There was no mistaking the inn's owner, a tall, heavyset woman encased in a red silk dress that practically glowed; elaborate, dyed curls — nature had never produced that shade of red, surely never with such dark eyes — framed a thrusting chin and a hard mouth. In between shouting orders to the serving girls, she stopped at this table or that to speak a few words or slap a back and laugh with her patrons.
Siuan held herself stiffly and tried to ignore the considering looks men gave her as she approached the crimsonhaired woman. “Mistress Tharne?” She had to repeat the name three times, each louder than the last, before the inn's owner looked at her. “Mistress Tharne, I want a job singing. I can sing —”
“You can, can you now?” The big woman laughed. “Well, I have a singer, but I can always use another to give her a rest. Let me be seeing your legs.”
“I can sing 'The Song of the Three Fishes,” Siuan said loudly. This had to be the right woman. Surely two women in one city could not have hair like that, not and answer to the right name at the right inn.
Mistress Tharne laughed harder still and slapped one of the men at the nearest table on the shoulder, jolting him half off his bench. “Not much call for that one here, eh, Pel?” Gaptoothed Pel, a wagon driver's whip curled around his shoulder, cackled with her.
“And I can sing 'Blue Sky Dawning'.”
The woman shook, scrubbing at her eyes as though she had laughed herself to tears. “Can you, now? Ah, I'm sure the lads will love that. Now let me see your legs. Your legs, girl, or get out!”
Siuan hesitated, but Mistress Tharne only stared at her. And an increasing number of the men did, too. This had to be the right woman. Slowly, she pulled her skirt up to her knees. The tall woman gestured impatiently. Closing her eyes, Siuan gathered more and more of her skirt in her hands. She felt her face growing redder by the inch.
“A modest one,” Mistress Tharne chortled. “Well, if those songs are the extent of your knowledge, you'd better have legs to make a man fall on his face. Can't tell till we get those woolen stockings off her, eh, Pel? Well, come on with me. Maybe you have a voice, anyway, but I can't hear it in here. Come on, girl! Hustle your rump!”
Siuan's eyes snapped open, blazing, but the big woman was already striding toward the back of the common room. Backbone like an iron rod, Siuan let her skirts fall and followed, trying to ignore the guffaws and lewd suggestions directed at her. Her face was stone, but inside, worry warred with anger.
Before being raised to the Amyrlin Seat, she had run the Blue Ajah's network of eyesandears; some had also been her own personal listeners both then and later. She might no longer be Amyrlin, or even Aes Sedai, but she still knew all of those agents. Duranda Tharne had already been serving the Blue when she took over the network, a woman whose information was always timely. Eyesandears were not to be found everywhere, and their reliability varied — there had been only one that she trusted enough to approach between Tar Valon and here, at Four Kings, in Andor, and she had vanished — but a vast amount of news and rumor passed through Lugard with the merchants' wagon trains. There might be eyesandears for other Ajahs here; it would be well to remember that. Caution gets the boat home, she reminded herself.
This woman fit the description of Duranda Tharne perfectly, and surely no other inn could have a name so vile, but why had she responded as she did when Siuan identified herself as another agent of the Blue? She had to risk it; Min and Leane, in their own fashion, were growing as impatient as Logain. Caution got the boat home, but sometimes boldness brought back a full hold. At the worst, she could knock the woman over the head with something and escape out the back. Eyeing the woman's width and height, and the firmness of her thick arms, she hoped that she could.
A plain door in the corridor that led to the kitchens opened into a sparsely furnished room, a desk and one chair on a scrap of blue carpet, a large mirror on one wall, and surprisingly, a short shelf with a few books. As soon as the door was shut behind them, diminishing if not cutting off the noise of the common room, the big woman rounded on Siuan, fists planted on ample hips. “Now, then. What do you want with me? Don't bother giving me a name; I don't want to know, whether it's yours or not.”
A little of the tension oozed out of Siuan. Not the anger, though. “You had no right to treat me in that manner out there! What did you mean forcing me to —!”
“I had every right,” Mistress Tharne snapped, “and every necessity. If you'd come at opening or closing, as you're supposed to, I could have hustled you in here and none the wiser. Do you think some of those men wouldn't be wondering if I escorted you back here like a longlost friend? I can't afford to have anyone wondering about me. You're lucky I didn't make you take Susu's place on the table for a song or two. And you watch your manner with me.” She raised a wide, hard hand threateningly. “I've married daughters older than you, and when I visit them, they step right and talk proper. You come Mistress Snip with me, and you'll be learning why. Nobody out there will even hear you yelp, and if they did, they wouldn't interfere.” With a sharp nod, as if that were settled, she put fists on hips again. “Now, what do you want?”
Several times during the onslaught Siuan had tried to speak, but the woman rolled over her like a tidal wave. That was not something she was accustomed to. By the time Mistress Tharne was done, she quivered with anger; both hands held her skirts in a whiteknuckled grip. She held on to her temper every bit as hard. I am supposed to be just another agent, she reminded herself firmly. Not the Amyrlin anymore, just another agent. Besides, she suspected that the woman might carry out her threat. This was something else still new to her, having to be wary of someone under her eye just because they were larger and stronger.
“I was given a message to deliver to a gathering of those we serve.” She hoped Mistress Tharne took the strain in her voice for being cowed; the woman might be more helpful if she thought Siuan properly intimidated. “They were not where I was told to find them. I can only hope you know something to help me find them.”
Folding her arms under a massive bosom, Mistress Tharne studied her. “Know how to hold your temper when it suits, eh? Good. What's happened in the Tower? And don't try denying you come from there, my fine haughty wench. Your message has courier writ large all over it, and you never got that snooty m
