Plans. Unthinking, Karede picked up Ajimbura’s cup and almost drank before he realized what he was doing. He continued to hold the cup, though, so as not to give away his turmoil. Every?one - those who knew, anyway - was sure the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was part of the contest to succeed the Empress, might she live forever. Such was life in the Imperial family. If the High Lady were dead, after all, a new heir must be named. If she were dead. And if not. . . . TheWhiteTowerwould have sent their best, if they planned to carry her away. If the Seeker was not play?ing him in some game of his own. Seekers could try to snare any?one short of the Empress herself, might she live forever. “You have taken this notion to your superiors, and they rejected it, or you would not come to me. That, or. . . . You haven’t mentioned it to them, have you? Why not?”
“Much more tangled than you can imagine,” Mor said softly, eyeing the door as if suspecting eavesdroppers. Why did he grow cautious now? “There are many . . . complications. The twodamane were removed by the Lady Egeanin Tamarath, who has had deal?ings with Aes Sedai before. Close dealings, in fact. Very close. Clearly, she released the otherdamane to cover her escape. Egeanin left the city that same night, with threedamane in her entourage, and also, we believe, Merrilin and the others. We don’t know who the thirddamane was - we suspect someone important among the Atha’an Miere, or perhaps an Aes Sedai who was hiding in the city - but we have identified thesul’dam she used, and two have close connections with Suroth. Who herself has many connections to Aes Sedai.” For all his wariness, Mor said that as if it were not a lightning bolt. No wonder he was on edge.
So. Suroth plotted with Aes Sedai and had corrupted at least some of the Seekers above Mor, and theWhiteTowerhad placed men under one of their best to carry out certain actions. It was allbelievable. When Karede was sent with the Forerunners, he had been tasked to watch the Blood for over-ambition. There had always been a possibility, this far from the Empire, that they would try to set up their own kingdoms. And he himself had sent men into a city he knew would fall whatever was done to defend it, so they could harm the enemy from within.
“You have a direction, Almurat?”
Mor shook his head. “They went north, and Jehannah was mentioned in the palace stables, but that seems an obvious attempt at deception. They will have changed direction at the first oppor?tunity. We have checked on boats large enough to have carried the party across the river, but vessels of that size come and go all the time. There is no order in this place, no control.”
“This gives me a great deal to think on.”
The Seeker grimaced, a slight twisting of his mouth, but he seemed to realize he had gotten as much commitment as Karede would make. He nodded once. “Whatever you choose to do, you should know this. You may wonder how the girl extorted anything from these merchants. It seems two or three soldiers always accom?panied her. The description of their armor was also very precise.” He half stretched out a hand as though to touch Karede’s robe, but wisely let it fall back to his side. “Most people call that black. You understand me? Whatever you choose to do, do not delay.” Mor raised his cup. “Your health, Banner-General. Furyk. Your health, and the health of the Empire.”
Karede drained Ajimbura’s cup without hesitation.
The Seeker departed as abruptly as he had entered, and moments after the door closed behind him, it opened to admit Ajimbura. The little man stared accusingly at the skull-cup in Karede’s hands.
“You know this rumor, Ajimbura?” As well ask whether the sun rose in the morning as ask whether the fellow had been listen?ing. He did not deny it, in any case.
“I would not soil my tongue with such filth, high one,” he said, drawing himself up.
Karede permitted himself a sigh. Whether the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was her own doing or some other’s, she was in great danger. And if the rumor was some ploy by Mor, the best wayto defeat another’s game was to make the game your own. “Lay out my razor.” Sitting down, he reached for his pen, holding the sleeve of his robe clear of the ink with his left hand. “Then you will find Captain Musenge, when he is alone, and give him this. Return quickly; I will have more instructions for you.”
Shortly afternoonon the following day, he was crossing the harbor on the ferry that departed each hour, according to the strict ringing of bells. It was a lumbering barge that heaved as long sweeps propelled it across the harbor’s choppy surface. The ropes lashing a merchant’s half-dozen canvas-covered wagons to the cleats on the deck creaked with every shift, the horses stamped their hooves nervously, and the oarsmen had to fend off wagon drivers and hired guards who wanted to empty their bellies over the side. Some men had no stomach for the motion of water. The merchant herself, a plump-faced woman with a coppery skin, stood in the bow wrapped in her dark cloak, balancing easily with the ferry’s movements, staring fixedly at the approaching landing and ignoring Karede beside her. She might know that he was Seanchan, from the saddle on his bay gelding if nothing else, but a plain gray cloak covered his red-trimmed green coat, so if she thought of him at all, it was as an ordinary soldier. Not a settler, with a sword on his hip. There might have been sharper eyes back in the city, despite all he had done to evade them, but there was nothing he could do about that. With luck, he had a day, perhaps two, before anyone realized he would not be returning to the inn any time soon.
Swinging into his saddle as soon as the ferry bumped hard against the landing dock’s leather-padded posts, he was first off when the loading gate swung aside, the merchant was still chivvy?ing her drivers to the wagons and the ferrymen unlashing wheels. He kept Aldazar to a slow walk across the stones, still slippery with the morning’s rain, a litter of horse dung, and the leavings of a flock of sheep, and let the bay’s pace increase only when he reached theIllian Roaditself, though he kept short of a trot even then. Impatience was a vice when beginning a journey of unknown length.
Inns lined the road beyond the landing, flat-roofed buildings, covered in cracked and flaking white plaster and with faded signsout front or none at all. This road marked the northern edge of the Rahad, and roughly dressed men slouching on benches in front of the inns sullenly watched him pass. Not because he was Seanchan; he suspected they would have been no brighter for anyone on horseback. Anyone who had two coins to rub, for that matter. Soon he left them behind, though, and the next few hours took him past olive orchards and small farms where the workers were accustomed enough to passersby on the road that they did not look up from their labors. The traffic was sparse in any case, a handful of high-wheeled farmers’ carts and twice a merchant’s train rumbling toward Ebou Dar, surrounded by hired guards. Many of the drivers and both merchants wore those distinctive Illianer beards. It seemed strange that Illian continued to send its trade to Ebou Dar while fighting to resist the Empire, but people on this side of theEasternSeawere often peculiar, with odd customs, and little like the stories told of the great Hawkwing’s homeland. Often nothing like. They must be understood, of course, if they were to be brought into the Empire, but understanding was for others, higher than he. He had his duty.
The farms gave way to woodlands and fields of scrub, and his shadow was lengthening in front of him, the sun more than halfway to the horizon, by the time he saw what he was looking for. Just ahead, Ajimbura was squatting on the north side of the road, playing a reed flute, the image of an idler shirking. Before Karede reached him, he tucked the flute behind his belt, gathered his brown cloak and vanished into the brush and trees. Glancing behind to make sure the road was empty in that direction as well, Karede turned Aldazar into the woodland at the same point.
The little man was waiting just out of sight of the road, among a stand of some sort of large pine tree, the tallest easily a hundred feet. He made his hunch-shouldered bow and scrambled into the saddle of a lean chestnut with four white feet. He insisted that white feet on a horse were lucky. “This way, high one?” he said, and at Karede’s gesture of permission, turned his mount deeper into the forest.
They had only a short way to ride, no more than half a mile, but no one passing on the road could have suspected what waited there in a large clearing. Musenge had brought a hundred of theGuard on good horses and twenty Ogier Gardeners, all in full armor, along with pack animals to carry supplies for two weeks. The packhorse Ajimbura had brought out yesterday, with Karede’s armor, would be among them. A cluster ofsul’dam were standing beside their own mounts, some petting the six leasheddamane. When Musenge rode forward to meet Karede with Hartha, the First Gardener, striding grim-faced beside him with his green-tasseled axe over his shoulder. One of the women, Melitene, the High Lady Tuon’sder’sul’dam, stepped into her saddle and joined them.
Musenge and Hartha touched fists to heart, and Karede returned their salute, but his eyes went to thedamane. To one in particular, a small woman whose hair was being stroked by a dark, square-facedsul’dam. Adamam’s face was always deceptive - they aged slowly and lived a very long time - but this one had a differ?ence he had learned to recognize as belonging to those who called themselves Aes Sedai. “What excuse did you use to get all of them out of the city
