Robert Jordan - Winter's Heart

There were meat pies called pasties when I was a boy, Lews Therin murmured. We would buy them in the country and…

Juggling the pie from hand to hand, the heat soaking through his gloves, Rand suppressed the voice. "I like to know what kind of man makes my boots. Is he suspicious of strangers, for instance? A man doesn’t do his best work if he's suspicious of you."

"Yes, Mistress," the chinless fellow said, ducking his head to a stout gray-haired woman with a squint. Wrapping four meat pies in coarse paper, he handed her the package before taking her coins. "A pleasure, Mistress. The Light shine on you." She tottered away without a word, clutching the wrapped pies under her cloak, and he grimaced sourly at her back before returning his attention to Rand. "Zeram never had a suspicious bone, and if he did, Milsa wouldn't let him keep it. That's his wife. Since the last of the children married, Milsa's been renting out the top floor. Whenever she finds somebody don't mind being locked in at night, anyway," he laughed. "Milsa had stairs put in right up to the third floor, so it's private, but she wouldn't pay for having a new door cut as well, so the stairs come out in the shop, and she's not trusting enough to leave that unlocked at night. You going to eat that pie, or just look at it?"

Taking a quick bite, Rand wiped hot juice from his chin and walked over to shelter beneath the eaves of a small cutler's shop. Along the street others were snatching a quick meal from the food-peddlers, meat pies or fried fish or twisted paper cones heaped with roasted peas. Three or four men as tall as he, and two or three women as tall as most of the other men in the street, might have been Aiel. Maybe the chinless fellow was not as shifty as he seemed, or maybe it was just that Rand had eaten nothing since breakfast, but Rand found himself wanting to gobble the pie down and buy another. Instead, he made himself eat slowly. Zeram seemed to be doing a good business. A steady if not constant flow of men went into his shop, most carrying a pair of boots to be mended. Even if he let visitors go up without sending word ahead, he would be able to identify them later, and maybe so would two or three others.

If the renegades were renting the top floor from the bootmaker's wife, being locked in at night would not inconvenience them much. To the south, an alleyway separated the bootmaker's from a single-story house, a dangerous drop, but on the other side, a two-story building with a seamstress on the ground floor stood wall-to-wall with the bootmaker. Zeram's building had no windows except at the front—in back was another alley, for taking away rubbish; Rand had already checked—but there had to be a way onto the roof so the slates could be repaired when necessary. From there it would be a short drop to the seamstress's roof, with only three more to cross before another low building, a candle-maker's shop, and an easy jump to the street, or into the alley behind the buildings. There would not be a great deal of risk in it at night, or even in daylight, if you stayed back from the street and were careful about the Guard's patrols when you came down. The way Blue Carp Street bent, the nearest watchstands were out of sight.

Two men approaching the bootmaker's made him turn away and pretend to peer through the bubbled panes of the cutler's small shopwindow at a display of scissors and knives fastened to a board. One of the men was tall, though not as tall as the possible Aielmen. Their deep cowls hid their faces, but neither carried a pair of boots, and although they held their cloaks with both hands, the wind flipped the tails of them enough to show the bottoms of scabbarded swords. A gust pulled the shorter man's hood from his head, and he snatched it back again, but not before the damage was done. Charl Gedwyn had taken to wearing his hair caught at the nape of his neck in a silver clip set with a large red stone, but he was still a hard-faced man with a challenging look about him. And Gedwyn's presence made the other Torval. Rand was willing to wager on it. None of the others was as tall.

Waiting until the pair had gone into Zeram's shop, Rand licked a few greasy crumbs from his gloves and went in search of Nynaeve and Lan. He found them before he was far enough along the curve of the street to lose sight of the bootmaker's. The candiemaker's he had marked as a way down from the rooftops stood a little behind him, with an alley at one side. Ahead, the narrow street twisted back the other way. No more than fifty paces farther on was a watchstand with a Street Guard at the top, but another building of three stories, a cabinetmaker's that shared the alleyway with the candlemaker, blocked the rooftops beyond from his view.

"Half a dozen people recognized Torval and Gedwyn," Lan said, "but none of the others." He kept his voice low, though no one passing more than glanced at the three of them. A glimpse of two men wearing swords beneath their cloaks was enough to make everyone who noticed step a little faster.

"A butcher down the street says those two buy from him," Nynaeve said, "but never more than enough for two." She looked sideways at Lan as though hers was the real proof.

"I saw them," Rand said. "They're inside now. Nynaeve, can you lift Lan and me to that rooftop from the alley behind the building?"

Nynaeve frowned at Zeram's building, rubbing the belt around her waist with one hand. "One at a time, I could," she said finally. "But it would use more than half what the Well holds. I wouldn't be able to lift you down again."

"Up is enough," Rand told her. "We will leave over the rooftops, and climb down right over beside the candlemaker."

She protested, of course, as they walked back down the street toward the bootmaker's shop. Nynaeve always fought anything she had not thought of herself. "I am just supposed to put you on the roof and wait?" she muttered, scowling left and right so hard that as many people shied away from her as from the men flanking her, swords or no swords. She thrust her hand out from under her cloak to show the bracelet with its pale red stones. "This can cover me with armor better than any steel. I'd hardly even feel a sword hitting me. I thought I would be going inside with you."

"And do what?" Rand asked softly. "Hold them with the Power for us to kill? Kill them yourself?" She frowned at the paving stones in front other feet.

Walking beyond Zeram's shop, Rand paused in front of the low house and looked around as casually as he could. There were no Street Guards in sight, but when he prodded Nynaeve into the narrow alley, he moved quickly. He had not seen any Guards before following Rochaid, either.

"You are very quiet," Lan said, following close behind.

She took three more quick steps before replying, without slowing or looking back. "I didn't think, before," she said quietly. "I was thinking of it as an adventure, confronting Darkfriends, renegade Asha'man, but you are going up there to execute them. You'll kill them before they know you're there if you can, won't you?"

Rand glanced over his shoulder at Lan, but the older man only shook his head, as confused as he was. Of course they would kill them without warning if they could. This was not a duel; it was the execution she had named it. At least, Rand hoped very much it would be.

The alley that ran behind the buildings was a little wider than the one to the street, the rocky soil rutted with the tracks of the rubbish barrows that were pushed along it mornings. Blank stone walls rose around them. No one wanted a window to watch the rubbish carts.

Nynaeve stood peering up at the back of Zeram's building, then suddenly sighed. "Kill them in their sleep, if you can," she said, very quietly for such fierce words.

Something unseen wrapped snugly around Rand's chest beneath his arms, and slowly he rose into the air, floating higher until he drifted over the edge of the overhanging eave. The invisible harness vanished, and his boots dropped to the sloping roof, sliding a little on the damp gray slates. Crouching, he moved back on all fours. A few moments later, Lan floated up to land on the roof, too. The Warder crouched as well, and peered into the alley below.