Winter's Heart twot-9

by Robert Jordan

  A serving man hurrying by with an armload of linen towels stared at Mat's muddiness in amazement, but Juilin thought it was at him, and snatched his thumbs free of his belt and attempted to adopt a more humble stance. Without much success. Thom might sleep with the servants, yet from the beginning he had somehow made it seem to be his own choice, an eccentricity, and no one thought it odd to see him up here, perhaps slipping into Riselle's rooms that had once been Mat's. Juilin had gone on at length about being a thief-catcher—never a thief-taker—and stared so many prickly lordlings and complacent merchants in the eye to show he was as good as they that everyone in the Palace knew who and what he was. And where he was supposed to be, which was belowstairs.

  "My Lord is wise," he said, too loudly, and making a stiff, jerky bow. "My Lord knows all about women. If my Lord will forgive a humble man, I must return to my place." Turning to go, he spoke over his shoulder, still in a carrying voice. "I heard today that if my Lord comes back one more time looking like he's been dragged in the street, the Queen intends taking a switch to my Lord's person."

  And that was the stone that broke the wagon clean in two.

  Flinging open the doors of Tylin’s apartments, Mat strode in, sailed his hat across the width of the room… And stopped dead, his mouth hanging open and everything he had planned to say frozen on his tongue. His hat hit the carpets and rolled, he did not see where. A gust of wind rattled the tall triple-arched windows that let out onto a long, screened balcony overlooking the Mol Hara.

  Tylin turned in a chair carved to look like gilded bamboo and stared at him over her golden winecup. Waves of glossy black hair touched with gray at the temples framed a beautiful face with the eyes of a bird of prey, and not one best pleased at the moment. Inconsequential things seemed to leap at him. She kicked her crossed leg slightly, rippling layered green and white petticoats. Pale green lace trimmed the oval opening in her gown that half exposed her full breasts, where the jeweled hilt of her marriage knife dangled. She was not alone. Suroth sat facing her, frowning into her winecup and tapping long fingernails on the arm of her chair, a pretty enough woman despite her hair being shaved to that long crest, except that she made Tylin seem a rabbit by comparison. Two of those fingernails on each hand were lacquered blue. Seated at her side was a little girl, of all things, also in an elaborately flowered robe over pleated white skirts, but with a sheer veil covering her entire head—it seemed to be shaved completely!—and wearing a fortune in rubies. Even in a state of shock, he noticed rubies and gold. A slender woman, nearly as dark as her stark black gown and tall even had she been Aiel, stood behind the girl's chair with her arms folded and ill-concealed impatience. Her wavy black hair was short, but not shaved at all, so she was neither of the Blood nor so'jhin. Imperiously beautiful, she put Tylin and Suroth both in the shade. He noticed beautiful women, too, even when he did feel hit in the head with a hammer.

  It was not the presence of Suroth or the strangers that jerked him to a halt, though. The dice had stopped, landing with a thunder that made his skull ring. That had never happened before. He stood there waiting for one of the Forsaken to leap out of the flames in the marble fireplace, or the earth to swallow the Palace beneath him.

  "You aren't listening to me, pigeon," Tylin cooed in dangerous tones. "I said, take yourself down to the kitchens and have a pastry until I have time for you. Have a bath while you're about it." Her dark eyes glittered. "We will discuss your mud later."

  In a daze, he ran it through again in his head. He had walked into the room, the dice had stopped, and… Nothing had happened. Nothing!

  "This man has been set upon," the tiny, veiled figure said, rising. Her tone turned cold as the wind outside. "You told me the streets were safe, Suroth! I am displeased."

  Something had to happen! It already should have! Something always happened when the dice stopped.

  "I assure you, Tuon, the streets of Ebou Dar are as safe as the streets of Seandar itself," Suroth replied, and that pulled Mat out of his stupor. She sounded… anxious. Suroth made other people anxious.

  A slender, graceful young man in the almost transparent robe of a da'covale appeared at her side with a tall blue porcelain pitcher, bowing his head and silently offering to replenish her wine. And giving Mat another start. He had not realized anyone else was present in the room. The yellow-haired man in his indecent garment was not the only one, either. A slim but nicely rounded red-haired woman wearing the same sheer robe was kneeling beside a table that held spice bottles and more fine Sea Folk porcelain wine pitchers and a small gilded brass brazier with the pokers needed for heating the wine, while a graying nervous-eyed serving woman wearing green-and-white House Mitsobar livery stood at the other end. And in one corner, so motionless that he still almost missed her, yet another Seanchan, a short woman with half her golden head shaved and a bosom that might outmatch Riselle's if her dress of red-and-yellow panels had not covered her neck to the chin. Not that he had any real desire to find out. Seanchan were very touchy about their so'jhin. Tylin was touchy about any woman. There had not been a serving woman younger than his grandmother in her apartments since he was able to get out of bed.

  Suroth looked at the graceful man as though wondering what he was, then shook her head wordlessly and turned her attention back to the child, Tuon, who waved the fellow away. The liveried serving maid scurried forward to take the pitcher from him and try to refill Tylin’s cup, but the Queen made a very small gesture that sent her back to the wall. Tylin was sitting very, very still. Little wonder that she wanted to avoid notice if this Tuon frightened Suroth, as she plainly did.

  "I am displeased, Suroth," the girl said again, sternly frowning down at the other woman. Even standing, she did not have all that far down to stare at the seated High Lady. Mat supposed she must be a High Lady, too, only Higher than Suroth. "You have recovered much, and that will please the Empress, may she live forever, but your ill-considered attack eastward was a disaster that must not be repeated. And if the streets of this city are safe, how can he have been set upon?"

  Suroth's knuckles were white from gripping the chair arm, and her winecup. She glared at Tylin as though the lecture were her fault, and Tylin gave her an apologetic smile and bowed her head. Oh, blood and ashes, he was going to pay for that!

  "I fell down, that's all." His voice might as well have been fireworks for the way heads whipped around. Suroth and Tuon looked shocked that he had spoken. Tylin looked like an eagle who wanted her rabbit fried. "My Ladies," he added, but that did not seem to improve anything.

  The tall woman suddenly reached out and snatched the wine-cup from Tuon's hand, throwing it into the fireplace. Sparks showered up the chimney. The serving woman stirred as if to retrieve the cup before it could be damaged further, then subsided at a touch from the so'jhin.

  "You are being foolish, Tuon," the tall woman said, and her voice made the girl's sternness seem laughter. The too-familiar Seanchan drawl seemed almost absent entirely. "Suroth has the situation here well in her control. What happened to the east can happen in any battle. You must stop wasting time on ridiculous trifles."

  Suroth gaped at her in astonishment for an instant before she could assume a frozen mask. Mat did a little gaping on his own part. Use that tone of voice to one of the Blood, and you were lucky to escape with a trip to the flogging post!

  Shockingly, Tuon inclined her head slightly. "You may be right, Anath," she said calmly, and even with a touch of deference. "Time and the omens will tell. But the young man plainly is lying. Perhaps he fears Tylin's anger. But his injuries clearly are more than he could sustain falling down unless there are cliffs in the city I have not seen."

  So he feared Tylin’s anger, did he? Well, come to that, he did, a little. Only a little, mind. But he did not like being reminded of it. Leaning on his shoulder-high staff, he tried to make himself comfortable. They could ask a man to sit, after all. "I was hurt the day your lads took the city," he said with his cheekiest grin. "Your lot w
ere flinging around lightning and balls of fire something fierce. I'm just about healed, though, thank you for asking." Tylin buried her face in her winecup, and still managed to shoot him a look over the rim that promised retribution later.

  Tuon's skirts rustled as she crossed the carpets to him. The dark face behind that sheer veil might have been pretty, without the expression of a judge passing sentence of death. And with a decent head of hair instead of a bald pate. Her eyes were large and liquid, but utterly impersonal. All other long fingernails were lacquered, he noticed, a bright red. He wondered whether that signified anything. Light, a man could live in luxury for years on the price of those rubies.

  She reached up with one hand, putting her fingertips under his chin, and he started to jerk back. Until Tylin glared at him over Tuon's head, promising retribution here and now, if he did any such thing. Glowering, he let the girl shift his head for her study.

  "You fought us?" she demanded. "You have sworn the oaths?"

  "I swore," he muttered. "For the other, I had no chance."

  "So you would have," she murmured. Circling him slowly, she continued her study, fingering the lace at his wrist, touching the black silk scarf tied around his neck, lifting the edge of his cloak to examine the embroidery. He endured it, refusing to shift his stance, glowering fit to match Tylin. Light, he had bought horses without so thorough an examination! Next, she would want to look at his teeth!

  "The boy told you how he was injured," Anath said in frosty tones of command. "If you want him, then buy him and be done. The day has been long, and you should be in your bed."

  Tuon paused, examining the long signet ring on his finger. It had been carved as a try-piece, to show the carver's skills, a running fox and two ravens in flight, all surrounded by crescent moons, and he had bought it by chance, though he had come to like it. He wondered whether she wanted it. Straightening, she stared up at his face. "Good advice, Anath," she said. "How much for him, Tylin? If he is a favorite, name your price, and I will double it."

  Tylin choked on her wine and began coughing. Mat almost fell off his staff. The girl wanted to buy him? Well, she might as well have been looking at a horse for all the expression on her face.

  "He is a free man, High Lady," Tylin said unsteadily when she could speak. "I… I cannot sell him." Mat could have laughed, if Tylin did not sound as though she were trying to keep her teeth from chattering, if bloody Tuon had not just asked his price. A free man! Ha!

  The girl turned away from him as though dismissing him from her mind. "You are afraid, Tylin, and under the Light, you should not be." Gliding to Tylin’s chair, she lifted her veil with both hands, baring the lower half of her face, and bent to kiss Tylin lightly, once on each eye and once on the lips. Tylin looked astounded. "You are a sister to me, and to Suroth," Tuon said in a surprisingly gentle voice. "I myself will write your name as one of the Blood. You will be the High Lady Tylin as well as Queen of Altara, and more, as was promised you."

  Anath snorted, loudly.

  "Yes, Anath, I know," the girl sighed, straightening and lowering her veil. "The day has been long and arduous, and I am weary. But I will show Tylin what lands are in mind for her, so she will know and be easy in her mind. There are maps in my chambers, Tylin. You will honor me by accompanying me, there? I have excellent masseuses."

  "The honor is mine," Tylin said, sounding not all that much steadier than before.

  At a gesture from the so'jhin, the yellow-haired man went running to open the door and kneel holding it open, but there was still all the smoothing and adjusting of clothes that women had to do before they would go anywhere, Seanchan or Altaran or from anywhere else. Though, the red-haired da'covale performed the function for Tuon and Suroth. Mat took the opportunity to draw Tylin a little aside, far enough that he would not be overheard. The so'jhin's blue eyes kept coming back to him, he realized, but at least Tuon, accepting the attentions of the slender da'covale woman, seemed to have forgotten he existed.

  "I didn't just fall down," he told Tylin softly. "The gholam tried to kill me not much more than an hour ago. It might be best if I left. That thing wants me, and it'll kill anybody near me, too." The plan had just occurred to him, but he thought it had a good chance of success.

  Tylin sniffed. "He—it—it cannot have you, piglet." She directed a look at Tuon that might have made the girl forget about Tylin being a sister had she seen. "And neither can she." At least she had sense enough to whisper.

  "Who is she?" he asked. Well, it had never been more than a chance.

  "The High Lady Tuon, and you know as much as I," Tylin replied, just as quietly. "Suroth jumps when she speaks, and she jumps when Anath speaks, though I would almost swear that Anath is some sort of servant. They are a very peculiar people, sweetling." Suddenly she flaked some mud from his cheek with one finger. He had not realized he had mud on his face, too. Suddenly, the eagle was strong in her eyes. "Do you recall the pink ribbons, sweetling? When I come back, we'll see how you look in pink."

  She swanned out of the room with Tuon and Suroth, trailed by Anath and the so'jhin and the da'covale, leaving Mat with the grandmotherly serving woman who began to clean up the wine table. He sank into one of the bamboo carved chairs and rested his head in his hands.

  Any other time, those pink ribbons would have had him gibbering. He never should have tried to get his own back with her. Even the gholam did not occupy much of his thoughts. The dice had stopped and… What? He had come face-to-face, or near enough, with three people he had not met before, but that could not be it. Maybe it was something to do with Tylin becoming one of the Blood. But always before, when the dice stopped, something had happened to him, personally.

  He sat there worrying over it while the serving woman called in others to carry everything away, sat there until Tylin returned. She had not forgotten about the pink ribbons, and that made him forget about anything else for quite a long time.

  Chapter 18: An Offer

  The days after the gholam tried to kill him settled into rhythms that irritated Mat no end. The gray sky never altered, except to give rain or not.

  There was talk in the streets of a man being killed by a wolf not far outside the city, his throat ripped. No one was worried, just curious; wolves had not been seen close to Ebou Dar in years. Mat worried. City people might believe a wolf would come that close to city walls, but he knew better. The gholam had not gone away. Harnan and the other Redarms stubbornly refused to leave, claiming they could watch his back, and Vanin refused without reasons, unless a muttered comment that Mat had a good eye for fast horses was supposed to be one. He spat after he said it, though. Riselle, her olive face pretty enough to make a man swallow, her big dark eyes knowing enough to dry his tongue, inquired about Olver's age, and when he said close on ten, she looked surprised and tapped her full lips thoughtfully, but if she changed anything in the boy's lessons, he still came away from them bubbling equally over her bosom and the books she read him. Mat thought Olver would almost have given up his nightly games of Snakes and Foxes for Riselle and the books. And when the lad ran out of the rooms that once had been Mat's, Thom often slipped in with his harp under his arm. By itself that was enough to make Mat grind his teeth, only that was not the half.

  Thom and Beslan frequently went out together, not inviting him, and were gone for half the day, or half the night. Neither would say a word more about their schemes, though Thom had the grace to look embarrassed. Mat hoped they were not going to get people killed for nothing, but they showed little interest in his opinions. Beslan glared at the very sight of him. Juilin continued to slip abovestairs and was seen by Suroth, which earned him a strapping hung up by his wrists from a stallpost in the stables. Mat saw his welts tended by Vanin—the man claimed doctoring men was the same as doctoring horses—and warned him it could be worse next time, but the fool was back on the upper floors that very night, still wincing from the weight of his shirt on his back. It had to be a woman, though the thief-catcher refuse
d to say. Mat suspected one of the Seanchan noblewomen. One of the Palace servants could have met him in his own room, with Thom out of it so much.

  Not Suroth or Tuon, to be sure, but they were not the only Seanchan High Blood in the Palace. Most of the Seanchan nobles rented rooms, or more often whole houses, in the city, but several had come with Suroth and a handful with the girl, too. More than one of the women looked a pleasant armful in spite of their crested heads and their way of staring down their noses at everybody without shaved temples. If they noticed them more than they did the furniture, that was. If it seemed unlikely that one of those haughty women would look twice at a man who slept in the servant's quarters, well, the Light knew women had peculiar tastes in men. He had no choice but to leave Juilin alone. Whoever the woman was, she might get the thief-catcher beheaded yet, but that sort of fever had to burn itself out before a man could think straight. Women did strange things to a man's head.

  The newly arrived ships disgorged people and animals and cargo for days on end, enough that the city's massive walls would have burst from the inside had they all stayed, but they flowed through the city and out into the countryside with their families and their crafts and their livestock, prepared to put down roots. Soldiers passed through in thousands, too, well-ordered infantry and cavalry with the flair of veterans, moving north in bright-colored armor, and east across the river. Mat gave up trying to count them. Sometimes he saw strange creatures, though most of those were unloaded above the city to avoid the streets. Torm like three-eyed bronze-scaled cats the size of horses, sending most real horses around them into a frenzy just by their presence, and corim, like hairy wingless birds as tall as a man, tall ears twitching constantly and long beaks seeming to yearn for flesh to rend, and huge s'redit with their long noses and longer tusks. Raken and the larger to'raken flew from their landing site below the Rahad, huge lizards spreading wings like bats and carrying men on their backs. The names were easy enough to pick up; any Seanchan soldier was eager to discuss the necessity of scouts on raken and the abilities of corim at tracking, whether s'redit were useful for more than moving heavy loads and torm too intelligent to trust. He learned a great deal of interest from men who wanted what most soldiers did, a drink and a woman and a bit of a gamble, not necessarily in any given order. Those soldiers were indeed veterans. Seanchan was an Empire larger than all the nations between the Aryth Ocean and the Spine of the World, all under one Empress, but with a history of almost constant rebellions and revolts that kept its soldiers' skills keen. The farmers would be harder to dig out.