“You know Master Sandar?” Nynaeve said.
“Twice he has found those who pilfered from us, and found them quickly. Another shoreman would have taken longer so he might ask more for the work. It is obvious that you know him, as well. Do you wish me to refuse passage?” Her reluctance was still there.
“Let us see why they are here first,” Nynaeve said in a flat voice that did not bode well for either man.
“Perhaps I should do the talking,” Elayne suggested, gently but firmly. “That way, you can watch to see if they are hiding anything.” She did not say that that way Nynaeve's temper would not get the better of her, but the wry smile the other woman gave her said she had heard it anyway.
“Very well, Elayne. I will watch them. Perhaps you might study how I keep calm. You know how you are when you become overwrought.”
Elayne had to laugh.
The two men straightened as she and Nynaeve approached. Around them the crew bustled, swarming into the rigging, hauling ropes, lashing some things down and unlashing others, to orders relayed from the Sailmistress. They moved around the four shorepeople with barely a glance.
Elayne frowned at Thom Merrilin thoughtfully. She was sure she had never seen the gleeman before his appearance in the Stone, yet even then she had been struck by something familiar about him. Not that that was likely. Gleemen were village performers, in the main; her mother had certainly never had one at the palace in Caemlyn. The only gleemen Elayne could remember seeing had been in the villages near her mother's country estates, and this whitehaired hawk of a man had surely never been there.
She decided to speak to the thiefcatcher first. He insisted on that, she remembered; what was a thieftaker elsewhere was a thiefcatcher in Tear, and the distinction seemed important to him.
“Master Sandar,” she said gravely. “You may not remember us. I am Elayne Trakand, and this is my friend, Nynaeve al'Meara. I understand that you wish to travel to the same destination as we. Might I ask why? The last time we saw you, you had not served us very well.”
The man did not blink at the suggestion he might not remember them. His eyes flickered across their hands, noting the absence of rings. Those dark eyes noted everything, and recorded it indelibly. “I do remember, Mistress Trakand, and well. But, if you will forgive me, the last time I served you was in the company of Mat Cauthon, when we pulled you both out of the water before the silverpike could get you.”
Nynaeve harrumphed, but not loudly. It had been a cell, not the water, and the Black Ajah, not silverpike. Nynaeve in particular did not like being reminded that they had needed help that time. Of course, they would not have been in that cell without Juilin Sandar. No, that was not entirely fair. True, but not completely fair.
“That is all very well,” Elayne said briskly, “but you still haven't said why you want to go to Tanchico.”
He drew a deep breath and eyed Nynaeve warily. Elayne was not sure that she liked him being more careful of the other woman than of her. “I was rousted out of my house no more than half an hour gone,” he said carefully, “by a man you know, I think. A tall, stone faced man calling himself Lan.” Nynaeve's eyebrows rose slightly. “He came on behalf of another man you know. A... shepherd, I was told. I was given a great quantity of gold and told to accompany you. Both of you. I was told that if you do not return safely from this journey... Shall we just say it would be better to drown myself than come back? Lan was emphatic, and the... shepherd no less so in his message. The Sailmistress tells me I cannot have passage unless you agree. I am not without certain skills that can be useful.” The staff whirled in his hands, a whistling blur, and was still. His fingers touched the swordbreaker on his hip, like a short sword but unsharpened, its slots meant to catch a blade.
“Men will find ways to get 'round what you tell them to do,” Nynaeve murmured, sounding not unpleased.
Elayne only frowned vexedly. Rand had sent him? He must not have read the second letter before he did. Burn him! Why does he leap about so? No time to send another letter, and it would probably only confuse him more if I did. And make me look a bigger fool. Burn him!
“And you, Master Merrilin?” Nynaeve said. “Did the shepherd send a gleeman after us, too? Or the other man? To keep us amused with your juggling and fire eating, perhaps.”
Thom had been scrutinizing Sandar closely, but he shifted his attentions smoothly and made an elegant bow, only spoiling it with a tooelaborate flourish of that patchcovered cloak. “Not the shepherd, Mistress al'Meara. A lady of our mutual acquaintance asked — asked — me to accompany you. The lady who found you and the shepherd in Emond's Field.”
“Why?” Nynaeve said suspiciously.
“I, too, have useful skills,” Thom told her with a glance at the thiefcatcher. “Other than juggling, that is. And I have been to Tanchico several times. I know the city well. I can tell you where to find a good inn, and what districts are dangerous in daylight as well as after dark, and who must be bribed so the Civil Watch does not take too close an interest in your doings. They are keen on watching outlanders. I can help you with a good many things.”
That familiarity tickled at Elayne's mind again. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached up and tugged at one of his long white mustaches. He gave a start, and she clapped both hands to her mouth, flushing crimson. “Forgive me. I... I seemed to remember doing that before. I mean... I am sorry.” Light, why did I do that? He must think me an imbecile."
I... would remember," he said, very stiffly.
She hoped he was not affronted. It was hard to tell from his expression. Men could be offended when they should be amused, and amused when they should be offended. If they were going to be traveling together... That was the first time she realized that she had decided they could come. “Nynaeve?” she said.
The other woman understood the unspoken question, of course. She studied the two men thoroughly, then nodded. “They may come. As long as they agree to do as they are told. I'll not have some woolbrained man going his own way and endangering us.”
“As you command, Mistress al'Meara,” Sandar said immediately, with a bow, but Thom said, “A gleeman is a free soul, Nynaeve, but I can promise I will not endanger you. Far from it.”
“As you are told,” Nynaeve said pointedly. “Your word on it, or you will watch this ship sail from the dock.”
“The Atha'an Miere do not refuse passage to anyone, Nynaeve.”
“Do you think not? Was the thieftaker” — Sandar winced —“the only one told he needed our permission? As you are told, Master Merrilin.”
Thom tossed his white head like a fractious horse and breathed heavily, but finally he nodded. “My word on it, Mistress al'Meara.”
“Very well then,” Nynaeve said in a bracing voice. “It is settled. You two find the Sailmistress now, and tell her I said to find the pair of you a cubbyhole somewhere if she can, out of our way. Off with you, now. Quickly.”
Sandar bowed again and left; Thom quivered visibly before joining him, stiffbacked.
“Are you not being too hard on them?” Elayne said as soon as they were out of earshot. That was not far, with all the hurlyburly on deck. “We do have to travel together, after all. 'Smooth words make smooth companions.' ”
“Best to begin as we mean to go on. Elayne, Thom Merrilin knows very well we are not full Aes Sedai.” She lowered her voice and glanced around as she said it. None of the crew was even looking at them, except for the Sailmistress, back near the sterndeck where she was listening to the tall gleeman and the thiefcatcher. “Men talk — they always do — so Sandar will know it soon enough, as well. They'd present no trouble to Aes Sedai, but two Accepted...? Given half a chance, they would both be doing things they thought for the best no matter what we said. I do not mean to give them even that half chance.”
“Perhaps you are right. Do you think they know why we are going to Tanchico?”
Nynaeve sniffed. “No, or they'd not be so sanguine, I think. And I would rather not tell them until we must.” She gave Elayne a meaningful look; there was no need for her to say she would not have told the Sailmistress, either, had it been left to her. “Here is a saying for you. 'Borrow trouble, and you repay tenfold.' ”
“You speak as if you don't trust them, Nynaeve.” She would have said the other woman was behaving like Moiraine, but Nynaeve would not appreciate the comparison.
“Can we? Juilin Sandar betrayed us once before. Yes, yes, I know no man could have avoided it, but there it is just the same. And Liandrin and the others know his face. We will have to put him in different clothes. Perhaps make him let his hair grow longer. Perhaps a mustache, like that thing infesting the gleeman's face. It might do.”
“And Thom Merrilin?” Elayne asked. “I think we can trust him. I don't know why, but I do.”
“He admitted being sent by Moiraine,” Nynaeve said wearily. “What has he not admitted, though? What did she tell him that he hasn't told us? Is he meant to help us, or something else? Moiraine plays her own game so often, I trust her this much more than I do Liandrin.” She held her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. “She will use us — you and me both — use us up, if it helps Rand. Or rather, if it helps whatever she has planned for Rand. She would leash him for a lapdog if she could.”
“Moiraine knows what has to be done, Nynaeve.” For once she was reluctant to admit that. What Moiraine knew had to be done might well speed Rand on his way toward Tarmon Gai'don that much faster. On his way toward death, perhaps. Rand balanced against the world. It was silly — foolish and childish — that those scales should tremble so evenly for her. Yet she did not dare make them swing, even in her mind, because she was not sure which way she would send them. “She knows it better than he does,” she said, making her voice firm. “Better than we.”
“Perhaps.” Nynaeve sighed. “But I do not have to like it.”
Ropes were cast off at the bow, where triangular sails suddenly broke out, and Wavedancer heeled away from the dock. More sails appeared, great white squares and triangles, the sternlines were cast off, and the ship curled out into the river in a great arc through the anchored ships awaiting their turn at the docks, a smooth curve that ended heading south, downriver. The Sea Folk handled their ship as a master horseman would a fine steed. That peculiar spoked wheel worked the rudder, somehow, as one of the barechested crewmen turned it. A man, Elayne was relieved to see. Sailmistress and Windfinder stood to one side of the wheel, Coine issuing occasional orders, sometimes after a murmured consultation with her sister. Toram watched for a time, with a face that might have been carved from a deck plank, then stalked below.
There was a Tairen on the sterndeck, a plump, dejected looking man in a dull yellow coat with puffy gray sleeves, rubbing his hands nervously. He had been hustled aboard just as the gangway was being hauled up, a pilot who was supposed to guide Wavedancer downriver; according to Tairen law, no ship could pass through the Fingers of the Dragon without a Tairen pilot aboard. His dejection certainly came from doing nothing, for if he gave any directions, the S
