Crossroads of Twilight

by Robert Jordan

  “Of course I can follow them,” Noal said, with a gap-toothed grin that said it would be child’s play. Laying a gnarled finger alongside his bent nose, he slipped the other knobbly hand beneath his coat, where he kept his knives. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better just to make sure she can’t talk to anyone? Just a suggestion, lad. If you say not, then not.” Mat most emphatically said not. He had killed one woman in his life, and left another to be butchered. He was not going to add a third to his soul.

  “It seems Suroth might have made an alliance with some king,” Juilin reported with a smile over a cup of mulled wine. At least Thera seemed to be making him smile more. She huddled beside Juilin’s stool in their cramped tent, her head lying on his lap, and he stroked her hair softly with his free hand. “At least, there’s considerable talk of some powerful new ally. And those set­tlers are all frightened out of their wits by Aiel.”

  “Most of the settlers seem to be have been sent east,” Thorn said, peering sadly into his cup. As Juilin grew happier day by day, he seemed to grow sadder. Noal was out shadowing Juilin and Thera, and Lopin and Nerim were sitting cross-legged at the back of the tent, but the two Cairhienin serving men had their mending baskets out and were examining Mat’s good coats from Ebou Dar for any repairs they thought necessary, so the small tent still seemed crowded. “And a great many soldiers, too,” Thorn went on. “Everything says they’re going to fall on Illian like a hammer.”

  Well, at least he knew he was hearing the unvarnished truth when he heard it from them. No Aes Sedai spinning words on their heads or sul’dam trying to smarm their way into his good graces. Bethamin and Seta had even learned to curtsy. Somehow, he felt more comfortable with Renna bending herself double. It seemed honest. Strange, but honest.

  For himself, town or village, Mat took no more than a quick look around, with his collar turned up and his cap pulled down, before heading back to the show. He seldom wore a cloak. A cloak could make it difficult to use the knives he carried tucked about his person. Not that he expected to need them. It was just a prudent precaution. There was no drinking, no dancing, and no gambling. Especially no gambling. The sound of dice rattling on a table in an inn’s common room pulled at him, but his sort of luck with dice was bound to be remarked, even if it did not lead to somebody pulling a knife, and in this part of Altara both men and women car­ried knives tucked behind their belts and were ready to use them. He wanted to pass through unnoticed, so he walked by the dice games, nodded coolly to the tavern maids who smiled at him, and never drank more than a cup of wine and usually not that. After all, he had work to do back at the show. Work of a sort. He had begun it the very first night after leaving Ebou Dar, and a rough job it was.

  “I need you to go with me,” he had said then, pulling open the cupboard built into the side of the wagon beneath his bed. He kept his chest of gold in there, all honestly come by through gambling. As honestly as he could, anyway. The greater part came from one horse race, and his luck was no better than any other man’s with horses. For the rest. . . . If a man wanted to toss dice or play at cards or pitch coins, he had to be ready to lose. Domon, seated on the other bed rubbing a hand over the bristle on his shaved scalp, had learned that lesson. The fellow should have been willing to sleep on the floor like a good so’jbin, but in the beginning he had insisted on flipping a coin with Mat each night for the second bed. Egeanin got the first, of course. Tossing coins was as easy as dice.

  As long as the coin did not land on edge, the way it sometimes did for him. But Domon had made the offer, not him. Until Mat had won four times straight, and then the fifth night the coin did land on edge, three times in a row. They took turn and turn about, now. But it was still Demon’s turn for the floor, tonight.

  Finding the smallish washleather bag he was after, he stuffed it into his coat pocket and straightened, pushing the cupboard shut with his foot. “You have to face her sometime,” he said. “And I need you to smooth things over.” He needed someone to attract Tuon’s ire, someone to make him seem acceptable by comparison, but he could not say that, could he? “You’re a Seanchan noble, and you can keep me from putting my boot in my mouth.”

  “Why do you need to smooth things over?” Egeanin’s drawl was hard as a saw. She stood against the wagon’s door with her fists on her hips, blue eyes augering out from beneath her long black wig. “Why do you need to see her? Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” Mat scoffed, dodging the question. What answer could he give that did not sound insane? “You could tuck her under your arm almost as easily as I could. But I promise not to let her cut your head off or beat you up.”

  “Egeanin do no be afraid of anything, boy,” Domon growled protectively. “If she does no want to go, then you trot off to court the girl by yourself. Stay the night, if you choose.”

  Egeanin continued to glare at Mat. Or through him. Then she glanced at Domon, her shoulders slumped a little, and she snatched her cloak from its peg on the wall. “Get a move on, Cauthon,” she growled. “If it has to be done, best it’s done and over with.” She was out of the wagon in a flash, and Mat had to hurry to catch her up. You could almost think she did not want to be alone with Domon, as little sense as that made.

  Outside the windowless purple wagon, black in the night, a shadow shifted in the deeper shadows. The sickle moon came out from behind the clouds long enough for Mat to recognize Harnan’s lantern jaw.

  “All quiet, my Lord,” the file-leader said.

  Mat nodded and took a deep breath, feeling for the washleather bag in his pocket. The air was clean, washed by the rain and away from the horselines. Tuon must be relieved to be away from the dung smell, and the rank odor of the animal cages. The performers’ wagons to his left were as dark as the canvas-topped storage wag­ons to his right. No use waiting any longer. He pushed Egeanin up the purple wagon’s steps ahead of him.

  There were more people inside than he expected. Setalle was seated on one of the beds, working her embroidery hoop again, and Selucia stood at the far end scowling beneath her head scarf, but Noal was sitting on the other bed, apparently lost in thought, and Tuon sat cross-legged on the floor playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver.

  The boy twisted around with a wide-mouthed grin that almost split his face when Mat came in. “Noal has been telling us about Co’dansin, Mat,” he exclaimed. “That’s another name for Shara. Did you know the Ayyad tattoo their faces? That’s what they call women who can channel, in Shara.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mat said, settling a grim eye on Noal. It was bad enough that Vanin and the Redarms were teaching the boy bad habits, not to mention what he was picking up from Juilin and Thorn, without Noal filling his head with made-up nonsense.

  Suddenly Noal slapped his thigh and sat up straight. “I remember now,” he said, and then the fool began to recite.

  “Fortune rides like the sun on high

  with the fox that makes the ravens fly.

  Luck his soul, the lightning his eye,

  He snatches the moons from out of the sky.”

  The broken-nosed old man looked around as if just realizing anyone else was there. “I’ve been trying to remember that. It’s from the Prophecies of the Dragon.”

  “Very interesting, Noal,” Mat muttered. Those colors whirled in his head just the way they had that morning, when the Aes Sedai were panicking. They flashed away without making a picture this time, but he felt as cold as if he had spent a night sleeping under a bush in his skin. The last thing on earth he needed was anybody else linking him to the Prophecies. “Maybe some time you can recite the whole thing for us. But not tonight, eh?”

  Tuon looked up at him through her eyelashes, a black porcelain doll in a dress that was too big for her. Light, but she had long lashes. She ignored Egeanin as if the other woman did not exist, and in truth, Egeanin was doing her best to appear part of a cabinet built into the wall. So much for hoping for a diversion.

  “Toy d
oesn’t mean to be rude,” Tuon murmured in that slow honey drawl. “He just has never been trained in manners. But it is late, Master Charin; time for Olver to be in bed. Perhaps you will escort him to his tent? We’ll play again another time, Olver. Would you like me to teach you to play stones?”

  Olver most emphatically would. He almost wriggled, saying so. The boy liked anything that gave him a chance to smile at a woman, not to mention a chance to say things that should have gotten him slapped till his ears swelled up bigger than they already were. If Mat ever found out which of his ‘uncles’ was teach­ing him that. . . . But the lad gathered the pieces of his game and carefully rolled up the line-marked cloth without a second urging. He even made a very good leg, thanking the High Lady, before let­ting Noal lead him from the wagon. Mat nodded approvingly. He had taught the boy how to make a leg, but the boy usually added a leer for a pretty woman. If he ever found out who. . . .

  “You have a reason for interrupting me, Toy?” Tuon said in cool tones. “It is late, and I was thinking of going to sleep.”

  He made a leg and gave her his best smile. He could be polite even if she was not. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. These wagons are uncomfortable, on the road. And I know you aren’t happy with the clothes I could find you. I thought this might make you feel a little better.” Fishing the leather bag from his pocket, he presented it with a flourish. Women always liked that little extra flourish.

  Selucia tensed, blue eyes sharpening, but Tuon waggled her slim fingers and the bosomy maid subsided. A little. Mat liked feisty women, by and large, but if she ruined this, he was going to paddle her bottom. He hung on to his smile with an effort, and even managed to ratchet it up a notch.

  Tuon turned the bag over her hands several times before unty­ing the drawstrings and spilling what it contained into her lap, a heavy necklace of gold and carved amber. An expensive piece, and Seanchan work to boot. He was proud of finding the thing. It had been the property of an acrobat, who had it from a Seanchan officer whose fancy she caught, but she had been willing to sell now that her officer was left behind. It did not suit her skin, whatever that meant. He smiled and waited. Jewels always softened a woman’s heart.

  No one’s reaction was quite what he expected, though. Tuon lifted the necklace in front of her face with both hands, studying it as if she had never seen such a thing before. Selucia’s lip curled in a sneer. Setalle set her embroidery down on her knees and looked at him, the large golden hoops in her ears swaying as she shook her head.

  Abruptly, Tuon thrust the necklace back over her shoulder toward Selucia. “It does not suit me,” she said. “Would you like it, Selucia?” Mat’s smile slipped a little.

  The cream-skinned woman took the necklace between thumb and forefinger, as if holding a dead rat by the tail. “A piece for a shea dancer to wear with her veil,” she said wryly. With a twist of her wrist, she hurled the necklace at Egeanin, snapping, “Put it on!” Egeanin caught the thing just before it hit her face. Mat’s smile slid the rest of the way off his.

  He expected an explosion, but Egeanin immediately fumbled open the clasp and pushed her heavy wig back to fasten it behind her neck. Her face might have been molded from snow for all the expression on it.

  “Turn,” Selucia commanded, and it was a command, without any doubt. “Let me see.”

  Egeanin turned. Stiff as a fence post, but she turned.

  Setalle looked at her intently, with a puzzled shake of her head, then gave Mat a different head shake before returning to her embroidery. Women had as many ways of shaking their heads as they had looks. This one said he was a fool, and if he did not catch the finer nuances, he was just as glad. He did not think he would have liked them. Burn him, he bought a necklace for Tuon, who gave it to Selucia right in front of him, and now it was Egeanin’s?

  “She came for a new name,” Tuon said musingly. “What does she call herself?”

  “Leilwin,” Selucia replied. “A fitting name for a shea dancer. Leilwin Shipless, perhaps?”

  Tuon nodded. “Leilwin Shipless.”

  Egeanin jerked as though every word was a slap. “May I with­draw?” she asked stiffly, bending in sharp bow.

  “If you want to go, then go,” Mat growled. Bringing her in the first place had not been the best notion he ever had, but maybe he could recover a little without her.

  Eyes locked on the floorboards, Egeanin sank to her knees. “Please, may I withdraw?”

  Tuon sat there straight-backed on the floor staring through the taller woman, clearly not seeing her at all. Selucia eyed Egeanin up and down, pursing her lips. Setalle pushed her needle through the cloth stretched on her hoop. No one so much as glanced at Mat.

  Egeanin dropped to her face, and Mat bit back a startled oath when she kissed the floor. “Please,” she said hoarsely, “I beg leave to withdraw.”

  “You will go, Leilwin,” Selucia said, cold as a queen speaking to a chickenthief, “and you will not let me see your face again unless it is covered by a shea dancer’s veil.”

  Egeanin scrambled backward on hands and knees and all but tumbled out the door, so fast that Mat was left gaping.

  With an effort, he managed to regain his smile. There seemed little point in staying, but a man could make a graceful exit. “Well, I suppose - ”

  Tuon wriggled her fingers again, still not looking at him, and Selucia cut him short. “The High Lady is weary, Toy. You have her permission to go.”

  “Look, my name is Mat,” he said. “An easy name. A simple name. Mat.” Tuon might as well have been a porcelain doll in truth for all the response she made.

  Setalle set down her embroidery, though, and rose with one hand resting lightly on the hilt of the curved dagger stuck behind her belt. “Young man, if you think you’re going to lounge about till you get to see us readying for bed, you’re sadly mistaken.” She smiled saying it, but she did have her hand on her knife, and she was Ebou Dari enough to stick a man on a whim. Tuon remained an unmoving doll, a queen on her throne somehow mistakenly dressed in ill-fitting clothes. Mat left.

  Egeanin was leaning on one hand against the side of the wagon, her head hanging. Her other hand was gripping the necklace around her throat. Harnan moved, a little way off in the darkness, just to show he was still there. A wise man, to keep clear of Egeanin just then. Mat was too irritated for wisdom.

  “What was that about?” he demanded. “You don’t have to go on your knees to Tuon anymore. And Selucia? She’s a bloody lady’s maid! I don’t know anybody who’d jump for his queen the way you jumped for her.”

  Egeanin’s hard face was shadowed, but her voice was haggard. “The High Lady is . . . who she is. Selucia is her so’jhin. No one of the low Blood would dare meet her so’jhin’s eyes, and maybe not the High Blood, either.” The clasp broke with a metallic snap as she jerked the necklace free. “But then, I’m not of any Blood, now.” Rearing back, she put her whole body into throwing the necklace as far into the night as she could.

  Mat opened his mouth. He could have bought a dozen prime horses with what he paid for that thing and had coin left. He closed it again without saying a word. He might not always be wise, but he was wise enough to know when a woman really might try to stick a knife in him. He knew another thing, as well. If Egeanin behaved this way around Tuon and Selucia, then he had better make sure the sul’dam were kept clear. The Light only knew what they would do if Tuon started wiggling her fingers.

  That left him with a job of work to do. Well, he hated work, but those old memories had his head stuffed full of battles. He hated battle, too - a man could get killed dead! - but it was better than work. Strategy and tactics. Learn the ground, learn your enemy, and if you could not win one way, you found another.

  The next night he returned to the purple wagon, alone, and once Olver had finished his lesson in stones from Tuon, Mat invei­gled his way into a game. At first, sitting on the floor across the board from the dark little woman, he was not sure whether to win o
r lose. Some women liked to win every time, but the man had to make her work for it. Some liked the man to win, or at least more often than he lost. Neither made any sense to him - he liked to win, and the easier, the better - but that was how it was. While he was dithering, Tuon took matters out of his hands. Halfway through the game, he realized she had him in a trap he could not get out of. Her white stones were cutting off his black everywhere. It was a clean and resounding win for her.

  “You don’t play very well, Toy,” she said mockingly. Despite the tone, her big, liquid eyes considered him coolly, weighing and measuring. A man could drown in eyes like that.

  He smiled and made his goodbyes before there could be any thought of kicking him out. Strategy. Think to the future. Do the unexpected. The next night, he brought a small red paper flower made by one of the show’s seamstresses. And presented it to a star­tled Selucia. Setalle’s eyebrows rose, and even Tuon seemed taken aback. Tactics. Put your opponent off balance. Come to think, women and battles were not that different. Both wrapped a man in fog and could him kill him without trying. If he was careless.

  Every night he visited the purple wagon for a game of stones under Setalle and Selucia’s watchful eyes, and he concentrated on the crosshatched board. Tuon was very good, and it was all too easy to find himself watching the way she placed her stones, with her fingers bent back in a curiously graceful way. She was used to hav­ing fingernails an inch long and taking care not to break them. Her eyes were a danger, too. You needed a clear head in stones or battle, and her gaze seemed to reach inside his skull. He buckled down to the game, though, and managed to win four of the next seven, with one draw. Tuon was satisfied when she won and determined when she lost, with none of the temper tantrums he had feared, no scathing comments aside from insisting on calling him Toy, not very much of that icy regal hauteur, as long as they were playing anyway. She purely enjoyed the game, laughing exultantly when she pulled him into a trap, laughing in delight when he managed a clever placement to escape. She seemed a different woman once she lost herself in the stones board.