Riding slowly through Caemlyn under a baking midmorning sun, Min really saw little of the city. She hardly noticed the people and sedan chairs, wagons and coaches, that clogged the streets except to guide her bay mare around them. One of her dreams had always been to live in a great city and travel to strange places, but today colorful towers covered in glittering tiles and sweeping vistas as the street rounded a hill passed all but unseen. Clumps of Aiel striding through the crowds with space opening around them got a second glance, and so did patrols of hawk-nosed, often bearded men on horseback, but only because they reminded her of the stories they had begun hearing while still in Murandy. Merana had been angered by those, and by the charred evidence of Dragonsworn they had come on twice, but Min thought some of the other Aes Sedai were worried. The less said about what they thought of Rand’s amnesty, the better.

At the edge of the plaza in front of the Royal Palace, she drew Wildrose’s rein and blotted her face carefully with a lace-edged handkerchief that she tucked back up her coatsleeve. Only a few people dotted the great oval, perhaps because Aiel guarded the open main gates of the palace. More Aiel stood on marble balconies or glided across high, colonnaded walks like leopards. The White Lion of Andor stirred in a breeze above the tallest of the palace domes. Another crimson flag flew from one of the spires, a little lower than the white dome, lifted just enough by the breeze for her to make out the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai, black-and-white.

Those Aiel made her glad she had refused the offer of a pair of Warders as escort; she suspected Aiel and Warders might strike sparks. Well, it had not been precisely an offer, and she had refused by sneaking away an hour beforetime by the clock on the inn mantelpiece. Merana was from Caemlyn, and when they arrived before dawn she took them straight to what she said was the finest inn in the New City.