“You are ta’veren?” Zarine said disbelievingly. Her gaze ran over his sturdy country clothes and settled on his yellow eyes. “Well, perhaps. Whatever you are, she threatens you as easily as she does me. Who is Min? What does she mean, I will perch on your shoulder?” Her face tightened. “If you try making me your responsibility, I will carve your ears. Do you hear me?”

Grimacing, he slipped his unstrung bow under the saddle girths along Stepper’s flank, and climbed into the saddle. Restive after days on the ship, the dun lived up to his name until Perrin calmed him with a firm hand on the reins and pats to his neck.

“None of that deserves an answer,” he growled. Min bloody told her! Burn you, Min! Burn you, too, Moiraine! And Zarine! He could never remember Rand or Mat being bullied by women on every side. Or himself, before leaving Emond’s Field. Nynaeve had been the only one. And Mistress Luhhan, of course; she ran him and Master Luhhan both, everywhere but in the smithy. And Egwene had had a way about her, though mostly with Rand. Mistress al’Vere, Egwene’s mother, always had a smile, but things seemed to end up being done as she wanted, too. And the Women’s Circle had looked over everybody’s shoulder.

Grumbling to himself, he reached down and took Zarine by an arm; she gave a squawk and nearly dropped her bundle as he hoisted her up behind his saddle. Those divided skirts of hers made it easy for her to straddle Stepper. “Moiraine will have to buy you a horse,” he muttered. “You cannot walk the whole way.”

“You are strong, blacksmith,” Zarine said, rubbing her arm, “but I am not a piece of iron.” She shifted around, stuffing her bundle and her cloak between them. “I can buy my own horse, if I need one. The whole way where?”

Lan was already riding off the dock into the city, with Moiraine and Loial behind him. The Ogier looked back at Perrin.

“No questions, remember? And my name is Perrin, Zarine. Not ‘big man,’ or ‘blacksmith,’ or anything else. Perrin. Perrin Aybara.”

“And mine is Faile, shaggy-hair.”

With something close to a snarl, he booted Stepper after the others. Zarine had to throw her arms around his waist to keep from being tossed over the dun’s crupper. He thought she was laughing.

CHAPTER
42

Easing the Badger

The hubbub of the city quickly submerged Zarine’s laughter—if that was what it was—beneath all the clamor that Perrin remembered from Caemlyn and Cairhien. The sounds were different here, slower, and pitched differently, but they were the same, too. Boots and wheels and hooves on rough, uneven paving stones, cart and wagon axles squealing, music and song and laughter drifting from inns and taverns. Voices. A hum of voices like putting his head into a giant beehive. A great city, living.