The second thing he noticed was the sound, a rhythmic racketing clatter accompanied periodically by a piercing whistle. Faint at first, it seemed to be coming closer rapidly. Despite the early hour, the streets he could see from the gates were crowded. Half the people in sight appeared to be Sea Folk, the men bare-chested, the women in bright linen blouses, all wearing long sashes more colorful than those worn by Tairen commoners. Every head appeared to be turned toward that sound. Children darted through the throng, dodging carts most often pulled by oxen with wide horns, racing toward the noise. Several well-dressed men and women had dismounted from their sedan chairs and stood with the bearers to watch. A fork-bearded merchant with silver chains across the chest of his coat was half out of the window of a red-lacquered coach, shouting at his driver to manage the nervously dancing team while he strained for a better view.

White-winged pigeons, startled from pointed slate rooftops by a particularly sharp whistle, suddenly wheeled into the air. And two large flocks crashed into each other, pelting the folk below with stunned birds. Every single bird fell. A few people actually stopped staring toward the approaching noise and gaped at the sky. A surprising number snatched up fallen birds and wrung their necks, though, and not just barefoot people in worn woolens. A woman in silk and lace, standing beside one of the sedan chairs, quickly gathered half a dozen before gazing toward the noise with the birds dangling from her hands by their feet.

Alivia made a startled sound. “Is that ill luck or good?” she drawled. “It must be ill. Unless pigeons here are different?” Nynaeve gave her a sour look, but said nothing. She had been very quiet since Lan vanished the day before, a subject on which she was doubly silent.

“Some of those people are going to die of hunger.” Min said sadly. The bond quivered with sorrow. “Every last one I can see something about.”

How can I die? Lews Therin laughed. I am ta’veren!

You’re dead. Rand thought at him sharply. People in front of him were going to starve, and he laughed? There was nothing to be done, of course, not when Min spoke, but laughing was another matter. I am ta’veren. Me!

What else was happening in Tear because of his presence? His being ta’veren did not always have any effect at all. but when it did, the result could blanket an entire city. Best to get on with what he had come for before the wrong people figured out what things like pigeons flying into one another meant. If the Forsaken were sending armies of Trollocs and Myrddraal after him, it was likely that Darkfriends would take any opportunity to put an arrow through his ribs. Making little effort to hide was not the same as making no effort.

“You might as well have brought the Banner of Light and an honor guard of thousands instead of six,” Cadsuane murmured dryly, eyeing the Maidens who were trying to pretend they had nothing to do with Rand’s party while standing in a wide circle around it, sboufa covering their heads and veils hanging down their chests. Two were Shaido, fierce-eyed whenever they looked at him. The Maidens’ spears were all on their backs, stuck through the harness of their bowcases, but only because Rand had offered to leave them behind and take someone else otherwise. Nandera had insisted on at least a few Maidens, staring at him with eyes as hard as emeralds. He had never considered refusing. The only child of a Maiden any Maiden had ever known, he had obligations to meet.

He gathered Tai’daishar’s reins, and abruptly a large wagon full of machinery came into sight, clanking and hissing, wide iron-studded wheels striking sparks from the gray paving stones as it moved along the street as fast as a man could trot. The machinery seemed to sweat steam; a heavy wooden shaft swung up and down pushing another, vertical shaft, and gray woodsmoke drifted from a metal chimney; but there was no sign of a horse, just an odd sort of tiller in the front to turn the wheels. One of the three men standing in the wagon pulled a long cord, and steam rushed in a shrill whistle out of a tube atop a huge iron cylinder. If the onlookers stared in awe and maybe covered their ears, the fork-bearded merchant’s team was in no such mood.

Whinnying wildly, they bolted, scattering people as they ran and nearly pitching the man out on his head. Curses pursued them, and several braying mules that galloped off with their drivers in bouncing carts sawing at the reins. Even a few oxen began to lumber along more quickly. Min’s astonishment filled the bond.

Controlling the black with his knees-trained as a warhorse. Tai’-daishar responded immediately, chough he still snorted-Rand stared in amazement, too. It seemed Master Poel actually had made his steamwagon work. “But how did the thing get to Tear?” he asked the air. The last he had seen, it had been at the Academy of Cairhien. and seizing up every few paces.

“It’s called a steamhorse. my Lord,” a barefoot, dirty-faced urchin in a ragged shirt said, bouncing on the pavement. Even the sash holding up his baggy breeches seemed as much holes as cloth. “I’ve seen it nine times! Com here’s only seen it seven.”

“A steamwagon, Doni,” his equally ragged companion put in. “A steamwagon.” Neither of them could have been more than ten, and they were gaunt rather than skinny. Their muddy feet, torn shirts and holed breeches meant they came from outside the walls, where the poorest folk lived. Rand had changed a number of laws in Tear, especially those that weighed heavily on the poor, but he had been unable to change everything. He had not even known how to begin. Lews Therin began to maunder on about taxes and money creating jobs, but he might as well have been spilling out words at random for all the sense he made. Rand muted the voice to a buzz, a fly on the other side of a room.

“Four of them hitched together, one behind the other, pulled a hundred wagons all the way from Cairhien,” Doni went on, ignoring the other boy. “They covered near a hundred miles every day. my Lord. A hundred miles!”

Com sighed heavily. “There were six of them, Doni, and they only pulled fifty wagons, but they covered more than a hundred miles every day. A hundred and twenty some days, I heard, and it was one of the steam-men said it.” Doni turned to scowl at him. the pair of them balling up fists.

“Either way, it’s a remarkable achievement,” Rand told them quickly, before they could begin trading blows. “Here.”

Dipping into his coat pocket, he pulled out two coins and tossed one toward each boy without looking to see what they were. Gold glittered in the air before the boys eagerly snatched the coins. Exchanging startled glances, they went running out through the gates as fast as they could go. no doubt fearful he would demand the coins back. Their families could live for months on that much gold.

Min gazed after them with an expression of misery that the bond echoed even after she shook her head and smoothed her face. What had she seen? Death, probably. Rand felt anger, but no sorrow. How many tens of thousands would die before the Last Battle was done? How many would be children? He had no room left in him for sorrow.

“Very generous,” Nynaeve said in a tight voice, “but are we going to stand here all morning?” The steamwagon was moving on out of sight quickly, yet her plump brown mare was still blowing anxiously and tossing her head, and she was having difficulty with the animal, placid as it was by nature. She was far from as good a rider as she thought herself. For that matter. Min’s mount, an arch-necked gray mare from Algarin’s stables, danced so that only Min’s firm, red-gloved grip on the reins kept her from running, and Alivia’s roan was trying to dance, though the former damane controlled the animal as easily as Cadsuane did her bay. Alivia sometimes displayed surprising talents. Damane were expected to ride well.