Swallowing an oath, Mat quickened his pace as much as he could and pushed through the women muttering apologies left and right. Olver was in the middle of them, a short, pale boy posturing and grinning at one woman then another. That toothy grin alone was enough that any of them might decide to slap his ears off in a moment.
"Please forgive him," Mat murmured, taking the boy's hand. "Come on, Olver; we have to get back to the city. Stop waving your cloak about. He doesn't know what he's saying, really. I don't know where he picks up that sort of thing."
Luckily, the women laughed and ruffled Olver's hair as Mat led him away. Some murmured that he was a sweet boy, of all things! One slipped her hand under Mat's cloak and pinched his bottom. Women!
Once clear, he scowled at the boy tripping along happily at his side. Olver had grown since Mat first met him, but he was still short for his years. And with that wide mouth and ears to match, he would never be handsome. "You could get yourself in deep trouble talking to women that way," Mat told him. "Women like a man to be quiet, and well-mannered. And reserved. Reserved, and maybe a little shy. Cultivate those qualities, and you'll do well."
Olver gave him a gaping, incredulous stare, and Mat sighed. The lad had a fistful of uncles looking after him, and every one except Mat himself was a bad influence.
Thom and Beslan were enough to restore Olver's grin. Pulling his hand free, he ran ahead to them laughing. Thom was teaching him how to juggle and play the harp and the flute, and Beslan was teaching him how to use a sword. His other "uncles" gave him other lessons, in a remarkably varied set of skills. Mat intended to start teaching him to use a quarterstaff, and the Two Rivers bow, once he had his strength back. What the boy was learning from Chel Vanin, or the Redarms, Mat did not want to know.
Luca rose from his fancy chair at Mat's approach, his fatuous smile fading to a sour grimace. Eyeing Mat up and down, he swept that ridiculous cloak around himself with a wide flourish and announced in a booming voice, "I am a busy man. I have much to do. It may be that I soon will have the honor of guesting the High Lady Suroth for a private showing." Without another word he strode away holding the ornate cloak with just one hand, so gusts rippled it behind him like a banner.
Mat gathered his own with both hands. A cloak was for warmth. He had seen Suroth in the Palace, though never closely. As closely as he wanted, though. He could not imagine her giving a moment to Valan Luca's Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders, as the streamer strung between two tall poles at the entrance to the show announced in red letters a pace high. If she did, likely she would eat the lions. Or frighten them to death.
"Has he agreed yet, Thom?" he asked quietly, frowning after Luca.
"We can travel with him when he leaves Ebou Dar," the weathered man replied. "For a price." He snorted, blowing out his mustaches, and irritably raked a hand through his white hair. "We should eat and sleep like kings for what he wants, but knowing him, I doubt we will. He doesn't think we are criminals, since we're still walking free, but he knows we're running from something, or we would travel some other way. Unfortunately, he does not intend to leave until spring at the earliest."
Mat considered several choice curses. Not until spring. The Light knew what Tylin would have done to him, would have him doing, by spring. Maybe Vanin stealing horses was not such a bad notion. "Gives me more time for dice," he said, as if it did not matter. "If he wants as much as you say, I need to fatten my purse. One thing you can say for the Seanchan, they don't seem to mind losing." He tried to be careful how long he let his luck run, and he had not faced any threats of having his throat slit for cheating, at least since he had been able to leave the Palace on his own feet. At first, he had believed it was his luck spreading, or perhaps being ta'veren finally coming in for something useful.
Beslan regarded him gravely. A dark slender man a little younger than Mat, he had been blithely rakish when Mat first met him, always ready for a round of the taverns, especially if it ended with women or a fight. Since the Seanchan came, he had grown more serious, though. To him, they were very serious business. "My mother won't be pleased if she learns I am helping her pretty leave Ebou Dar, Mat. She will marry me to someone with a squint and a mustache like a Taraboner foot soldier."
After all this time, Mat still winced. He could never get used to Tylin's son thinking what his mother was doing with Mat was all right. Well, Beslan did believe she had become a little too possessive—just a little, mind!—but that was the only reason he was willing to help. Beslan claimed Mat was what his mother needed to take her mind off the agreements she had been forced into by the Seanchan! Sometimes, Mat wished he was back in the Two Rivers, where at least you knew how other people thought. Sometimes he did.
"Can we return to the Palace now?" Olver said, more a demand than a question. "I have a reading lesson with the Lady Riselle. She lets me rest my head on her bosom while she reads to me."
"A notable achievement, Olver," Thom said, stroking his mustaches to hide a smile. Leaning closer to the other two men, he pitched his voice to escape the boy's ears. "The woman makes me play the harp for her before she lets me rest my head on that magnificent pillow."
"Riselle makes everyone entertain her first," Beslan chuckled in a knowing way, and Thom stared at him in astonishment.
Mat groaned. It was not his leg, this time, or the fact that every man in Ebou Dar seemed to be choosing the bosom they rested their heads on except for Mat Cauthon. Those bloody dice had just started tumbling in his head again. Something bad was coming his way. Something very bad.
Chapter 16: An Unexpected Encounter
The walk back to the city was better than two miles, across low hills that worked the ache out of Mat's leg and put it back again before they topped a rise and saw Ebou Dar ahead, behind its extravagantly thick, white-plastered wall that no siege catapult had ever been able to break down. The city within was white, too, though here and there pointed domes bore thin stripes of color. The white-plastered buildings, white spires and towers, white palaces, gleamed even on a gray winter day. Here and there a tower ended in a jagged top or a gap showed where a building had been destroyed, but in truth, the Seanchan conquest had occasioned little damage. They had been too fast, too strong, and in control of the city before more than scattered resistance could form.
Surprisingly, such trade as there was this time of year had hardly faltered with the city's fall. The Seanchan encouraged it, though merchants and ship captains and crews were required to take an oath to obey the Forerunners, await the Return, and serve Those Who Come Home. In practice, that meant largely going about your life as usual, so few objected. The broad harbor was more crowded with ships every time Mat looked at it. This afternoon, it seemed he could have walked from Ebou Dar proper across to the Rahad, a rough quarter he would just as soon never revisit. Often in the days after he first managed to walk again, he had gone down to the docks to stare. Not at the vessels with ribbed sails or the Sea Folk ships that the Seanchan were re-rigging and manning with their own crews, but at craft flying the Golden Bees of Illian, or the Sword and Hand of Arad Doman, or the Crescents of Tear. He no longer did. Today, he barely glanced toward the harbor. Those dice spinning in his head seemed to roar like thunder. Whatever was going to happen, he very much doubted he would like it. He seldom did, when the dice gave warning.
Though a steady stream of traffic flowed out of the great arched gateway, and people afoot seemed to be squeezing through to get in, a thick column of wagons and ox-carts, stretching all the way back to the rise, was waiting to enter and hardly moving. Everyone departing on a horse was Seanchan, whether with skin as dark as one of the Sea Folk or pale as a Cairhienin, and they stood out for more than being mounted. Some of the men wore voluminous trousers and odd, tight coats with high collars that fit their necks snugly right to the chin and rows of shiny metal buttons down the front, or flowing, elaborately embroidered coats almost as long as a woman's dress. They were of the Blood, as wer
e the women in strangely cut riding dresses that seemed made of narrow pleats, with divided skirts cut to expose colorfully booted ankles and wide sleeves that hung to their feet in the stirrups. A few wore lace veils that hid all but their eyes, so their faces were not exposed to the lowborn. Most of the riders by far, however, wore brightly painted armor of overlapping plates. Some of the soldiers were women, too, though there was no way to tell which with those painted helmets like the heads of monstrous insects. At least none wore the black-and-red of the Death-watch Guard. Even other Seanchan seemed nervous around them, and that was enough to warn Mat to walk wide around them.
In any case, none of the Seanchan spared so much as a glance for three men and a boy slowly walking toward the city along the column of waiting carts and wagons. Well, the men walked slowly. Olver skipped. Mat's leg was setting their pace, but he tried not to let the others see how much he was leaning on his staff. The dice usually announced incidents he managed to survive by the skin of his teeth, battles, a building dropping on his head. Tylin. He dreaded what would happen when they stopped this time.
Nearly all of the wagons and carts leaving the city had Seanchan driving or walking alongside, more plainly dressed than those on horses, hardly peculiar looking at all, but those in the waiting line were more likely to belong to Ebou Dari or folk from the surrounding area, men in long vests, women with their skirts sewn up on one side to expose a stockinged leg or colorful petticoats, their wagons as well as their carts pulled by oxen. Outlanders dotted the column, merchants with small trains of horse-drawn wagons. There was more trade in winter here in the south than farther north, where merchants had to contend with snow-covered roads, and they came from far, some of them. A stout Domani woman with a dark beauty patch on her copper cheek, riding the lead of four wagons, clutched her flowered cloak around her and scowled at a man five wagons ahead of her in the line, a greasy-looking fellow, hiding long thick mustaches behind a Taraboner veil, beside the wagon driver. A competitor, no doubt. A lean Kandori with a large pearl in her left ear and silver chains across her chest sat her saddle calmly, gloved hand folded on the pommel, maybe still unaware that her gray gelding and her wagon teams alike would be put into the lottery once she was into the city. One horse in five had been taken from locals, and so as not to discourage trade, one in ten from outlanders. Paid for, true, and a fair price in other days, but not nearly what the market would bear, given the demand. Mat always noticed horses, even if with only half his mind or less. A fat Cairhienin in a coat as drab as those of his wagon drivers was shouting angrily about the delay and letting his fine bay mare dance nervously. A very good conformation on that mare. She would go to an officer, most likely. What was going to happen when the dice stopped?
The wide arched gates into the city had their guards, though it was likely only the Seanchan recognized them as such. Sul'dam in their lightning-paneled blue dresses threaded back and forth through the streams of traffic with gray-clad damane on silvery a'dam. Just one of those pairs would have been sufficient to quell any disturbance short of a full-scale assault, and maybe even that, but that was not the real reason for their presence. In the first days after Ebou Dar's fall, while he was still confined to bed, they had harrowed the city searching for the women they called Marath'damane, and now they made sure none could enter. The sul'dam each carried an extra leash coiled on her shoulder just in case. Pairs patrolled the docks, too, meeting every arriving ship and boat.
Beside the wide arched gate into the city, a long platform displayed, on spikes twenty feet above the ground, the tarred but still recognizable heads of over a dozen men and two women who had fallen afoul of Seanchan justice. Above them hung the symbol for that justice, a headsman's slant-edged axe with the haft wrapped in an intricately knotted white cord. A placard below each head announced the crime that had placed it there, murder or rape, robbery with violence, assault on one of the Blood. Lesser offenses brought fines or flogging, or being made da'covale. The Seanchan were evenhanded about it. None of the Blood themselves were on display—one of those who earned execution would be sent back to Seanchan, or strangled with the white cord—but three of those heads had been attached to Seanchan, and the weight of their justice fell on high as well as low. Two placards marked rebellion hung below the heads of the woman who had been Mistress of the Ships to the Atha'an Miere and her Master of the Blades.
Mat had been through that gate often enough that he barely noticed the display, now. Olver skipped along singing a rhyming song. Beslan and Thom walked with their heads together, and once Mat caught a soft "risky business" from Thom, but he did not care what they were talking about. Then they were into the long, dim tunnel that carried the road through the wall, and the rumble of wagons passing through would have made listening impossible even had he wanted to. Keeping close to the side, well away from the wagon wheels, Thom and Beslan forged ahead talking in low murmurs, Olver darting after them, but when Mat emerged into daylight again, he walked into Thom's back before he realized that all of them had stopped, hard beside the tunnel's mouth. On the point of making a caustic comment, he suddenly saw what they were staring at. People afoot pushing out of the tunnel behind him shoved them aside, but he just stared, too.
The streets of Ebou Dar were always full of people, but not like this, as though a dam had burst and sent a flood of humanity into the city. The throng packed the street in front of him from one side to the other, surrounding pools of livestock the like of which he had never seen before, spotted white cattle with long upswept horns, pale brown goats covered in fine hair that hung to the paving stones, sheep with four horns. Every street he could see looked as jammed. Wagons and carts inched through the mass where they moved at all, the shouts and curses of the wagon drivers and carters all but drowned in the babble of voices and the noise of the animals. He could not make out words, but he could distinguish accents. Slow, drawling Seanchan accents. Some of them nudged a neighbor and pointed at him in his bright clothing. They were gaping and pointing at everything, as if they had never seen an inn or a cutler's shop before, but he still growled under his breath and jerked his hat brim low over his eyes.
"The Return," Thom muttered, and if Mat had not been right at his shoulder he would not have heard. "While we were taking our ease with Luca, the Corenne has arrived."
Mat had been thinking of this Return that the Seanchan kept going on about as an invasion, an army. One of the wagon drivers shouted and waved her long-handled whip at some boys who had crawled up on the side of the wagon box to poke at what appeared to be grapevines in wooden tubs of earth. Another wagon held a long printing press, and still another, just managing to turn into the tunnel, carried what looked like brewers' vats and a faint smell of hops. Crates of strangely colored chickens and ducks and geese decorated some of those wagons, not birds for sale, but a farmer's stock. It was an army all right, only not the sort he had imagined. This kind of army would be harder to fight than soldiers.
"Stab my eyes, we'll have to wade to get though this!" Beslan grumbled in disgust, rising on his toes to try peering farther ahead over the crowd. "How far before we find a clear street?"
Mat found himself remembering what he had not really seen when it was in front of his eyes, the harbor full of ships. Full of ships. Maybe two or three times the vessels that had been there when they left for Luca's camp at first light, quite a few of them still maneuvering under sail. Which meant there might be more still waiting to enter the harbor. Light! How many could have disgorged their cargo since morning? How many remained to be unloaded? Light, how many people could be carried on that number of ships? And why had they all come here instead of Tanchico? A shiver ran down his spine. Maybe this was not all of them.
"You had best try to find your way by back streets and alleys," he said, raising his voice so they could hear over the cacophony. "You won't reach the Palace before night, otherwise."
Beslan turned a frown on him. "You aren't returning with us? Mat, if you try to buy passage o
n a ship again… You know she won't go easy on you this time."
Mat matched the Queen's son scowl for scowl. "I just want to walk around a little," he lied. As soon as he returned to the Palace, Tylin would start cosseting and petting him. It would not have been that bad, really—not really—except that she did not care who saw her caress his cheeks and whisper endearments in his ear, even her son. Besides, what if the dice in his head stopped when he reached her? Possessive was hardly the word for Tylin these days. Blood and ashes, the woman might have decided to marry him! He did not want to marry, not yet, but he knew who he was going to marry, and it was not Tylin Quintara Mitsobar. Only, what could he do if she decided differently?
Suddenly he remembered Thom's murmur of "risky business." He knew Thom, and he knew Beslan. Olver was gaping at the Seanchan as hard as they themselves were at everything around them. He started to dart away for a closer look, and Mat seized his shoulder just in time and pushed him, protesting, into Thom's hands. "Take the boy back to the Palace and give him his lessons when Riselle is done with him. And forget whatever madness you have in mind. You could put your heads on display outside the gate, and Tylin’s, too." And his own. Never let that be forgotten!
The two men stared back at him without any expression, as good as confirming his suspicions.
"Perhaps I should walk with you," Thom said at last. "We could talk. You're remarkably lucky, Mat, and you have a certain flair for, shall we say, the adventurous?" Beslan nodded. Olver squirmed in Thom's grip, trying to stare at all the strange people at once and unconcerned with what his elders were talking about.
Mat grunted sourly. Why did people always want him to be a hero? Sooner or later that sort of thing was going to get him killed. "I don't need to talk about anything. They are here, Beslan. If you couldn't stop them getting in, sure as morning, you won't be able to push them out. Rand will deal with them, if the rumors are anything to go by." Again, those whirling colors spun through his head, almost obliterating the sound of the dice for an instant. "You took that bloody oath to wait on the Return; we all did." Refusal had meant being put in chains and set to work on the docks, or clearing the canals in the Rahad. Which made it no oath at all, in his book. "Wait on Rand." The colors came once more and vanished. Blood and ashes! He just had to stop thinking about… About certain people. Again they swirled. "It might come out right yet, if you give it time."
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