rand al’Thor would have been able to stand upright beneath one of the thick beams. Except for a few lacquered chests, everything seemed to have been built in place, cabinets along the walls, even the long table that ran half the length of the room and the armchairs that surrounded it. It was difficult to think of something the size of this ship being made of wood, and even after all her time in the wetlands, the sight of all that polished wood nearly made her gasp. It glowed almost as much as the gilded lamps, hanging unlit in some sort of cage so they remained upright as the ship moved with the waves. In truth, the ship hardly seemed to move at all, at least in comparison with the boat they had been on, but unfortunately the back of the cabin, of the ship, was a line of windows with the painted and gilded shutters standing open, giving a splendid view of the bay. Worse, there was no land in sight out those windows. No land at all! Her throat seized. She could not have spoken. She could not have screamed, although that was what she wanted to do.