Knife of Dreams (43 page)

Finishing with Caemlyn, Luca gathered himself with a spark of his usual grandiosity. The man strutted. “And from there,” he announced, “to Tar Valon itself. I will hire ships to carry us all.” Mat did choke at that. Luca would hire
ships
?
Luca
, who was tight enough to render mice for tallow? “Such crowds will come in Tar Valon that we could spend the rest of our lives in that vast city’s splendor, where Ogier-built shops seem like palaces and palaces are beyond description. Rulers seeing Tar Valon for the first time weep that their cities are villages and their own palaces no more than peasant’s huts. The White Tower itself is in Tar Valon, remember, the greatest structure in the world. The Amyrlin Seat herself will ask us to perform before her. We have given shelter to three Aes Sedai in need. Who can believe they will do other than speak for us with the Amyrlin Seat?”

Mat looked over his shoulder, and found the three sisters no longer wandering about the meadow where the village had vanished. Instead, they stood side by side in the road watching him, perfect images of Aes Sedai serenity. No, they were not watching him, he realized. They were studying Tuon. The three had agreed not to bother her anymore, and being Aes Sedai, were bound by that, but how far did an Aes Sedai’s word ever go? They found ways around the Oath against lying all the time. So Tuon would not get to see Caemlyn, and perhaps not Lugard. Chances were, there would be Aes Sedai in both cities. What easier for Joline and the others than to inform those Aes Sedai that Tuon was a Seanchan High Lady? In all likelihood, Tuon would be on her way to Tar Valon before he could blink. As a
“guest,” of course, to help stop the fighting. No doubt many would say that would be for the good, that he should hand her over himself and tell them who she really was, but he had given his word. He began to calculate how near to Lugard he dared wait before finding her passage back to Ebou Dar.

Luca had had a difficult time making Tar Valon sound greater than Caemlyn after his spiel on that city, and if they ever reached Tar Valon, some might actually be disappointed comparing his mad descriptions—the White Tower a thousand paces high? Ogier-built palaces the size of small mountains? he claimed there was an Ogier
stedding
actually inside the city!—but finally he called for a show of hands in favor of pressing on. Every hand shot up, even the children’s hands, and they had no vote.

Mat pulled a purse from his coat pocket and handed over an Ebou Dari crown. “I never enjoyed losing more, Thom.” Well, he
never
enjoyed losing, but in this instance it was better than winning.

Thom accepted with a small bow. “I think I’ll keep this as a memento,” he said, rolling the fat gold coin across the back of his fingers. “To remind me that even the luckiest man in the world can lose.”

For all of the show of hands, there was a shadow of reluctance to cross that patch of road ahead. After Luca got his wagon back onto the road, he sat staring, with Latelle clinging to his arm as hard as Amathera ever clung to Juilin. Finally, he muttered something that might have been an oath and whipped his team up with the reins. By the time they reached the fatal stretch, they were at a gallop, and Luca kept them there until well beyond where the paving stones had been. It was the same with every wagon. A pause, waiting until the wagon ahead was clear, then a flailing of reins and a hard gallop. Mat himself drew a deep breath before heeling Pips forward. At a walk, not a gallop, but it was hard not to dig his heels in, especially when passing the peddler’s hat. Tuon’s dark face and Selucia’s pale displayed no more emotion than Aes Sedai’s faces did.

“I will see Tar Valon one day,” Tuon said calmly in the middle of that. “I shall probably make it my capital. I shall have you show me the city, Toy. You
have
been there?”

Light! She was a tough little woman. Gorgeous, but definitely tough as nails.

After slowing from his gallop, Luca set the pace at a fast walk rather than the show’s usual amble. The sun slid lower, and they passed several roadside meadows sufficiently large to hold the show, but Luca pressed on until their shadows stretched long ahead of them and the sun was a fat red
ball on the horizon. Even then he sat holding the reins and peering at a grassy expanse beside the road.

“It’s just a field,” he said at last, too loudly, and turned his team toward it.

Mat accompanied Tuon and Selucia to the purple wagon once the horses had been handed over to Metwyn, but there was to be no meal or games of stones with her that night.

“This is a night for prayer,” she told him before going in with her maid. “Do you know nothing, Toy? The dead walking is a sign that Tarmon Gai’don is near.” He did not take this for one of her superstitions; after all, he had thought something very like that himself. He was not much for praying, yet he offered a small one then and there. Sometimes there was nothing else to do.

No one wanted to sleep, so lamps burned late throughout the camp. No one wanted to be alone, either. Mat ate by himself in his tent, with little appetite and the dice in his head sounding louder than ever, but Thom came to play stones just as he finished, and Noal soon after. Lopin and Nerim popped in every few minutes, bowing and inquiring whether Mat or the others wanted anything, but once they fetched wine and cups—Lopin carried the tall pottery jar and broke the wax seal; Nerim carried the cups on a wooden tray—Mat told them to find Harnan and the other soldiers.

“I don’t doubt they’re getting drunk, which seems a good notion to me,” he said. “That’s an order. You tell them I said to share.”

Lopin bowed gravely over his round belly. “I have assisted the file leader now and again by procuring a few items for him, my Lord. I expect he will be generous with the brandy. Come along, Nerim. Lord Mat wants us to get drunk, and you are getting drunk with me if I have to sit on you and pour brandy down your throat.” The abstemious Cairhienin’s narrow face grew pinched with disapproval, but he bowed and followed the Tairen out with alacrity. Mat did not think Lopin would need to sit on the man, not tonight.

Juilin came with Amathera and Olver, so games of Snakes and Foxes, played sprawled on the ground-cloth, were added to stones played at the small table. Amathera proved an adequate player at stones, unsurprising given that she had been a ruler once, but her mouth became even more pouty when she and Olver lost at Snakes and Foxes, although nobody ever won that game. Then again, Mat suspected she had not been a very good ruler. Whoever was not playing sat on the cot. Mat watched the games when it was his turn there, as did Juilin if Amathera was playing. He seldom took his eyes
from her except when it was his turn at a game. Noal nattered on with his stories—but then, he spun those tales even while playing, and talking seemed to have no effect on his skill at stones—and Thom sat reading the letter Mat had brought him what seemed a very long time ago. The page was heavily creased from being carried in Thom’s coat pocket and much smudged from being read and re-read. He had said it was from a dead woman.

It was a surprise when Domon and Egeanin ducked through the entry flaps. They had not precisely been avoiding Mat since he moved out of the green wagon, but neither had they gone out of their way to seek him out. Like everyone else, they were in better clothes than they had worn for disguises in the beginning. Egeanin’s divided skirts and high-collared coat, both of blue wool and embroidered in a yellow near to gold on the hem and cuffs, had something of a uniform about them, while Domon, in a well-cut brown coat and baggy trousers stuffed into turned-down boots just below his knees, looked every inch the prosperous, if not exactly wealthy, Illianer merchant.

As soon as Egeanin entered, Amathera, who was on the ground-cloth with Olver, curled herself into a ball on her knees. Juilin sighed and got up from the stool across the table from Mat, but Egeanin reached the other woman first.

“There’s no need for that, with me or anyone else,” she drawled, bending to take Amathera by the shoulders and draw her to her feet. Amathera rose slowly, hesitantly, and kept her eyes down until Egeanin put a hand beneath her chin and raised her head gently. “You look me in the eyes. You look everyone in the eyes.” The Taraboner woman touched her tongue to her lips nervously, but she did keep looking straight at Egeanin’s face when the hand was removed from her chin. On the other hand, her eyes were very wide.

“This is a change,” Juilin said suspiciously. And with a touch of anger. He stood stiff as a statue carved from dark wood. He disliked any Seanchan, for what they had done to Amathera. “You’ve called me a thief for freeing her.” There was more than a touch of anger in that. He hated thieves. And smugglers, which Domon was.

“All things change given time,” Domon said jovially, smiling to head off more heated words. “Why, you do be looking at an honest man, Master Thief-catcher. Leilwin did make me promise to give up smuggling before she would agree to marry me. Fortune prick me, who did ever hear of a woman refusing to marry a man unless he did give up a lucrative trade?” He laughed as though that were the funniest joke in the world.

Egeanin fisted him in the ribs hard enough to change his laughter to a
grunt. Married to her, his ribs must be a mass of bruises. “I expect you to keep that promise, Bayle. I am changing, and so must you.” Eyeing Amathera briefly—perhaps to make sure she was still obeying; Egeanin was big on others doing as she told them—she stuck out a hand toward Juilin. “I am changing, Master Sandar. Will you?”

Juilin hesitated, then clasped her hand. “I’ll make a try at it.” He sounded doubtful.

“An honest try is all I ask.” Frowning around the tent, she shook her head. “I’ve seen orlop decks less crowded than this. We have some decent wine in our wagon, Master Sandar. Will you and your lady join us in a cup or two?”

Again Juilin hesitated. “He has this game all but won,” he said finally. “No point in playing it out.” Clapping his conical red hat on his head, he adjusted his dark, flaring Tairen coat unnecessarily, and offered his arm to Amathera formally. She clasped it tightly, and though her eyes were still on Egeanin’s face, she trembled visibly. “I expect Olver will want to stay here and play his game, but my lady and I will be pleased to share wine with you and your husband, Mistress Shipless.” There was a hint of challenge in his gaze. It was clear that to him, Egeanin had further to go to prove she no longer saw Amathera as stolen property.

Egeanin nodded as if she understood perfectly. “The Light shine on you tonight, and for as many days and nights as we have remaining,” she said by way of farewell to those staying. Cheerful of her.

No sooner had the four departed than thunder boomed overhead. Another loud peal, and rain began pattering on the tent roof, quickly growing to a downpour that drummed the green-striped canvas. Unless Juilin and the others had run, they would do their drinking wet.

Noal settled on the other side of the red cloth from Olver and took up Amathera’s part of the game, rolling the dice for the snakes and the foxes. The black discs that now represented Olver and him were nearly to the edge of the web-marked cloth, but it was evident to any eye that they would not make it. To any eye but Olver’s, at least. He groaned loudly when a pale disc inked with a wavy line, a snake, touched his piece, and again when a disc marked with a triangle touched Noal’s.

Noal took up the tale he had left off when Egeanin and Domon appeared, as well, a story of some supposed voyage on a Sea Folk raker. “Atha’an Miere women are the most graceful in the world,” he said, moving the black discs back to the circle in the center of the board, “even more so than Domani, and you know that’s saying something. And when they’re
out of sight of land—” He cut off abruptly and cleared his throat, eyeing Olver, who was stacking the snakes and foxes on the board’s corners.

“What do they do then?” Olver asked.

“Why. . . .” Noal rubbed his nose with a gnarled finger. “Why, they scramble about the rigging so nimbly you’d think they had hands where their feet should be. That’s what they do.” Olver oohed, and Noal gave a soft sigh of relief.

Mat began removing the black and white stones from the board on the table, placing them in two carved wooden boxes. The dice in his head bounced and rattled even when the thunder was loudest. “Another game, Thom?”

The white-haired man looked up from his letter. “I think not, Mat. My mind’s in a maze, tonight.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Thom, why do you read that letter the way you do? I mean, sometimes your face looks like you’re trying to puzzle out what it means.” Olver yelped with glee at a good toss of the dice.

“That’s because I am. In a way. Here.” He held out the letter, but Mat shook his head.

“It’s no business of mine, Thom. It’s your letter, and I’m no good with puzzles.”

“Oh, it’s your business, too. Moiraine wrote it just before. . . . Well, anyway, she wrote it.”

Mat stared at him for a long moment before taking the creased page, and when his eyes fell on the smudged ink, he blinked. Small, precise writing covered the sheet, but it began, “My dearest Thom.” Who would have thought Moiraine, of all people, would address old Thom Merrilin so? “Thom, this is personal. I don’t think I should—”

“Read,” Thom cut in. “You’ll see.”

Mat drew a deep breath. A letter from a dead Aes Sedai that was a puzzle and concerned him in some way? Suddenly, he wanted nothing less than to read the thing. But he began anyway. It was near enough to make his hair stand on end.

My dearest Thom
,