He glared at her and barely stopped himself from saying something he knew would be stupid. This bloody woman has me jumping before I can think. Light, I’ll wager she thinks I never even kissed a girl! He tried not to listen to any more of what the girl was singing. If he could not get the red out of his face, Zarine was sure to make more of it.

A flash of startlement had passed across the face of the proprietress when they entered. A large, round woman with her hair in a thick roll at the back of her neck and a smell of strong soap about her, she suppressed her surprise quickly, though, and hurried to Moiraine.

“Mistress Mari,” she said, “I did never think to see you here today.” She hesitated, eyeing Perrin and Zarine, glanced once at Loial, but not in the searching way she looked at them. Her eyes actually brightened at the sight of the Ogier, but her real attention was all on “Mistress Mari.” She lowered her voice, “Have my pigeons no arrived safely?” Lan, she seemed to accept as a part of Moiraine.

“I am sure they have, Nieda,” Moiraine said. “I have been away, but I am sure Adine has noted down everything you reported.” She eyed the girl singing on the table with no outward disapproval, nor any other expression. “The Badger was considerably quieter when last I was here.”

“Aye, Mistress Mari, it did be that. But the louts have no gotten over the winter yet, it does seem. I have no had a fight in the Badger in ten years, till the tail of this winter gone.” She nodded toward the one man not sitting near the singer, a fellow even bigger than Perrin, standing against the wall with his thick arms folded, tapping his foot to the music. “Even Bili did have a hard time keeping them down, so I did hire the girl to take their minds from anger. From some place in Altara, she does come.” She tilted her head, listening for a moment. “A fair voice, but I did sing it better—aye, and dance better, too—when I did be her age.”

Perrin gaped at the thought of this huge woman capering on a table, singing that song—a bit of it came through; “I’ll wear no shift at all. At all”—until Zarine fisted him hard in the short ribs. He grunted.

Nieda looked his way. “I’ll mix you some honey and sulphur, lad, for that throat. You’ll no want to take a chill before the weather warms, no with a pretty girl like that one on your arm.”

Moiraine gave him a look that said he was interfering with her. “Strange that you should suffer fights,” she said. “I well remember how your nephew stops such. Has something occurred to make people more irritable?”