A Crown of Swords

by Robert Jordan

  “Nynaeve, if two women who could channel made a society, the Tower would fall on them like a pack of wolves. How would Mistress Anan know whether they can or not, anyway? Women who can and aren’t Aes Sedai do not go about making a show of themselves, you know. Not for very long, anyway. In any case, I can’t see it makes a difference. Egwene might want to bring every woman who can channel into the Tower somehow, but that is not what we are about here.” The frosty patience in Elayne’s voice tightened Nynaeve’s hands on her braid. How could the woman be so dense? She bared her teeth again for Mistress Anan, and managed not to scowl at the innkeeper’s back when her head turned forward once more.

  “Fifty women isn’t two,” Nynaeve whispered fiercely. They could channel; they must be able to; everything hinged on that. “It’s beyond reason that this Circle can be in the same city with a storeroom packed full of angreal and such without at least knowing of it. And if they do . . . ” She could not keep satisfaction from honeying her voice. “ . . . we’ll have found the Bowl without Master Matrim Cauthon. We can forget those absurd promises.”

  “They were not a bribe, Nynaeve,” Elayne said absently. “I will keep them, and so will you, if you have any honor, and I know you do.” She was spending entirely too much time with Aviendha. Nynaeve wished she knew why Elayne had begun thinking they all had to follow this preposterous Aiel ji-whatever-it-was.

  Elayne bit her underlip, frowning. All that iciness seemed to have vanished; she was herself again, apparently. Finally she said, “We would never have gone to the inn without Master Cauthon, so we’d never have met the remarkable Mistress Anan or been taken to this Circle. So if the Circle does lead us to the Bowl, we have to say he was the root cause.”

  Mat Cauthon; his name boiled in her head. Nynaeve stumbled over her own feet and let go of her braid to lift her skirts. The alley was hardly as smooth as a paved square much less a palace floor. At times, Elayne in a taking was better than Elayne thinking clearly. “Remarkable,” she muttered. “I’ll ‘remarkable’ her till her eyes cross. No one has ever treated us this way, Elayne, not even people who doubted, not even the Sea Folk. Most people would step wary if a ten-year-old said she was Aes Sedai.”

  “Most people don’t really know what an Aes Sedai’s face looks like, Nynaeve. I think she went to the Tower once; she knows things she couldn’t, otherwise.”

  Nynaeve snorted, glowering at the back of the woman striding ahead. Setalle Anan might have been to the Tower ten times, a hundred, but she was going to acknowledge Nynaeve al’Meara as Aes Sedai. And apologize. And learn what it was like to be hauled about by her ear, too! Mistress Anan glanced back, and Nynaeve flashed her a rigid smile, nodded as if her neck was a hinge. “Elayne? If these women do know where the Bowl is . . . We don’t have to tell Mat how we found it” That was not quite a question.

  “I do not see why,” Elayne replied, then dashed all her hopes by adding, “But I’ll have to ask Aviendha to be sure.”

  If she had not thought the Anan woman might abandon them on the spot, Nynaeve would have screamed.

  The wandering alley gave way to a street, and there was no talking then to amount to anything. The sun’s thin rim glared blindingly above the rooftops ahead; Elayne shaded her eyes with one hand very ostentatiously. Nynaeve refused to. It was not that bad. She barely had to squint at all, really. A clear blue sky mocked her weather sense, that still told her a storm was right on top of the city.

  Even this early a few brightly lacquered coaches were about in the winding streets, and a double fistful of brighter sedan chairs, two or sometimes four barefoot bearers in green-and-red striped vests to each, trotting because they carried passengers hidden behind the grilled wooden screens. Carts and wagons rumbled over the paving stones, and people began to fill the streets as shop doors opened and awnings went up, vested apprentices hurrying on errands and men with great rolled carpets balanced on their shoulders, tumblers and jugglers and musicians readying themselves at likely corners and hawkers with their trays of pins or ribbons or shabby fruit. The open-sided fish-and meat-markets had long since been in full cry; all the fishmongers were women, and most of the butchers, too, except those dealing in beef.

  Dodging through the crowds, past the coaches and sedan chairs and wagons that seemed to think they had no reason to slow, Mistress Anan set a fast pace to make up for interruptions. There were plenty of those. She seemed to be a well-known woman, hailed by shopkeepers and craftsmen and other innkeepers standing in their doorways. The shopkeepers and craftsmen received a few words, a pleasant nod, but she always stopped to chat a moment with the innkeepers. After the first, Nynaeve wished fervently that she would not again; after the second, she prayed for it. After the third she stared straight ahead and tried in vain not to hear. Elayne’s face grew tighter and tighter, colder and colder; her chin rose till it was a wonder she could see to walk.

  There was a reason, Nynaeve had to admit grudgingly. In Ebou Dar, someone wearing silk might stroll the length of a square, maybe, but no further. Everybody else in sight wore wool or linen, seldom with much embroidery, except for an occasional beggar who had acquired a cast-off silk garment, frayed on every edge and more hole than cloth. She just wished Mistress Anan had chosen some other explanation for why she was leading the pair of them through the streets. She wished she did not have to listen one more time to a tale of two flighty girls who had spent all their money on fine clothes to impress a man. Mat came out of it well, burn him. A fine young fellow, if Mistress Anan had not been married, a beautiful dancer with just a touch of the rogue. All of the women laughed. Not her or Elayne, though. Not the brainless little honeykissers — that was the word she used; Nynaeve could guess what it meant! — Honeykissers, penniless from chasing after a man and their purses full of brass bits and tin to fool fools, witless loobies who would have been reduced to beggary or theft had Mistress Anan not known someone who might give them work in the kitchen.

  “She doesn’t have to stop at every inn in the city,” Nynaeve growled as she stalked away from The Stranded Goose, three broad stories with an innkeeper who wore large garnets at her ears despite the humble name. Mistress Anan hardly even glanced back to see they followed, now. “Do you realize we’ll never be able to show our own faces in any of those places!”

  “I suspect that is exactly the point.” Every word out of Elayne’s mouth was chipped from ice. “Nynaeve, if you’ve sent us running after a wild pig . . . ” There was no need to complete the threat. With Birgitte and Aviendha to help, and they would, Elayne could make her life miserable until she was satisfied.

  “They will take us right to the Bowl,” she insisted, flapping her hands to shoo a beggar with a horrible purple scar that obliterated one eye; she could recognize flour paste dyed with bluewort when she saw it. “I know they will.” Elayne sniffed in an offensively expressive manner.

  Nynaeve lost count of the number of bridges they crossed, large and small, with barges poling beneath. The sun climbed its own height above the rooftops, then twice. The Anan woman did not follow even so straight a line as she might have — she really did seem to be going out of her way to find inns — but they continued generally east, and Nynaeve thought they must be nearing the river when the hazel-eyed woman suddenly rounded on them.

  “You watch your tongues, now. Speak when you’re spoken to and not else. You embarrass me, and . . . ” With a final frown and a mutter half under her breath that she was probably making a mistake, she jerked her head for them to follow again, to a flat-roofed house right opposite.

  It was not a large house, two stories without one balcony, cracked plaster and brick showing in several places, and hardly in an agreeable location, with the loud rattling of a weaver’s looms to one side and the acrid stinks of a dyer’s shop to the other. A maid answered the door, though, a graying woman with a square jaw, shoulders like a blacksmith, and a steely eye unsoftened by the sweat on her face. As Nynaeve followed Mistress Anan in, she smiled. Somewhere in that
house, a woman was channeling.

  The square-jawed maid obviously knew Setalle Anan on sight, but her reaction was odd. She curtsied with a very real respect, yet she was plainly surprised to see her, and obviously doubtful about her being there. She almost fluttered before letting them in. Nynaeve and Elayne were greeted with no ambivalence, though. They were shown to a sitting room one flight up, and the maid told them firmly,

  “Don’t stir a toe and don’t touch anything, or you’ll catch the old what-for,” then vanished.

  Nynaeve looked at Elayne.

  “Nynaeve, one woman channeling doesn’t mean — ”The feel changed, swelling for a moment, then subsiding, lower than before. “Even two women doesn’t mean anything,” Elayne protested, but she sounded doubtful. “That was the most ill-mannered maid I’ve ever seen.” She took a tall-backed red chair, and after a moment Nynaeve sat too, but she perched on the edge. From eagerness, not nerves. Not nerves at all.

  The room was not grand, but the blue-and-white floor tiles glistened, and the pale green walls looked freshly painted. No trace of gilt showed anywhere, of course, yet fine carving covered the red chairs arrayed along the walls and several small tables of a darker blue than the tiles. The lamps hanging from sconces were clearly brass, polished till they shone. Carefully arranged evergreen branches filled the swept hearth, and the lintel above the fireplace was carved, not plain stonework. The carving seemed an odd choice — what people around Ebou Dar called the Thirteen Sins; a man with eyes that nearly filled his whole face for Envy, a fellow with his tongue hanging to his ankles for Gossip, a snarling, sharp-toothed man clutching coins to his chest for Greed, and so on — but all in all, it satisfied her very much. Whoever could afford that room could afford fresh plaster outside, and the only reason not to put it up was to keep low, avoiding notice.

  The maid had left the door open, and suddenly voices coming up the hall drifted through.

  “I cannot believe you brought them here.” The speaker’s tone was tight with incredulity and anger. “You know how careful we are, Setalle. You know more than you should, and you surely know that.”

  “I am very sorry, Reanne,” Mistress Anan answered stiffly. “I suppose I didn’t think. I . . . submit myself, both to stand surety for these girls’ behavior and to your judgment.”

  “Of course not!” Reanne’s tone was high with shock, now. “That is to say . . . I mean, you shouldn’t have, but . . . Setalle, I apologize for raising my voice. Say you forgive me.”

  “You have no reason to apologize, Reanne.” The innkeeper managed to sound rueful and reluctant at the same time. “I did wrong to bring them.”

  “No, no, Setalle. I shouldn’t have spoken to you so. Please, you must forgive me. Please do.”

  The Anan woman and Reanne Corly entered the sitting room, and Nynaeve blinked in surprise. From the exchange, she had expected someone younger than Setalle Anan, but Reanne had hair more gray than not and a face full of what might have been smile lines, though they were creased in worry now. Why would the older woman humble herself so to the younger, and why would the younger allow it, however halfheartedly? Customs were different here, the Light knew, some more different than she liked to think about, yet not this much, surely. Of course, she had never gone very far toward being humble with the Women’s Circle back home, but this . . .

  Of course, Reanne could channel — she had expected that; hoped for it, anyway — but she had not expected the strength. Reanne was not as strong as Elayne, or even Nicola — burn that wretched girl! — but she easily equaled Sheriam, say, or Kwamesa or Kiruna. Not many women possessed so much strength, and for all she herself bettered it by a fair margin, she was surprised to find it here. The woman must be one of the wilders; the Tower would have found a way to keep its hands on a woman like this if they had to hold her in a novice dress her whole life.

  Nynaeve rose as they came through the doorway, smoothing her skirts. Not from nervousness, certainly; certainly not. Oh, but if only this came out right . . .

  Reanne’s sharp blue eyes studied the two of them with the air of someone who had just found a pair of pigs in her kitchen, fresh from the sty and dripping mud. She dabbed at her face with a tiny handkerchief, though the interior of the house was cooler than outside. “I suppose we’ll have to do something with them,” she murmured, “if they are what they claim.” Her voice was quite high even now, musical and almost youthful. As she finished speaking she gave a small start for some reason and eyed the innkeeper sideways, which set off another round of Mistress Anan’s reluctant apologies and Mistress Corly’s flustered attempts to deflect them. In Ebou Dar, when folk were truly being polite, apologies back and forth could flow for an hour.

  Elayne had risen too, wearing a slightly fixed smile. She raised an eyebrow at Nynaeve, cupped her elbow in one hand and laid a finger against her cheek.

  Nynaeve cleared her throat. “Mistress Corly, my name is Nynaeve al’Meara, and this is Elayne Trakand. We are looking for — “

  “Setalle has told me all about you,” the blue-eyed woman cut in ominously. However many gray hairs on her head, Nynaeve suspected she was also hard as a stone fence. “Abide with patience, girl, and I’ll deal with you directly.” She turned back to Setalle, blotting her cheeks with the handkerchief. Barely suppressed diffidence once more tinged her voice. “Setalle, if you will please excuse me, I must question these girls, and — “

  “Look who is returned after all these years,” a short, stout woman in her middle years blurted as she barged into the room, nodding at her companion. Despite her red-belted Ebou Dari dress and a tanned face that glistened damply, her accents were pure Cairhienin. Her equally sweaty companion, in the dark, plainly cut woolens of a merchant, was a head taller, no older than Nynaeve, with dark tilted eyes, a strongly hooked nose, and a wide mouth. “It’s Garenia! She — ”The flow of words terminated abruptly in confusion as the stout woman realized others were present.

  Reanne clasped her hands as if in prayer, or perhaps because she wanted to hit someone. “Berowin,” she said with an edge, “one day you will run right off a cliff before you see it under your feet.”

  “I am sorry, Eld—” Blushing, the Cairhienin lowered her eyes. The Saldaean became intent on fiddling with a circle of red stones pinned at her breast.

  For Nynaeve’s part, she gave Elayne a triumphant look. Both newcomers could channel, and saidar was still being wielded somewhere in the house. Two more, and while Berowin was not very strong, Garenia stood even above Reanne; she could match Lelaine or Romanda. Not that that mattered, of course, yet this made at least five. Elayne’s chin set stubbornly, but then she sighed and gave a small nod. Sometimes it took the most incredible effort to convince her of anything.

  “Your name is Garenia?” Mistress Anan said slowly, frowning at the woman in question. “You look very much like someone I met once. Zarya Alkaese.”

  Dark tilted eyes blinked in surprise. Plucking a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her sleeve, the Saldaean merchant touched her cheeks. “That is my grandmother’s sister’s name,” she said after a moment. “I’m told I favor her strongly. Was she well when you saw her? She forgot her family completely after she went off to become Aes Sedai.”

  “Your grandmother’s sister.” The innkeeper laughed softly. “Of course. She was well when I saw her, but that was a long time ago. I was younger than you are now”

  Reanne had been hovering at her side, all but grabbing her elbow, and now she leaped in. “Setalle, I truly am sorry, but I really must ask you to excuse us. You will forgive me not showing you to the door?”

  Mistress Anan made her own apologies, as if she was at fault because the other woman could not escort her down, and departed with a last, very dubious look at Nynaeve and Elayne.

  “Setalle!” Garenia exclaimed as soon as the innkeeper was gone. “That was Setalle Anan? How did she —? Light of Heaven! Even after seventy years, the Tower would — “

  “Garenia,” Mistress Cor
ly said in an extremely sharp tone. Her stare was sharper still, and the Saldaean’s face reddened. “Since you two are here, we can make up the three for questioning. You girls stay where you are and keep silent.” That last was for Nynaeve and Elayne. The other women withdrew to a corner in a huddle and began conversing in soft murmurs.

  Elayne moved nearer Nynaeve. “I did not like being treated as a novice when I was a novice. How long do you intend to continue this farce?”

  Nynaeve hissed at her for quiet “I’m trying to listen, Elayne,” she whispered.

  Using the Power was out of the question, of course. The three would have known on the instant. Fortunately, they wove no barriers, perhaps not knowing how, and sometimes their voices rose just enough.

  “ . . . said they may be wilders,” Reanne said, and shock and revulsion bloomed on the other women’s faces.

  “Then we show them the door,” Berowin said. “The back door. Wilders!”

  “I still want to know who this Setalle Anan is,” Garenia put in.

  “If you can’t keep your mind on the straight,” Reanne told her, “perhaps you should spend this turn on the farm. Alise knows how to concentrate a mind wonderfully. Now . . . ” The words dropped back to a buzz.

  Another maid appeared, a slender woman, pretty except for a sullen expression, with a rough gray woolen dress and a long white apron. Setting a green-lacquered tray on one of the small tables, she surreptitiously wiped her cheeks with a corner of her apron and began fussing with blue-glazed cups and a matching teapot. Nynaeve’s eyebrows rose. This woman could channel, too, if not to any high degree. What was she doing as a servant?