A Crown of Swords

by Jordan, Robert

  Mat put a hand over his eyes and tried very hard not to weep. When he uncovered them, she was gone.

  Climbing out of the bed, he tucked the sheet around him; for some reason, the notion of walking around bare felt uncomfortable. The bloody woman might leap out of the wardrobe. The garments he had been wearing lay on the floor. Why bother with laces, he thought sourly, when you can just cut somebody’s clothes off! She had no call to slice up his red coat that way, though. She had just enjoyed peeling him with her knife.

  Not quite holding his breath, he pulled open the tall red-and-gilt wardrobe. She was not hiding inside. His choices were limited; Nerim had most of his coats for cleaning or mending. Dressing quickly, he chose a plain coat of dark bronze silk, then stuffed the sliced rags as far under the bed as he could reach until he could dispose of them without Nerim seeing. Or anyone else, for that matter. Too many people already knew entirely too much of what was going on between him and Tylin; there was no way he could face anybody knowing this.

  In the sitting room, he lifted the lid of the lacquerware box by the door, then let it fall with a sigh; he had not really expected Tylin to replace the key. He leaned against the door. The unlocked door. Light, what was he going to do? Move back to the inn? Burn why the dice had stopped before. Only, he would not put it past Tylin to bribe Mistress Anan and Enid, or the innkeeper wherever he went. He would not put it past Nynaeve and Elayne to claim he had broken some agreement and put an end to their promises. Burn all women!

  A large parcel elaborately wrapped in green paper sat on one of the tables. It contained an eagle mask in black and gold and a coat covered with feathers to match. There was also a red silk purse holding twenty gold crowns and a note that smelled of flowers.

  I would have bought you an earring, piglet, but I noticed your ear is not pierced. Have it done, and buy yourself something nice.

  He nearly wept again. He gave women presents. The world was standing on its head! Piglet? Oh, Light! After a minute, he did take the mask; she owed him that much, for his coat alone.

  When he finally reached the small, shaded courtyard where they had been meeting each morning beside a tiny round pool of lily pads and brightly spotted white fish, he found Nalesean and Birgitte ready for the Festival of Birds, too. The Tairen had contented himself with a plain green mask, but Birgitte’s was a spray of yellow-and-red with a crest of plumes, her golden hair hung loose, with feathers tied all down its length, and she wore a dress with a wide yellow belt, diaphanous beneath more red and yellow feathers. It did not reveal nearly as much as Riselle’s, yet it seemed about to every time she moved. He had never thought of her wearing a dress like other women.

  “Sometimes it’s fun to be looked at,” she said, poking him in the ribs, when he commented. Her grin would have done for Nalesean saying how much fun it was to pinch serving girls. “There’s a lot more to it than feather dancers wore, but not enough to it to slow me down, and anyway, I cannot see we’ll have to move quickly on this side of the river.” The dice rattled in his head. “What kept you?” she went on. “You didn’t make us wait so you could tickle a pretty girl, I hope.” He hoped he was not blushing.

  “I—” He was not certain what excuse he would have made, but just then half a dozen men wearing feathered coats strolled into the courtyard, all with those narrow swords on their hips, all but one wearing an elaborate mask with colorful crest and beak that represented no bird ever seen by human eyes. The exception was Beslan, twirling his mask by its ribbon. “Oh, blood and bloody ashes, what’s he doing here?”

  “Beslan?” Nalesean folded his hands on the pommel of his sword and shook his head in disbelief. “Why, burn my soul, he says he intends to spend the festival in your company. Some promise you two made, he says. I told him it would be deadly boring, but he wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I cannot think it is ever boring around Mat,” Tylin’s son said; his bow took them all in, but his dark eyes especially lingered on Birgitte. “I’ve never had so much fun as I did drinking with him and the Lady Elayne’s Warder on Swovan Night, though truth, I remember little.” He did not seem to recognize that Warder. Strangely, considering the taste she had shown in men—Beslan was fine-looking, maybe a little too fine, not at all her sort—strangely, she smiled slightly, and preened under his scrutiny.

  Right then, Mat did not care how out of character she behaved. Obviously Beslan suspected nothing, or that sword of his likely would already be out, but the last thing under the Light Mat wanted was a day in company with the man. It would be excruciating. He had some sense of decency, even if Beslan’s mother did not.

  The only problem was Beslan, who took that bloody promise to attend all the festivals and feastdays together very seriously. The more Mat agreed with Nalesean that the day they had planned would be dull beyond belief, the more determined Beslan grew. After a bit, his face began to darken, and Mat began to think that sword might be unsheathed yet. Well, a promise was a promise. When he and Nalesean and Birgitte left the palace, half a dozen feathered fools strutted along. Mat was sure it would not have happened had Birgitte been wearing her proper clothes. The whole lot of them kept eyeing her and smiling.

  “What was all that twisting around while he was spilling his eyes all over you?” he muttered as they crossed the Mol Hara. He tugged the ribbon holding the eagle mask tighter.

  “I did not twist, I moved.” Her primness was so blatantly false, he would have laughed some other time. “Slightly.” Abruptly her grin was back, and she lowered her voice for his ear alone. “I told you sometimes it’s fun to be looked at; just because they’re all too pretty doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy them looking. Oh, you’ll want to look at her,” she added, pointing to a slender woman who went running by in a blue owl mask and rather fewer feathers than Riselle had worn.

  That was one of the things about Birgitte; she would nudge him in the ribs and point out a pretty girl for his eye as readily as any man he had ever known, and expect him to point out in turn what she liked to see, which was generally the ugliest man in sight. Whether or not she chose to go half-naked today—a quarter, anyway—she was . . . well, a friend. A strange world, it was turning out to be. One woman he was beginning to think of as a drinking companion, and another after him as intently as he had ever pursued any pretty woman, in those old memories or his own. More intently; he had never chased any woman who let him know she did not want to be chased. A very strange world.

  The sun stood little more than halfway to its peak, but already celebrants filled the streets and squares and bridges. Tumblers and jugglers and musicians with feathers sewn about their clothes performed at every street corner, the music often drowned in laughter and shouting. For the poorer folk a few feathers laced into their hair sufficed, pigeon feathers gathered from the pavement for the street children dodging about and the beggars, but masks and costumes grew more elaborate as purses grew heavier. More elaborate, and frequently more scandalous. Men and women alike were often decked in feathers that revealed more skin than Riselle or that woman back in the Mol Hara. No commerce moved in the streets or canals today, though a number of shops seemed to be open—along with every tavern and inn, of course—but here and there a wagon made its way through the throng or a barge was poled along supporting a platform where young men and women posed in bright bird masks that covered their entire heads, with spreading crests sometimes rising a full pace, moving long colorful wings in such a way that the rest of their costumes were exposed only in flashes. Which was just as well, considering.

  According to Beslan, these settings, as they were called, were usually presented in guild halls and private palaces and houses. The entire festival normally took place indoors for the most part. It did not snow properly in Ebou Dar even when the weather was as it should be—Beslan said he would like to see this snow, one day—but apparently ordinary winter was cold enough to keep people from running around outdoors all but unclothed. With the heat, everything was spilling into the streets. Wait unt
il night fell, Beslan said; then Mat would really see something. As sunlight faded, so did inhibitions.

  Staring at a tall slender woman gliding along through the crowd in mask and feathered cloak and beyond that, six or seven feathers, Mat wondered what inhibitions some of these folk had left to shed. He almost shouted at her to cover herself with that cloak. She was pretty, but out in the street, before the Light and everybody?

  Those wagons carrying the settings attracted followers, of course, thick knots of men and women who shouted and laughed as they tossed coins, and sometimes folded notes, onto the wagons and squeezed everyone else in the street aside. He became used to fleeing ahead until they could duck down a crossing street, or waiting until the setting went by to cross an intersection or bridge. While waiting, Birgitte and Nalesean tossed coins to filthy urchins and dirtier beggars. Well, Nalesean tossed; Birgitte concentrated on the children, and pressed each coin into a grubby hand like a gift.

  In one of those waits, Beslan suddenly put a hand on Nalesean’s arm, raising his voice above the crowd and a cacophony of music coming from at least six different places. “Forgive me, Tairen, but not him.” A ragged man edged back into the throng, warily; gaunt-cheeked and bony, he seemed to have lost whatever pitiful feathers he might have found for his hair.

  “Why not?” Nalesean demanded.

  “No brass ring on his little finger,” Beslan replied. “He’s not in the guild.”

  “Light,” Mat said, “a man can’t even beg in this city without belonging to a guild?” Maybe it was his tone. The beggar leaped for his throat, a knife appearing in his grimy fist.

  Without thinking, Mat grabbed the man’s arm and spun, slinging him away into the crowd; some people cursed at Mat, some at the sprawling beggar. Some tossed the fellow a coin.

  From the corner of his eye, Mat saw a second skinny man in rags try to push Birgitte out of the way to reach him with a long knife. It was a foolish mistake to underestimate the woman because of her costume; from somewhere among those feathers she produced a knife and stabbed him beneath the arm.

  “Look out!” Mat shouted at her, but there was no time for warnings; even as he shouted, he drew from his coat-sleeve and threw sidearmed. The blade streaked past her face to sink into the throat of yet another beggar flaunting steel before he could plant it in her ribs.

  Suddenly there were beggars everywhere with knives, and clubs studded with spikes; screams and shouts rose as people in masks and costumes scrambled to get out of the way. Nalesean slashed a man in rags across the face, sending him reeling; Beslan ran another through the middle, while his costumed cronies fought still others.

  Mat had no time to see more; he found himself back-to-back with Birgitte and facing his own adversaries. He could feel her shifting against him, hear her mutter curses, but he was barely conscious of it; Birgitte could take care of herself, and watching the two men in front of him, he was not sure he could do the same. The hulking fellow with the toothless sneer had only one arm and a puckered socket where his left eye had been, but his fist held a club two feet long, encircled by iron bands that sprouted spikes like steel thorns. His rat-faced little companion still had both eyes and several teeth, and despite sunken cheeks and arms that seemed all bone and sinew, he moved like a snake, licking his lips and flicking a rusty dagger from hand to hand. Mat aimed the shorter knife in his own hand first at one, then the other. It was still long enough to reach a man’s vitals, and they danced and shuffled, each waiting for the other to leap at him first.

  “Old Cully won’t like this, Spar,” the bigger man growled, and rat-face darted forward, rusty blade flashing from hand to hand.

  He did not count on the knife that suddenly appeared in Mat’s left hand and sliced across his wrist. The dagger clattered to the paving stones, but the fellow flung himself at Mat anyway. As Mat’s other blade stabbed into his chest, he squealed, eyes going wide, arms wrapping around Mat convulsively. The bald fellow’s sneer widened, his club rising as he stepped in.

  The grin vanished as two beggars swarmed over him, snarling and stabbing.

  Staring incredulously, Mat shoved rat-face’s corpse away. The street was clear for fifty paces except for combatants, and everywhere beggars rolled on the pavement, two or three or sometimes four stabbing at one, beating him with clubs or rocks.

  Beslan caught Mat’s arm. There was blood on his face, but he was grinning. “Let’s get out of here and let the Fellowship of Alms finish its business. There’s no honor in fighting beggars, and besides, the guild won’t leave any of these interlopers alive. Follow me.” Nalesean was scowling—doubtless he saw no honor in fighting beggars either—and Beslan’s friends, several with their costumes awry and one with his mask off so another could dab at a cut across his forehead. The man with the cut was grinning, too. Birgitte bore not a scratch that Mat could see, and her costume looked as neat as it had back in the palace. She made her knife disappear; there was no way she could hide a blade under those feathers, but she did.

  Mat made no protest at being drawn away, but he did growl, “Do beggars always go around attacking people in this . . . this city?” Beslan might not appreciate hearing it called a bloody city.

  The man laughed. “You are ta’veren, Mat. There’s always excitement around ta’veren.”

  Mat smiled back with gritted teeth. Bloody fool, bloody city, and bloody ta’veren. Well, if a beggar slit his throat, he would not have to go back to the palace and let Tylin peel him like a ripe pear. Come to think of it, she had called him her little pear. Bloody everything! The street between the dyer’s shop and The Rose of the Eldar had its share of revelers, though not many scantily clad. Apparently you had to have coin to go near naked. Though the acrobats in front of the merchant’s house on the corner came close, the men barefoot and bare-chested in tight, brightly colored breeches, the women in even tighter breeches and thin blouses. They all had a few feathers in their hair, as did the capering musicians playing in front of the small palace at the far corner, a woman with a flute, another blowing on a tall, twisted black tube covered with levers, and a fellow beating a tambour for all he was worth. The house they had come to watch looked shut up tight.

  The tea at The Rose was as bad as ever, which meant it was much better than the wine. Nalesean stuck to the sour local ale. Birgitte said thanks without saying for what, and Mat shrugged it off silently; they grinned at each other and tapped cups. The sun rose, and Beslan sat balancing first one boot on the toe of the other, then the other way around, but his companions began growing restive, no matter how often he pointed out that Mat was ta’veren. A scuffle with beggars was hardly proper excitement, the street was too narrow for any settings to pass, the women were not as pretty as elsewhere, and even looking at Birgitte seemed to pall once they realized that she did not intend to kiss even one of them. With protestations of regret that Beslan would not come, they hurried off to find somewhere more exhilarating. Nalesean took a stroll down the alley beside the dyer’s, and Birgitte vanished into The Rose’s murky interior to find, she said, whether there was anything at all fit to drink hidden in some forgotten corner.

  “I never expected to see a Warder garbed like that,” Beslan said, changing his boots around.

  Mat blinked. The fellow had sharp eyes. She had not removed her mask once. Well, as long as he did not know about—

  “I think you will be good for my Mother, Mat.”

  Choking, Mat sprayed tea into the passersby. Several glared at him angrily, and one slender woman with a nice little bosom gave him a coy smile from beneath a blue mask he thought was meant to be a wren. She stamped a foot and stalked off when he did not smile back. Luckily, no one was angry enough to take it beyond glares before they too went on their way. Or maybe unluckily. He would not have minded if six or eight piled on him right then.

  “What do you mean?” he said hoarsely.

  Beslan’s head whipped around in wide-eyed surprise. “Why, her choosing you for her pretty, of course. Why is y
our face so red? Are you angry? Why—?” Suddenly he slapped his forehead and laughed. “You think I will be angry. Forgive me, I forget you’re an outlander. Mat, she’s my mother, not my wife. Father died ten years ago, and she has always claimed to be too busy. I am just glad she chose someone I like. Where are you going?”

  He did not realize he was on his feet until Beslan spoke. “I just . . . need to clear my head.”

  “But you’re drinking tea, Mat.”

  Dodging around a green sedan chair, he half saw the door of the house open and a woman with a blue-feathered cloak over her dress slip out. Unthinkingly—his head was spinning too much to think clearly—he fell in behind her. Beslan knew! He approved! His own mother, and he. . . .

  “Mat?” Nalesean shouted behind him. “Where are you going?”

  “If I’m not back by tomorrow,” Mat shouted back absently over his shoulder, “tell them they’ll have to find it for themselves!” He walked on after the woman in a daze, not hearing if Nalesean or Beslan shouted again. The man knew! He remembered once thinking that Beslan and his mother were both mad. They were worse! All of Ebou Dar was mad! He was hardly aware of the dice still spinning inside his skull.

  From a window of the meeting room, Reanne watched Solain disappear down the street toward the river. Some fellow in a bronze coat followed in her wake, but if he tried to impede her, he would find out soon enough that Solain had no time for men, and no patience with them.

  Reanne was not sure why the urge had grown so strong today. For days it had come on almost with the morning and faded with the sun, and for days she had fought—by the strict rules they did not quite dare call laws, that order was given at the half moon, still five nights off—but today. . . . She had spoken the order before she thought and been unable to make herself retract until the proper time. It would be well. No one had seen any sign of those two young fools calling themselves Elayne and Nynaeve anywhere in the city; thank the Light, there had been no need to take dangerous chances.