Some pairings did look odder than others. A number of women had begun wearing outlandish clothes of late, apparently never noticing how they drew men’s eyes and made even the servants struggle not to stare. Tight breeches and a coat barely long enough to cover the hips were not suitable garments for a woman, no matter how much effort went into rich embroidery or patterning the coat with gemstones. Jeweled necklaces and bracelets and pins with sprays of colorful feathers only pointed up the oddity. And those brightly dyed boots, with their heels that added as much as a hand to a woman’s height, made them appear in danger of falling down with every swaying step.
“Scandalous,” Sashalle muttered, eyeing one such pair of women and twitching her skirts in displeasure.
“Scandalous,” Samitsu murmured before she could stop herself, then snapped her mouth shut so hard her teeth clicked. She needed to control her tongue. Voicing agreement just because she agreed was a habit she could ill afford with Sashalle.
Still, she could not help glancing back at the pair in disapproval. And a bit of wonder. A year ago, Alaine Chuliandred and Fionnda Annariz would have been at each other’s throats. Or rather have had their armsmen at one another’s throats. But then, who would have expected to see Bertome Saighan walking peacefully with Weiramon Saniago, neither man reaching for the dagger at his belt? Strange times and strange traveling companions. Doubtless they were playing the Game of Houses, maneuvering for advantage as they always had, yet dividing lines that once were graven in stone now turned out to have been drawn on water instead. Very strange times.
The kitchens were on the lowest level of the Sun Palace above-ground, at the back, a cluster of stone-walled beamed-ceiling rooms centered around a long windowless room full of iron stoves and brick ovens and dressed-stone fireplaces, and the heat was enough to make anyone forget the snow outside, or even that it was winter. Normally, sweaty-faced cooks and under-cooks, as darkly clad as any other palace servants beneath their white aprons, would have been scurrying about getting ready to prepare the midday meal, kneading loaves on long flour-strewn tables topped with marble, basting the joints and fowl that were turning on spits in the fireplaces. Now, only the trotting spit-dogs were moving, eager to earn their bits from the joints. Baskets of turnips and carrots stood unpeeled and unchopped, and smells sweet and spicy came from untended pots of sauces. Even the scullions, boys and girls surreptitiously wiping their faces on their aprons, stood on the fringe of a group of women clustered around one of the tables. From the doorway, Samitsu could see the back of an Ogier’s head rising above them where he was seated at the table, taller than most men would have been standing up, and broad with it. Of course, Cairhienin were short by and large, and that helped. She laid a hand on Sashalle’s arm, and for a wonder, the woman stopped where they were without protest.
“… vanished without leaving a clue where he was going?” the Ogier was asking in a deep rumble like the earth shifting. His long, tufted ears, sticking up through dark hair that hung to his high collar, flicked back and forth uneasily.
“Oh, do stop talking about him, Master Ledar,” a woman’s voice answered in a quaver that seemed well-practiced. “Wicked, he was. Tore half the palace apart with the One Power, he did. He could turn your blood to ice just looking at you, and kill you as soon as look. Thousands have died by his own hand. Tens of thousands! Oh, I never like talking about him.”
“For someone as never likes talking about something, Eldrid Methin,” another woman said sharply, “you surely talk of little else.” Stout and quite tall for a Cairhienin, nearly as tall as Samitsu herself, with a few strands of gray hair escaping her white plain-lace cap, she must have been the chief cook on duty, because everyone Samitsu could see quickly nodded agreement and twittered with laughter and said, “Oh, right you are, Mistress Beldair,” in a particularly sycophantic way. Servants had their own hierarchies, as rigidly maintained as the Tower itself.
“But that sort of thing really is not for us to be gossiping over, Master Ledar,” the stout woman went on. “Aes Sedai business, that is, and not for the likes of you and me. Tell us more about the Borderlands. Have you really seen Trollocs?”
“Aes Sedai,” a man muttered. Hidden by the crowd around the table, he had to be Ledar’s companion. Samitsu could see no grown men among the kitchen folk this morning. “Tell me, do you really think they bonded those men you were talking about, those Asha’man? As Warders? And what about the one who died? You never said how.”
“Why, it was the Dragon Reborn as killed him,” Eldrid piped up. “And what else would Aes Sedai bond a man as? Oh, terrible, they was, them Asha’man. Turn you to stone with a look, they could. You can tell one just by looking at him, you know. Frightful glowing eyes, they have.”
“Be quiet, Eldrid,” Mistress Beldair said firmly. “Maybe they was Asha’man and maybe not, Master Underbill. Maybe they was bonded and maybe not. All I or anyone else can say is they was with him,” the emphasis in her voice made plain who she was talking about; Eldrid might consider Rand al’Thor fearful, but this woman did not want to so much as name him, “and soon after he left, suddenly the Aes Sedai was telling them what to do and they was doing it. Of course, any fool knows to do as an Aes Sedai says. Anyway, those fellows are all gone off, now. Why are you so interested in them, Master Underbill? Is that an Andoran name?”
Ledar threw back his head and laughed, a booming sound that filled the room. His ears twitched violently. “Oh, we want to know everything about the places we visit, Mistress Beldair. The Borderlands, you say? You might think it’s cold here, but we’ve seen trees crack open like nuts on the fire from the cold in the Borderlands. You have blocks of ice in the river, floating down from upstream, but we’ve seen rivers as wide as the Alguenya frozen so merchants can drive loaded trains of wagons across them, and men fishing through holes cut in ice nearly a span thick. At night, there are sheets of light in the sky that seem to crackle, bright enough to dim the stars, and…”
Even Mistress Beldair was leaning toward the Ogier, caught up, but one of the young scullions, too short to see past the adults, glanced behind him, and his eyes went wide when they lit on Samitsu and Sashalle. His gaze stayed fixed on them as if trapped, but he fumbled with one hand till he could tug at Mistress Beldair’s sleeve. The first time, she shook him off without looking around. At a second tug, she turned her head with a scowl that vanished in a blink when she, too, saw the Aes Sedai.
“Grace favor you, Aes Sedai,” she said, hastily tucking stray hair back under her cap as she bobbed her curtsy. “How may I serve you?” Ledar broke off short in midsentence, and his ears stiffened for an moment. He did not look toward the doorway.
“We wish to speak with your visitors,” Sashalle said, moving into the kitchen. “We won’t disrupt your kitchen for long.”
“Of course, Aes Sedai.” If the stout woman felt any surprise at two sisters wanting to talk to kitchen visitors, she showed none. Head swinging from side to side to take in everyone, she clapped her plump hands and began spouting orders. “Eldrid, those turnips will never peel themselves. Who was watching the fig sauce? Dried figs are hard to come by! Where is your basting spoon, Kasi? Andil, run, fetch some…” Cooks and scullions scattered in every direction, and a clatter of pots and spoons quickly filled the kitchen, though everyone was plainly making an effort to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the Aes Sedai. They were plainly making an effort not to even look in their direction, though that involved some contortion.