Knife of Dreams twot-11

by Robert Jordan

  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 pie 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.

  When the proprietor, a sleek woman with bright-feathered birds embroidered to below her bosom, came out and began extolling the virtues of her blades, he said. “How much for this black stick, Mistress?”

  She blinked, startled that a man in silk and lace wanted a quarterstaff-slim as it was, she bloody well thought the bloody thing was a quarterstaff!-and named a price that he paid without bargaining. Which made her blink again, and frown as if she thought she should have asked for more. He would have paid more for the makings of a Two Rivers bow. With the raw bowstave over his shoulder, he walked on, wolfing down the last of the meat pie and wiping his hand on his coat. But he had not come for breakfast or a bowstave any more than for gambling. It was the stables that interested him.

  Livery stables always had a horse or three for sale, and if the price was right, they would usually sell one that had not been for sale. At least, they did when the Seanchan had not snapped them up already. Luckily, the Seanchan presence in Jurador had been fleeting so far. He wandered from stable to stable examining bays and roans, blue roans and piebalds, duns, sorrels, blacks, whites, grays and dapples, all mares or geldings. A stallion would not serve his purposes. Not every animal he looked at had a shallow girth or long cannons, yet none matched what he had in mind. Until he entered a narrow stable jammed between a large stone inn called The Twelve Salt Wells and a rugmaker’s shop.

  He would have thought the racketing looms would have bothered the horses, but they were all quiet, apparently accustomed to the noise. Stalls stretched farther into the block than he had expected, but lanterns hanging from the stall posts gave a fair light away from the doors. The air. speckled with dust from the loft above, smelled of hay and oats and horse dung, but not old dung. Three men with shovels were mucking out stalls. The owner kept his place clean. That meant less chance of disease. Some stables he had walked out of after getting one whiff.

  The black-and-white mare was out of her stall on a rope halter while a groom put down fresh straw, and she stood squarely, and with her ears perked forward, showing alertness. About fifteen hands tall, she was long in front, with a deep girth that promised endurance, and her legs were perfectly proportioned, with short cannons and a good angle to her fetlocks. Her shoulders were well sloped, and her croup dead level with her whithers. She had lines as good as Pips’, or even better. More than that, she was a breed he had heard tell of but never thought to see, a razor, from Arad Doman. No other breed would have that distinctive coloring. In her coat, black met white in straight lines that could have been sliced by a razor, hence the name. Her presence here was as mystifying as the black yew. He had always heard no Do-mani would sell a razor to any outlander. He let his eyes sweep past her without lingering, studying the other animals in their stalls. Had the dice inside his skull slowed? No, it was his imagination. He was sure they were spinning as hard as they had in Luca’s wagon.

  A wiry man with only a fringe of gray hair remaining came forward. ducking his head over folded hands. “Toke Fearnim. my Lord,” he introduced himself in rough accents, eyeing the bowstave on Mat’s shoulder dubiously. Men who wore silk coats and gold signet rings rarely carried such things. “How can I be of service? My Lord wishes to rent a horse? Or to buy?” Embroidery, small bright flowers, covered the shoulders of the vest he wore over a
shirt that might have been white once. Mat avoided looking at the flowers at all. The fellow had one of those curved knives at his belt and two long white scars on his leathery face. Old scars. Any fighting he had done lately had not marked him where it showed.

  “Buy, Master Fearnim, if you have anything for sale. If I can find one that’s halfway decent. I’ve had more spavined gluebaits offered to me as six-year-olds when they were eighteen if a day than I can shake a stick at.” He hefted the bowstave slightly with a grin. His Da claimed bargaining went better if you could make the other fellow start grinning.

  “I have three for sale, my Lord, none of them spavined,” the wiry man replied with another bow, and no hint of a grin. Fearnim gestured. “One is out of her stall there. Five years old and prime horseflesh, my Lord. And a steal at ten crowns. Gold,” he added blandly.

  Mat let his jaw drop. “For a pkbalcfi I know the Seanchan have driven prices up, but that’s ridiculous!”

  “Oh, she’s not your common piebald, my Lord. A razor is what she is. Domani bloodborn ride razors.”

  Blood and bloody ashes! So much for catching a bargain. “So you say, so you say,” Mat muttered, lowering one end of the bowstave to the stone floor so he could lean on it. His hip seldom bothered him any longer except when he did a lot of walking, but he had done so this morning, and he felt twinges. Well, bargain or no, he had to play out the game. There were rules to horse trading. Break them, and you were asking to have your purse emptied out. “I’ve never heard of any horse called a razor myself. What else do you have? Only geldings or mares, mind.”

  “Geldings are all I have for sale except the razor, my Lord,” Fearnim said, emphasizing the word razor a little. Turning toward the back of the stable, he shouted, “Adela, bring out that big bay what’s for sale.”

  A lanky young woman with a pimply face, in breeches and a plain dark vest, came darting out of the back of the stable to obey. Fearnim had Adela walk the bay and then a dappled gray on rope leads in the good light near the doors. Mat had to hand him that. Their conformation was not bad at all, but the bay was too big, better than seventeen hands, and the gray kept his ears half laid back and tried to bite Adela’s hand twice. She was deft with the animals, though, easily evading the bad-tempered gray’s lunges. Rejecting the pair of them would have been easy even if he had not had his mind set on the razor.

  A lean, gray-striped tomcat, like a ridgecat in miniature, appeared and sat at Fearnim’s feet to lick a bloody gash on his shoulder. “Rats are worse this year than I ever recall,” the stablekeeper muttered, frowning down at the cat. “They fight back more, too. I’m going to have to get another cat, or maybe two.” He brought himself back to the business at hand. “Will my Lord take a look at my prize, since the others don’t suit?”

  “I suppose I could look at the piebald, Master Fearnim,” Mat said doubtfully. “But not for any ten crowns.”

  “In gold,” Fearnim said. “Hurd, walk the razor for the Lord here.” He emphasized the breed again. Working the man down would be difficult. Unless he got some help for a change from being ta’veren. His luck never helped with anything as straightforward as dickering.

  Hurd was the fellow refreshing the straw in the razor’s stall, a squat man who had about three white hairs left on his head and no teeth in his mouth at all. That was evident when he grinned, which he did while he led the mare in a circle. He clearly liked the animal, and well he should.

  She walked well, but Mat still inspected her closely. Her teeth said Fearnim had been honest enough about her age-only a fool lied very far about a horse’s age unless the buyer was a fool himself, though it was surprising how many sellers thought buyers were all just that- and her ears pricked toward him when he stroked her nose while checking her eyes. They were clear and bright, free of rheum. He felt along her legs without finding any heat or swelling. There was never a hint of a lesion or sore, or of ringworm, anywhere on her. He could get his fist easily between her rib cage and her elbow-she would have a long stride-and was barely able to fit his flat hand between her last rib and the point of her hip. She would be hardy, unlikely to strain a tendon if run fast.

  “My Lord knows his horseflesh, I see.”

  “That I do, Master Faernim. And ten crowns gold is too much, especially for a piebald. Some say they’re bad luck, you know. Not that I believe it. not as such, or I wouldn’t offer at all.”

  “Bad luck? I never heard that, my Lord. What do you offer?”

  “I could get Tairen bloodstock for ten crowns gold. Not the best, true, but still Tairen. I’ll give you ten crowns. In silver.”

  Fearnim threw back his head, laughing uproariously, and when he stopped, they settled down to the dickering. In the end. Mat handed over five crowns in gold along with four marks gold and three crowns silver, all stamped in Ebou Dar. There were coins from many countries in the chest under his bed. but foreign coin usually meant finding a banker or money changer to weigh them and work out what they were worth locally. Aside from attracting more notice than he wanted, he would have ended paying more for the animal, maybe even the full ten crowns gold. Money changers’ scales always seemed to work that way. He had not expected to get the man down that far, but from Fearnims expression, grinning at last, he had never expected to receive so much. It was the best way for horse trading to end, with both sides thinking they had come out ahead. All in all, the day had begun very well, dice or no bloody dice. He should have known it would not last.

  When he got back to the show at midday, riding the razor bareback because of his aching hip and with the dice rattling in his head, the line of people was longer than when he had left, waiting to pass beneath the big blue banner, stretched between two tall poles, that carried the show’s name in big red letters. As people dropped their coins into the clear glass pitcher held by a heavy-set horse handler in a rough woolen coat, to be poured from there into an iron-bound chest under the watchful eyes of another horse handler who was even larger, more people joined the line, so it never seemed to grow shorter. The thing stretched beyond the end of the rope and around the corner. For a small wonder, no one was pushing or shoving. There were obvious farmers in the line, wearing rough woolens and with dirt ingrained in their hands, though the children’s faces and those of the farmwives at least had been scrubbed clean. Luca was getting his hoped-for crowd, unfortunately. No chance of convincing him to leave tomorrow now. The dice said something was going to happen, something fateful to Mat bloody Cauthon. but what? There had been times when the dice stopped and he still had no idea what happened.

  Just inside the canvas wall, with people streaming past to enjoy the performers lining both sides of the main street. Aludra was taking delivery of two wagonloads of barrels in various sizes. Of more than the barrels, it seemed. “I will show you where to park the wagons,” the slender woman told the driver of the lead wagon, a lean man with a jutting jaw. Aludra’s waist-long beaded braids swung as her eyes followed Mat for a moment, but she quickly turned back to the wagon driver. “The horses, you will take to the horselines afterward, yes?”

  Now. what had she bought in such quantity? Something for her fireworks, certainly. Every night, soon after dark so she would catch everyone before they went to bed. she launched her nightflowers, two or three for a town the size of Jurador or if there were several villages close together. He had had some thoughts on why she wanted a bellfounder. but the only one that seemed to make any sense actually made no sense at all that he could see.

  He hid the mare on the horselines. Well, you could not really hide a razor, but a horse was noticed less among other horses, and the time was not right, yet. The bowstave he left in the wagon he shared with Egeanin and Domon. neither of whom was there, then headed for Tuon’s faded purple wagon. That was parked not far from Luca’s wagon, now, though Mat wished it had been left near the storage wagons. Only Luca and his wife knew that Tuon was a High Lady rather than a servant who had been about to expose Mat and Egeanin to her supposed husband a
s lovers, but many among the showfolk were already wondering why Mat spent more time with Tuon than with Egeanin. Wondering and disapproving. They were an oddly prim lot for the most part, even the contortionists. Running off with the wife of a cruel lord was romantic. Canoodling with the lady’s maid was sordid. Giving Tuon’s wagon this favored spot, among the people who had been with Luca for years and were his most prized performers, was going to cause more talk.

  In truth, he hesitated about going to Tuon at all with the dice drumming in his head. They had stopped too often in her presence. and he still did not know the why for a single one of those times. Not for certain. Maybe the first time, it had just been meeting her. Thinking of it made the hair on the back of his neck want to stand up. Still, with women, you always had to take chances. With a woman like Tuon, ten chances a day, and nevet knowing the odds until it was too late. Sometimes he wondered why his luck failed to help him more with women. Women were certainly as unpredictable as any honest dice ever made.

  None of the Redarms was on guard outside the wagon-they were beyond that, now-so he trotted up the short flight of steps at the back of the wagon and rapped once before pulling the door open and entering. After all, he paid the rent for the thing, and they were hardly likely to be lying around unclothed at this time of day. Anyway, the door had a latch if they needed to keep people out.

  Mistress Anan was off somewhere, but the interior was still crowded. The narrow table had been let down on ropes from the ceiling, with mismatched plates of bread and olives and cheese laid out on it along with one of Luca’s tall silver wine pitchers, a squat red-striped pitcher and flower-painted cups. Tuon. a month’s growth of tightly curled black hair on her head, sat on the wagon’s sole stool at the far end of the table, with Selucia sitting on one of the beds at her side, and Noal and Olver on the other bed, elbows on the table. Today, Selucia was in the dark blue Ebou Dari dress that displayed her memorable bosom so well, with a flowered scarf tied around her head, but Tuon wore a red dress that seemed to be made entirely of tiny pleats. Light, he had only bought her the silk yesterday! How had she convinced the show’s seamstresses to complete a dress already? He was pretty certain that usually took longer than a day. With liberal promises of his gold, he suspected. Well, if you bought a woman silk, you had to expect to pay to have it sewn. He had heard that saying as a boy, when he never expected to be able to afford silk, but it was the Light’s own truth.