“Odious fellow,” Zarine muttered, brushing furiously at the dust on her narrow skirts with both hands. “I believe he took me for your handmaid, Aes Sedai. I will not stand for that!”

“Watch your tongue,” Lan said softly. “If you use that name where folk can hear, you will regret it, girl.” She looked as if she were going to argue, but his icy blue eyes stilled her tongue this time, if it did not cool her glare.

Moiraine ignored them. Staring off at nothing, she worked her cloak in her hands almost as if wiping them. Unaware what she was doing, in Perrin’s opinion.

“How do we go about finding Rand?” he asked, but she did not appear to hear him. “Moiraine?”

“Remain close to the inn,” she said after a moment. “Tear can be a dangerous city for those who do not know its ways. The Pattern can be torn, here.” That last was soft, as if to herself. In a stronger voice she said, “Lan, let us see what we can discover without attracting attention. The rest of you, stay close to the inn!”

“ ‘Stay close to the inn,’ ” Zarine mimicked as the Aes Sedai and the Warder disappeared down the stairs. But she said it quietly enough that they would not hear. “This Rand. He is the one you called the. . . .” If she looked like a falcon right then, it was a very uneasy falcon. “And we are in Tear, where the Heart of the Stone holds. . . . And the Prophecies say. . . . The Light burn me, ta’veren, is this a story I want to be in?”

“It is not a story, Zarine.” For a moment Perrin felt almost as hopeless as the innkeeper had sounded. “The Wheel weaves us into the Pattern. You chose to tangle your thread with ours; it’s too late to untangle it, now.”

“Light!” she growled. “Now you sound like her!”

He left her there with Loial and went to put his things in his room—it had a low bed, comfortable but small, as city people seemed to think befitted a servant, a washstand, a stool, and a few pegs on the cracked plaster wall—and when he came out, they were both gone. The ring of hammer on anvil called to him.