Perrin thought about reminding her that whoever took the fish was supposed to clean them, too, but just at that moment she caught his eye. There was no particular expression on her smooth face, but her dark eyes did not waver, and they appeared to know what he was going to say, and to have dismissed it out of hand already. When she turned away, it seemed somehow too late to say anything.

Muttering to himself, Perrin pulled out his beltknife and set to the gutting and heading. “All of a sudden she’s forgotten about sharing the chores, it seems. I suppose she’ll want us to do the cooking, as well, and the cleaning up after.”

“No doubt she will,” Loial said without pausing over the fish he was working on. “She is Aes Sedai.”

“I seem to remember hearing that somewhere.” Perrin’s knife ripped into the fish. “The Shienarans might have been willing to run around fetching and carrying for her, but there are only four of us now. We should keep on turn and turn about. It’s only fair.”

Loial gave a great snort of laughter. “I doubt she sees it that way. First she had to put up with Rand arguing with her all the time, and now you’re ready to take over for him. As a rule, Aes Sedai do not let anyone argue with them. I expect she means to have us back in the habit of doing what she says by the time we reach the first village.”

“A good habit to be in,” Lan said, throwing back his cloak. In the fading light he had appeared out of nowhere.

Perrin nearly fell over from surprise, and Loial’s ears went stiff with shock. Neither of them had heard the Warder’s step.

“A habit you should never have lost,” Lan added, then strode off toward Moiraine and the horses. His boots barely made a sound, even on that rocky ground, and once he was a few paces away the cloak hanging down his back gave him the uneasy appearance of a disembodied head and arms drifting up from the stream.

“We need her to find Rand,” Perrin said softly, “but I am not going to let her shape my life anymore.” He went back to his cleaning vigorously.

He meant to keep that promise—he really did—but during the days that followed, in some way he did not quite understand, he found that he and Loial were doing the cooking, and the cleaning up, and any other little chore that Moiraine thought of. He even discovered that somehow or other he had taken over tending Aldieb every night, unsaddling the mare and rubbing her down while Moiraine settled herself, apparently deep in thought.