“The palace is . . . changed.” For a moment, there was confusion in the bond. Birgitte grimaced. “It sounds mad, I know, but it’s as if the whole thing had been built to a slightly different plan.” One of the Guardswomen ahead missed a step, caught herself. “I have a good memory. . . .” Birgitte hesitated, the bond filled with a jumble of emotions hastily pushed down. Most of her memories of past lives had vanished as surely as the winter’s snow. Nothing remained before the founding of the White Tower, and the four lives she had lived between then and the end of the Trolloc Wars were beginning to fragment. Little seemed to frighten her, yet she feared losing the rest, especially her memories of Gaidal Cain. “I don’t forget a path once I’ve followed it,” she went on, “and some of these hallways aren’t the same as they were. Some of the corridors have been . . . shifted. Others aren’t there anymore, and there are some new. Nobody is talking about it that I could find out, but I think the old people are keeping quiet because they’re afraid their wits are going, and the younger are afraid they’ll lose their positions.”
“That’s—” Elayne shut her mouth. Clearly it was not impossible. Birgitte did not suffer from sudden fancies. Naris’ reluctance to leave her apartments suddenly made sense, and perhaps Reene’s earlier puzzlement, too. She almost wished being with child really had befuddled her. But how? “Not the Forsaken,” she said firmly. “If they could do something like this, they’d have done it long since, and worse than. … A good day to you, too, Lord Aubrem.”
Lean and craggy and bald save for a thin white fringe, Aubrem Pensenor should have been dandling his grandchildren’s children on his knee, but his back was straight, his eyes clear. He had been among the first to reach Caemlyn, with near to a hundred men and the first news that it was Arymilla Marne marching against the city, with Naean and Elenia supporting her. He began reminiscing about riding for her mother in the Succession, until Birgitte murmured that Lady Dyelin would be waiting for her.
“Oh, in that case, don’t let me delay you, my Lady,” the old man said heartily. “Please give my regards to Lady Dyelin. She’s been so busy, I’ve not exchanged two words with her since reaching Caemlyn. My very best regards, if you will.” House Pensenor had been allied to Dyelin’s Taravin since time out of mind.
“Not the Forsaken,” Birgitte said once Aubrem was out of earshot. “But what caused it is only the first question. Will it happen again? If it does, will the changes always be benign? Or might you wake up and find yourself in a room without doors or windows? What happens if you’re sleeping in a room that disappears? If a corridor can go, so can a room. And what if it’s more than the palace? We need to find out if all the streets still lead where they did. What if the next time, part of the city wall isn’t there anymore?”
“You do think dark thoughts,” Elayne said bleakly. Even with the Power in her, the possibilities were enough to give her a sour stomach.
Birgitte fingered the four golden knots on the shoulder of her white-collared red coat. “They came with these.” Strangely, the worry carried by the bond was less now that she had shared her concerns. Elayne hoped the woman did not think she had answers. No, that really was impossible. Birgitte knew her too well for that. “Does this frighten you, Deni?” she asked. “I’ll admit it does me.”
“No more than needful, my Lady,” the blocky woman answered without stopping her careful scan of what lay ahead. Where the others walked with a hand on their sword hilts, her hand rested on her long cudgel. Her voice was as placid, and as matter-of-fact, as her face. “One time a big wagon man named Eldrin Hackly came near breaking my neck. Not usually a rough man, but he was drunk beyond drunk that night. I couldn’t get the angle right, and my cudgel seemed to bounce off his skull without making a dent. That frightened me more, because I knew certain sure I was about to die. This is just maybe, and any day you wake up, maybe you die.”
Any day you wake up, maybe you die. There were worse ways to look at life, Elayne supposed. Still, she shivered. She was safe, at least till her babes were born, but no one else was.
The two guards at the wide, lion-carved doors to the Map Room were experienced Guardsmen, one short and the next thing to scrawny, the other wide enough to appear squat though he was of average height. Nothing visible picked them out from any other men in the Guards, but only good swordsmen, trusted men, got this duty. The short man nodded to Deni, then straightened his back stiffly at a disapproving frown from Birgitte. Deni smiled at him shyly—Deni! shyly!—while a pair of Guardswomen went through the inevitable routine. Birgitte opened her mouth, but Elayne laid a hand on her arm, and the other woman looked at her, then shook her head, thick golden braid swaying slowly.
“It’s not good when they’re on duty, Elayne. They should be seeing to their duties, not mooning over each other.” She did not raise her voice, yet color appeared in Deni’s round cheeks, and she stopped smiling and started watching the corridor again. It was better that way, perhaps, yet still a pity. Somebody ought to have a little pleasure in their lives.
The Map Room was the second-largest ballroom in the palace, and spacious, with four red-streaked marble fireplaces where small fires burned beneath the carved mantels, a domed ceiling worked with gilt and supported by widely spaced columns two spans from white marble walls that had been stripped of tapestries, and sufficient mirrored stand-lamps to light the room as well as if it had windows. The greatest part of its tile floor was a detailed mosaic map of Caemlyn, originally laid down more than a thousand years ago, after the New City had been completed though before Low Caemlyn began growing. Long before there was an Andor, before even Artur Hawkwing. It had been redone several times since, as tiles faded or became worn, so every street was exact—at least, they had been until today; the Light send they still were—and despite many buildings replaced over the years, even some of the alleys were unchanged from what the huge map showed.
There would be no dancing in the Map Room for the foreseeable future, however. Long tables between the columns held more maps, some large enough to spill over the edges, and shelves along the walls held stacks of reports, those not so sensitive they needed to be locked away or else committed to memory and burned. Birgitte’s wide writing table, nearly covered with baskets, most full of papers, stood at the far end of the room. As Captain-General, she had her own study, but as soon as she discovered the Map Room, she had decided the map in the floor ma
