Robert Jordan - Crossroads of Twilight

“You and Naean won’t mind sharing a bed, will you? It seems we are short of decent tents here.”

She flitted on, but for a moment, Elenia could not hear a word. She felt as though her skin had been stuffed with snow. Turning her head slightly, she met Naean’s shocked gaze. There was no possible way Arymilla could know about their chance meeting, not yet, and even if she did, why would she offer them a chance to plot together? A trap? Spies to listen to what they said? Naean’s maid, or… Or Janny? The world seemed to spin. Black and silver flecks floated in front of Elenia’s eyes. She thought she was about to faint.

Abruptly she realized that Arymilla had addressed something to her directly and was waiting on an answer with an increasingly impatient scowl. Frantically, she cast her mind about. Yes, she had it. “A gilded coach, Arymilla?” What a ridiculous notion. As well ride in a Tinker’s wagon! “Oh, delightful! You do have such marvelous ideas!” Arymilla’s pleased simper put a little ease into Elenia’s breathing. The woman was a brainless fool. Maybe there was a shortage of suitable tents. More likely she just thought they were safe, now. Tamed. Elenia turned her bared teeth into a simper of her own. But she put aside any idea of having the Taraboner “entertain” the woman, even for an hour. With Jarid’s signature on that pledge, there was only one way to clear her path to the throne. Everything was in hand and ready to go forward. The only question was whether Arymilla or Nasin should die first.

Night pressed down on Caemlyn with a hard cold driven deep by sharp winds. Here and there a glow of light spilling from an upper window spoke of people still awake, but most shutters were drawn, and a thin sliver of moon low in the sky only seemed to emphasize the darkness. Even the snow coating rooftops and piled along the fronts of buildings where it had escaped the day’s traffic was a shadowy gray. The lone man muffled head to ankles in a dark cloak, striding through the frozen slush left on the paving stones, answered to Daved Hanlon or Doilan Mellar with equal ease; a name was no more than a coat, and a man changed his coat whenever needed. He had worn a number over the years. Given his wishes, he would have had his feet up in front of a roaring fire in the Royal Palace, a mug in his hand, a pitcher of brandy at his side, and a willing wench on his knee, but he had others’ wishes to serve. At least the footing was better here in the New City. Not good, with this frozen muck underfoot that could turn a careless step into a sprawl, yet a man’s boots were less likely to go out from under him here than back on the steeper hills of the Inner City. Besides, darkness suited him tonight.

There had been few people in the streets when he started out, and the number had dwindled away as darkness deepened. Wise people stayed indoors once night fell. Occasionally, dim shapes skulked in the deeper shadows, but after a brief study of Hanlon, they scuttled around corners ahead of him, or withdrew into alleys trying to muffle their curses as they floundered in snow that likely had not been touched by the sun. He was not bulky, and little taller than the average run of men, with his sword and breastplate hidden by his cloak to boot, but footpads looked for weakness or hesitation, and he moved with an obvious self-confidence, plainly unafraid of lurkers. An attitude helped by the long dagger concealed in his gauntleted right hand.

He kept an eye out for patrols of Guardsmen as he walked, but he did not expect to see any. The strongarms and prowlers would have sought other hunting grounds if the Guards were about. Of course, he could send nosy Guardsmen on their way with a word, yet he wanted no observers of any kind, and no questions why he was so far from the palace afoot. His step hesitated as two heavily cloaked women appeared at a crossing well ahead, but they moved on without glancing his way, and he breathed more easily. Very few women would venture out at this time of night without a man along to wield sword or cudgel, and even without seeing their faces he would have wagered a fistful of gold to a horse apple that pair were Aes Sedai. Or else some of those strange women who filled most of the beds in the palace.

The thought of that lot brought a scowl, and a prickling between his shoulder blades like the brush of nettles. Whatever was going on in the palace, it was enough to give him the grips. The Sea Folk women were bad enough, and not just because they went swaying along the halls in that seductive way, then pulled a knife on a man. He had not even thought of patting one on the bottom after he realized they and the Aes Sedai were staring at one another like strange cats in a box. And plainly, however impossibly, the Sea Folk were the larger cats. The others were worse, in a way. No matter what the rumors said, he knew the look of Aes Sedai, and it did not include wrinkles. Yet some of them could channel, and he had the disturbing notion that they all could. Which made no sense at all. Maybe the Sea Folk had some sort of peculiar dispensation, but as for these Kin, as Falion called them, everyone knew that if three women who could channel and were not Aes Sedai sat down at the same table, Aes Sedai would appear before they could finish a pitcher of wine and tell them to move on and never speak to one another again. And make sure they did it, besides. That was given. But there those women sat in the palace, over a hundred of them, holding their private meetings, walking around Aes Sedai without one frown between them. Until today, anyway, and whatever had set them huddling like frightened hens, the Aes Sedai had been every bit as anxious. There were too many oddities to suit him. When Aes Sedai behaved oddly, it was time for a man to look to the safety of his own skin.

With a curse he jerked himself out of his reverie. A man needed to look out for his skin in the night, too, and letting his concentration drift was no way to do it. At least he had not stopped, or even slowed. After a few more steps, he smiled a thin smile and thumbed the blade of his dagger. The wind sighed down the street and fell, whistled across rooftops and fell, and in the brief silences between he could hear the faint crunch of the boots that had been following him since shortly after he left the palace.

At the next crossing street, he turned to his right at the same steady unhurried pace, then suddenly flattened his back against the front of a stable that stood hard on the corner. The wide stable doors were shut, and likely barred on the inside, but the smell of horse and horse dung hung in the icy air. The inn across the street was closed up tight, as well, its windows shuttered and dark, the only sound aside from the wind the creak of its swinging sign he could not make out in the night. No one to see what they should not.

He had a moment’s warning, the sound of boots quickened in an effort not to let him out of sight too long, and then a cowled head was thrust cautiously around the corner. Not cautiously enough, of course. His left hand darted into the cowl to seize a throat at the same time his right made a practiced stop-thrust with the dagger. He half expected to find a breastplate, or a mail shirt under the man’s coat, and he was ready if he did, but an inch of steel sank easily beneath the fellow’s breastbone. He did not know why that seemed to paralyze a man’s lungs, so he could not cry out, until he had drowned in his own blood, but he knew that it did. Still, tonight he had no time to wait. No Guards in sight at present did not mean matters would stay that way for long. With a quick wrench, he slammed the man’s head against the stable’s stone wall hard enough to crack a skull, then shoved his dagger to the hilt, feeling the blade grate as it dug through the fellow’s spine.