Winter's Heart (87 page)

At last, Tuon showed expression. She smiled, as if she suddenly knew a secret. She smiled, and he shivered. Oh, Light, how he shivered.

The Golden Wheel was a large inn, just off the Avharin Market, with a long, beam-ceilinged common room crowded with small square tables. Even at midday no more than one table in five had anyone sitting at it, though, usually an outland merchant facing a woman in sober colors with her hair worn on top of her head or gathered up at the nape of her neck. The women were merchants, too, or bankers; in Far Madding, banking and trade were forbidden to men. All the foreigners in the common room were male, since the women among them could be taken into the Women’s Room. The smells of fish and mutton cooking in the kitchens filled the air, and occasionally a shout from one of the tables summoned one of the serving men who waited in a line at the back of the room. Otherwise, the merchants and bankers kept their voices low. The sound of the rain outside was louder.

“Are you certain?” Rand asked, taking the creased drawings back from a lantern-jawed serving man he had drawn off to one side of the room.

“I think it’s him,” the fellow said uncertainly, wiping his hands on a long apron embroidered with a yellow wagon wheel. “It looks like him. He should be back soon.” His eyes darted beyond Rand, and he sighed. “You better buy a drink or go. Mistress Gallger doesn’t like us talking when we should be working. And she wouldn’t like me talking about her patrons any time.”

Rand glanced over his shoulder. A lean woman with a tall ivory comb
stuck in the dark bun on the back of her head was standing in the yellow-painted arch that led to the Women’s Room. The way she looked over the common room—half queen surveying her domain, half farmer surveying her fields, and either way displeased with the sparsity of trade she saw—named her the innkeeper. When her gaze fell on Rand and the lantern-jawed fellow, she frowned.

“Mulled wine,” Rand said, handing the man some coins, coppers for the wine and a silver mark for his information, uncertain as it was. More than a week had passed since he had killed Rochaid and Kisman had gotten away, and in all those days this was the first time he had gotten more than a shrug or a shake of the head when he showed the drawings.

There were a dozen empty tables right at hand, but he wanted to be in a corner at the front of the room, where he could see who came in without being seen himself, and as he edged his way between the tables, snatches of conversation caught his ear.

A tall pale woman in dark green silk shook her head at a stocky man in a tight-fitting black Tairen coat. An iron-gray bun made her look a little like Cadsuane from the side. He appeared to be made of stone blocks, but his dark square face was worried. “You can put your mind at ease about Andor, Master Admira,” she said soothingly. “Believe me, the Andorans will shout and shake swords at one another, but they’ll never let it come to actual fighting. It is in your best interests to stay with the present route for your goods. Cairhien would tax you a fifth more than Far Madding. Think of the added expense.” The Tairen grimaced as if he were thinking of it. Or wondering whether his best interests really coincided with hers.

“I hear the body did be all black and swollen,” a lean, white-bearded Illianer in a dark blue coat said at another table. “I hear the Counsels did order it burned.” He raised his eyebrows significantly and tapped the side of a pointed nose that gave him the appearance of a weasel.

“If there was
plague
in the city, Master Azereos, the Counsels would have announced it,” the slim woman sitting across from him said calmly. With two elaborate ivory combs in her rolled hair, she was pretty, in a fox-faced way, and cool as an Aes Sedai, though with faint lines at the corners of her brown eyes. “I really do suggest against moving
any
of your trade to Lugard. Murandy is
most
unsettled. The nobles will
never
stand for Roedran building an army. And there are
Aes Sedai
involved, as I’m sure you have heard. The Light alone knows what
they
will do.” The Illianer shrugged uncomfortably. These days, no one was very certain what Aes Sedai would do, if they ever had been.

A Kandori with gray streaks in his forked beard and a large pearl in his left ear was leaning toward a stout woman in dark gray silk who wore her black hair in a tight roll along the top of her head. “I hear the Dragon Reborn has been crowned King of Illian, Mistress Shimel.” A frown put more wrinkles in his forehead. “Given the White Tower’s proclamation, I am considering sending my spring wagons to travel along the Erinin to Tear. The River Road may be a harder route, but Illian is not such a market for furs that I want to take too many risks.”

The stout woman smiled, a very thin smile for such a round face. “I’m told the man has hardly been seen in Illian since he took the crown, Master Posavina. In any case, the Tower will deal with him, if it hasn’t already, and this morning, I received word that the Stone of Tear is under siege. That is hardly a situation where you will find much market for furs, now it? No, Tear is not a place to avoid risks.” The wrinkles in Master Posavina’s forehead deepened.

Reaching a small table in the corner, Rand tossed his cloak over the back of the chair and sat with his back to the wall, turning up his collar. The lantern-jawed fellow brought a steaming pewter cup of spiced wine, murmured a hurried thanks for the silver, and scurried off at a shout from another table. Two large fireplaces on either side of the room took the chill off the air, but if anyone noticed that Rand kept his gloves on, no one glanced at him twice. He pretended to stare into the winecup between his hands on the table while keeping an eye on the door to the street.

Most of what he had overheard did not interest him greatly. He had heard as much before, and sometimes knew more than the people he eavesdropped on. Elayne agreed with the pale woman, for example, and she had to know Andor better than any Far Madding merchant. The Stone under siege was new, though. Still, he need not trouble himself with it yet. The Stone had never fallen, except to him, and he knew Alanna was somewhere in Tear. He had felt her leap from just north of Far Madding to somewhere much farther north, then, a day later, to somewhere far to the south and east. She was distant enough that he could not say whether she was in Haddon Mirk or the city of Tear itself, yet he was confident she was one place or the other, with four other sisters he could trust. If Merana and Rafela could get what he wanted from the Sea Folk, they could from the Tairens, too. Rafela was Tairen, and that should help. No, the world could get along without him a little longer. It had to.

A tall man swathed in a long, damp cloak with the hood hiding his face came in from the street, and Rand’s eyes followed him to the stairs at
the back of the room. Starting up, the fellow threw back his cowl, revealing a fringe of gray hair and a pale pinched face. He could not be the one the serving man meant. No one with eyes would confuse him with Peral Torval.

Rand went back to studying the surface of his wine, his thoughts turning sour. Min and Nynaeve had refused to spend one more hour tramping the streets, as Min had put it, and he suspected Alivia was only going through the motions of showing the drawings. When she did even that. They were all three out of the city for the day, in the hills, he judged from what the bond told him of Min. She felt very excited about something. The three of them believed Kisman had fled after failing to kill Rand, and the other renegades had either gone with him or never come at all. They had all been trying to talk him into leaving for days, now. At least Lan had not given up.

Why can’t the women be right?
Lews Therin whispered fiercely in his head.
This city is worse than any prison. There is no
Source
here! Why would they stay? Why would
any
sane man stay? We could ride out, beyond the barrier, just for a day, a few hours. Light, just for a few hours!
The voice laughed uncontrollably, wildly.
Oh, Light, why do I have a madman in my head? Why? Why?

Angrily, Rand forced Lews Therin to a muted hum, like a biteme buzzing nearby. He had thought about accompanying the women on their ride, just to feel the Source again, though only Min had shown much enthusiasm. Nynaeve and Alivia would not admit why they wanted to ride out when the morning sky had promised the rain that was pouring down outside now. This was not the first time they had gone. To feel the Source, he suspected. To drink in the One Power again, if only for a short time. Well, he could endure not being able to channel. He could endure the absence of the Source. He could! He had to, so he could kill the men who had tried to kill him.

That is not the reason!
Lews Therin shouted, forcing past Rand’s efforts to shut him up.
You are afraid! If the sickness takes you while you are trying to use the access
ter’angreal,
it could kill you, or worse! It could kill us all!
he moaned.

Wine slopped over Rand’s wrist, soaking his coats-leeve, and he loosened his grip on the winecup. The thing had not been in true round to begin with, and he did not think he had bent it enough to be noticed. He was
not
afraid! He refused to let fear touch him. Light, he had to die, eventually. He had accepted that.

They tried to kill me, and I want them dead for it,
he thought.
If it takes a little time, well, maybe the sickness will pass by then. Burn you, I have to live until the Last Battle.
In his head, Lews Therin laughed more wildly than before.

Another tall man swaggered in, through the door to the stableyard, almost at the foot of the stairs in the back of the room. Shaking rain from his cloak, he tossed back his hood and strode to the doorway of the Women’s Room. With his sneering mouth and sharp nose, and a gaze that swept contemptuously over the people at the tables, he did look something like Torval, but with twenty years’ more wear on his face and thirty pounds of fat on his frame. Peering through the yellow arch, he called out in a high, prissy voice that was thick with the accents of Illian. “Mistress Gallger, I do be leaving in the morning. Early, so I do expect no charges for tomorrow, mind!” Torval was a Taraboner.

Gathering his cloak, Rand left his winecup on the table and did not look back.

The noon sky was gray and cold, and if the rain had slackened, it was not by much, and driven by blustery lake winds, it was enough to have driven almost everyone from the streets. He held the cloak around him one-handed, as much to shelter, the drawings in his coat pocket as to keep the rest of him dry, and used the other to hold his hood against the gusts. The windblown raindrops hit his face like flecks of ice. A lone sedan chair passed him, the bearers’ hair hanging sodden down their backs and their boots splashing in puddles on the paving stones. A few people trudged along the streets wrapped up in their cloaks. There were hours of daylight left, such as it was, but he walked by an inn called The Heart of the Plain without going in, and then by The Three Ladies of Maredo. He told himself it was the rain. This was no weather to be making his way from inn to inn. He knew he was lying, though.

A short stout woman coming down the street bundled in a dark cloak suddenly veered toward him. When she stopped in front of him and raised her head, he saw it was Verin.

“So you are here after all,” she said. Raindrops fell on her upturned face, but she did not seem to notice. “Your innkeeper thought you intended to walk up to the Avharin, but she was not sure. I’m afraid Mistress Keene doesn’t pay much attention to the comings and goings of men. And here I am with my shoes soaked through, and my stockings. I used to like walking in the rain when I was a girl, but it seems to have lost its charm somewhere along the way.”

“Did Cadsuane send you?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from
sounding hopeful. He had kept his room at The Counsel’s Head after Alanna left so that Cadsuane could find him. He could hardly make her interested if she had to hunt for him inn by inn. Especially since she had shown no evidence that she would hunt.