Harnan and Metwyn, two of the Redarms, had already hitched the first pair of horses to the shaft of the purple wagon and were almost done with the second pair. Soldiers well trained in the Band of the Red Hand, they would be ready to take the road while the showfolk were still figuring out which way the horses were supposed to face. Mat had taught the Band to move fast when there was need. His own feet dragged as though he were wading in mud.
Harnan, with that fool tattoo of a hawk on his cheek, was the first to see him. Buckling a trace, the heavy-jawed file-leader exchanged looks with Metwyn, a boyish-faced Cairhienin whose appearance belied his age and his weakness for tavern brawls. They had no call to look surprised.
“Everything going smoothly? I want to be away in good time.” Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Mat eyed the purple wagon uneasily. He should have brought her a present, jewelry or flowers. Either worked as well, with most women.
“Smooth enough, my Lord,” Harnan replied in a cautious tone. “No shouting, no screaming, no crying.” He glanced at the wagon as if he did not credit it himself.
“Quiet suits me,” Metwyn said, stringing one of the reins through a ring on a horse-collar. “Woman starts crying, the only thing to do is leave, if you value your hide, and we can hardly drop these off by the side of the road.” But he glanced at the wagon, too, and shook his head in disbelief.
There really was nothing for Mat to do except go inside. So he did. It only took two tries, with a smile fixed on his face, to make himself climb the short flight of painted wooden steps at the back of the wagon. He was not afraid, but any fool would know enough to be nervous.
Despite the lack of windows, the interior of the wagon was well lighted, with four mirrored lamps burning, and the lamps held good oil, so there was no rancid smell. But then, with the stink from outside, it would have been hard to tell. He needed to find a better spot to park this wagon. A small brick stove with an iron door, and an iron top for cooking, made the space toasty compared with outside. It was not a large wagon, and every inch of wall that could be spared was covered with cabinets or shelves or pegs for hanging clothing and towels and the like, but the table that could be let down on ropes was snug against the ceiling, and the three women inside the wagon were hardly crowded.
They could not have been more different, those three. Mistress Anan was sitting on one of the two narrow beds built into the walls, a regal woman with touches of gray in her hair, seemingly intent on her embroidery hoop and not looking at all as if she were a guard. A large golden ring hung in each of her ears, and her marriage knife dangled from a close-fitting silver necklace, the hilt with its red and white stones snug in the cleavage exposed by the narrow plunging neckline of her Ebou Dari dress that had one side of the skirt sewn up to expose yellow petticoats. She wore another knife, with a long, curved blade, tucked behind her belt, but that was just the custom of Ebou Dar. Setalle had refused to take on any disguise, which seemed well enough. No one had reason to be hunting for her, and finding clothes for everyone else had been a big enough problem as it was. Selucia, a pretty woman with skin the color of buttery cream, was cross-legged on the floor between the beds, a dark scarf covering her shaven head and a sullen expression on her face, though normally she was dignified enough to make Mistress Anan look flighty. Her eyes were as blue as Egeanin’s, and more piercing, and she had made more fuss than Egeanin over losing her the rest of her hair. She disliked the dark blue Ebou Dari dress she had been given, too, claiming the deep neckline was indecent, but it hid her as effectively as a mask. Few men who glimpsed Selucia’s impressive bosom would be able to focus long on her face. Mat might have enjoyed the view for a moment or two himself, but there was Tuon, seated on the wagon’s only stool, a leather-bound book open on her lap, and he could barely make himself look at anything else. His wife-to-be. Light!
Tuon was tiny, not just short but almost slim as a boy, and a loose-fitting dress of brown wool, bought from one of the showfolk, made her seem a child wearing her older sister’s clothes. Not at all the sort of woman he enjoyed, especially with only a few days’ growth of black stubble covering her scalp. If you ignored that, she was pretty, though, in a reserved way, with her heart-shaped face and full lips, her eyes large dark liquid pools of serenity. That utter calmness almost unnerved him. Not even an Aes Sedai would be serene in her circumstances. The bloody dice in his head did not help matters.
“Setalle has been keeping me informed,” she said in a cool drawl as he pulled the door shut. He had gotten so he could tell a difference in Seanchan accents; Tuon’s made Egeanin sound as if she had a mouthful of mush, but they all sounded slurred and slow. “She’s told me the story you have put about concerning me, Toy.” Tuon had persisted in calling him that, back in the Tarasin Palace. He had not cared, then. Well, not much.
“My name is Mat,” he began. He never saw where the pottery cup in her hand came from, but he managed to drop to the floor in time for it to shatter against the door instead of his head.
“I am a servant, Toy?” If Tuon’s tone had been cool before, now it was deep winter ice. She barely raised her voice, but it was hard as ice, too. Her expression would have made a hanging judge look giddy. “A thieving servant?” The book slid from her lap as she stood and bent to snatch up the lidded white chamber pot. “A faithless servant?”
“We will need that,” Selucia said deferentially, slipping the bulbous pot out of Tuon’s hands. Setting it carefully to one side, she crouched at Tuon’s feet almost as if ready to hurl herself at Mat, laughable as that was. Though nothing much seemed laughable right then.
Mistress Anan reached up to one of the railed shelves above her head and handed Tuon another cup. “We have plenty of these,” she murmured.
Mat shot her an indignant look, but her hazel eyes twinkled with amusement. Amusement! She was supposed to be guarding those two!
A fist thumped on the door. “Do you need help in there?” Harnan called uncertainly. Mat wondered which of them he was asking.
“We have everything well in hand,” Setalle called back, calmly pushing her needle through the fabric stretched on her hoop. You would have thought that needlework was the most important thing. “Go on about your work. Don’t dawdle.” The woman was not Ebou Dari, but she certainly had soaked up Ebou Dari ways. After a moment, boots thumped back down the steps outside. It seemed Harnan had been too long in Ebou Dar, as well.
Tuon turned the new cup in her hands as though examining the flowers painted on it, and her lips quirked in a smile so small it almost might have been Mat’s imagination. She was more than pretty when she smiled, but it was one of those smiles that said she knew things he did not. He was going to break out in hives if she kept doing that. “I will not be known as a servant, Toy.”
“My name is Mat, not . . . that other thing,” he said, climbing to his feet and cautiously testing his hip. To his surprise, it ached no worse after smacking the floorboards. Tuon arched an eyebrow and hefted the cup in one hand. “I could hardly tell the showfolk I’d kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons,” he said in exasperation.
“The High Lady Tuon, peasant!” Selucia said crisply. “She is under the veil!” Veil? Tuon had worn a veil in the palace, but not since.
The tiny woman gestured graciously, a queen granting license. “It is of no import, Selucia. He is ignorant, yet. We must educate him. But you will change this story, Toy. I will not be a servant.”
“It’s too late to change anything,” Mat said, keeping an eye on that cup. Her hands looked frail, with those long fingernails cut short, but he remembered how quick they were. “Nobody’s asking you to be a servant.” Luca and his wife knew the truth, but there had to be some reason to give everyone else why Tuon and Selucia were kept confined to this wagon and guarded. The perfect solution had been a pair of serving girls, about to be dismissed for theft, who had intended to betray their mistress’s flight with her lover. It seemed perfect to Mat, anyway. To the showfolk, it only added to t
he romance. He had thought Egeanin was going to swallow her tongue while he was explaining to Luca. Maybe she had known how Tuon would take it. Light, he almost wished the dice would stop. How could a man think with that in his head?
“I couldn’t leave you behind to raise an alarm,” he went on patiently. That was true, as far as it went. “I know Mistress Anan has explained it to you.” He thought about saying he had been babbling from nerves when he said she was his wife—she must think him a complete looby!—but it seemed best not to bring it up again. If she was willing to let the matter lie, all the better. “I know she’s already told you this, but I promise no one’s going to hurt you. We’re not after ransom, just getting away with our heads still attached. As soon as I can figure out how to send you home safe and sound, I will. I promise. I’ll make you as comfortable as I can until then. You’ll just have to put up with the other.”
Tuon’s big dark eyes crackled, heat lightning in a night sky, but she said, “It seems I will see what your promises are worth, Toy.” At her feet, Selucia hissed like a doused cat, her head half-turning as if to object, but Tuon’s left hand wiggled, and the blue-eyed woman blushed and went silent. The Blood used something like Maiden handtalk with their upper servants. Mat wished he understood the signals.
“Answer me a question, Tuon,” he said.
He thought he heard Setalle murmur, “Fool.” Selucia’s jaw knotted, and a dangerous look kindled in Tuon’s eyes, but if she was going to call him “Toy,” he would be burned if he gave her any titles.
“How old are you?” He had heard that she was only a few years younger than he, but looking at her in that sack of a dress, it seemed impossible.
To his surprise, that dangerous spark burst into flame. Not just heat lightning, this time. He should have been fried on the spot. Tuon threw back her shoulders and drew herself to her full height. Such as that was; he doubted she could reach five feet with her heels flat however she stretched. “My fourteenth true-name day will come in five months,” she said in a voice that was far from cold. In fact, it could have heated the wagon better than the stove. He felt a moment of hope, but she was not finished. “No; you keep your birth names here, don’t you. That will be my twentieth naming day. Are you satisfied, Toy? Did you fear you had stolen a . . . child?” She almost hissed the last word.
Mat waved his hands in front of him, frantically dismissing the suggestion. A woman started hissing at him like a kettle, a man with any brains found a way to cool her down fast. She was gripping the cup so tightly that tendons stood out on the back of her hand, and he did not want to try his hip with another fall to the floor. Come to think on it, he was not sure how hard she had tried to hit him the first time. Her hands were very fast. “I just wanted to know, that’s all,” he said quickly. “I was curious, making conversation. I’m only a little older myself.” Twenty. So much for hoping she was too young to marry for another three or four years. Anything that came between him and his wedding day would have been welcome.
Tuon studied him suspiciously with her head tilted, then tossed the cup onto the bed beside Mistress Anan and seated herself on the stool again, taking as much care about arranging her voluminous woolen skirts as if they had belonged to a silk gown. But she continued to examine him through her long eyelashes. “Where is your ring?” she demanded.
Unconsciously, he thumbed the finger on his left hand where the long ring usually lay. “I don’t wear it all the time.” Not when everybody in the Tarasin Palace knew he wore it. The thing would have stood out, with his rough layabout’s garb, in any case. It was not even his signet, anyway, just a carver’s try-piece. Strange, how his hand felt noticeably lighter without it. Too light. Strange that she remarked on it, too. But then, why not? Light, those dice had him shying at shadows and jumping at sighs. Or maybe it was just her, a discomforting thought.
He moved to sit on the unoccupied bed, but Selucia swung herself up onto it so quickly any of the acrobats might have been jealous, and stretched out with her head propped on her hand. That pushed her scarf askew for a moment, but she hurriedly straightened it, all the while staring at him proud and cold as a queen. He looked at the other bed, and Mistress Anan set down her embroidery long enough to ostentatiously smooth her skirts, making it clear she did not intend to share an inch. Burn her, she was behaving as though she were guarding Tuon from him! Women always seemed to club together so a man never had a fair chance. Well, he had managed to keep Egeanin from taking charge so far, and he was not about to be bullied by Setalle Anan or a bosomy lady’s maid or the high and mighty High Lady Daughter of the Nine bloody Moons! Only, he could hardly go shoving one of them out of the way to find a place to sit.
Leaning against a drawered cabinet at the foot of the bed Mistress Anan was seated on, he tried to think of what to say. He never had trouble thinking of what to say to women, but his brain seemed deafened by the sound of those dice. All three women gave him disapproving looks—he could all but hear one of them telling him not to slouch!—so he smiled. Most women thought his best smile very winning.
Tuon let out a long breath that did not sound won over in the slightest. “Do you remember Hawkwing’s face, Toy?” Mistress Anan blinked in surprise, and Selucia sat up on the bed frowning. At him. Why would she frown at him? Tuon just continued to look at him, hands folded in her lap, as cool and collected as a Wisdom at Sunday.
Mat’s smile felt frozen. Light, what did she know? How could she know anything? He lay beneath the burning sun, holding his side with both hands, trying to keep the last of life from leaking out and wondering whether there was any reason to hold on. Aldeshar was finished, after this day’s work. A shadow blotted the sun for an instant, and then a tall man in armor crouched beside him, helmet tucked under his arm, dark deep-set eyes framing a hooked nose. “You fought well against me today, Culain, and many days past,” that memorable voice said. “Will you live with me in peace?” With his last breath, he laughed in Artur Hawkwing’s face. He hated to remember dying. A dozen other encounters skittered through his mind, too, ancient memories that were his, now. Artur Paendrag had been a difficult man to get along with even before the wars started.
Drawing a deep breath, he took care choosing his words. This was no time to go spouting the Old Tongue. “Of course I don’t!” he lied. A man who could not lie convincingly got short shrift from women. “Light, Hawkwing died a thousand years ago! What kind of question is that?”
Her mouth opened slowly, and for a moment he was sure she meant to answer question with question. “A foolish one, Toy,” she replied finally, instead. “I can’t say why it popped into my head.”
The stiffness in Mat’s shoulders relaxed, a little. Of course. He was ta’veren. People did things and said things around him they never would elsewhere. Nonsense qualified. Still, a thing like that could become uncomfortable when it hit too close to home. “My name is Mat. Mat Cauthon.” He might as well not have spoken.
“I cannot say what I will do after returning to Ebou Dar, Toy. I have not decided. I may have you made da’covale. You are not pretty enough for a cupbearer, but it might please me to have you for one. Still, you have represented certain promises to me, so it pleases me now to promise, as well. So long as you keep your promises, I will neither escape nor betray you in any way, nor will I cause dissension among your followers. I believe that covers everything necessary.” This time, Mistress Anan gaped at her, and Selucia made a sound in her throat, but Tuon appeared not to notice either woman. She just looked at him expectantly, waiting on a response.
He made a sound in his throat, too. Not a whimper, just a sound. Tuon’s face was as smooth as a stern mask of dark glass. Her calm was madness, but this made gibbering look sane! She would have to be insane to think he would believe that offer. Except, he thought she did mean it. That, or she was a better liar than he ever hoped to be. Again he had that queasy sense that she knew more than he did. Ridiculous, of course, but there it was. He swallowed a lump in his throat. A ha
rd lump.
“Well, that does all right for you,” he said, trying to buy time, “but what about Selucia?” Time for what? He could not think with those dice pounding in his skull.
“Selucia follows my wishes, Toy,” Tuon said impatiently. The blue-eyed woman herself straightened and stared at him as though indignant that he had doubted that. For a lady’s maid, she could look fierce when she tried.
Mat did not know what to say or do. Without thinking, he spat on his palm and offered his hand as if sealing a bargain on a horse.
“Your customs are . . . earthy,” Tuon said in a dry voice, but she spat on her own palm and clasped his hand. “ ‘Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made.’ What does that writing on your spear mean, Toy?”
He did whimper this time, and not because she had read the Old Tongue inscription on his ashandarei. A bloody stone would have whimpered. The dice had stopped as soon as he touched her hand. Light, what had happened?
Knuckles rapped on the door, and he was so on edge that he moved without thought, spinning, a knife coming into either hand ready to throw at whatever came in. “Stay behind me,” he snapped.
The door opened, and Thom stuck his head in. The hood of his cloak was up, and Mat realized it was raining outside. Between Tuon and the dice, he had missed the sound of rain hitting the wagon’s roof. “I trust I’m not interrupting anything?” Thom said, knuckling his long white mustaches.
Mat’s face heated. Setalle had frozen with her embroidery needle trailing blue thread down to her work, and her eyebrows seemed to be trying to climb over the top of her head. Tensed on the edge of the other bed, Selucia watched him slip the knives back up his sleeves with considerable interest. He would not have thought she was the sort to like dangerous men. That kind of woman was worth avoiding; they tended to find ways to make a man need to be dangerous. He did not glance back at Tuon. She was probably staring at him as if he had been capering like Luca. Just because he did not want to get married did not mean he wanted his future wife to think him a fool.
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