For a moment she eyed him doubtfully, then gave a quick nod. “Good. So long as you do not presume toward me.” Tossing the bundled blanket at his feet, she sat on her heels across the firepit from him. “You would not accept the buckle as canceling debt between us . . .”

“Aviendha, there is no debt.” He thought that she had forgotten about that. She went on as if he had not spoken.

“. . . but perhaps that will cancel it.”

Sighing, he unwrapped the striped blanket—warily, since she had held it far more uneasily than she had the snake; she had held the bloody snake as if it were a piece of cloth—unwrapped it, and gasped. What lay inside was a sword, the scabbard so encrusted with rubies and moonstones that it was hard to see the gold except where a rising sun of many rays had been inset. The ivory hilt, long enough for two hands, had another inlaid rising sun in gold; the pommel was thick with rubies and moonstones, and still more made a solid mass along the quillons. This had never been made to use, only to be seen. To be stared at.

“This must have cost . . . Aviendha, how could you pay for it?”

“It cost little,” she said, so defensively that she might as well have added that she lied.

“A sword. How did you ever come by a sword? How did any Aiel come by a sword? Don’t tell me Kadere had this hidden in his wagons.”

“I carried it in a blanket.” She sounded even more touchy now than she had about the price. “Even Bair said that would make it all right, so long as I did not actually touch it.” She shrugged uncomfortably, shifting and reshifting her shawl. “It was the treekiller’s sword. Laman’s. It was taken from his body as proof that he was dead, because his head could not be brought back so far. Since then it has passed from hand to hand, young men or fool Maidens who wanted to own the proof of his death. Only, each began to think of what it was, and soon sold it to another fool. The price has come down very far since it first was sold. No Aiel would lay hand to it even to remove the stones.”