“They hates me, they does, my Lady,” Hark said in a sullen voice. His hands gripped the chain between them in fists. “I was gathering evidence of how they was stealing from the good master-his own daughter, mind!-only he died afore I could give it to him. and I was turned out in the streets without a reference or a penny, I was. They burned what I’d gathered, gave me a drubbing and threw me out.”

Elayne tapped her chin thoughtfully. “A clerk, you say. Most clerks are better spoken than you. Master Hark, but I’ll offer you a chance to give evidence for your claim. Would you send for a lapdesk. Master Norry?”

Norry gave a thin smile. How could the man make a smile seem dry? “No need, my Lady. The magistrate in the case had the same idea.” For the first time that she had ever seen, he took a sheet of paper from the folder clutched to his chest. She thought trumpets should sound! Hark’s smile faded away completely as his eyes followed that page from Norry’s hand to hers.

One glance was all that was needed. A few uneven lines covered less than half the sheet, the letters cramped and awkward. No more than half a dozen words were actually legible, and those barely.

“Hardly the hand of a clerk.” she murmured. Returning the page to Norry, she tried to make her face stern. She had seen her mother passing judgment. Morgase had been able to make herself appear implacable. “I fear. Master Hark, that you will sit in a cell until the magistrates in Four Kings can be queried, and soon after that you will hang.” Hark’s lips writhed, and he put a hand to his throat as if he could already feel the noose. “Unless, of course, you agree to follow a man for me. A dangerous man who doesn’t like to be followed. If you can tell me where he goes at night, instead of hanging, you will be exiled to Baerlon. Where you would be well advised to find a new line of work. The governor will be informed of you.”

Suddenly Hark’s smile was back. “Of course, my Lady. I’m innocent. but I can see how things look dark against me, I can. I’ll follow any man you want me to. I was your mother’s man, I was. and I’m your man. too. Loyal is what I am, my Lady, loyal if I suffers for it.”

Birgitte snorted derisively.

“Arrange for Master Hark to see Mellar’s face without being seen, Birgitte.” The man was unmemorable, but there was no point in taking chances. “Then turn him loose.” Hark looked ready to dance, iron chains or no iron chains. “But first… You see this. Master Hark?” She held up her right hand so he could not miss the Great Serpent ring. “You may have heard that I am Aes Sedai.” With the Power already in her, it was a simple matter to weave Spirit. “It is true.” The weave she laid on Hark’s belt buckle, his boots, his coat and breeches, was somewhat akin to that for the Warder bond, though much less complex. It would fade from the clothing and boots in a few weeks, or months at best, but metal would hold a Finder forever. “I’ve laid a weave on you. Master Hark. Now you can be found wherever you are.” In truth, only she would be able to find him-a Finder was attuned to the one who wove it-but there was no reason to tell him that. “Just to be sure that you are indeed loyal.”

Hark’s smile seemed frozen in place. Sweat beaded on his forehead. When Birgitte went to the door and called in Hansard, giving him instructions to take Hark away and keep him safe from prying eyes, Hark staggered and would have fallen if the husky Guardsman had not held him up on the way out of the room.

“I fear I may just have given Mellar a sixth victim,” Elayne muttered. “He hardly seems capable of following his own shadow without tripping over his boots.” It was not so much Hark’s death she regretted. The man would have hanged for sure. “I want whoever put that bloody man in my palace. I want them so badly my teeth ache!” The palace was riddled with spies-Reene had uncovered above a dozen beyond Skellit, though she believed that was all of them-but whether Mellar had been set to spy or to facilitate kidnapping her, he was worse than the others. He had arranged for men to die, or he had killed them, in order to gain his place. That those men had thought they were to kill her made no difference. Murder was murder.

“Trust me, my Lady,” Norry said, laying a finger alongside his long nose. “Cutpurses are… um… stealthy by nature, yet they seldom last long. Sooner or later they cut the purse of someone faster afoot than they, someone who doesn’t wait for the Guards.” He made a quick gesture as if stabbing someone. “Hark has lasted at least twenty years. A number of the purses in his… um… collection were embroidered with prayers of thanks for the end of the Aiel War. Those went out of fashion very quickly, as I recall.”

Birgitte sat down on the arm of the next chair and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I could arrest Mellar,” she said quietly, “and have him put to the question. You’d have no need of Hark then.”

“A poor joke, my Lady, if I may say so,” Mistress Harfor said stiffly. at the same time that Master Norry said, “That would be… um… against the law, my Lady.”

Birgitte bounded to her feet, outrage flooding the bond. “Blood and bloody ashes! We know the man’s as rotten as last month’s fish.’’

“No.” Elayne sighed, fighting not to feel outraged as well. “We have suspicions, not proof. Those five men might have fallen afoul of footpads. The law is quite clear on when someone may be put to the question, and suspicions are not reason enough. Solid evidence is needed. My mother often said, ‘The Queen must obey the law she makes, or there is no law.” I will not begin by breaking the law.” The bond carried something… stubborn. She fixed Birgitte with a steady look. “Neither will you. Do you understand me. Birgitte Trahelion? Neither will you.”

To her surprise, the stubbornness lasted only moments longer before dwindling away to be replaced by chagrin. “It was only a suggestion,” Birgitte muttered weakly.

Elayne was wondering how she had done that and how to do it again-sometimes there seemed doubt in Birgitte’s mind over which of them was in charge-when Deni Coiford slipped into the room and cleared her throat to draw attention to herself. A long, brass-studded cudgel balanced the sword hanging at the heavyset woman’s waist, looking out of place. Deni was getting better with the sword but still preferred the cudgel she had used keeping order in a wagon drivers’ tavern. “A servant came to say that the Lady Dyelin has arrived, my Lady, and will be at your service as soon as she’s freshened herself.”

“Send the Lady Dyelin word that she’s to meet me in the Map Room.” Elayne felt a surge of hope. At last, perhaps, she might hear some good news.

Leaving Mistress Harfor and Master Norry, Elayne started eagerly toward the Map Room still holding saidar. Eagerly, but not hurriedly. Deni and three Guardswomen strode ahead of her, heads swiveling in constant search of threats, and the other four stamped along behind. She doubted that Dyelin would take long over her ablutions. good news or bad. The Light send that it was good. Birgitte. hands clasped behind her back and wearing a frown, seemed sunk in silence as they walked, though she studied every crossing corridor as if expecting an attack from it. The bond still carried worry. And tiredness. A yawn cracked Elayne’s jaws before she could stop herself.

An unwillingness to start rumors was not the only reason she maintained a stately pace. There were more than servants in the hallways, now. Courtesy had required her to offer rooms in the palace to the nobles who managed to reach the city with armsmen-counting armsmen loosely; some were well-trained and carried a sword every day. others had been guiding a plow before being called to follow their lord or lady-and a fair number had accepted. Mainly those who had no dwelling in Caemlyn or. she suspected, felt pinched for coin. Farmers or laborers might think all nobles wealthy, and certainly most were. if only in comparison, but the expenses required by their positions and duties left many counting coins as carefully as any farmwife. What she was to do for the newest arrivals she did not know. Nobles already were sleeping three and four to a bed wherever the beds were large enough; all but the narrowest could take at least two, and did. Many Kinswomen had been reduced to pallets on the floor in the servants’ quarters, and thank the Light spring had made that possible.