“Home. The Two Rivers. It is late. If you are leaving tomorrow, too, I suppose you want to get some sleep. I know I’m tired.” He yawned as widely as he could.
She still made no move toward the door. “You are a blacksmith? I have need of a blacksmith in Mayene. Making ornamental ironwork. A short stay before returning to the Two Rivers? You would find Mayene … entertaining.”
“I am going home,” he told her firmly, “and you are going back to your own rooms.”
Her small shrug made him look away again hastily. “Perhaps another day. I always get what I want in the end. And I think I want …” She paused, eyeing him up and down. “ … ornamental ironwork. For the windows of my bedchamber.” She smiled so innocently that he felt alarm gongs sounding his head.
The door opened again, and Faile came in. “Perrin, I went into the city looking for you, and I heard a rumor—” She stopped stock still, her eyes hard on Berelain.
The First ignored her. Stepping close to Perrin, she ran a hand up his arm, across his shoulder. For an instant he thought she meant to try pulling his head down for a kiss—she certainly lifted her face as if for one—but she only trailed her hand along the side of his neck in a quick caress and stepped back. It was over and done before he could move to stop her. “Remember,” she said softly, as if they were alone, “I always get what I want.” And she swept past Faile and out of the room.
He waited for an explosion from Faile, but she glanced at his stuffed saddlebags on the bed and said, “I see you’ve heard the rumor already. It is only a rumor, Perrin.”
“Yellow eyes make it more than that.” She should have been erupting like a bundle of dry twigs tossed on a fire. Why was she so cool? “Very well. Moiraine is the next problem, then. Will she try to stop you?”
“Not if she doesn’t know. If she tries, I will go anyway. I have family and friends, Faile; I won’t leave them to Whitecloaks. But I hope to keep it from her until I am well out of the city.” Even her eyes were calm, like dark pools in the forest. It made his hackles rise.
“But it had to take weeks for that rumor to reach Tear, and it will take weeks more to ride to the Two Rivers. The Whitecloaks could be gone by then. Well, I have been wanting you to leave here. I should not complain. I just want you to know what to expect.”
“It won’t take weeks by the Ways,” he told her. “Two days, maybe three.” Two days. He supposed there was no means to make it faster.
“You are as mad as Rand al’Thor,” she said disbelievingly. Dropping on the foot of his bed, she folded her legs crosswise and addressed him in a voice suitable for lecturing children. “Go into the Ways, and you come out hopelessly mad. If you come out at all, which it is most likely you will not. The Ways are tainted, Perrin. They have been dark for—what?—three hundred years? Four hundred? Ask Loial. He could tell you. It was Ogiers built the Ways, or grew them, or whatever it was. Not even they use the Ways. Why, even if you managed to make it through them unscathed, the Light alone knows where you would come out.”
“I have traveled them, Faile.” And a frightening trip it had been, too. “Loial can guide me. He can read the guideposts; that’s how we went before. He will do it for me again when he knows how important it is.” Loial was eager to be away from Tear, too; he seemed to be afr
aid that his mother knew where he was. Perrin was sure he would help.
“Well,” she said, rubbing her hands together briskly. “Well, I wanted adventure, and this is certainly it. Leaving the Stone of Tear and the Dragon Reborn, traveling the Ways to fight Whitecloaks. I wonder whether we can persuade Thom Merrilin to come along. If we cannot have a bard, a gleeman will do. He could compose the story, and you and I the heart of it. No Dragon Reborn or Aes Sedai about to swallow up the tale. When do we leave? In the morning?”
He took a deep breath to steady his voice. “I will be going alone, Faile. Just Loial and me.”
“We will need a packhorse,” she said as if he had not spoken. “Two, I think. The Ways are dark. We will need lanterns, and plenty of oil. Your Two Rivers people. Farmers? Will they fight Whitecloaks?”
“Faile, I said—”
“I heard what you said,” she snapped. Shadows gave her a dangerous look, with her tilted eyes and high cheekbones. “I heard, and it makes no sense. What if these farmers won’t fight? Or don’t know how? Who is going to teach them? You? Alone?”
“I will do what has to be done,” he said patiently. “Without you.”
She bounced to her feet so fast he thought she was coming for his throat. “Do you think Berelain will go with you? Will she guard your back? Or perhaps you prefer her to sit on your lap and squeal? Tuck your shirt in, you hairy oaf! Does it have to be so dark in here? Berelain likes dim light, does she? Much good she will do you against the Children of the Light!”
Perrin opened his mouth to protest, and changed what he had been going to say. “She looks a pleasant armful, Berelain. What man wouldn’t want her on his lap?” The hurt on her face banded his chest with iron, but he made himself go on. “When I am done at home, I may go to Mayene. She asked me to come, and I might.”
Faile said not a word. She stared at him with a face like stone, then whirled and ran out, slamming the door behind her with a crash.
In spite of himself he started to follow, then stopped with his hands gripping the doorframe till his fingers hurt. Staring at the splintered gash his axe had made in the door, he found himself telling it what he could not tell her. “I killed Whitecloaks. They would have killed me if I hadn’t, but they still call it murder. I’m going home to die, Faile. That’s the only way I can stop them hurting my people. Let them hang me. I cannot let you see that. I can’t. You might even try to stop it, and then they’d … .”
His head dropped against the door. She would not be sorry to see the last of him now; that was what was important. She would go find her adventure somewhere else, safe from Whitecloaks and ta’veren and bubbles of evil. That was all that was important. He wished he did not want to howl with grief.
Faile strode through the halls at a near run, oblivious of who she passed or who had to scramble out of her way. Perrin. Berelain. Perrin. Berelain. He wants a milk-faced vixen who runs about half-naked, does he? He doesn’t know what he wants. Hairy lummox! Wooden-headed buffoon! Blacksmith! And that sneaking sow, Berelain. That prancing she-goat!
She did not realize where she was going until she saw Berelain ahead of her, gliding along in that dress that left nothing to the imagination, swaying along as if that walk of hers was not deliberately calculated to make male eyes pop. Before Faile knew what she was doing, she had darted ahead of Berelain and turned to face her where two corridors met.
“Perrin Aybara belongs to me,” she snapped. “You keep your hands and your smiles away from him!” She flushed to her hairline when she heard what she had said. She had promised herself she would never do this, never fight over a man like a farmgirl rolling in the dirt at harvest.
Berelain arched a cool eyebrow. “Belongs to you? Strange, I saw no collar on him. You serving girls—or are you a farmer’s daughter?—you have the most peculiar ideas.”
“Serving girl? Serving girl! I am—” Faile bit her tongue to stop the furious words. The First of Mayene, indeed. There were estates in Saldaea larger than Mayene. She would not last a week in the courts of Saldaea. Could she recite poetry while hawking? Could she ride in the hunt all day, then play the cittern at night while discussing how to counter Trolloc raids? She thought she knew men, did she? Did she know the language of fans? Could she tell a man to come or go or stay, and a hundred things more, all with the twist of a wrist and the placement of a lace fan? Light shine on me, what am I thinking? I swore I would never even hold a fan again! But there were other Saldaean customs. She was surprised to see the knife in her hand; she had been taught not to draw a knife unless she meant to use it. “Farm girls in Saldaea have a way of dealing with women who poach others’ men. If you do not swear to forget Perrin Aybara, I will shave your head as bald as an egg. Perhaps the boys who tend the chickens will pant after you, then!”