Knife of Dreams (125 page)

They heard him out, every face as blank as if they were stunned. They schooled themselves well. Or perhaps they were stunned at Merrilin’s plan apparently unraveling at the last instant.

Merrilin stroked one of his white mustaches with a long finger. He seemed to be hiding a smile. “I fear you have mistaken me, Banner-General
Karede.” For the space of a sentence his voice became extremely resonant. “I am a gleeman, a position higher than court-bard to be sure, but no general. The man you want is Lord Matrim Cauthon.” He made a small bow toward the young man, who was settling his flat-topped hat back on his head.

Karede frowned. Tylin’s
Toy
was the general? Were they playing a game with him?

“You have about a hundred men, Deathwatch Guards, and maybe twenty Gardeners,” Cauthon said calmly. “From what I hear, that could make an even fight against five times their number for most soldiers, but the Band aren’t most soldiers, and I have a sight more than six hundred. As for Chisen, if that’s the fellow who pulled back through the Narrows, even if he has figured out what I was up to, he couldn’t get back in less than five days. My scouts’ last reports had him pushing southwest along the Ebou Dar Road as fast he could march. The real question is this, though. Can you get Tuon to the Tarasin Palace safely?”

Karede felt as if Hartha had kicked him in the belly, and not only because the man had used the High Lady’s name so casually. “You mean to let me take her away?” he said incredulously.

“If she trusts you. If you can get her to the palace safely. She’s in danger till she reaches that. In case you don’t know it, your whole bloody Ever Victorious flaming Army is ready to slit her throat or bash in her head with a rock.”

“I know,” Karede said, more calmly than he felt. Why would this man just release the High Lady after the White Tower had gone to all the trouble of kidnapping her? Why, after fighting that short, bloody campaign? “We will die to the man if that is what is needed to see her safe. It will be best if we set out immediately.” Before the man changed his mind. Before Karede woke from this fever-dream. It surely seemed a fever-dream.

“Not so fast.” Cauthon turned toward the High Lady. “Tuon, do you trust this man to see you safe to the palace in Ebou Dar?” Karede stifled an impulse to wince. General and lord the man might be, but he had no right to use the High Lady’s name so!

“I trust the Deathwatch Guards with my life,” the High Lady replied calmly, “and him more than any other.” She favored Karede with a smile. Even as a child, smiles from her had been rare. “Do you by any chance still have my doll, Banner-General Karede?”

He bowed to her formally. The manner of her speaking told him she
was still under the veil. “Forgiveness, High Lady. I lost everything in the Great Fire of Sohima.”

“That means you kept it for ten years. You have my commiseration on the loss of your wife, and of your son, though he died bravely and well. Few men will enter a burning building once. He saved five people before he was overcome.”

Karede’s throat tightened. She had followed news of him. All he could do was bow again, more deeply.

“Enough of that,” Cauthon muttered. “You’re going to knock your head on the ground if you keep that up. As soon as she and Selucia can get their things together, you take them out of here and ride hard. Talmanes, roust the Band. It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Karede, but I think I’ll sleep easier beyond the Narrows.”

“Matrim Cauthon is my husband,” the High Lady said in a loud, clear voice. Everyone froze where they stood. “Matrim Cauthon is my husband.”

Karede felt as if Hartha had kicked him again. No, not Hartha. Aldazar. What madness was this? Cauthon looked like a man watching an arrow fly toward his face, knowing he had no chance to dodge.

“Bloody Matrim Cauthon is my husband. That
is
the wording you used, is it not?”

This had to be a fever-dream.

It took a minute before Mat could speak. Burn him, it seemed to take a bloody hour before he could move. When he could, he snatched off his hat, strode to Tuon and seized the razor’s bridle. She looked down at him, cool as any queen on a bloody throne. All those battles with the flaming dice rattling away in his head, all those skirmishes and raids, and they had to stop when she said a few words. Well, at least this time he knew what had happened that was bloody fateful for Mat bloody Cauthon. “Why? I mean, I knew you were going to sooner or later, but why now? I like you, maybe more than like you, and I enjoy kissing you,” he thought Karede grunted, “but you haven’t behaved like a woman in love. You’re ice half the time and spend most of the rest digging under my skin.”

“Love?” Tuon sounded surprised. “Perhaps we will come to love one another, Matrim, but I have always known I would marry to serve the Empire. What do you mean, you
knew
that I was going to speak the words?”

“Call me Mat.” Only his mother had ever called him Matrim, when he was in trouble, and his sisters when they were carrying tales to get him in trouble.

“Your name is Matrim. What did you mean?”

He sighed. The woman never wanted much. Just her own way. Like just about every other woman he had ever known. “I went through a
ter’angreal
to somewhere else, another world maybe. The people there aren’t really people—they look like snakes—but they’ll answer three questions for you, and their answers are always true. One of mine was that I’d marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. But you haven’t answered my question. Why now?”

A faint smile on her lips, Tuon leaned down from her saddle. And rapped him hard on the top of his head with her knuckles! “Your superstitions are bad enough, Matrim, but I won’t tolerate lies. An amusing lie, true, but still a lie.”

“It’s the Light’s own truth,” he protested, clapping his hat on. Maybe it would give him some protection. “You could learn for yourself if you could make yourself talk to an Aes Sedai. They could tell you about the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn.”

“It could be the truth,” Edesina piped up as if she were being helpful. “The Aelfinn can be reached through a
ter’angreal
in the Stone of Tear, so I understand, and supposedly they give true answers.” Mat glared at her. A fat lot of help she was, with her “so I understands” and “supposedlies.” Tuon continued to stare at him as if Edesina had not opened her mouth.

“I answered your question, Tuon, so you answer mine.”

“You know that
damane
can tell fortunes?” She gave him a stern look, likely expecting him to call it superstition, but he nodded curtly. Some Aes Sedai could Foretell the future. Why not a
damane
? “I asked Lidya to tell mine just before I landed at Ebou Dar. This is what she said. ‘Beware the fox that makes the ravens fly, for he will marry you and carry you away. Beware the man who remembers Hawkwing’s face, for he will marry you and set you free. Beware the man of the red hand, for him you will marry and none other.’ It was your ring that caught my eye first.” He thumbed the long ring unconsciously, and she smiled. A small smile, but a smile. “A fox apparently startling two ravens into flight and nine crescent moons. Suggestive, wouldn’t you say? And just now you fulfilled the second part, so I knew for certain it was you.” Selucia made a sound in her throat, and Tuon waggled fingers at her. The bosomy little woman subsided, adjusting
her head scarf, but the look she shot at Mat should have been accompanied by a dagger in her hand.

He laughed mirthlessly. Blood and bloody ashes. The ring was a carver’s try-piece, bought only because it stuck on his finger; he would give up those memories of Hawkwing’s face along with every other old memory, if it would get the bloody snakes out of his head; and yet those things had gained him a wife. The Band of the Red Hand would never have existed without those old memories of battles.

“Seems to me being
ta’veren
works on me as much as it does on anybody else.” For a moment, he thought she was going to rap him again. He gave her his best smile. “One more kiss before you leave?”

“I’m not in the mood at the moment,” she said coolly. That hanging magistrate was back. All prisoners to be condemned immediately. “Perhaps later. You could return to Ebou Dar with me. You have an honored place in the Empire, now.”

He did not hesitate before shaking his head. There was no honored place waiting for Leilwin or Domon, no place at all for the Aes Sedai or the Band. “The next time I see Seanchan, I expect it will be on the field somewhere, Tuon.” Burn him, it would be. His life seemed to run that way no matter what he did. “You’re not my enemy, but your Empire is.”

“Nor are you my enemy, husband,” she said coolly, “but I live to serve the Empire.”

“Well, I suppose you’d better get your things. . . .” He trailed off at the sound of a cantering horse approaching.

Vanin reined in a rangy gray beside Tuon, eyed Karede and the other Deathwatch Guards, then spat through a gap in his teeth and leaned on the high pommel of his saddle. “There’s ten thousand or so soldiers at a little town about five miles west of here,” the fat man told Mat. “Only one man Seanchan, near as I could learn. Rest are Altarans, Taraboners, Amadicians. All mounted. Thing is, they’re asking after fellows wearing armor like that.” He nodded toward Karede. “And rumor says the one of them that kills a girl that sounds a lot like the High Lady gets himself a hundred thousand crowns gold. Their mouths are dripping for it.”

“I can slip past them,” Karede said. His bluff face looked fatherly. His voice sounded like a drawn sword.

“And if you can’t?” Mat asked quietly. “It can’t be chance they’re this close. They’ve caught some sniff of you. One more smell might be all it takes to kill Tuon.” Karede’s face darkened.

“Do you intend to go back on your word?” A drawn blade that might be used soon. Worse, Tuon was watching, looking at Mat like that hanging magistrate in truth. Burn him, if she died, something would shrivel up inside him. And the only way to stop it, to be sure it was stopped, was to do what he hated worse than work. Once, he had thought that fighting battles, much as he hated it, was still better than work. Near enough nine hundred dead in the space of a few days had changed his mind.

“No,” he said. “She goes with you. But you leave me a dozen of your Deathwatch Guards and some of the Gardeners. If I’m going to take these people off your back, I need them to think I’m you.”

Tuon abandoned most of the clothing Matrim had bought for her, since she would need to travel light. The little cluster of red silk rosebuds he had given her she tucked away in her saddlebags, folded in a linen cloth, as carefully as if it were blown glass. She had no farewells to make except for Mistress Anan—she really would miss their discussions—so she and Selucia were ready to ride quickly. Mylen smiled so broadly at the sight of her that she had to pat the little
damane
. It seemed that word of what had happened had spread, because as they rode through the camp with the Deathwatch Guards, men of the Band stood and bowed to her. It was very like reviewing regiments in Seandar.

“What do you make of him?” she asked Karede once they were away from the soldiers and beginning to canter. There was no need to say which “he” she meant.

“It is not my place to make judgments, High Lady,” he said gravely. His head swivelled, keeping watch on the surrounding trees. “I serve the Empire and the Empress, may she live forever.”

“As do we all, Banner-General. But I ask your judgment.”

“A good general, High Lady,” he replied without hesitation. “Brave, but not overly brave. He won’t get himself killed just to show how brave he is, I think. And he is . . . adaptable. A man of many layers. And if you will forgive me, High Lady, a man in love with you. I saw how he looked at you.”

In love with her? Perhaps. She thought she might be able to come to love him. Her mother had loved her father, it was said. And a man of many layers? Matrim Cauthon made an onion look like an apple! She rubbed a hand over her head. She still was not accustomed to the feel of hair on her head. “I will need a razor first thing.”

“It may be best to wait until Ebou Dar, High Lady.”

“No,” she said gently. “If I die, I will die as who I am. I have removed the veil.”

“As you say, Highness.” Smiling, he saluted, gauntleted fist striking over his heart hard enough that steel clanged on steel. “If we die, we will die as who we are.”