"I want to be free," Theril said suddenly, "but if we get anybody free, then we've beaten them." He looked surprised that he had spoken, and blushed deep red. His father frowned at him, then nodded thoughtfully.
"Very well said," Faile told the boy gently, "but I made my oath, and I stand by it. You and your father—" She cut off as Aravine, looking past her shoulder, laid a hand on her arm. The woman's smile had been replaced by fright.
Turning her head, Faile saw Rolan standing beside her tent. A good two hands taller than Perrin, he wore his shoufa coiled around his neck with the black veil hanging down his broad chest. Rain slicked his face and made his short red hair cling to his scalp in curls. How long had he been there? Not long, or Aravine would have noticed him before. The tiny tent offered little concealment. Alvon and his son had their shoulders hunched, as if they were thinking about attacking the tall Mera'din. That was a very bad idea. Mice attacking a cat was not in it, as Perrin would have said.
"Go on about your duties, Alvon." she said quickly. "You, too, Aravine. Go on, now."
Aravine and Alvon had sense enough not to offer courtesies before leaving with final worried glances at Rolan, but Theril half raised a hand toward knuckling his forehead before catching himself. Blushing, he scurried away after his father.
Rolan came out from beside the tent to stand in front of her. Oddly, he had a small bunch of blue and yellow wildflowers in one hand. She was very conscious of the rod she was holding in her sleeve. Where was she to hide it? Once Therava discovered it missing, she likely would turn the camp upside down.
"You must be careful, Faile Bashere," Rolan said, smiling down at her. Alliandre called him not quite pretty, but Faile had decided she was wrong. Those blue eyes and that smile made him very nearly beautiful. "What you are about is dangerous, and I may not be here to protect you much longer."
"Dangerous?" She felt a chill in her middle. "What do you mean? Where are you going?" The thought of losing his protection made her stomach lurch. Few of the wetlander women had escaped the attentions of Shaido men. Without him. . . .
"Some of us are thinking of returning to the Three-fold Land." His smile faded. "We cannot follow a false Car'a'cani, and a wetlander at that, but perhaps we will be allowed to live out our lives in our own holds. We think on it. We have been a long time from home, and these Shaido sicken us."
She would find a way to deal with it once he was gone. She would have to. Somehow. "And what am I doing that is dangerous?" She tried to make her voice light, but it was difficult. Light, what would happen to her without him?
"These Shaido are blind even when they are not drunk, Faile Bashere." he replied calmly. Pushing her cowl back, he tucked one of the wildflowers into her hair above her left ear. "We Mera'din use our eyes." Another wildflower went into her hair, on the other side. "You have made many new friends lately, and you are planning to escape with them. A bold plan, but dangerous."
"And will you tell the Wise Ones, or Sevanna?" She was startled when that came out in an even tone. Her stomach was trying to tie itself into knots.
"Why would I do that?" he asked, adding another flower to her decorations. "Jhoradin thinks he will take Lacile Aldorwin back to the Three-fold Land with him even if she is a Treekiller. He believes he may convince her to make a bridal wreath to lay at his feet." Lacile had found her own protector by climbing into the blankets of the Mera'din who had made her gai'shain, and Arrela had done the same with one of the Maidens who had captured her, but Faile doubted that Jhoradin would attain his wish. Both women were focused on escape like arrows aimed at a target. "And now that I think on it, I may take you with me if we go."
Faile stared up at him. The rain was beginning to soak through her hair. "To the Waste? Rolan, I love my husband. I've told you that, and it is true."
"I know," he said, continuing to add flowers. "But for the moment, you still wear white, and what happens while you wear white is forgotten when you put it off. Your husband cannot hold it against you. Besides, if we go, when we come near to a wetlander town, I will let you go. I should never have made you gai'shain in the first place. That collar and belt hold enough gold to get you safely back to your husband."
Her mouth fell open in shock. It surprised her when her fist struck his wide chest. Gai'shain were never allowed to offer violence, but the man just grinned at her. "You—!" She struck him again, harder. She beat at him. "You—! I can't think of a word bad enough. You let me think you were going to abandon me to these Shaido while all along you were meaning to help me escape?"
Finally he caught her fist and held it easily with a hand that enveloped hers completely. "If we go, Faile Bashere," he laughed. The man laughed! "It is not decided. Anyway, a man cannot let a woman think he is too eager."
Again she surprised herself, this time by beginning to laugh and cry at the same time, so hard that she had to lean against him or fall down. That bloody Aiel sense of humor!
"You are very beautiful with flowers in your hair, Faile Bashere," he murmured, tucking in another blossom. "Or without them. And for the moment, you still wear white."
Light! She had the rod, leaning against her arm so coolly, but there was no way to give it to Galina until Therava let her walk around freely again, no way to be sure that the woman would not betray her before then out of desperation. Rolan offered her escape, if the Mera'din decided to leave, but he would continue to try to inveigle her into his blankets so long as she wore white. And if the Alera'din decided not to go, would one of them betray her escape plans? If Rolan could be believed, they all knew! Hope and danger, all tied together inextricably. What a tangle.
She turned out to have been exactly right about Therava's reaction. Just before midday all of the gai'shain were herded into the open and made to strip to their skins. Covering herself as best she could with her hands, Faile huddled together with other women wearing Sevanna's belt and collar—they had been made to put those on again straightaway—huddled for a scrap of decency while Shaido rummaged through the gai'shain tents, tossing everything out into the mud. All Faile could do was think about her hiding place inside the town and pray. Hope and danger, and no way to untangle them.
CHAPTER 6 A Stave and a Razor
Mat had never really expected Luca to leave Jurador after only one day—the stone-walled salt town was wealthy, and Luca did like to see coin stick to his hands—so he was not exactly disappointed when the man told him that Valan Luca's Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders would remain there at least two more days. Not exactly disappointed, yet he had hoped that his luck might hold good, or his being ta'veren. But then, being ta'veren had never brought anything other than bad that he could see.
"The lines at the entrance are already as long as they were at their best, yesterday," Luca said, gesturing expansively. They were inside Luca's huge gaudy wagon, early in the morning after Renna's death, and the tall man sat in the gilded chair at the narrow table—a real table, with stools tucked under for guests; most other wagons had an affair rigged on ropes from the ceiling, and people sat on the beds to eat. Luca had not yet donned one of his flamboyant coats, but he made up for it with gestures. Latelle, his wife, was cooking the breakfast porridge on a small, iron-topped brick stove built into a corner of the windowless wagon, and the air was sharp with spices. The harsh-faced woman put so many spices into everything she prepared that it was all inedible, in Mat's estimation, yet Luca always gobbled down whatever she set in front of him as if it were a feast. He must have a leather tongue. "I expect twice as many visitors today, maybe three times as many, and tomorrow as well. People can't see everything in one visit, and here they can afford to come twice. Word of mouth, Cauthon. Word of mouth. That brings as many as Aludra's nightflowers. I feel almost like a ta'veren, the way things are falling out. Large audiences and the prospect of more. A warrant of protection from the High Lady." Luca cut off abruptly, looking faintly embarrassed, as if he had just remembered that Mat's name was on that
warrant as being excluded from protection.
"You might not like it if you really were ta'veren," Mat muttered, which made the other man give him an odd look. He put a finger behind the black silk scarf that hid his hanging scar and tugged at it. For a moment, the thing had felt too tight. He had spent a night of bleak dreams about corpses floating downstream and woken to the dice spinning in his head, always a bad sign, and now they seemed to be bouncing off the inside of his skull harder than before. "I can pay you as much as you'll make for every show you give between here and Lugard, no matter how many people attend. That's on top of what I promised for carrying us to Lugard." If the show was not stopping all the time, they could cut the time to reach Lugard by three quarters at the least. More, if he could convince Luca to spend whole days on the road instead of half days, the way they did now.
Luca seemed taken with the idea, nodding thoughtfully, but then he shook his head with a sadness that was plainly feigned and spread his hands. "And what will that look like, a traveling show that never stops to give shows? It will look suspicious, that's what. I have the warrant, and the High Lady will speak up for me besides, but you certainly don't want to pull the Seanchan down on us. No, it's safer for you this way." The man was not thinking of Mat Cauthon's bloody safety, he was thinking that his bloody shows might earn him more than Mat paid. That, plus making himself as much the center of attention as any of the performers was nearly as important to him as gold. Some of the showfolk talked of what they would do when they retired. Not Luca. He intended to keep on until he fell over dead in the middle of a show. And he would arrange it so he had the largest audience possible when he did.
"It's ready, Valan," Latelle said affectionately as she lifted the iron pot from the stove with a cloth protecting her hands and set it down on a thick woven mat on the table. Two places had already been set, with white-glazed plates and silver spoons. Luca would have silver spoons when everyone else settled for tin or pot metal or even horn or wood. Stern-eyed, with a hard set to her mouth, the bear trainer looked quite odd wearing a long white apron over her spangled blue dress. Her bears probably wished they had trees to climb when she frowned at them. Strangely, though, she jumped to ensure her husband's comforts. "Will you be eating with us, Master Cauthon?" There was no welcome in that; in fact, just the opposite, and she showed no sign of turning to the cupboard where the plates were stored.
Mat gave her a bow that soured her face further. He had never been less than civil to the woman, but she refused to like him. "I thank you for the kind invitation, Mistress Luca, but no." She grunted. So much for being courteous. He put on his flat-brimmed hat and left, the dice rattling away.
Luca's big wagon, glittering in red and blue and covered with golden stars and comets, not to mention the phases of the moon in silver, stood in the middle of the show, as far as possible from the animals' smelly cages and the horselines. It was surrounded by smaller wagons, little houses on wheels, most windowless and most painted just a single color with none of Luca's extra decorations, and by wall-tents the size of small houses in blue or green or red, sometimes striped. The sun stood nearly its own height above the horizon in a sky where a sprinkling of white clouds drifted slowly, and children ran playing with hoops and balls while the showfolk were limbering up for their morning performances, men and women twisting and stretching, many with glittering, colorful spangles on their coats or dresses. Four contortionists, in filmy trousers tied at the ankle and blouses thin enough to leave little to the imagination, made him wince. Two were sitting on their own heads atop blankets spread on the ground beside their red tent, while the others had twisted themselves into a pair of knots that looked beyond untying. Their backbones must have been made of spring-wire! Petra, the strongman, stood bare-chested beside the green wagon he shared with his wife, warming up by lifting weights with either hand that Mat was not sure he could have lifted with both. The man had arms thicker than Mat's legs, and he was not sweating at all. Clarine's small dogs stood in a line at the steps of the wagon wagging their tails and eagerly waiting on their trainer. Unlike Latelle's bears, Mat figured the plump woman's dogs performed so they could make her smile.
He was always tempted to just sit quietly somewhere when the dice were clicking in his head, some place nothing seemed likely to happen, waiting for the dice to stop, and though he would have enjoyed watching some of the female acrobats, a number of whom wore as little as the contortionists, he set out to walk the half mile to Jurador, eyeing everyone on the wide, hard-packed clay road closely. There was a purchase he hoped to make.
People were coming to join the long line waiting behind a stout rope stretched along the show's tall canvas wall, only a handful with more than a touch of embroidery on the women's dresses or the men's short coats, and a few farmers' high-wheeled carts lumbering behind a horse or an ox. Figures moved among the small forest of windmills that pumped the salt wells on the low hills behind the town, and around the long evaporation pans. A merchant's train of canvas-covered wagons, twenty of them behind six-horse teams, rumbled out of the town gates as he approached, the merchant herself in a bright green cloak seated beside the driver of the first wagon. A flock of crows cawed past overhead, giving him a chill, but no one vanished before his eyes, and everybody cast a long shadow so far as he could make out. There were no dead people's shades walking the road today, although he was convinced that was what he had seen the day before.
The dead walking surely could mean nothing good. Very likely it had something to with Tarmon Gai'don and Rand. Colors whirled in his brain, and for an instant, in his head, he saw Rand and Min standing beside a large bed, kissing. He stumbled and nearly tripped over his own boots. They had not been wearing any clothes! He would have to be careful thinking about Rand. . . . The colors swirled and resolved for a moment, and he stumbled again. There were worse things to spy on than kissing. Very careful what he thought. Light!
The pair of guards leaning on their halberds at the iron-studded gates, hard-faced men in white breastplates and conical white helmets with horsetail crests, eyed him suspiciously. They probably thought he was drunk. A reassuring nod failed to change their expressions by a hair. He could have used a stiff drink right then. The guards did not try to stop him entering, though, just watched him pass. Drunks caused trouble, especially a man who was drunk this early in the day, but a drunk in a good coat—plain, but well-cut and good silk—a man with a little lace at his wrists was an altogether different matter.
The stone-paved streets of Jurador were noisy even at this hour, with hawkers carrying trays or standing behind barrows crying their wares, and shopkeepers beside narrow tables in front of their shops bellowing the fineness of their goods, and coopers hammering hoops onto barrels for shipping salt. The clatter of rugmakers' looms nearly drowned out the ringing of the occasional blacksmith's hammer, not to mention the music of flutes and drums and dulcimers drifting from inns and taverns. It was a jumble of a town, with shops and houses and inns cheek by jowl with taverns and stables, all of stone and roofed with reddish tiles. A solid town, Jurador. And one accustomed to thievery. Most windows on the lower floors were covered with stout screens of wrought iron. The upper windows as well on the homes of the wealthy, most of whom were no doubt salt merchants. The music of the inns and taverns pulled at him. Likely there would be dice games going on in most of them. He could almost feel those dice spinning across a table. It had been too long since he had rattled a set of dice in his hands instead of inside his head, but he was not there for gambling this morning.
He had had no breakfast yet, so he approached a wrinkled woman with a tray hung from a strap around her neck who shouted "meat pies, made from the finest beef to be found in Altara." He took her word for it and handed over the coppers she demanded. He had seen no cattle at any farms near Jurador, only sheep and goats, but it was best not to inquire too closely what was in a pie bought in the streets of any town. There could be cows on nearby farms. There could be. In any case, the meat p
ie was tasty, and still hot for a wonder, and he walked on along the crowded street juggling the pie and wiping greasy juice from his chin.
He was careful not to bump into anyone in the throng. Altarans were a touchy lot, by and large. In this town, you could tell somebody's station to within a whisker by the amount of embroidery on coat or dress or cloak, the more the higher, long before you were close enough to tell wool from silk, though the richer women covered their olive-skinned faces with transparent veils hung from ornate combs stuck into their tightly coiled braids, but men and women alike, whether salt merchants or ribbon hawkers, wore long belt knives with curved blades and sometimes fondled the hilts as though looking for a fight. He always tried to avoid fighting, though his luck seldom did him much good there. Ta'veren took over with that, it seemed. The dice had never before signaled a fight—battles, yes, but never a dust-up in the street—yet he walked very carefully indeed. Not that that would help, of course. When the dice stopped, they stopped, and that was that. But he saw no reason to take chances. He hated taking chances. Except with gambling, of course, and that was hardly taking a chance for him.
He spotted a barrel full of thick quarterstaffs and walking staffs in front of a shop displaying swords and daggers under the watchful eye of a bulky fellow with sunken knuckles, a nose that had been broken more than once, and a thick truncheon hanging at his belt beside the inevitable dagger. The man announced in a rough voice that all the blades on display were Andoran made, but anybody who did not make his own blades always claimed they were Andoran or else from the Borderlands. Or Tairen, sometimes. Tear made good steel.
To Mat's surprise and delight, a slim stave of what appeared to be black yew, more than a foot taller than he was, stood upright in the barrel. Pulling the stave out, he checked the fine, almost braided grain. It was black yew, all right. That braided grain was what gave bows made from it such power, twice what any other wood could give. You could never be sure until you started slicing away the excess, but the stave looked perfect. How in the Light had black yew come to be in southern Altara? He was sure it only grew in the Two Rivers.
Knife of Dreams Page 21