Perrin and Faile immediately began a hasty packing, and Bain and Chiad flickered fingers at one another before announcing that they meant to accompany Faile, whereupon Gaul announced that he was accompanying Perrin. Rand did not understand what was going on there, but it involved a great deal of Gaul not looking at Bain or Chiad and them not looking at him. Loial went running off, muttering under his breath, as he thought about Cairhien being much farther from the Two Rivers than Caemlyn and his mother being a famous walker. When he returned, he had a half-done bundle under one arm and huge saddlebags over his shoulder, shirts hanging out. Loial was ready to go on the spot. Sulin vanished as well, coming back with a bundle in her arms that seemed made out of red-and-white dresses. With her face fixed in that incongruous mildness, she growled at Rand that she had been commanded to serve him and Perrin and Faile, and only a sun-crazed lizard would think she could do that in Caemlyn when they were all in Cairhien. She even added a “my Lord Dragon” that sounded a curse, and a curtsy, amazingly without a single wobble. The latter seemed to amaze her too.

Nandera arrived at almost the same instant as Mistress Harfor, who was carrying a writing case with several steel-nibbed pens and enough paper and ink and sealing wax for fifty letters. Which turned out to be fortunate.

Perrin wanted to send word to Dannil Lewin telling him to follow with the rest of the Two Rivers men—he did not intend to leave any of them for the Aes Sedai, either—and he only refrained from telling Dannil to bring Bode and the other girls from Culain’s Hound when both Rand and Faile pointed out that in the first place, the Aes Sedai were not going to let them go, and in the second, it was not very likely they would want to. Perrin and she had both been to the inn more than once, and even Perrin had to admit that the girls mainly seemed impatient to get on with becoming Aes Sedai.