The door opened and a heavy-shouldered gray-haired man in loose green silk breeches and sash came in, ruffling through a sheaf of papers. Four gold rings decorated each ear, and three heavy gold chains hung at his neck, including one with a perfume box. A long puckered scar down his cheek, and two curved knives tucked in his sash, gave him something of a dangerous air. He was fastening a peculiar wire framework over his ears to hold clear lenses in front of his eyes. The Sea Folk made the best looking glasses and burning lenses and the like, of course, somewhere on their islands, but Elayne had never seen anything like this device. He peered through the lenses at the papers and began talking without looking up.
“Coine, this fool is willing to trade me five hundred snowfox pelts from Kandor for those three small barrels of Two Rivers tabac I got in Ebou Dar. Five hundred! He can have them here by midday.” His eyes rose, and he gave a start. “Forgive me, my wife. I did not know you had guests. The Light be with you all.”
“By midday, my husband,” Coine said, “I will be falling downriver. By nightfall I will be at sea.”
He stiffened. “Am I still Cargomaster, wife, or has my place been taken while I did not see?”
“You are Cargomaster, husband, but the trading must stop now and preparations begin for getting under way. We sail for Tanchico.”
“Tanchico!” The papers crumpled in his fist, and he brought himself under control with an effort. “Wife—No! Sailmistress, you told me our next port was Mayene, and then eastward to Shara. I have traded with that in mind. Shara, Sailmistress, not Tarabon. What I have in my holds will bring little in Tanchico. Perhaps nothing! May I ask why my trade is to be ruined and Wavedancer impoverished?”
Coine hesitated, but when she spoke her voice was still formal. “I am Sailmistress, my husband. Wavedancer sails when and where I say. It must be enough, for now.”
“As you say, Sailmistress,” he rasped, “so it is.” He touched his heart—Elayne thought Coine flinched—and padded out with his back stiff as one of the ship’s masts.
“I must make this up to him,” Coine murmured softly, staring at the door. “Of course, it is pleasant making up with him. Usually. He saluted me like a deckboy, sister.”
“We regret being a cause of trouble, Sailmistress,” Elayne said carefully. “And we regret having witnessed this. If we have caused any embarrassment, to anyone, please accept our apologies.”
“Embarrassment?” Coine sounded startled. “Aes Sedai, I am Sailmistress. I doubt your presence embarrassed Toram, and I would not apologize to him for that if it did. Trade is his, but I am Sailmistress. I must make up to him—and it will not be easy, since I must keep the reason secret still—because he is right, and I could not think quickly enough to give him a reason beyond what I would give a raw hand. That scar on his face he earned clearing the Seanchan from Wavedancer’s decks. He has older scars earned defending my ship, and I have only to put out my hand to have gold placed in it because of his trading. It is the things I cannot tell him I must make up to him, because he deserves to know.”
“I do not understand,” Nynaeve said. “We would ask you to keep the Black Ajah secret …”—she shot a hard look at Elayne, one that promised hard words once they were alone; Elayne intended a few words of her own, about the meaning of tact—“ … but surely three thousand crowns is reason enough to take us to Tanchico.”
“I must keep you secret, Aes Sedai. What you are, and why you travel. Many among my crew consider Aes Sedai bad luck. If they knew they not only carried Aes Sedai, but toward a port where other Aes Sedai may serve the Father of Storms … . The grace of the Light shone on us that none was close enough to hear me call you so above. Will it offend if I ask you to keep below as much as possible, and not to wear your rings when on deck?”
For answer, Nynaeve plucked her Great Serpent ring off and dropped it into her pouch. Elayne did the same, a bit more reluctantly; she rather enjoyed having people see her ring. Not quite trusting Nynaeve’s remaining store of diplomacy at this point, she spoke up before the other woman could. “Sailmistress, we have offered you a gift of passage, if it pleases you. If it does not, may I ask what would?”
Coine came back to the table to look at the letter-of-rights again, then pushed it back to Nynaeve. “I do this for the Coramoor. I will see you safe ashore where you wish, if it pleases the Light. It shall be done.” She touched the fingers of her right hand to her lips. “It is agreed, under the Light.”
Jorin made a strangled sound. “My sister, has a Cargomaster ever mutinied against his Sailmistress?”
Coine gave her a flat-eyed stare. “I will put in the gift of passage from my own chest. And if Toram ever hears of it, my sister, I will put you in the bilges with Dorele. For ballast, perhaps.”
That the two Sea Folk women had dropped formality was confirmed when the Windfinder laughed aloud. “And then your next port would be in Chachin, my sister, or Caemlyn, for you could not find the water without me.”
The Sailmistress addressed Elayne and Nynaeve regretfully. “Properly, Aes Sedai, since you serve the Coramoor, I should honor you as I would Sailmistress and Windfinder of another ship. We should bathe together and drink honeyed wine and tell each other stories to make ourselves laugh and weep. But I must make ready to sail, and—”
Wavedancer rose like his name, leaping, pounding against the dock. Elayne whipped back and forth in her chair, wondering as it continued whether this was really better than being thrown to the deck.
Then, finally, it was over, the leaps slowing, growing smaller. Coine scrambled to her feet and raced for the ladder, Jorin at her heels, already shouting orders to look for damage to the hull.
CHAPTER 20
Winds Rising
Elayne struggled to open the latch on an arm of her chair and darted after them, almost colliding with Nynaeve at the ladder. The ship still rocked, if not as violently as before. Uncertain whether they were sinking, she pushed Nynaeve ahead of her, prodding her to climb faster.
On the deck the crew dashed about, checking the rigging or peering over the side to inspect the hull, shouting about earthquakes. The same shouts were rising from the dockmen, too, but Elayne knew better, despite the tumbled things on the piers and the ships yet pitching at their moorings.
She star
ed toward the Stone. The huge fortress was still except for masses of startled birds swirling about and that pale banner waving, almost lazily, in an isolated breeze. No sign that anything had ever touched the mountainous mass. That had been Rand, though. She was sure of it.
She turned to find Nynaeve looking at her, and for a long moment their eyes met. “A fine pickling, if he’s damaged the ship,” Elayne said finally. “How are we supposed to get to Tanchico if he goes tossing all the ships about?” Light, he has to be all right. I can do nothing if he isn’t. He is all right. He is.
Nynaeve touched her arm reassuringly. “No doubt that second letter of yours touched a nerve. Men always overreact when they let their emotions go; it’s the price for holding them in the way they do. He may be the Dragon Reborn, but he must learn, man to woman, that—What are they doing here?”
“They” were two men standing amid the bustling Sea Folk on the deck. One was Thom Merrilin, in his gleeman’s cloak, with leather-cased harp and flute on his back and a bundle lying at his feet beside a battered wooden box with a lock. The other was a lean handsome Tairen in his middle years, a hard, dark man wearing a flat conical straw hat and one of those commoner’s coats that fit snugly to the waist, then flared like a short skirt. A notched sword-breaker hung at a belt worn over his coat, and he leaned on a pale staff of nobbly, jointed wood exactly his own height and no thicker than his thumb. A square-tied parcel dangled by a loop from his shoulder. Elayne knew him: his name was Juilin Sandar.