The Fires of Heaven (81 page)

“Whitecloaks everywhere,” Nynaeve sighed. “Galad. The Prophet. No boats. It is as if everything is conspiring to hold us here for Moghedien. I am so tired, Elayne. Tired of being afraid of who might be around the next corner. Tired of being afraid of Moghedien. I cannot seem to think of what to do next. My hair? Nothing that would make it any color I’d have.”

“You need to sleep,” Elayne said firmly. “Without the ring. Give it to me.” The other woman hesitated, but Elayne merely waited with her hand outstretched until Nynaeve fished the flecked stone ring from the cord around her neck. Stuffing it into her pouch, Elayne went on. “Now you lie down here, and I will watch Birgitte.”

Nynaeve stared at the woman stretched out on the other bed for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t sleep. I . . . need to be alone. To walk.” Getting to her feet as stiffly as if she really had been beaten, she took her dark cloak from its peg and swung it over her shift. At the door she paused. “If she wants to kill me,” she said bleakly, “I do not know that I could make myself stop her.” She went into the night barefoot and sad-faced.

Elayne hesitated, unsure which woman needed her more, before settling
back where she sat. Nothing she said could make things better for Nynaeve, but she had faith in the woman’s resilience. Time alone to work it all over in her mind, and she would see that blame lay at Moghedien’s door, not hers. She had to.

F
or a long time Elayne sat there, watching Birgitte sleep. It did seem to be sleep. Once she stirred, muttering in a desperate voice, “Wait for me, Gaidal. Wait. I’m coming, Gaidal. Wait for . . .” Words trailed off into slow breath again. Was it stronger? The woman still looked deathly ill. Better than she had, but pale and drawn.

After perhaps an hour, Nynaeve returned, her feet dirty. Fresh tears shone on her cheeks. “I could not stay away,” she said, hanging her cloak back on its peg. “You sleep. I will watch her. I have to watch her.”

Elayne rose slowly, smoothing her skirts. Perhaps watching over Birgitte for a time would help Nynaeve work matters out. “I don’t feel like sleeping yet, either.” She was exhausted, but not sleepy any longer. “I think I will stroll outside myself.” Nynaeve only nodded as she took Elayne’s place on the bed, her dusty feet dangling over the side, her eyes fastened to Birgitte.

To Elayne’s surprise, Thom and Juilin were not asleep either. They had built a small fire beside the wagon and sat on either side of it, cross-legged on the ground, smoking their long-stemmed pipes. Thom had tucked his shirt in, and Juilin had donned his coat, though no shirt, and turned the cuffs back. She took a look around before joining them. No one stirred in the camp, dark except for the light of this one fire and the glow of the lamps from their wagon’s windows.

Neither man said anything while she settled her skirts; then Juilin
looked at Thom, who nodded, and the thief-catcher took something from the ground and held it out to her. “I found it where she was lying,” the dark man said. “As if it had dropped from her hand.”

Elayne took the silver arrow slowly. Even the fletching feathers appeared to be silver.

“Distinctive,” Thom said conversationally around his pipe. “And added to the braid . . . Every story mentions the braid for some reason. Though I’ve found some I think might be her under other names, without it. And some under other names with.”

“I do not care about stories,” Juilin put in. He sounded no more agitated than Thom. But then, it took a great deal to agitate either one of them. “Is it her? Bad enough if it isn’t, a woman appearing naked out of nothing like that, but . . . What have you gotten us into, you and N . . . Nana?” He
was
troubled; Juilin did not make mistakes, and his tongue
never
slipped. Thom merely bubbled at his pipe, waiting.

Elayne turned the arrow in her hands, pretending to study it. “She is a friend,” she said finally. Until—unless—Birgitte released her, her promise held. “She is not Aes Sedai, but she has been helping us.” They looked at her, waiting for her to say more. “Why didn’t you give this to Nynaeve?”

One of those glances passed between them—men seemed to carry on entire conversations through glances, around women at least—saying as clearly as spoken words what they thought of her keeping secrets. Especially when they all but knew for certain already. But she had given her word.

“She seemed upset,” Juilin said, sucking at his pipe judiciously, and Thom took his from between his teeth and blew out his white mustaches.

“Upset? The woman came out in her shift, looking lost, and when I asked if I could help her, she didn’t snap my head off. She cried on my shoulder!” He plucked at his linen shirt, muttering something about dampness. “Elayne, she
apologized
for every cross word she has ever said to me, which is very nearly every other word out of her mouth. Said she ought to be switched, or maybe that she had been; she was incoherent half the time. She said she was a coward, and a stubborn fool. I don’t know what is the matter with her, but she isn’t herself by a mile.”

“I knew a woman who behaved like this, once,” Juilin said, peering into the fire. “She woke to find a burglar in her bedchamber and stabbed the man through the heart. Only, when she lit a lamp, it was her husband. His boat had come back to the docks early. She walked around like Nynaeve for half a month.” His mouth tightened. “Then she hanged herself.”

“I hate to lay this burden on you, child,” Thom added gently, “but if
she can be helped, you are the only one of us who can do it. I know how to take a man out of his miseries. Give him a swift kick, or else get him drunk and find him a pr—” He harrumphed loudly, trying to make it seem a cough, and knuckled his mustaches. The one bad thing about him seeing her as a daughter was that now sometimes he seemed to think she was perhaps twelve. “Anyway, the point is that I do not know how to do this. And while Juilin might be willing to dandle her on his knee, I doubt she’d thank him for it.”

“I would sooner dandle a fangfish,” the thief-catcher muttered, but not as roughly as he would have yesterday. He was as concerned as Thom, though less willing to admit it.

“I will do what I can,” she assured them, turning the arrow again. They were good men, and she did not like lying to them, or hiding things from them. Not unless it was absolutely necessary, anyway. Nynaeve claimed that you had to manage men for their own good, but there was such a thing as taking it too far. It was not right to lead a man into dangers he knew nothing of.

So she told them. About
Tel’aran’rhiod
and the Forsaken being loose, about Moghedien. Not quite everything, of course. Some events in Tanchico had been too shaming for her to want to think of them. Her promise held her concerning Birgitte’s identity, and there was certainly no need to go into detail about what Moghedien had done to Nynaeve. It made explaining this night’s happenings a little difficult, yet she managed. She did tell them everything she thought they should know, enough to make them aware for the first time what they were really up against. Not just the Black Ajah—that had certainly made them stare cross-eyed when they learned it—but the Forsaken, and one of them very likely hunting her and Nynaeve. And she made it quite plain that they two would be hunting Moghedien as well, and that anyone close to them was in danger of being caught between hunter and prey either way.

“Now that you know,” she finished, “the choice to stay or go is yours.” She left it at that, and was careful not to look at Thom. She hoped almost desperately that he would stay, but she would not let him think that she was asking, not by so much as a glance.

“I haven’t taught you half what you need to know if you’re to be as good a queen as your mother,” he said, trying to sound gruff and spoiling it by brushing a strand of black-dyed hair from her cheek with a gnarled finger. “You’ll not rid yourself of me this easily, child. I mean to see you mistress of
Daes Dae’mar
if I must drone in your ear until you go deaf. I
haven’t even taught you to handle a knife. I tried to teach your mother, but she always said she could tell a man to use a knife if one needed using. Fool way to look at it.”

She leaned forward and kissed his leathery cheek, and he blinked, bushy eyebrows shooting up, then smiled and stuck his pipe back into his mouth.

“You can kiss me, too,” Juilin said dryly. “Rand al’Thor will have my guts for fish bait if I don’t hand you back to him in the same health he last saw you.”

Elayne lifted her chin. “I will not have you stay for Rand al’Thor, Juilin.” Hand her back? Indeed! “You will stay only if you want to. And I do not release you—or you, Thom!”—he had grinned at the thief-catcher’s comment—“from your promise to do as you are told.” Thom’s startled look was quite satisfying. She turned back to Juilin. “You will follow
me,
and Nynaeve of course, knowing full well the enemies we face, or you may pack your belongings and ride Skulker where you wish. I will give him to you.”

Juilin sat up straight as a post, his dark face going darker. “I have never abandoned a woman in danger in my life.” He pointed his pipestem at her like a weapon. “You send me away, and I will be on your heels like a soarer on a stern-chase.”

Not exactly what she wanted, but it would do. “Very well, then.” Rising, she held herself erect, the silver arrow at her side, and kept her slightly frosty manner. She thought they had finally realized who was in charge. “Morning is not far off.” Had Rand actually had the nerve to tell Juilin to “hand her back”? Thom would just have to suffer along with the other man for a time, and it served him right for that grin. “You will put out this fire and go to sleep. Now. No excuses, Thom. You’ll be no good at all tomorrow without sleep.”

Obediently they began scuffing dirt over the flames with their boots, but when she reached the plain wooden steps of the wagon, she heard Thom say, “Sounds like her mother sometimes.”

“Then I am glad I have never met the woman,” Juilin grumbled in reply. “Flip for first guard?” Thom murmured an assent.

She almost went back, but found herself smiling instead.
Men!
It was a fond thought. Her good mood lasted until she was inside.

Nynaeve sat on the very edge of the bed, holding herself up with both hands, eyes trying to drift shut as she watched Birgitte. Her feet were still dirty.

Elayne put Birgitte’s arrow into one of the cupboards behind some
rough sacks of dried peas. Luckily, the other woman never so much as glanced at her. She did not think the sight of the silver arrow was what Nynaeve needed right at that moment. But what was?

“Nynaeve, it is past time for you to wash your feet and go to sleep.”

Nynaeve swayed in her direction, blinking sleepily. “Feet? What? I must watch her.”

It would have to be one step at a time. “Your feet, Nynaeve. They are dirty. Wash them.”

Frowning, Nynaeve peered down at her dusty feet, then nodded. She spilled water tipping the big white pitcher over the washbasin, and sloshed more out before she was washed and ready to towel dry, but even then she resumed her seat. “I must watch. In case . . . In case . . . She cried out once. For Gaidal.”

Elayne pressed her back on the mattress. “You need sleep, Nynaeve. You can’t keep your eyes open.”

“I can,” Nynaeve muttered sullenly, trying to sit up against Elayne’s pressure on her shoulders. “I must watch her, Elayne. I must.”

Nynaeve made the two men outside look sensible and biddable. Even if Elayne had had a mind to, there was no way to get her drunk and find her a—a pretty young man, she supposed it would have to be. That left a swift kick. Sympathy and common sense had surely made no impression. “I have had enough of this sulking and self-pity, Nynaeve,” she said firmly. “You are going to sleep
now,
and in the morning you are not going to say one word about what a miserable wretch you are. If you cannot behave like the clearheaded woman you are, I will ask Cerandin to give you two black eyes for the one I took away. You did not even thank me for that. Now go to sleep!”

Nynaeve’s eyes widened indignantly—at least she did not look on the point of tears—but Elayne slid them shut with her fingers. They closed easily, and despite softly murmured protests, the deep slow breath of sleep followed quickly.