The Nine Horse Hitch

The Nine Horse Hitch

A wide straw hat shaded Siuan's face as she let Logain lead the way through Lugard's Shilene Gate under the late-afternoon sun. The city's tall gray outer walls were in some disrepair; in two places she could see, tumbled stone lowered the wall to no more than a tall fence. Min and Leane rode close behind her, both tired from the pace the man had set over the weeks since Kore Springs. He wanted to be in charge, and it took little enough to convince him that he was. If he said when they started of a morning, when and where they stopped of a night, if he kept the money, even if he expected them to serve his meals as well as cook them, it was of little account to her. All in all, she felt sorry for him. He had no idea what she planned for him. A big fish on the hook to catch a bigger, she thought grimly.

In name, Lugard was the capital of Murandy, the seat of King Roedran, but lords in Murandy spoke the words of fealty, then refused to pay their taxes, or do much of anything else that Roedran wanted, and the people did the same. Murandy was a nation in name only, the people barely held together by supposed allegiance to the king or queen - the throne changed hands at sometimes short intervals - and fear that Andor or Illian might snap them up if they did not hold together in some fashion.

Stone walls crisscrossed the city, most in a worse state than the outer bastions, for Lugard had grown haphazardly over the centuries, and more than once had actually been divided among feuding nobles. It was a dirty city, many of the broad streets unpaved and all of them dusty. Men in high-crowned hats and aproned women in skirts that showed their ankles dodged between merchants' lumbering trains, while children played in wagon ruts. Trade kept Lugard alive, trade up from Illian and Ebou Dar, from Ghealdan to the west and Andor to the north. Large bare patches of ground through the city held wagons parked wheel-to-wheel, many heavy-laden under strapped-down canvas covers, others empty and awaiting freight. Inns lined the main streets, along with horse lots and stables, nearly outnumbering the gray stone houses or shops, all roofed with tiles in blue or red or purple or green. Dust and noise filled the air, clanging from the smithies, the rumble of wagons and curses of the drivers, boisterous laughter from the inns. The sun baked Lugard as it slid toward the horizon, and the air felt as though it might never rain again.

When Logain finally turned in to a stableyard and dismounted behind a green-roofed inn called The Nine Horse Hitch, Siuan clambered down from Bela gratefully and gave the shaggy mare a doubtful pat on the nose, wary of teeth. In her view, sitting on the back of an animal was no way to travel. A boat went as you turned the rudder; a horse might decide to think for itself. Boats never bit, either; Bela had not so far, but she could. At least those awful first days of stiffness were gone, when she was sure Leane and Min were grinning behind her back as she hobbled about in the evening camp. After a day in the saddle she still felt as if she had been thoroughly beaten, but she managed to hide it.

As soon as Logain began bargaining with the stableman, a lanky, freckled old fellow in a leather vest and no shirt, Siuan sidled close to Leane. "If you want to practice your wiles," she said softly, "practice them on Dalyn the next hour." Leane gave her a dubious look - she had dabbled in smiles and glances at some 757f57h of the villages since Kore Springs, but Logain had gotten no more than a flat look - then sighed and nodded. Taking a deep breath, she glided forward in that startling sinuous way, leading her arch-necked gray and already smiling at Logain. Siuan could not see how she did that; it was as if some of her bones were no longer rigid.

Moving over to Min, she spoke just as quietly again. "The instant Dalyn is done with the stableman, tell him you are going to join me inside. Then hurry ahead, and stay away from him and Amaena until I come back." From the noise roaring out of the inn, the crowd inside was big enough to hide an army. Surely big enough to hide the absence of one woman. Min got that mulish look about her eyes and opened her mouth, no doubt to demand why. Siuan forestalled her. "Just do it, Serenla. Or I'll let you add cleaning his boots to handing him his plate." The stubborn look remained, but Min gave a sullen nod.

Pushing Bela's reins into the other woman's hands, Siuan hurried out of the stable yard and started down the street in what she hoped was the right direction. She did not want to have to search the entire city, not in this heat and dust.

Heavy wagons behind teams of six or eight or even ten filled the streets, drivers cracking long whips and cursing equally at the horses and at the people who darted between the wagons. Roughly dressed men mingling through the crowds in lone wagon-drivers' coats sometimes directed laughing invitations at women who passed them. The women who wore colorful aprons, sometimes striped, their heads wrapped in bright scarves, walked on with eyes straight ahead, as though they did not hear. Women without aprons, hair hanging loose around their shoulders and skirts sometimes ending a foot or more clear of the ground, often shouted back even ruder replies.

Siuan gave a start when she realized that some of the men's suggestions were aimed at her. They did not make her angry - she really could not apply them to herself in her own mind - only startled. She was still not used to the changes in herself. That men might find her attractive... Her reflection in the filthy window of a tailor's shop caught her eye, not much more than a murky image of a fair-skinned girl under a straw hat. She was young; not just young-appearing, as far as she could tell, but young. Not much older than Min. A girl in truth, from the vantage of the years she had actually lived.

An advantage to having been stilled, she told herself. She had met women who would pay any price to lose fifteen or twenty years; some might even consider her price a fair bargain. She often found herself listing such advantages, perhaps trying to convince herself they were real. Freed from the Three Oaths, she could lie at need, for one thing. And her own father would not have recognized her. She did not really look as she had as a young woman; the changes maturity had made were still there, but softened into youth. Coldly objective, she thought she might be somewhat prettier than she had been as a girl; pretty was the best that had ever been said of her. Handsome had been the more usual compliment. She could not connect that face to her, to Siuan Sanche. Only inside was she still the same; her mind yet held all its knowledge. There, in her head, she was still herself.

Some of the inns and taverns in Lugard had names like The Farrier's Hammer, or The Dancing Bear, or The Silver Pig, often with garish signs painted to match. Others had names that should not have been allowed, the mildest of that sort being The Domani Wench's Kiss, with a painting of a coppery-skinned woman - bare to the waist! - with her lips puckered. Siuan wondered what Leane would make of that, but the way the woman was now, it might only give her notions.

At last, on a side street just as wide as the main, just beyond a gateless opening in one of the collapsing inner walls, she found the inn she wanted, three stories of rough gray stone topped with purple roof tiles. The sign over the door had an improbably voluptuous woman wearing only her hair, arranged to hide as little as possible, astride a barebacked horse, and a name that she skipped over as soon as she recognized it.

Inside, the common room was blue with pipesmoke, packed with raucous men drinking and laughing, trying to pinch serving maids, who dodged as best they could with long-suffering smiles. Barely audible over the babble, a zither and a flute accompanied a young woman singing and dancing on a table at one end of the long room. Occasionally the singer swirled her skirts high enough to show nearly the whole length of her bare legs; what Siuan could catch of her song made her want to wash out the girl's mouth. Why would a woman go walking with no clothes on? Why would a woman sing about it to a lot of drunken louts? It was not a sort of place she had ever been into before. She intended to make this visit as brief as possible.

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 crimson-haired 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?" Gap-toothed 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 eyes-and-ears; 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. Eyes-and-ears 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 eyes-and-ears 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 long-lost 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 white-knuckled 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 manner in a village."

Siuan drew a deep breath before answering. "Siuan Sanche has been stilled." Her voice did not even tremble; she was proud of that. "Elaida a'Roihan is the new Amyrlin." She could not keep a hint of bite out of that, however.

Mistress Tharne's face showed no reaction. "Well, that explains some of the orders I've gotten. Some of them, maybe. Stilled her, did they? I thought she'd be Amyrlin forever. I saw her once, a few years ago in Caemlyn. At a distance. She looked like she could chew harness straps for breakfast." Those impossible scarlet curls swung as she shook her head. "Well, done's done. The Ajahs have split, haven't they? Only thing that fits; my orders, and the old buzzard stilled. The Tower's broken, and the Blues are running."

Siuan ground her teeth. She tried telling herself the woman was loyal to the Blue Ajah, not to her personally, but it did not help. Old buzzard? She's old enough to be my mother. And if she was, I'd drown myself. With an effort, she made her voice meek. "My message is important. I must be on my way as soon as possible. Can you help me?"

"Important, is it? Well, I'm doubting it. Trouble is, I can give you something, but it's up to you to cipher it out. Do you want it?" The woman refused to make this any easier.

"Yes, please."

"Sallie Daera. I don't know who she is or was, but I was told to give her name to any Blue who came around looking lost, so to speak. You may not be one of the sisters, but you carry your nose high enough for one, so there it is. Sallie Daera. Make of it what you will."

Siuan suppressed a thrill of excitement and made her face dejected. "I never heard of her, either. I'll just have to go on looking."

"If you find them, you tell Aeldene Sedai I'm still loyal, whatever's happened. I've worked for the Blues so long, I wouldn't know what to do with myself else."

"I will tell her," Siuan said. She had not known that Aeldene was her replacement controlling the Blues' eyes-and-ears; the Amyrlin, whatever Ajah she came from, was of all but part of none. "I suppose you need some reason for not hiring me. I really cannot sing; that should do."

"As if it mattered to that lot out there." The big woman quirked an eyebrow and grinned in a way Siuan did not like. "I'll think of something, wench. And I'll give you a bit of advice. If you don't climb down a rung or two, some Aes Sedai will take you down the whole ladder. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already. Now, go on. Get out of here."

Hateful woman, Siuan growled in her head. If there was a way to manage it, I'd have her doing penance till her eyes popped. The woman thought she deserved more respect, did she? "Thank you for your help," she said coolly, making a curtsy that would have graced any court. "You have been too kind."

She was three steps into the common room when Mistress Tharne appeared behind her, raising her voice in a laughing shout that cut through the noise. "A shy maiden, that one! Legs white, and slender enough to set you all drooling and she bawled like a baby when I told her she'd have to show them to you! Just sat right down on the floor and cried! Hips round enough for any taste, and she..."

Siuan stumbled as the tide of laughter rose, never quite drowning out the woman's recitation. She managed another three steps, face red as a beet, then fled at a run.

In the street, she paused to get her breath back and let her heart stop pounding. That horrible old harridan! I should... ! It did not matter what she should do; that disgusting woman had told her what she needed. Not Sallie Daera; not a woman at all. Only a Blue would know, or even suspect. Salidar. Birthplace of Deane Aryman, the Blue sister who had become Amyrlin after Bonwhin and had rescued the Tower from the ruin Bonwhin had poised it for. Salidar. One of the last places anyone would look for Aes Sedai, short of Amadicia itself.

Two men in snowy cloaks and brightly burnished mail were riding down the street toward her, reluctantly moving their horses aside for wagons. Children of the Light. They could be found everywhere these days. Tipping her head down, watching the Whitecloaks cautiously from beneath the brim of her hat, Siuan moved closer to the blue-and-green front of the inn. They glanced at her as they rode by - hard faces beneath shining conical helmets - and passed on.

Siuan bit her lip in vexation. She had probably called their attention to her by shrinking back. And if they had seen her face...? Nothing, of course. Whitecloaks might try to kill an Aes Sedai they found alone, but hers was an Aes Sedai face no longer. Only, they had seen her try to hide from them. If Duranda Tharne had not upset her so, she would not have made such a foolish error. She could remember when a little thing like Mistress Tharne's remarks would not have made her stride waver in the least, when that overgrown dyed fishwife would not have dared say a word of it. If that termagant doesn't like my manner, I'll... What she would do was continue about the business she was on before Mistress Tharne pummeled her so she could not sit a saddle. Sometimes it was hard remembering that the days were gone when she could call kings or queens and have them come.

Striding down the street, she glared so hard that some of the wagon drivers bit back the comments they had been going to make to a pretty young woman alone. Some of them did.

Min sat on a bench against the wall of the crowded common room in The Nine Horse Hitch, watching a table surrounded by standing men, some with coiled driver's whips, others wearing the swords that marked them merchants' guards. Six more sat shoulder to shoulder around the table. She could just make out Logain and Leane, sitting on the far side. He wore a disgruntled frown; the other men hung on Leane's every smiling word.

The air was thick with pipesmoke, and full of chatter that nearly drowned the music of flute and tambour and the singing of a girl dancing on a table between the stone fireplaces. Her song had to do with a woman convincing six men that each was the only man in her life; Min found it interesting even when it made her blush. The singer darted jealous glances at the crowded table from time to time. Or rather at Leane.

The tall Domani woman had already been leading Logain by the nose when they entered the inn, and she had attracted more men like flies to honey with that swaying walk and the smoldering light in her eyes. There had very nearly been a riot, Logain and the merchants' guards with hands on swords, knives being drawn, the stout proprietor and two heavily muscled fellows rushing in with cudgels. And Leane had doused the flames much as she had ignited them, with a smile here, a few words there, a pat on the cheek. Even the innkeeper had lingered awhile, grinning like a fool, until his custom called him away. And Leane thought she needed practice. It hardly seemed fair.

If I could do that to one particular man, I'd be more than satisfied. Maybe she'd teach me - Light, what am I thinking? She had always been herself, and everyone else could accept her as she was or not. Now she was thinking about changing what she was, for a man. It was bad enough that she had to hide herself in a dress, instead of the coat and breeches she had always worn. He'd look at you in a dress with neckline cut low. You've more to show than Leane does, and she - Stop that!

"We have to go south," Siuan said at her shoulder, and Min gave a start. She had not seen the other woman come in. "Now." From the shine in Siuan's blue eyes, she had learned something. Whether she would share it was another matter. The woman seemed to think she was still Amyrlin, most of the time.

"We cannot reach anywhere else with an inn before nightfall," Min said. "We might as well take rooms here for the night." It was pleasant to sleep in a bed again instead of under hedges and in haystacks, even if she did usually have to share it with Leane and Siuan. Logain was willing to rent them all rooms, but Siuan was tight with their coin even when Logain was doling it out.

Siuan looked around, but, whoever in the common room was not staring at Leane was listening to the singer. "That isn't possible. I - I think some Whitecloaks may be asking questions about me."

Min whistled softly. "Dalyn won't like that."

"Then do not tell him." Siuan shook her head at the gathering about Leane. "Just tell Amaena that we have to go. He'll follow. Let us just hope the rest don't as well."

Min grinned wryly. Siuan might claim that she did not care that Logain-Dalyn had taken charge, mostly by just ignoring her whenever she tried to make him do anything, but she was still determined to bring him to heel again.

"What is a Nine Horse Hitch, anyway?" she asked, getting to her feet. She had gone out front hoping for a hint, but the sign over the door bore only the name. "I have seen eight, and ten, but never nine."

"In this town," Siuan said primly, "it is better not to ask." Sudden spots of color in her cheeks made Min think that she knew very well. "Go fetch them. We've a long way to go, and no time to waste. And don't let anyone overhear you."

Min snorted softly. With that small smile on Leane's face, none of those men would even see her. She wished she knew how Siuan had brought herself to the Whitecloaks' attention. That was the last thing they needed, and it was not like Siuan to make mistakes. She wished she knew how to make Rand look at her like those men were looking at Leane. If they were going to be riding all night - and she suspected they were - maybe Leane would be willing to give her a few tips.