Min glanced to the side. A tall, lean man in a red Domani coat hustled toward them from the docks. His shirt had once been fine and ruffled, but was now wrinkled and unkempt. He looked exhausted.
What was his name? Min thought. Iralin. That’s it. Master of the docks.
“Iralin?” Rand asked. “What is going on here? What have you done?”
“What have I done?” the man demanded. “I’ve been trying to keep everyone from rushing those ships for the spoiled food! Anyone who eats it gets sick and dies. The people won’t listen. Several groups tried to storm the docks for the food, so I decided not to let them kill themselves eating it.”
The man’s voice had never been that angry before. Min remembered him as peaceable.
“Lady Chadmar fled an hour after you left,” Iralin continued. “The other members of the Council of Merchants ran within the day. Those burning Sea Folk claim they won’t sail away until they’ve unloaded their wares—or until I give them payment to do something else. So I’ve been waiting for the city to starve itself, eat that food and die, or go up in another riot of flame and death. That’s what I’ve been doing here. What have you been doing, Lord Dragon?”
Rand closed his eyes and sighed. He did not apologize to Iralin as he had the others; perhaps he saw that it would not have meant anything.
Min glared at Iralin. “He has weights upon his shoulders, merchant. He cannot watch over each and every—”
“It is all right, Min,” Rand said, laying his hand on her arm and opening his eyes. “It is no more than I deserve. Iralin. Before I left the city, you told me that the food on those ships had spoiled. Did you check every barrel and sack?”
“I checked enough,” Iralin said, still hostile. “If you open a hundred sacks and you find the same thing in every one, you figure out the pattern. My wife has been trying to figure out a safe method of sifting the rotted grain from the safe grain. If there’s any safe grain to be had.”
Rand began walking toward the ships. Iralin followed, looking confused, perhaps because Rand hadn’t yelled at him. Min joined them. Rand approached a Sea Folk vessel sitting low in the water, moored by ropes. A group of Sea Folk lounged atop it.
“I would speak with your Sailmistress,” Rand called.
“I am she,” said one of the Sea Folk, a woman with white in her straight black hair and a pattern of tattoos across her right hand. “Milis din Shalada Three Stars.”
“I made a deal,” Rand called up, “for food to be delivered here.”
“That one doesn’t want it delivered,” Milis said, nodding to Iralin. “He won’t let us unload; says that if we do, he’ll have his archers loose on us.”
“I wouldn’t be able to hold the people back,” Iralin said. “I’ve had to spread rumors in town that the Sea Folk are holding the food hostage.”
“You see what we suffer for you?” Milis said to Rand. “I begin to wonder about our Bargain with you, Rand al’Thor.”
“Do you deny that I am the Coramoor?” Rand asked, meeting her eyes. She seemed to have trouble looking away from him.
“No,” Milis said. “No, I guess that I do not. You will want to board the Whitecap, I suppose.”
“If I may.”
“Up with you, then,” she said.
Once the gangplank was in place, Rand strode up it, followed by Min with Naeff and the two Maidens. After a moment, Iralin came, too, followed by the captain and some of his soldiers.
Milis led them to the center of the deck, where a hatch and ladder led down to the ship’s hold. Rand climbed down first, moving awkwardly, being one-handed. Min followed.
Beneath, light peeked through slots in the deck, illuminating sack upon sack of grain. The air smelled dusty and thick.
“We’ll be glad to have this cargo gone,” Milis said softly, coming down next. “It’s been killing the rats.”
“I would think you’d appreciate that,” Min said.
“A ship without rats is like an ocean without storms,” Milis said. “We complain about both, but my crew mutters every time they find one of the vermin dead.”
There were several open sacks of grain nearby, turned on their sides, spilling dark contents across the floor. Iralin had spoken of trying to sift the bad from the good, but Min didn’t see any good. Just shriveled, discolored grains.
Rand stared at the open sacks as Iralin came down into the hold. Captain Durnham shuffled down the ladder last with his men.
“Nothing stays good any longer,” Iralin said. “It’s not just this grain. People brought winter stores from the farms with them. They’re all gone. We’re going to die, and that’s that. We won’t reach the bloody Last Battle. We—”
“Peace, Iralin,” Rand said softly. “It is not so bad as you think.” He stepped forward and yanked free the tie on the top of a sack. It fell to the side, and golden barley spilled from it across the floor of the hold, not a single speck of darkness on it. The barley looked as if it had just been harvested, each grain plump and full.
Milis gasped. “What did you do to it?”
“Nothing,” Rand said. “You merely opened the wrong sacks. The rest are all good.”
“Merely…” Iralin said. “We happened to open the exact number of bad sacks without reaching one of the good ones? That’s ridiculous.”
“Not ridiculous,” Rand said, laying his hand Iralin’s shoulder. “Simply implausible. You did well here, Iralin. I’m sorry to have left you in such a predicament. I’m naming you to the Merchant Council.”
Iralin gaped.
To the side, Captain Durnham pulled open another sack. “This one’s good.”
“So’s this one,” said one of his men.
“Potatoes here,” another soldier said from beside a barrel. “Look as good as any I’ve had. Better than most, actually. Not dried up, like you’d expect from winter leftovers.”
“Spread the word,” Rand said to the soldiers. “Gather your men to set up distribution in one of the warehouses. I want this grain well guarded; Iralin was wise to worry that the people would rush the docks. Don’t give out uncooked grain—that will turn people to hoarding and bartering with it. We’ll need cauldrons and fires to cook some of it. Move the rest to s
