The bedchamber was snug, if not exactly cramped. Two narrow beds with striped coverlets stood to either side of a window looking out onto the street, and little more than walking room separated them from each other or the white-plastered walls. A small table holding a lamp and tinderbox between the beds, a tiny, flowered rug, and a washstand with a small mirror above it completed the furnishings. Everything was clean and well polished, at least.

The innkeeper plumped the pillows and smoothed the coverlets and said the mattresses were the best goose down and the Lady’s men would be bringing her chests up by the back stairs and everything would be very cozy, there was a good breeze at night if the Lady opened the window and left the door cracked. As though she would sleep with her door open to a public hallway. Two aproned girls arrived with a large blue pitcher of steaming water and a large lacquered tray covered with a white cloth before Elayne managed to get Mistress Jharen out. The shape of a wine pitcher and two cups mounded up one side of the cloth.

“I think she believed we might go to The King’s Lancer even with a hole in it,” she said, once the door was firmly shut. Looking around the room, she grimaced. There would barely be room for them and the chests. “I am not certain we shouldn’t.”

“I do not snore,” Nynaeve said in a tight voice.

“Of course you do not. I had to say something though.”

Nynaeve gave a loud harrumph, but all she said was “I am glad I am tired enough to go to sleep. Aside from that forkroot, I did not recognize anything to aid sleep in what that Macura woman had.”

It took Thom and Juilin three trips to bring the iron-bound wooden chests up, grumbling all the while, the way men did, about having to haul them up the narrow stairs at the rear of the inn. They were muttering about being made to sleep in the stables, too, when they brought in the first one between them—it had leaf-shaped hinges; the bulk of their money and valuables were in the bottom of that, including the recovered ter’angreal—but one glance at the room and they shared a look and shut their mouths. About that, at least.

“We’re going to see what we can learn in the common room,” Thom said once the last chest was jammed in. Barely enough space remained to reach the washstand.

“And maybe take a walk around the village,” Juilin added. “Men talk when there’s as much dislike as I saw in the street.”