He had not come to Tear to kill anyone, though, not unless he had to, so he rode into the stableyard of a tile-roofed inn, three stories of dark gray stone with a prosperous look. The sign out front was freshly painted with, of all things, a rough approximation of the creatures encircling his forearms. The artist apparently had decided the thing was inadequate as described, though, because he had added long, sharp teeth and leathery, ribbed wings. Wings! They almost looked copied from one of those Seanchan flying beasts. Cadsuane looked at the sign and snorted. Nynaeve looked at it and giggled. So did Min!
Even after Rand gave the barefoot stableboys silver to curry the horses, they stared at the Maidens harder than at the coins, but no harder than the patrons stared in The Dragon’s beam-ceilinged common room. Conversation trailed off when the Maidens followed Rand and the others inside, spearpoints sticking up above their heads and bullhide bucklers in hand. Men and women, most in plain if good quality wool, turned in their low-backed chairs to stare. They seemed to be middling merchants and solid craftsfolk, yet they gaped like villagers seeing a city for the first time. The serving women, in dark high-necked dresses and short white aprons, stopped trotting and goggled over their trays. Even the woman playing a hammered dulcimer between the two stone fireplaces, cold on this fine morning, fell silent.
A very dark fellow with tightly curled hair, at a square table beside the door, seemed not to notice the Maidens at all. Rand took him for one of the Sea Folk at first, though he wore a peculiar coat without collar or lapels, once white but now stained and wrinkled. “I tell you. I have many, many of the . . . the worms that make . . . yes, make . . . silk on a ship,” he said haltingly in an odd, musical accent. “But I must have the . . . the . . . andberry . . . yes, andberry leaves to feed them. We will be rich.”
His companion waved a plump, dismissive hand even while staring at the Maidens. “Worms?” he said absently. “Everybody knows silk grows on trees.”
Walking deeper into the common room, Rand shook his head as the proprietor advanced to meet him. Worms! The tales people could come up with to try prying coin out of somebody else.
“Agardo Saranche at your service, my Lord, my Ladies,” the lean, balding man said with a deep bow, sweeping his hands wide. Not all Tairens were dark by any means, but he was nearly as fair complected as a Cairhienin. “How may I serve?” His dark eyes kept drifting to the Maidens, and every time they did, he tugged at his long blue coat as though it suddenly felt too tight.
“We want a room with a good view of the Stone,” Rand said.
“It is worms that make silk, friend,” a man drawled behind him. “My eyes on it.”
At that familiar accent, Rand spun to find Alivia staring, wide-eyed and her face bloodless, at a man in a dark coat who was just passing through the doorway into the street. With an oath, Rand ran to the door, but there were close to a dozen men in dark coats walking away from the inn, any one of whom might have spoken. There was no way to pick out one man of average height and width seen only from behind. What was a Seanchan doing in Tear? Scouting for another invasion? He would put paid to that soon enough. But he turned from the door wishing he could have laid hands on the man. Knowing would be better than having to guess.
He asked Alivia whether she had gotten a good look at the fellow, but she shook her head silently. Her face was still pale. She was ferocious when she talked of what she wanted to do to sul’dam, yet it seemed just hearing the accents of her native land was enough to shake her. He hoped that did not turn out to be weakness in her. She was going to help him, somehow, and he could not afford her to be weak.
“What do you know of the man who just left?” he demanded of Saranche. “The one with the slurred way of talking.”
The innkeeper blinked. “Nothing, my Lord. I’ve never seen him before. You want one room, my Lord?” He ran his eyes over Min and the other women, and his lips moved as if he were counting.
“If you’re thinking of any impropriety, Master Saranche,” Nynaeve said indignantly, tugging at the braid hanging from the cowl of her cloak, “you had best think twice and again. Before I box your ears.” Min hissed softly, and one hand drifted toward her other wrist before she checked the motion. Light, but she was quick to reach for her knives!
“What impropriety?” Alivia asked in tones of puzzlement. Cadsuane snorted.
“One room,” Rand said patiently. Women can always find a reason to be indignant, he thought. Or had that been Lews Therin? He shrugged in discomfort. And a touch of irritation that he only just managed to keep out of his voice. “Your largest with a view of the Stone. We don’t want it for long. You’ll be able to rent it out again for tonight. You may have to keep our horses a day or two, though.”
A look of relief crept over Saranche’s narrow face, though patently false rue filled his voice. “I regret that my largest room is taken, my Lord. In fact, all of my large rooms are taken. But I will be more than happy to escort you up the street to The Three Moons and—“
“Phaw!” Cadsuane pushed back her hood enough to reveal her face and some of her golden hair ornaments. She was all cool composure, her gaze implacable. “I think you can find a way to make that room available, boy. I think you had better find a way. Pay him well,” she added to Rand, ornaments swaying on their chains. “That was advice, not an order.”
Saranche took Rand’s fat golden crown with alacrity—it was doubtful the entire inn earned much more in a week—but it was Cadsuane’s ageless face that sent him bounding up the staircase at the back of the common room to return in a handful of minutes and show them to a room on the second floor with dark polished paneling and a rumpled bed wide enough for three flanked by a pair of windows filled by the Stone looming over the rooftops. The previous occupant had been hustled out so quickly that he had left a woolen stocking crumpled at the foot of the bed and a carved horn comb on the washstand in the corner. The innkeeper offered to have their saddlebags brought up, and wine, and seemed surprised when Rand refused, but one glance at Cadsuane’s face, and he bowed his way out again hurriedly.
The room was fairly large as inn rooms went, yet not compared to most chambers in Algarin’s manor house, much less in a palace. Especially not with near a dozen people filling the space. The walls seemed to close in on Rand. His chest suddenly felt tight. Every breath came with difficulty. The bond was suddenly full of sympathy and concern. The box, Lews Therin panted. H
