“I forgot to put the book back in the proper place,” she said in a voice like crystal chimes, turning back toward the tentflap. “Sevanna will have me beaten if she sees it out of place when she wakes.”
“She’s lying,” Maighdin growled, and Dairaine darted for outside.
That was enough to convince Faile. She grabbed the woman’s cowl and hauled her back into the tent. Dairaine opened her mouth to scream, but Alliandre clapped her hand over it, and the three of them wrestled the woman to the blanket-strewn ground-cloth. It took all three. Dairaine was small, but she writhed like a snake, tried to claw at them, to bite. While the other two held the woman down, Faile produced the second knife she had secured, a quite serviceable dagger with a ridged steel hilt and a blade longer than her hand, and began slicing strips from one of the blankets.
“How did you know?” Alliandre said, struggling to contain one of Dairaine’s arms while keeping her mouth covered without being bitten. Maighdin had taken care of the woman’s legs by sitting on them and had her other arm twisted to her shoulder blades. Dairaine still managed to twist, if uselessly.
“She was frowning, but when she spoke, her face went smooth. I could just make it out. If she were really worried about being beaten, she’d have frowned harder, not stopped.” The golden-haired woman was not a very skilled lady’s maid, yet she was a very observant one.
“But what made her suspicious?”
Maighdin shrugged. “Maybe one of us looked surprised, or guilty. Though I can’t say how she could have noticed without any light.”
Soon enough they had Dairaine trussed up with her ankles and wrists tied together behind her back. She would not wriggle far like that. A wadded length torn from her shift and tied in place with another piece of blanket served for a gag that let her emit only grunts. She twisted her head to glare up at them. Faile could not see her face very well, but the woman’s expression had to be either glaring or pleading, and Dairaine only pleaded with Shaido. She used her position as one of Sevanna’s gai’shain to bully gai’shain who were not, and her tale-carrying to bully those who were. The trouble was, they could not leave her here. Someone might come at any moment to summon one of them to serve Sevanna.
“We can kill her and hide the body,” Alliandre suggested, smoothing her long hair. It had become disarrayed in the struggle.
“Where?” Maighdin said, combing her own sun-gold hair with her fingers. She did not sound a lady’s maid speaking to a queen. Prisoners were equals in their captivity or else they aided their captors. It had taken time to teach Alliandre that. “It has to be somewhere she won’t be found for at least a day. Sevanna might send men after Galina to bring us back if we’re suspected of killing one of her belongings.” She vested that word with all the scorn it would bear. “And I don’t trust Galina not to let them bring us back.”
Dairaine began struggling against her bonds again and grunting harder than ever. Maybe she had decided to plead after all.
“We aren’t going to kill her,” Faile told them. She was being neither squeamish nor merciful. There simply was nowhere they could be sure a body would remain hidden long enough, not that they could reach without being seen. “I’m afraid our plans have changed a little. Wait here.”
Ducking outside, where the sky was indeed beginning to pearl, she found what had made Dairaine suspicious. Bain and Chiad were there in their plain white robes as expected, to escort them as far as the meeting place. Rolan and his friends might not be done breakfasting yet—she hoped they were not; they might do something foolish and ruin everything—and Bain and Chiad had volunteered to divert any men who tried to interfere with them. She had not been able to make herself ask how they intended to do that. Some sacrifices deserved a veil of secrecy. And all of a heart’s gratitude. Two gai’shain holding wicker baskets were not enough to rouse suspicion in the Cairhienin woman, but thirty or forty gai’shain were, crowding the narrow muddy lane through the gai’shain tents.
Aravine’s plump plain face watched her from a white cowl, and Lusara’s beautiful one. Alvon was there with his son Theril in their robes of muddy tentcloth, and Alainia, a plump Amadician silversmith in dirty coarse white linen, and Dormin, a stocky Cairhienin bootmaker, and Corvila, a lean weaver from right here in Altara, and. . . .
They represented not a tenth part of those who had sworn to her, but a gathering of gai’shain this large would have planted suspicion in a stone. At least when added to the three of them being dressed. Dairaine likely had heard who had been summoned to Sevanna this morning. How had they learned she was leaving today? It was too late to worry about that. If any Shaido knew, they would all have been dragged from the tent before this.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“We wanted to see you go, my Lady,” Theril said in his rough, barely intelligible accents. “We were very careful to come by ones and twos.” Lusara nodded happily, and she was not the only one.
“Well, we can say goodbye now,” Faile said firmly. No need to tell them how close they had come to ruining the escape. “Until I come back for you.” If her father would not give her an army, then Perrin would. His friendship with Rand al’Thor would provide it. Light, where was he? No! She had to be glad he had not caught up yet, had not gotten himself killed trying to sneak into the camp and rescue her. She had to be glad, and not think of what might be delaying him.
“Now go before someone sees you here and runs to tell tales. And don’t talk to anyone about this.” Her adherents were safe enough, otherwise she would already be chained, but there were too many like Dairaine among the gai’shain, and not only among the long-held Cairhienin. Some people naturally set to licking wrists wherever they were.
They bowed or curtsied or knuckled their foreheads, just as if nobody might be poking their heads out to see, and scattered in every direction with chagrined expressions. They really had expected to watch her leave! She had no time to fritter away on exasperation. Hurrying to Bain and Chiad, she hastily explained the situation inside the tent.
They exchanged glances when she finished and put down the baskets to free fingers for Maiden handtalk. She avoided looking at their hands, since they plainly wanted privacy. Not that she could have understood much in any case. Their hands moved very fast. Flame-haired Bain with her dark blue eyes stood nearly half a hand taller than she, gray-eyed Chiad just a finger taller. They were her close friends, but they had adopted each other as first-sisters, and that created bonds c
