Egwene groaned, closing her eyes. That man will be the death of me. “Tell him to return. Infuriating though he is, I’m going to need him in the coming days.”

“Yes, Mother,” Silviana said, taking out a sheet of paper.

Egwene entered her study to continue her letters. Time was short. Time was so very, very short.

Chapter 28

Oddities

“What are you planning, husband?” Faile asked.

They were back in their tent, following the parley with the Whitecloaks. Perrin’s actions had surprised her—which was invigorating, yet also disturbing.

He took off his coat. “I smell a strangeness on the wind, Faile. Something I’ve never smelled before.” He hesitated, glancing at her. “There are no wolves.”

“No wolves?”

“I can’t sense any nearby,” Perrin said, eyes distant. “There were some before. Now they’re gone.”

“You said that they don’t like being close to people.”

He pulled off his shirt, exposing a muscled chest covered in curling brown hair. “There were too few birds today, too few creatures in the underbrush. Light burn that sky. Is that causing this, or is it something else?” He sighed, sitting down on their sleeping pallet.

“You’re going to go…there?” Faile asked.

“Something’s wrong,” he repeated. “I need to learn what I can before the trial. There might be answers in the wolf dream.”

The trial. “Perrin, I don’t like this idea.”

“You’re angry about Maighdin.”

“Of course I’m angry about Maighdin,” she said. They’d been through Malden together, and she hadn’t told Faile that she was the Queen of bloody Andor? It made Faile look like a fool—like a small-town braggart, extolling her skill with the sword in front of a passing blademaster.

“She didn’t know if she could trust us,” Perrin said. “She was fleeing one of the Forsaken, it seems. I’d have hidden myself, too.”

Faile glared at him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “She didn’t do it to make you look bad, Faile. She had her reasons. Let it go.”

That made her feel a little better; it was so nice that he would stand up for himself now. “Well, it makes me wonder who Lini will turn out to be. Some Seanchan queen? Master Gill, the King of Arad Doman in hiding?”

Perrin smiled. “I suspect they’re her attendants. Gill is who he says he is, at least. Balwer is probably having a fit for not having figured this out.”

“I bet he did figure it out,” Faile said, kneeling beside him. “Perrin, I meant what I said about this trial. I’m worried.”

“I won’t let myself be taken,” he said. “I only said I’d sit through a trial and give them a chance to present evidence.”

“Then what’s the point?” Faile said.

“It gives me more time to think,” he said, “and it might stop me from having to kill them. Their captain, Damodred—something about him smells better than many of the rest. Not rabid with anger or hate. This will get our people back and let me plead my side. It feels good for a man to be able to have his say. Maybe that’s what I’ve needed, all this time.”