“Boy, the Creator never made the Houses. Some forget it, but go far enough back in any House, and you’ll find a commoner who showed uncommon courage or kept his head and took charge when everybody else was running around like plucked geese. Mind you, another thing some like to forget is the road down can be just as sudden. I’ve two maids in Tyr who would be ladies if their forebears two hundred years ago hadn’t been fools even a fool wouldn’t follow, and a woodcutter in Sidona who claims his ancestors were kings and queens before Artur Hawkwing. He might be telling the truth; he’s a good woodcutter. As many roads down as up, and the roads down as slippery as the others.” Bashere snorted hard enough to make his mustaches stir. “A fool moans when fortune takes him down, and it takes a true fool to moan when fortune takes him up. What I want to know about you isn’t what you were, or even so much what you are, as what you are inside. If my wife leaves Zarine with a whole hide, and I don’t kill you, do you know how to treat a wife? Well?”

Mindful of that good impression, Perrin decided not to explain that he would much rather be a blacksmith again. “I treat Faile as well as I know how,” he said carefully.

Bashere snorted again. “As well as you know how.” His flat tone became a growl. “You had better know well enough, boy, or I’ll. . . . You hear me. A wife isn’t a trooper to go running when you shout. In some ways, a woman is like a dove. You hold her half as hard as you think is necessary, or you might hurt her. You don’t want to hurt Zarine. You understand me?” He grinned suddenly, disconcertingly, and his voice grew almost friendly. “You might do very well for a son-in-law, Aybara, but if you make her unhappy. . . .” He was stroking his sword hilt again.

“I try to make her happy,” Perrin said seriously. “Hurting her is the last thing I’d want to do.”