Knife of Dreams

Chapter Eleven A Hell in Maderin

Despite the late hours kept by everyone that night, the show made a very early start the next morning. Grainy-eyed and groggy, Mat trudged out of his tent while the sky was still dark to find men and women with lanterns trotting to get ready when they were not running, and nearly everyone shouting for somebody or other to move faster. Many had the unsteady step of people who had not slept. Everyone seemed to feel that the farther they could get from where that village had vanished in front ot their eyes, the better. Luca’s great gaudy wagon took to the road before the sun had cleared the horizon, and once again he set a goodly pace. Two merchants’ trains of twenty or so wagons each passed them heading south, and a slow caravan of Tinkers, but nothing going the other way. The farther, the better.

Mat rode with Tuon, and Selucia made no attempt to put the dun between them, yet there was no conversation however much he tried to start one. Save for an occasional unreadable glance when he made a sally or told a joke, Tuon rode looking straight ahead, the cowl of her blue cloak hiding her face. Even juggling failed to catch her attention. There was something broody about her silence, and it worried him. When a woman went silent on you, there usually was trouble in the offing. When she brooded, you could forget about usually. He doubted it was the village of the dead that had her fretting. She was too tough for that. No, there was trouble ahead.

Little more than an hour after they set out, a farm on rolling ground hove into sight, with dozens of black-faced goats cropping grass in a wide pasture and a large olive grove. Boys weeding among the rows of dark-leaved olive trees dropped their hoes and rushed down to the stone fences to watch the show pass, shouting with excitement to know who they were and where they were going and where coming from. Men and women came out of the sprawling tile-roofed farmhouse and two big thatch-roofed barns, shading their eyes to watch. Mat was relieved to see it. The dead paid no mind to the living.

As the show rolled onward, farms and olive groves grew thicker on the ground until they ran side by side, pushing the forest back a mile or more on either side of the road, and well short of midmorning they reached a prosperous town somewhat larger than Jurador. A merchant’s long train of canvas-topped wagons was turning in at the main gates, where half a dozen men in polished conical helmets and leather coats sewn with steel discs stood guard with halberds. More men, cradling crossbows, kept watch atop the two gate towers. But if the Lord of Maderin, one Nathin Sarmain Vendare, expected trouble, the guards were the only sign of it. Farms and olive groves reached right to the stone walls of Maderin, an unsound practice, and right costly should the town ever need to be defended. Luca had to bargain with a farmer for the right to set up the show in an unused pasture and came back muttering that he had just bought the scoundrel a new flock of goats or maybe two. But the canvas wall was soon rising, with Luca chivvying everyone for speed. They were to perform today and leave early in the morning. Very early. Nobody complained, or much said an unneeded word. The farther, the better.

“And tell no one what you saw,” Luca cautioned more than once. “We saw nothing out of the ordinary. We wouldn’t want to frighten the patrons away.” People looked at him as if he were insane. No one wanted to think of that melting village or the peddler, much less speak of them.

Mat was sitting in his tent in his shirtsleeves, waiting for Thorn and Juilin to return from their trip into the town to learn whether there was a Seanchan presence. He was idly tossing a set of dice on his small table. After an early run of mostly high numbers, five single pips stared up at him ten times in a row; most men thought the Dark One’s eyes an unlucky toss.

Selucia pulled back the entry flap and strode in. Despite her plain brown divided skirts and white blouse, she managed to seem a queen entering a stable. A filthy stable, by the expression on her face, though Lopin and Nerim could have satisfied his mother when it came to cleaning.

“She wants you,” she drawled peremptorily, touching her flowered scarf to make sure her short yellow hair was covered. “Come.”

“What’s she want with me, then?” he said, and leaned his elbows on the table. He even stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. Once you let a woman think you would jump whenever she called, you never got out from under again.

“She’ll tell you. You are wasting time, Toy. She won’t be pleased.”

“If Precious expects me to come running when she crooks a finger, she better learn to like being displeased.”

Grimacing—if her mistress tolerated the name, Selucia took it for a personal affront—she folded her arms beneath that impressive bosom.

It was clear as good glass that she intended to wait there until he went with her, and he was of a mind to make it a long wait. He tossed the dice. The Dark One’s Eyes. Expecting him to jump when Tuon said toad. Hah! Another toss, spinning across the table, one die nearly going over the edge. The Dark One’s Eyes. Still, he had nothing else to do at the moment.

Even so, he took his time donning his coat, a good bronze-colored silk. By the time he picked up his hat, he could hear her foot tapping impatiently. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked. She hissed at him. She held the entry flap open, but she purely hissed like a cat.

Setalle and Tuon were sitting on one of the beds talking when he entered the purple wagon, but they cut off the instant he stepped through the door and gave him brief but appraising looks. Which told him the subject of their talk had been Mat Cauthon. It made his hackles rise. Plainly, whatever Tuon wanted was something they thought he would disapprove of. And just as plainly, she meant to have it anyway. The table was snug against the ceiling, and Selucia brushed past him to take a place behind Tuon as the tiny woman sat down on the stool, her face stern and those beautiful big eyes steady. Hang all the prisoners immediately.

“I wish to visit the common room of an inn,” she announced. “Or a tavern. I have never seen the inside of either. You will take me to one in this town, Toy.”

He let himself breathe again. “That’s easy enough. Just as soon as Thorn or Juilin lets me know it’s safe.”

“It must be a low place. What is called a hell.”

His mouth fell open. Low? Hells were the lowest of the low, dirty and dimly lit, where the ale and wine were cheap and still not worth half what you paid, the food was worse, and any woman who sat on your lap was trying to pick your pocket or cut your purse or else had two men waiting upstairs to crack you over the head as soon as you walked into her room. At any hour of the day or night you would find dice rolling in a dozen games, sometimes for surprising stakes given the surroundings. Not gold—only a stone fool displayed gold in a hell—but silver often crossed the tables. Few of the gamblers would have come by their coin by any means even halfway honest, and those few would be as hard-eyed as the headcrackers and knife-men who preyed on drunks in the night. Hells always had two or three strong-arms with cudgels about to break up fights, and most days they worked hard for their pay. They usually stopped the patrons from killing one another, but when they failed, the corpse was dragged out the back and left in an alley somewhere or on a rubbish heap. And while they were dragging, the drinking never slowed, or the gambling either. That was a hell. How had she even heard of such places?

“Did you plant this fool notion in her head?” he demanded of Setalle.

“Why, what in the Light makes you think that?” she replied, going all wide-eyed the way women did when pretending to be innocent. Or when they wanted you to think they were pretending, just to confuse you. He could not see why they bothered. Women confused him all the time without trying.

“It’s out of the question. Precious. I walk into a hell with a woman like you, and I’ll be in six knife fights inside the hour, if I survive that long.”

Tuon gave a pleased smile. Just a flicker, but definitely pleased. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so for a fact.” Which produced another brief smile of delight. Delight! The bloody woman wanted to see him in a knife fight!

“Even so. Toy, you promised.”

They were arguing over whether he had made a promise—well, he was calmly presenting the logic that saying something was easy was no promise; Tuon just stubbornly insisted he had promised, while Setalle took up her embroidery hoop and Selucia watched him with the amused air of someone watching a man try to defend the indefensible: and he did not shout, no matter what Tuon said—when a knock came at the door.

Tuon paused. “You see, Toy,” she said after a moment, “that is how it is done. You knock and then wait.” She made a simple gesture over one shoulder at her maid.

“You may enter the presence,” Selucia called, drawing herself up regally. She probably expected whoever came in to prostrate themselves!

It was Thom, in a dark blue coat and dark gray cloak that would make him unremarked in any common room or tavern, neither well-to-do nor poor. A man who could afford to pay for his own drink while listening to the gossip, or buy another man a cup of wine to pay for hearing his news and the latest rumors. He did not prostrate himself, but he did make an elegant bow despite his bad right leg. “My Lady,” he murmured to Tuon before turning his attention to Mat. “Harnan said he saw you strolling this way. I trust I’m not interrupting? I heard… voices.”

Mat scowled. He had not been shouting. “You’re not interrupting. What did you find out?”

“That there may be Seanchan in the town from time to time. No soldiers, but it seems they’re building two farm villages a few miles to the north of the road and three more a few miles south. The villagers come to town to buy things now and then.”

Mat managed to keep from smiling as he spoke over his shoulder. He even got a smattering of regret into his voice. “I’m afraid there’s no jaunt into Maderin for you, Precious. Too dangerous.”

Tuon folded her arms, emphasizing her bosom. There were more curves to her than he once had thought. Not like Selucia, certainly, but nice curves. “Farmers, Toy,” she drawled dismissively. “No farmer has ever seen my face. You promised me a tavern or a common room, and you won’t escape on this puny excuse.”

“A common room should present no difficulties,” Thom said. “It’s a pair of scissors or a new pot these farmers are after, not drink. They make their own ale, it seems, and don’t much like the local brew.”

“Thank you, Thorn,” Mat said through gritted teeth. ‘She wants to see a hell.”

The white-haired man gave a wheezing cough and knuckled his mustache vigorously. “A hell.” he muttered.

“A hell. Do you know a hell in this town where I might take her without starting a riot?” He intended the question for sarcasm, but Thorn surprised him by nodding.

“I might just know a place at that,” the man said slowly. “The White Ring. I intend to go there anyway, to see what news I can pick up.”

Mat blinked. However unremarked Thom might be elsewhere, he would be looked at askance in a hell wearing that coat. More than askance. The usual garb there was coarse dirty wool and stained linen. Besides, asking questions in a hell was a good way to have a knife planted in your back. But maybe Thom meant that this White Ring was not a hell at all. Tuon might not know the difference if the place were only a little rougher than the usual. “Should I get Harnan and the others?” he asked, testing.

“Oh, I think you and I should be protection enough for the Lady,” Thom said with what might have been the ghost of a smile, and knots loosened in Mat’s shoulders.

He still cautioned the two women—there was no question of Selucia staying behind, of course; Mistress Anan refused Tuon’s invitation to accompany them, saying she had already seen as many hells as she had any wish to—about keeping their hoods well up. Tuon might believe no farmer had ever seen her face, but if a cat could gaze on a king, as the old saying said, then a farmer might have gazed on Tuon some time or other, and it would be just their luck to have one or two of them turn up in Maderin. Being ta’veren usually seemed to twist the Pattern for the worst in his experience.

“Toy,” Tuon said gently as Selucia settled the blue cloak on her slim shoulders, “I have met many farmers while visiting the country, but they very properly kept their eyes on the ground even if I allowed them to stand. Believe me, they never saw my face.”

Oh. He went to fetch his own cloak. White clouds nearly obscured the sun, still short of its midday peak, and it was a brisk day for spring, with a strong breeze to boot.

People from the town crowded the main street of the show, men in rough woolens or sober coats of finer stuff with just a touch of embroidery on the cuffs: women, many wearing lace caps, in somber, collared dresses beneath long white aprons or dark, high-necked dresses with embroidery curling across the bosom; children darting everywhere, escaping their parents and being chased down, all of them oohing and aahing at Miyora’s leopards or Latelle’s bears, at the jugglers or Balat and Abar eating fire, the lean brothers moving in unison. Not pausing for so much as a glimpse of the female acrobats, Mat threaded through the throng with Tuon on his arm, which he assured by placing her hand on his left wrist. She hesitated a moment, then nodded slightly, a queen giving assent to a peasant. Thorn had offered his arm to Selucia, but she stayed at her mistress’s left shoulder. At least she did not try to crowd between.

Luca, in scarlet coat and cloak, was beneath the big banner at the entrance watching coins clink into the glass pitcher, clink again as they were dropped into the strongbox. He wore a smile on his face. The line waiting to get in stretched near a hundred paces along the canvas wall, and more people were trickling out of the town and heading toward che show. “I could take in a fine bit here over two or three days,” he told Mat. “After all, this place is solid, and we’re far enough from.” His smile flickered out like a snuffed candle. “You think we’re far enough, don’t you?”

Mat sighed. Gold would defeat fear every time in Valan Luca.

He could not hold his cloak closed with Tuon on his arm, so it flared behind him in the stiff breeze, yet that was to the good. The gate guards, slouching in a ragged line, eyed them curiously, and one made a sketchy bow. Silk and lace had that effect, with country armsmen, at least, and that was what these men were no matter how brightly they had burnished their helmets and coin-armor coats. Most leaned on their halberds like farmers leaning on shovels. But Thorn stopped, and Mat was forced to halt too, a few paces into the town. After all, he had no idea where The White Ring lay.

“A heavy guard, Captain,” Thom said, worry touching his voice. “Are there brigands in the area?”

“No outlaws around here,” a grizzled guard said gruffly. A puckered white scar slanting across his square face combined with a squint to give him a villainous appearance. He was not one of the leaners, and he held his halberd as if he might know how to use it. “The Seanchan cleaned out the few we hadn’t caught. Move along, now, old fellow. You re blocking the way.” There was not a wagon or cart in sight, and the few people leaving the town afoot had plenty of room. The gate arch was wide enough for two wagons abreast, though it might be a squeeze.

“The Seanchan said we didn’t set enough guards,” a stocky fellow about Mat’s age put in cheerfully, “and Lord Nathin listens close when the Seanchan talk.”

The grizzled man clouted him with a gauntleted hand on the back of his helmet hard enough to stagger him. “You watch your mouth with people from off, Keilar,” the older man growled, “else you’ll be back behind a plow before you can blink. My Lord.” he added to Mat, raising his voice, “you want to call your servant before he gets himself in trouble.”

“My apologies. Captain,” Thom said humbly, ducking his white head, the very image of a chastened serving man. “No offense meant. My apologies.”

“He would have thumped you, too, if I hadn’t been here,” Mat told him when he caught up. Thorn was limping noticeably. He must have been tired for it to show that much. “He almost did anyway. And what did you learn that was worth risking that?”

“I wouldn’t have asked without you, in that coat.” Thorn chuckled as they walked deeper into the town. “The first lesson is what questions to ask. The second, and just as important, is when and how to ask. I learned there aren’t any brigands, which is always good to know, though I’ve heard of very few bands big enough to attack something as large as the show. I learned Nathin is under the Seanchan thumb. Either he’s obeying a command with those extra guards, or he takes their suggestions as commands. And most important, I learned that Nathin’s armsmen don’t resent the Seanchan.”

Mat quirked an eyebrow at him.

“They didn’t spit when they said the name, Mat. They didn’t grimace or growl. They won’t fight the Seanchan, not unless Nathin tells them to, and he won’t.” Thorn exhaled heavily. “It’s very strange. I’ve found the same everywhere from Ebou Dar to here. These outlanders come, take charge, impose their laws, snatch up women who can channel, and if the nobles resent them, very few among the common people seem to. Unless they’ve had wife or relation collared, anyway. Very strange, and it bodes ill for getting them out again. But then. Altara is Altara. I’ll wager they’re finding a colder reception in Amadicia and Tarabon.” He shook his head. “We had best hope they are, else…” He did not say what else, but it was easy to imagine.

Mat glanced at Tuon. How did she feel hearing Thom talk about her people so? She said nothing, only walked at his side peering curiously at everything from the shelter of her cowl.

Tile-roofed buildings three and four stories tall, most of brick, lined the wide, stone-paved main street of Maderin, shops and inns with signs that swung in the stiff breeze crowded in beside stables and rich people’s homes with large lamps above the arched doorways and humbler structures that housed poorer folk, by the laundry hanging from nearly every window. Horse carts and hand-barrows laden with bales or crates or barrels slowly made their way through a moderately thick throng, men and women with brisk strides, full of that storied southern industry, children dashing about in games of catch. Tuon studied it all with equal interest. A fellow pushing a wheeled grindstone and crying that he sharpened scissors or knives till they could cut wishes caught her attention as much as a lean, hard-faced woman in leather trousers with two swords strapped to her back. Doubtless a merchant’s guard or perhaps a Hunter for the Horn, but a rarity either way. A buxom Domani in a clinging red dress that fell just short of transparent with a pair of bulky bodyguards in scale-armor jerkins at her back got neither more nor less study than a lanky one-eyed fellow in frayed wool hawking pins, needles and ribbons from a tray. He had not noticed this sort of curiosity from her in Jurador, but she had been intent on finding silk in Jurador. Here, she seemed to be trying to memorize all she saw.

Thorn soon led them off into a maze of twisting streets, most of which deserved the name only because they were paved with rough stone blocks the size of a man’s two fists. Buildings as big as those on the main street, some housing shops on the ground floor, loomed over them, almost shutting out the sky. Many of those ways were too narrow for horse carts—in some Mat would not have had to extend his arms fully to touch the walls on either side—and more than once he had to press Tuon against the front of a building to let a heavy-loaded hand-barrow rumble past over the uneven paving stones, the barrow-man calling apologies for the inconvenience without slowing. Porters trudged through that cramped warren, too, men walking bent nearly parallel to the ground, each with a bale or crate on his back held level by a padded leather roll strapped to his hips. Just the sight of them made Mat’s own back ache. They reminded him how much he hated work.

He was on the point of asking Thorn how far they had to go—Maderin was not that big a town—when they reached The White Ring, on one of those winding streets where his arms could more than compass the width of the pavement, a brick building of three floors across from a cutler’s shop. The painted sign hanging over the inn’s red door, a frilly white circle of lace, made the knots return to his shoulders. Ring, it might be called, but that was a woman’s garter if ever he had seen one. It might not be a hell, but inns with signs like that usually were rowdy enough in their own right. He eased the knives up his coatsleeves, and those in his boot tops, as well, felt the blades under his coat, shrugged just to get the feel of the one hanging behind his neck. Though if it went that far… Tuon nodded approvingly. The bloody woman was dying to see him get into a knife fight! Selucia had the sense to frown.

“Ah, yes,” Thom said. “A wise precaution.” And he checked his own knives, tightening those knots in Mat’s shoulders a little more. Thom carried almost as many blades as he did, up his sleeves, beneath his coat.

Selucia writhed her fingers at Tuon, and suddenly they were in a silent argument, fingers flashing. Of course, it could not be that—Tuon bloody well owned Selucia the same as owning a dog and you did not argue with your dog—but an argument it seemed, both women with their jaws set stubbornly. Finally, Selucia folded her hands and bowed her head in acquiescence. A reluctant submission.

“It will be well.” Tuon told her in a jollying tone. “You will see. It will be well.”

Mat wished he was sure of that. Taking a deep breath, he extended his wrist for her hand again and followed Thom.

The spacious, wood-paneled common room of The White Ring held better than two dozen men and women, nearly half obvious out-landers, at square tables beneath a thick-beamed ceiling. All neatly dressed in finely woven wool with little by way of ornamentation, most were talking quietly over their wine in pairs, cloaks draped over their low-backed chairs, though three men and a woman with long beaded braids were tossing bright red dice from a winecup at one table. Pleasant smells drifted from the kitchen, including meat roasting. Goat, most likely. Beside the wide stone fireplace, where a parsimonious fire burned and a polished brass barrel-clock sat on the mantel, a saucy-eyed young woman who rivaled Selucia—and with her blouse unlaced nearly to her waist to prove it—swayed her hips and sang, accompanied by a hammered dulcimer and a flute, a song about a woman juggling all of her lovers. She sang in a suitably bawdy voice. None of the patrons appeared to be listening.

“As I walked out one fine spring day, I met young Jac who was pitching hay, his hair so fair, and his eyes were, too.

Well. I gave him a kiss; oh, what could I do?

We snuggled and we tickled while the sun rose high, and I won’t say how often he made me sigh.”

Lowering her hood, Tuon stopped just inside the door and frowned around the room. “Are you certain this is a hell. Master Merrilin?” she asked. In a low voice, thank the Light. Some places, a question of that sort could get you thrown out and roughly, silk coat or no. In others, the prices just doubled.

“I assure you, you won’t find a bigger collection of thieves and rascals anywhere in Maderin at this hour,” Thorn murmured, stroking his mustaches.

“Nowjac gets an hour when the sky is clear, and Willi gets an hour when my father’s not near. It’s the hayloft with Mori I, for he shows no fear, and Keilin comes at midday: he’s oh so bold! Lord Brelan gets an evening when the night is cold. Master Andril gets a morning, but he’s very old. Oh, what, oh, what is a poor girl to do? My loves are so many and the hours so few.”

Tuon looked doubtful, but with Selucia at her shoulder, she walked over to stand in front of the singer, who faltered a moment at Tuon’s intense scrutiny before catching the song up again. She sang over the top of Tuon’s head, plainly attempting to ignore her. It seemed that with every other verse, the woman in the song added a new lover to her list. The male musician, playing the dulcimer, smiled at Selucia and got a frosty stare back. The two women got other looks as well, the one so small and with very short black hair, the other rivaling the singer and with her head wrapped in a scarf, but no more than glances. The patrons were intent on their own business.

“It isn’t a hell.” Mat said softly, “but what is it? Why would so many people be here in the middle of the day?” It was mornings and evenings when common rooms filled up like this.

“The locals are selling olive oil, lacquerware or lace,” Thom replied just as quietly, “and the outlanders are buying. It seems local custom is to begin with a few hours of drink and conversation. And if you have no head for it,” he added dryly, “you sober up to find you’ve made much less of a bargain than you thought in your wine.”

“Light, Thorn, she’ll never believe this place is a hell. I thought you were taking us somewhere merchants’ guards drink, or apprentices. At least she might believe that.”

“Trust me. Mat. I think you’ll find she has lived a very sheltered life in some ways.”

Sheltered? When her own brothers and sisters tried to kill her? “You wouldn’t care to wager a crown on it, would you?”

Thorn chuckled. “Always glad to take your coin.”

Tuon and Selucia came gliding back, faces expressionless. “I expected rougher garb on the patrons,” Tuon said quietly, “and perhaps a fight or two, but the song is too salacious for a respectable inn. Though she is much too covered to sing it properly, in my opinion. What is that for?” she added in tones of suspicion as Mat handed Thorn a coin.

“Oh,” Thorn said, slipping the crown into his coat pocket. “I thought you might be disappointed that only the more successful blackguards were present—they aren’t always so colorful as the poorer sort—but Mat said you’d never notice.”

She leveled a look at Mat, who opened his mouth indignantly. And closed it again. What was there to say? He was already in the pickling kettle. No need to stoke the fire.

As the innkeeper approached, a round woman with suspiciously black hair beneath a white lace cap and stuffed into a gray dress embroidered in red and green across her more than ample bosom, Thorn slipped away with a bow and a murmured. “By your leave, my Lord, my Lady.” Murmured, but loud enough for Mistress Heilin to hear.

The innkeeper had a flinty smile, yet she exercised it for a lord and lady, curtsying so deeply that she grunted straightening back up, and she seemed only a little disappointed that Mat wanted wine and perhaps food, not rooms. Her best wine. Even so, when he paid, he let her see that he had gold in his purse as well as silver. A silk coat was all very well, but gold wearing rags got better service than copper wearing silk.

“Ale.” Tuon drawled. “I’ve never tasted ale. Tell me, good mistress, is it likely any of these people will start a fight any time soon?” Mat nearly swallowed his tongue.

Mistress Heilin blinked and gave her head a small shake, as if uncertain she really had heard what she thought she had. “No need to worry, my Lady,” she said. “It happens time to time, if they get too far in their cups, but I’ll settle them down hard if it does.”

“Not on my account.” Tuon told her. “They should have their sport.”

The innkeeper’s smile went crooked and barely held, but she managed another curtsy then scurried away clutching Mat’s coin and calling, “Jera, wine for the lord and lady, a pitcher of the Kiranaille. And a mug of ale.”

“You mustn’t ask questions like that. Precious,” Mat said quietly as he escorted Tuon and Selucia to an empty table. Selucia refused a chair, taking Tuon’s cloak and draping it over the chair she held for Tuon, then standing behind it. “It isn’t polite. Besides, it lowers your eyes.” Thank the Light for those talks with Egeanin, whatever name she wanted to go by. Seanchan would do any fool thing or refuse to do what was sensible to avoid having their eyes lowered.

Tuon nodded thoughtfully. “Your customs are often very peculiar, Toy. You will have to teach me about them. I have learned some, but I must know the customs of the people I will rule in the name of the Empress, may she live forever.”

“I’ll be glad to teach you what I can,” Mat said, unpinning his cloak and letting it fall carelessly over the low back of his chair. “It will be good for you to know our ways even if you end up ruling a sight less than you expect to.” He set his hat on the table.

Tuon and Selucia gasped as one, hands darting for the hat. Tuon’s reached it first, and she quickly put it on the chair next to her. “That is very bad luck. Toy. Never put a hat on a table.” She made one of those odd gestures for warding off evil, folding under the middle two fingers and extending the other two stiffly. Selucia did the same.

“I’ll remember that,’ he said dryly. Perhaps too dryly. Tuon gave him a level look. Very level.

“I have decided you will not do for a cupbearer, Toy. Not until you learn meekness, which I almost despair of teaching you. Perhaps I will make you a running groom, instead. You are good with horses. Would you like trotting at my stirrup when I ride? The robes are much the same as for a cupbearer, but I will have yours decorated with ribbons. Pink ribbons.”

He managed to maintain a smooth face, but he felt his cheeks growing hot. There was only one way she could know pink ribbons had any special significance to him. Tylin had told her. It had to be. Burn him, women would talk about anything’.

The arrival of the serving maid with their drink saved him from having to make any response. Jera was a smiling young woman with nearly as many curves as the singer, not so well displayed yet not really concealed by the white apron she wore tied snugly. Her dark woolen dress fit quite snugly, too. Not that he gave her more than a glance, of course. He was with his wife-to-be. Anyway, only a complete woolhead looked at a woman while with another.

Jera placed a tall pewter wine pitcher and two polished pewter cups on the table and handed a thick mug of ale to Selucia, then blinked in confusion when Selucia transferred the mug to Tuon and took a cup of wine in return. He handed her a silver penny to settle her discomposure, and she gave him a beaming smile with her curtsy before darting off to another call from the innkeeper. It was unlikely she received much in the way of silver.

“You could have smiled back at her. Toy,” Tuon said, holding the mug up for a sniff and wrinkling her nose. “She is very pretty. You were so stone-faced, you probably frightened her.” She took a sip, and her eyes widened in surprise. “This actually is quite good.”

Mat sighed and took a long swallow of dark wine that smelled faintly of flowers. In none of his memories, his own or those other men’s, could he recall having understood women. Oh, one or two things here and there, but never anywhere near completely.

Sipping her ale steadily—he was not about to tell her ale was taken in swallows, not sips: she might get herself drunk deliberately, just to experience a hell fully; he was not ready to put anything past her today. Or any day—taking sips between every sentence, the maddening little woman questioned him on customs. Telling her how to behave in a hell was easy enough. Keep to yourself, ask no questions, and sit with your back to a wall if you could and near to a door in case of a need to leave suddenly. Better not to go at all, but if you had to… Yet she quickly passed on to courts and palaces, and got few answers there. He could have told her more of customs in the courts of Eharon or Shiota or a dozen other dead nations than in those of any nation that still lived. Scraps of how things were done in Caemlyn and Tear were all he really knew, and bits from Fal Dara, in Shienar. Well, that and Ebou Dar, but she already knew those ways.

“So you have traveled widely and been in other palaces than the Tarasin,” she said finally, and took the last bit of ale in her mug. He had not finished half his wine yet; he thought Selucia had not taken above two small swallows of hers. “But you are not nobly born, it seems. I thought you must not be.”

“That I am not,” he told her firmly. “Nobles…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. He could hardly tell her nobles were fools with their noses so high in the air they could not see where they were stepping. She was who and what she was, after all.

Expressionless, Tuon studied him while pushing her empty mug to one side. Still studying, she flickered the fingers of her left hand over her shoulder, and Selucia clapped her own hands together loudly. Several of the other patrons looked at them in surprise. “You called yourself a gambler,” Tuon said, “and Master Merrilin named you the luckiest man in the world.”

Jera came running, and Selucia handed her the mug. “Another, quickly,” she commanded, though not in an unkindly way. Still, she had a regal manner to her. Jera dropped a hasty curtsy and scurried off again as though she had been shouted at.

“I have luck sometimes,” Mat said cautiously.

“Let’s see whether you have any today, Toy.” Tuon looked toward the table where the dice were rattling on the tabletop.

He could see no harm in it. It was a certainty he would win more than he lost, yet he thought it unlikely one of the merchants would pull a knife however much his luck was in. He had not noticed anyone carrying one of those long belt knives that everybody wore farther south. Standing, he offered Tuon his arm, and she rested her hand lightly on his wrist. Selucia left her wine on the table and stayed close to her mistress.

Two of the Altaran men, one lean and bald except for a dark fringe, the other round-faced above three chins, scowled when he asked whether a stranger might join the game, and the third, a graying, stocky fellow with a pendulous lower lip, went stiff as a fence post. The Taraboner woman was not so unfriendly.

“Of course, of course. Why not?” she said, her speech slightly slurred. Her face was flushed, and the smile she directed at him had a slackness about it. Apparently she was one of those with no head for wine. It seemed the locals wanted to keep her happy because the scowls vanished, though the graying man remained wooden-faced. Mat fetched chairs from a nearby table for himself and Tuon. Selucia chose to remain standing behind Tuon, which was just as well. Six people crowded the table.

Jera arrived to curtsy and proffer a refilled mug to Tuon with both hands and a murmured “My Lady.” and another serving woman, graying and nearly as stout as Mistress Heilin, replaced the wine pitcher on the gambler’s table. Smiling, the bald man filled the Taraboner’s cup to the brim. They wanted her happy and drunk. She drained half the cup and with a laugh wiped her lips delicately with a lace-edged handkerchief. Getting it back up her sleeve required two tries. She would come away with no good bargains this day.

Mat watched a little play and soon recognized the game. It used four dice rather than two, but without a doubt it was a version of Phi, Match, a game that had been popular for a thousand years before Artur Hawkwing began his rise. Small piles of silver admixed with a few gold coins lay in front of each of the players, and it was a silver mark that he laid in the middle of the table to buy the dice while the stout man was gathering his winnings from the last toss. He expected no trouble from merchants, but trouble was less likely if they lost silver rather than gold.

The lean man matched the wager, and Mat rattled the crimson dice in the pewter cup, then spun them out onto the table. They came to rest showing four fives.

“Is that a winning toss?” Tuon asked.

“Not unless I match it,” Mat replied, scooping the dice back into the cup, “without tossing a fourteen or the Dark One’s eyes first.” The dice clattered in the cup, clattered across the table. Four fives. His luck was in, for sure. He slid one coin over in front of himself and left the other.

Abruptly, the graying fellow scraped back his chair and stood up. “I’ve had enough.” he muttered, and began fumbling the coins in front of him into his coat pockets. The other two Altarans stared at him incredulously.

“You’re leaving, Vane?” the lean man said. “Now?”

“I said I’ve had enough. Camrin.” the graying man growled and went stumping out into the street pursued by Camrin’s scowl at his back.

The Taraboner woman leaned over unsteadily, her beaded braids clicking on the tabletop, to pat the fat man’s wrist. “Just means I’ll buy my lacquerware from you, Master Kostelle,” she said fuzzily. “You and Master Camrin.”

Kostelle’s triple chins wobbled as he chuckled. “So it does. Mistress Alstaing. So it does. Doesn’t it, Camrin?”

“I suppose,” the bald man replied grumpily. “I suppose.” He shoved a mark out to match Mat’s.

Once again the dice spun across the table. This time, they came up totaling fourteen.

“Oh,” Tuon said, sounding disappointed. “You lost.”

“I won, Precious. That’s a winning toss if it’s your first.” He left his original bet in the middle of the table. “Another?” he said with a grin.

His luck was in, all right, as strong as it had ever been. The bright red dice rolled across the table, bounced across the table, ricocheted off the wagered coins sometimes, and toss after toss they came to rest showing fourteen white pips. He made fourteen every way it could be made. Even at one coin to a wager, the silver in front of him grew to a tidy sum. Half the people in the common room came to stand around the table and watch. He grinned at Tuon, who gave him a slight nod. He had missed this, dice in a common room or tavern, coin on the table, wondering how long his luck would hold. And a pretty woman at his side while he gambled. He wanted to laugh with pleasure.

As he was shaking the dice in the cup again, the Taraboner merchant glanced at him, and for an instant, she did not look drunk at all. Suddenly, he no longer felt like laughing. Her face slackened immediately, and her eyes became a tad unfocused once more, but for that instant they had been awls. She had a much better head for wine than he had supposed. It seemed Camrin and Kostelle would not get away with fobbing off shoddy work at top prices or whatever their scheme had been. What concerned him, though, was that the woman was suspicious of him. Come to think, she herself had not risked a coin against him. The two Altarans were frowning at him, but just the way men who were losing frowned over their bad luck. She thought he had found some way to cheat. Never mind that he was using their dice, or more likely the inn’s dice; an accusation of cheating could get a man a drubbing even in a merchants’ inn. Men seldom waited on proof of that charge.

“One last toss.” he said, “and I think I’ll call it done. Mistress Heilin?” The innkeeper was among the onlookers. He handed her a small handful of his new-won silver coins. “To celebrate my good fortune, serve everybody what they want to drink until those run out.” That brought appreciative murmurs, and someone behind him clapped him on the back. A man drinking your wine was less likely to believe you had bought it with cheated coin. Or at least they might hesitate long enough to give him a chance to get Tuon out.

“He can’t keep this run going forever,” Camrin muttered, scrubbing a hand through the hair he no longer possessed. “What say you, Kostelle? Halves?” Fingering a gold crown free of the coins piled in front of him, he slid it over beside Mat’s silver mark. “If there’s only to be one more toss, let’s make a real wager on it. Bad luck has to follow this much good.” Kostelle hesitated, rubbing his chins in thought, then nodded and added a gold crown of his own.

Mat sighed. He could refuse the bet, but walking away now might well trigger Mistress Alstaing’s charge. So could winning this toss. Reluctantly he pushed out silver marks to match their gold. That left only two in front of him. He gave the cup an extra heavy shake before spilling the dice onto the table. He did not expect that to alter anything. He was just venting his feelings.

The red dice tumbled across the tabletop, hit the piled coins and bounced back, spinning before they fell to a stop. Each showing a single pip. The Dark One’s Eyes.

Laughing just as if it were not just their own coin won back, Camrin and Kostelle began dividing their winnings. The watchers started drifting away, calling congratulations to the two merchants, murmuring words of commiseration to Mat, some lifting the cup he was paying for in his direction. Mistress Alstaing took a long pull at her winecup, studying him over the rim, to all outward appearance as drunk as a goose. He doubted she thought he had been cheating any longer, not when he was walking away with only one mark more than he sat down with. Sometimes bad luck could turn out to be good.

“So your luck is not endless, Toy,” Tuon said as he escorted her back to their table. “Or is it that you are lucky only in small things?”

“Nobody has endless luck, Precious. Myself, I think that last toss was one of the luckiest I’ve ever made.” He explained about the Taraboner woman’s suspicions, and why he had bought wine for the whole common room.

At the table, he held her chair for her, but she remained standing, looking at him. “You may do very well in Seandar,” she said finally, thrusting her nearly empty mug at him. “Guard this until I return.”

He straightened in alarm. “Where are you going?” He trusted her not to run away, but not to stay out of trouble without him there to pull her out of it.

She put on a long-suffering face. Even that was beautiful. “If you must know, I am going to the necessary, Toy.”

“Oh. The innkeeper can tell you where it is. Or one of the serving women.”

“Thank you, Toy,” she said sweetly. “I’d never have thought to ask.” She waggled her fingers at Selucia, and the two of them walked toward the back of the common room having one of their silent talks and giggling.

Sitting down, he scowled into his winecup. Women seemed to enjoy finding ways to make you feel a fool. And he was half-married to this one.

“Where are the women?” Thom asked, dropping down into the chair beside Mat and setting a nearly full winecup on the table. He grunted when Mat explained, and went on in a low voice, leaning his elbows on the table to put his head close. “We have trouble behind and ahead. Far enough ahead that it may not bother us here, but best we leave as soon as they return.”

Mat sat up straight. “What kind of trouble?”

“Some of those merchant trains that passed us the last few days brought news of a murder in Jurador about the time we left. Maybe a day or two later; it’s hard to be sure. A man was found in his own bed with his throat ripped, only there wasn’t enough blood.” He had no need to say more.

Mat took a long pull at his wine. The bloody gholam was still following him. How had it found out he was with Luca’s show? But if it was still a day or two behind at the pace the show was making, likely it would not catch up to him soon. He fingered the silver foxhead through his coat. At least he had a way to fight it if it did appear. The thing carried a scar he had given it. “And the trouble ahead?”

“There’s a Seanchan army on the border of Murandy. How they assembled it without my learning about it before this…” He puffed out his mustaches, offended by his failure. “Well, no matter. Everybody who passes through they make drink a cup of some herbal tea.”

“Tea?” Mat said in disbelief. “Where’s the trouble in tea?”

“Every so often, this tea makes a woman go unsteady in her legs, and then the sul’dam come and collar her. But that’s not the worst. They’re looking very hard for a slight, dark young Seanchan woman.”

“Well, of course they are. Did you expect they wouldn’t be? This solves my biggest problem. Thorn. When we get closer, we can leave the show, take to the forest. Tuon and Selucia can travel on with Luca. Luca will like being the hero who returned their Daughter of the Nine Moons to them.”

Thom shook his head gravely. “They’re looking for an impostor, Mat. Somebody claiming to be the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Except the description fits her too closely. They don’t talk about it openly, but there are always men who drink too much, and some always talk too much as well when they do. They mean to kill her when they find her. Something about blotting out the shame she caused.”

“Light!” Mat breathed. “How could that be, Thom? Whatever general commands that army must know her face, wouldn’t he? And other officers, too, I’d think. There must be nobles who know her.”

“Won’t do her much good if they do. Even the lowest soldier will slit her throat or bash in her head as soon as she’s found. I had that from three different merchants, Mat. Even if they’re all wrong, are you willing to take the chance?”

Mat was not, and over their wine they began planning. Not that they did much drinking. Thom seldom did anymore for all his visits to common rooms and taverns, and Mat wanted a clear head.

“Luca will scream over letting us have enough horses to mount everyone whatever you pay him,” Thom said at one point. “And there are packhorses for supplies if we’re taking to the forest.”

“Then I’ll start buying, Thom. By the time we have to go, we’ll have as many as we need. I’ll wager I can find a few good animals right here. Vanin has a good eye, too. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he pays for them.” Thom nodded doubtfully. He was not so certain how reformed Vanin was.

“Aludra’s coming with us?” the white-haired man said in surprise a little later. “She’ll want to take all of her paraphernalia. That’ll mean more packhorses.”

“We have time, Thom. The border of Murandy is a long way, yet. I mean to head north into Andor, or east if Vanin knows a way through the mountains. Better east.” Any way Vanin knew would be a smuggler’s path, a horsethief’s escape route. There would be much less chance of unfortunate encounters along something like that. The Seanchan could be almost anywhere in Altara, and the way north took him nearer that army than he liked.

Tuon and Selucia appeared from the back of the common room, and he stood, taking up Tuon’s cloak from her chair. Thorn rose, too, lifting Selucia’s cloak. “We’re leaving.” Mat said, trying to place the cloak around Tuon. Selucia snatched it out of his hands.

“I haven’t seen even one fight yet.” Tuon protested, too loudly. Any number of people turned to stare, merchants and serving women.

“I’ll explain outside,” he told her quietly. “Away from prying ears.”

Tuon stared up at him, expressionless. He knew she was tough, but she was so tiny, like a pretty doll, that it was easy to believe she would break if handled roughly. He was going to do whatever was necessary to make sure she was not put in danger of being broken. Whatever it took. Finally she nodded and let Selucia place the blue cloak on her shoulders. Thorn attempted to do the same for the yellow-haired woman, but she took it away from him and donned it herself. Mat could not recall ever seeing her let anyone help her with her cloak.

The crooked street outside was empty of human life. A slat-ribbed brown dog eyed them warily, then trotted away around the nearest bend. Mat moved nearly as quickly in the other direction, explaining as they went. If he had expected shock or dismay, he would have been disappointed.

“It could be Ravashi or Chimal.” the little woman said thoughtfully, as if having an entire Seanchan army out to kill her were no more than an idle distraction. “My two nearest sisters in age. Aurana is too young, I think, only eight. Fourteen, you would say. Chimal is quiet in her ambition, but Ravashi has always believed she should have been named just because she is older. She might well have sent someone to plant rumors should I disappear for a time. It is really quite clever of her. If she is the one.” Just as coolly as talking about whether it might rain.

“This plot could be dealt with easily if the High Lady were in the Tarasin Palace where she belongs,” Selucia said, and coolness vanished from Tuon.

Oh, her face became as chill as that of an executioner, but she rounded on her maid, fingers flashing so furiously they should have been striking sparks. Selucia’s face went pale, and she sank to her knees, head down and huddling. Her fingers gestured briefly, and Tuon let her own hands fall, stood looking down at the scarf-covered top of Selucia’s head, breathing heavily. After a moment, she bent and lifted the other woman to her feet. Standing very close, she said something very short in that finger-talk. Selucia replied silently, Tuon made the same gestures again, and they exchanged tremulous smiles. Tears glistened in their eyes. Tears!

“Will you tell me what that was all about?” Mat demanded. They turned their heads to study him.

“What are your plans, Toy?” Tuon asked at last.

“Not Ebou Dar, if that’s what you’re thinking. Precious. If one army is out to kill you, then they probably all are, and there are too many soldiers between here and Ebou Dar. But don’t worry: I’ll find some way to get you back safely.”

“So you always…” Her eyes went past him, widening, and he looked over his shoulder to see seven or eight men round the last bend in the street. Every man had an unsheathed sword in his hand. Their steps quickened at sight of him.

“Run, Tuon!” he shouted, spinning to face their attackers. “Thom get her away from here!” A knife came into either hand from his sleeves, and he threw them almost as one. The left-hand blade took a graying man in the eye, the right-hand a skinny fellow in the throat. They dropped as if their bones had melted, but before their swords clattered on the paving stones, he had already snatched another pair of knives from his boot tops and was sprinting toward them.

It took them by surprise, losing two of their number so quickly, and him closing the distance instead of trying to flee. But with him so close so quickly, and them jamming against one another on that narrow street, they lost most of the advantage that swords gave them over his knives. Not all, unfortunately. His blades could deflect a sword, but he only bothered when someone drew back for a thrust. In short order he had a fine collection of gashes, across his ribs, on his left thigh, along the right side of his jaw, a cut that would have laid open his throat had he not jerked aside in time. But had he tried to flee, they would have run him through from behind. Alive and bleeding was better than dead.

His hands moved as fast as ever they had, short moves, almost delicate. Flamboyance would have killed him. One knife slipped into a fat man’s heart and out again before the fellow’s knees began to crumple. He sliced inside the elbow of a man built like a blacksmith, who dropped his sword and awkwardly drew his belt knife with his left hand. Mat ignored him; the fellow was already staggering from blood loss before his blade cleared the scabbard. A square-faced man gasped as Mat sliced open the side of his neck. He clapped a hand to the wound, but he only managed to totter back two steps before he fell. As men died, the others gained room, but Mat moved faster still, dancing so that a falling man shielded him from another’s sword while he closed inside the sword-arc of a third. To him, the world consisted of his two knives and the men crowding each other to get at him, and his knives sought the places where men bleed most heavily. Some of those ancient memories came from men who had not been very nice at all.

And then, miracle of miracles, bleeding profusely, but his blood too hot to let him feel the full pain yet, he was facing the last, one he had not noticed before. She was young and slim in a ragged dress, and she might have been pretty had her face been clean, had her teeth not been showing in a rictus snarl. The dagger she was tossing from hand to hand had a double-edged blade twice the length of his hand.

“You can’t hope to finish alone what the others failed in together,” he told her. “Run. I’ll let you go unharmed.”

With a cry like a feral cat, she rushed at him slashing and stabbing wildly. All he could do was dance backwards awkwardly, trying to fend her off. His boot slid in a patch of blood, and as he staggered, he knew he was about to die.

Abruptly Tuon was there, left hand seizing the young woman’s wrist—not the wrist of her knife hand, worse luck—twisting so the arm went stiff and the girl was forced to double over. And then it mattered not at all which hand held her knife, because Tuon’s right hand swept across, bladed like an axe, and struck her throat so hard that he heard the cartilage cracking. Choking, she clutched her ruined throat and sagged to her knees, then fell over still sucking hoarsely for breath.

“I told you to run,” Mat said, not sure which of the two he was addressing.

“You very nearly let her kill you, Toy,” Tuon said severely. “Why?”

“I promised myself I’d never kill another woman,” he said wearily. His blood was beginning to cool, and Light, he hurt! “Looks like I’ve ruined this coat,” he muttered, fingering one of the blood-soaked slashes. The motion brought a wince. When had he been gashed on the left arm?

Her gaze seemed to bore into his skull, and she nodded as if she had come to some conclusion.

Thorn and Selucia were standing a little down the street, in front of the reason Tuon was still there, better than half a dozen bodies sprawled on the paving stones. Thorn had a knife in either hand and was allowing Selucia to examine a wound on his ribs through the rent in his coat. Oddly, by evidence of the dark glistening patches on his coat, he seemed to have fewer injuries than Mat. Mat wondered whether Tuon had taken part there, too, but he could not see a spot of blood on her anywhere. Selucia had a bloody gash down her left arm, though it appeared not to hinder her.

“I’m an old man,” Thorn said suddenly, “and sometimes I imagine I see things that can’t be, but luckily, I always forget them.”

Selucia paused to look up at him coolly. Lady’s maid she might be, but blood seemed not to faze her at all. “And what might you be trying to forget?”

“I can’t recall,” Thorn replied. Selucia nodded and went back to examining his wounds.

Mat shook his head. Sometimes he was not entirely sure Thorn still had all his wits. For that matter, Selucia seemed a shovel shy of a full load now and then, too.

“This one can’t live to be put to the question.” Tuon drawled, frowning at the woman choking and twitching at her feet, “and she can’t talk if she somehow managed to.’ Bending fluidly, she scooped up the woman’s knife and drove it hard beneath the woman’s breastbone. That rasping fight for air went silent; glazing eyes stared up at the narrow strip of sky overhead. “A mercy she did not deserve, but I see no point to needless suffering. I won. Toy.”

“You won? What are you talking about?”

“You used my name before I used yours, so I won.”

Mat whistled faintly through his teeth. Whenever he thought he knew how tough she was, she found a way to show him he did not know the half. If anybody happened to be looking out a window, that stabbing might raise questions with the local magistrate, probably Lord Nathin himself. But there were no faces at any window he could see. People avoided getting embroiled in this sort of thing if they could. For all he knew, any number of porters or barrow-men might have come along during the fight. For a certainty, they would have turned right around again as quickly as they could. Whether any might have gone for Lord Nathin’s guards was another question. Still, he had no fear of Nathin or his magistrate. A pair of men escorting two women did not decide to attack more than a dozen carrying swords. Likely these fellows, and the unfortunate young woman, were well known to the guards.

Limping to retrieve his thrown knives, he paused in the act of pulling the blade from the graying man’s eye. He had not really taken in that face, before. Everything had happened too quickly for more than general impressions. Carefully wiping the knife on the man’s coat, he tucked it away up his sleeve as he straightened. “Our plans have changed. Thorn. We’re leaving Maderin as fast as we can, and we’re leaving the show as fast as we can. Luca will want to be rid of us so much that he’ll let us have all the horses we need.”

“This must be reported, Toy,” Tuon said severely. “Failure to do so is as lawless as what they did.”

“You know that fellow?” Thorn said.

Mat nodded. “His name is Vane, and I don’t think anybody in this town will believe a respectable merchant attacked us in the street. Luca will give us horses to be rid of this.” It was very strange. The man had not lost a coin to him, had not wagered a coin. So, why? Very strange indeed. And reason enough to be gone quickly.