A Crown of Swords twot-7

by Robert Jordan

  Caira giggled and twisted like a stroked cat "Would you like me to bring some punch to your room, my Lord? Or anything?" She smiled hopefully, invitingly.

  "Maybe later," he said, tapping her nose with a fingertip. She giggled again; she always did. Caira would have her skirt sewn to show petticoats to the middle of her thigh or higher had Mistress Anan allowed it, but the innkeeper looked after her serving women almost as closely as she did her daughters. Almost. "Maybe later."

  Trotting up the wide stone stairs, he put Caira out of his mind. What was he to do about Olver? The boy would find himself in real trouble one day if he thought he could treat women that way. He was going to have to keep him away from Harnan and the others as much as possible, he supposed. They were a bad influence on a boy. To have this on top of everything else! He had to get Nynaeve and Elayne out of Ebou Dar before something worse went wrong.

  His room was at the front, with windows overlooking the square, and as he reached for the door, the hallway floor behind him squeaked. In a hundred inns, it would not even have registered, but the floors in The Wandering Woman did not squeak.

  He looked back — and spun just in time to drop his hat and catch the descending truncheon with his left hand instead of his skull. The blow stung his hand to numbness, but he held on desperately as thick fingers dug into his throat, forcing him back against the door to his room. His head hit with a thump. Silver-rimmed black spots danced in his vision, obscuring a sweating face. All he could really see was a big nose and yellow teeth, and those seemed hazy. Suddenly he realized he was on the far edge of consciousness; those fingers were closing off blood to his brain along with air. His free hand went beneath his coat, fumbling over the hilts of his knives as though his fingers no longer remembered what they were for. The cudgel wrenched free. He could see it rising, feel it rising to smash his skull. Focusing everything, he jerked a knife from its scabbard and thrust.

  His attacker let out a high-pitched scream, and Mat was vaguely aware of the club bouncing off his shoulder as it fell to the floor, but the man did not let go of his throat. Stumbling, Mat drove him back, tearing at the clutching fingers with one hand, driving his knife repeatedly with the other.

  Abruptly the fellow fell, sliding from Mat's blade. The knife nearly followed him to the floor. So did Mat. Gulping breath, sweet air, he clung to something, a doorway, to hold himself on his feet. From the floor a plain-faced man stared up at him with eyes that would never see anything again, a heavyset fellow with curled Murandian mustaches, in a dark blue coat fit for a small merchant or a prosperous shopkeeper. Not the look of a thief about him at all.

  Abruptly he realized they had stumbled through an open door in their fight. It was a smaller room than Mat's, windowless, a pair of oil lamps on small tables beside the narrow bed providing a murky illumination. A lanky, pale-haired man straightened from a large open chest, staring oddly at the corpse. The chest took up most of the free space in the room.

  Mat opened his mouth to apologize for intruding so roughly, and the lanky man snatched a long dagger from his belt, a cudgel from the bed, and leaped over the chest at him, That had not been the look you gave a dead stranger. Clinging unsteadily to the doorframe, Mat threw underhanded, the hilt no sooner leaving his hand than he was scrabbling under his coat for another. His knife stuck squarely in the other man's throat, and Mat almost fell again, this time from relief, as the man clutched himself, blood spurting between his fingers, and toppled backward into the open chest.

  "It's good to be lucky," Mat croaked.

  Staggering, he retrieved his knife, wiping it clean on the fellow's gray coat. A better coat than the other; still wool, but of a better cut. A lesser lord would not have been ashamed to wear it. Andoran, by the collar. He sank onto the bed, frowning at the man sprawled in the chest. A noise made him look up.

  His manservant was in the doorway, trying unsuccessfully to hide a large black iron frying pan behind his back. Nerim kept a full set of pots, and everything else he thought a lord's servant might need traveling, in the small room he shared with Olver next to Mat's. He was short even for a Cairhienin, and skinny to boot. "My Lord has blood on his coat again, I fear," he murmured in melancholy tones. The day he sounded anything else, the sun would rise in the west "I do wish my Lord would be more careful of his clothes. It is so hard to remove blood without a stain, and the insects hardly need any encouragement to eat holes. This place has more insects than I have ever seen, my Lord." No mention at all of two dead men, or what he had intended with the frying pan.

  That scream had drawn other attention; The Wandering Woman was not the sort of inn where screams passed unremarked. Feet pounded in the hallway, and Mistress Anan pushed Nerim firmly out of her way and raised her skirts to step around the corpse on the floor. Her husband followed her in, a square-faced, gray-haired man with the double earring of the Ancient and Honorable League of the Nets dangling from his left ear. The two white stones on the lower hoop said he owned other boats beside the one he captained. Jasfer Anan was part of the reason Mat was careful not to smile too much at any of Mistress Anan's daughters. The man wore a work knife stuffed behind his belt and a longer, curved blade too, and his long blue-and-green vest revealed arms and chest crisscrossed with dueling scars. He was alive, though, and most of the men who had given those scars were not.

  The other reason for caution was Setalle Anan herself. Mat had never before let himself be turned off a girl because of her mother, even if that mother owned the inn where he was staying, but Mistress Anan had a way about her. Large gold hoops in her ears swung as she surveyed the dead men without a flinch. She was pretty despite a touch of gray in her hair, and her marriage knife nestled in roundness that normally would have drawn his eyes like moths to a candle, yet looking at her that way would have been like looking at… Not his mother. At an Aes Sedai, maybe — though he had done that, of course, just to look — or at Queen Tylin, the Light help him there. Putting a finger on why was not easy. She simply had a way about her. It was just difficult to think of doing anything that would offend Setalle Anan.

  "One of them jumped me in the hall." Mat kicked the chest lightly; it made a hollow sound despite the dead man slumped inside with his arms and legs dangling out. "This is empty except for him. I think they meant to fill it with whatever they could steal." The gold, perhaps? Not likely they could have heard of that, won only hours ago, but he would ask Mistress Anan about a safer place to keep it.

  She nodded calmly, hazel eyes serene. Men knifed in her inn did not ruffle her feathers. "They insisted on carrying it up themselves. Their stock, so they claimed. They took the room just before you came in. For a few hours, they said, to sleep before traveling on toward Nor Chasen." That was a small village on the coast to the east, but it was unlikely they would have told the truth. Her tone implied as much. She frowned at the dead men as though wishing she could shake them alive to answer questions. "They were picky about the room, though. The pale-haired man was in charge. He turned down the first three he was offered, then accepted this, that was meant for a single servant. I thought he was being stingy with a coin."

  "Even a thief can be tightfisted," Mat said absently. This could have qualified to start those dice rolling in his head — a head that would have been cracked open for sure without the luck of that fellow stepping on the one board in the whole inn that would squeak — but the bloody things were still tumbling. He did not like it.

  "You think it was chance then, my Lord?"

  "What else?"

  She had no answer, but she frowned at the corpses again. Maybe she was not so sanguine as he had thought. She was not native to Ebou Dar, after all.

  "Too many roughs in the city of late." Jasfer had a deep voice, and speaking normally he seemed to be barking commands on a fishing boat. "Maybe you ought to think on hiring guards." All Mistress Anan did was lift an eyebrow at her husband, but his hands rose defensively. "Peace be on you, wife. I spoke without thinking." Ebou Dari women were kn
own to express displeasure with a husband in a sharp fashion. It was not beyond possibility that a few of his scars came from her. The marriage knife had several uses.

  Thanking the Light he was not married to an Ebou Dari, Mat replaced his own knife in its sheath alongside the others. Thank the Light he was not married at all. His fingers brushed paper.

  Mistress Anan was not letting her husband off easily. "You frequently do, husband," she said, fingering the hilt between her breasts. "Many women would not let it pass. Elynde always tells me I am not firm enough when you speak out of line. I need to provide a good example for my daughters." Acerbity melted into a smile, if a small one. "Consider yourself chastised. I will refrain from telling you who should haul which net on which boat."

  "You are too kind to me, wife," he replied dryly. There was no guild for innkeepers in Ebou Dar, but every inn in the city was in the hands of a woman; to Ebou Dari, bad luck of the worst sort would dog any inn owned by a man or any vessel owned by a woman. There were no women in the fishermen's guild.

  Mat pulled out the paper. It was snowy white, expensive and stiff, and folded small. The few lines on it were printed in square letters like those Olver might use. Or an adult who did not want the hand recognized.

  ELAYNE AND NYNAEVE ARE PUSHING TOO FAR. REMIND THEM THEY ARE STILL IN DANGER FROM THE TOWER. WARN THEM TO BE CAREFUL, OR THEY WILL BE KNEELING TO ASK ELAIDA'S PARDON YET.

  That was all; no signature. Still in danger? That suggested it was nothing new, and somehow it did not fit with them being snared up by the rebels. No, that was the wrong question. Who had slipped him this note? Obviously somebody who thought they could not simply hand it to him. Who had had the opportunity since he put the coat on this morning? It had not been there then, for sure. Somebody who had gotten close. Somebody… Unbidden, he found himself humming a snatch of "She Dazzles My Eyes and Clouds My Mind." Around here the tune had different words; they called it "Upside Down and 'Round and 'Round." Only Teslyn or Joline fit, and that was impossible.

  "Bad news, my Lord?" Mistress Anan asked.

  Mat stuffed the note into his pocket. "Does any man ever get to understand women? I don't mean just Aes Sedai. Any women."

  Jasfer roared, and when his wife directed a meaning gaze his way, he only laughed harder. The look she gave Mat would have shamed an Aes Sedai for its perfect serenity. "Men have it quite easy, my Lord, if they only looked or listened. Women have the difficult task. We must try to understand men." Jasfer took hold of the doorframe, tears rolling down his dark face. She eyed him sideways, tilting her head, then turned, all cool calmness — and punched him under the ribs with her fist so hard that his knees buckled. His laughter took on a wheeze without stopping. "There is a saying in Ebou Dar, my Lord," she said to Mat over her shoulder. "'A man is a maze of brambles in darkness, and even he does not know the way.'"

  Mat snorted. Fat lot of help she was. Well, Teslyn or Joline or somebody else — it must have been somebody else, if he could only think who — the White Tower was a long way away. Jaichim Carridin was right here. He frowned at the two corpses. And so were a hundred other scoundrels. Somehow he would see those two women safely out of Ebou Dar. The trouble was, he did not have a clue how. He wished those bloody dice would stop, and be done with it.

  The apartments Joline shared with Teslyn were quite spacious, including a bedchamber for each of them, plus one apiece for their maids and another that would have done quite well for Blaeric and Fen, if Teslyn could have stood to have her Warders with them. The woman saw every man as a potentially rabid wolf, and there was no gainsaying her when she truly wanted something. As inexorable as Elaida, she ground down whatever lay in her path. They stood as equals in every real way, certainly, but not many managed to prevail over Teslyn without a clear advantage. She was at the writing table in the sitting room when Joline entered, her pen making an awful scritch-scritch. She was always parsimonious with the ink.

  Without a word, Joline swept by her and out onto the balcony, a long cage of white-painted iron. The scrollwork was so tight that the men working in the garden three stories below would have a difficult time seeing that there was anyone within. Flowers in this region ordinarily thrived in heat, wild colors to outshine the interior of the palace, but nothing bloomed down there. Gardeners moved along the gravel walks with buckets of water, yet nearly every leaf was yellow or brown. She would not have admitted it under torture, but the heat made her afraid. The Dark One was touching the world, and their only hope a boy who was running wild.

  "Bread and water?" Teslyn said suddenly. "Send the Cauthon boy off to the Tower? If there do be changes in what we did plan, you will please inform me before telling others."

  Joline felt a touch of heat in her cheeks. "Merilille needed to be set down. She lectured when I was a novice." So had Teslyn; a severe teacher who held her classes with an iron grip. Just the way she spoke was a reminder, a marked warning not to go against her, equal or not. Merilille, though, stood lower. "She used to make us stand in front of the class, and she would dig and dig for the answer she wanted, until we stood there in front of every one, weeping with frustration. She pretended to sympathize, or perhaps she really did, but the more she patted us and told us not to cry, the worse it was." She cut off abruptly. She had not intended to say all that. It was Teslyn's fault, always looking at her as if she were about to be upbraided for a spot on her dress. But she should understand; Merilille had taught her, too.

  "You have remembered that all this time?" Stark incredulity painted Teslyn's voice. "The sisters who did teach us did only do their duty. Sometimes I do think what Elaida did say of you do be right." The annoying scritch-scritch resumed.

  "It… simply came to mind when Merilille began as if she were truly an ambassador." Instead of a rebel. Joline frowned at the garden. She despised every one of those women who had broken the White Tower, and flaunted the break before all the world. Them and anyone who aided them. But Elaida had blundered too, horribly. The sisters who were rebels now could have been reconciled, with a little effort. "What did she say of me? Teslyn?" The sound of the pen continued, like fingernails scraping across a slate. Joline went back inside. "What did Elaida say?"

  Teslyn laid another sheet atop her letter, either to blot or to shield it from Joline's eyes, but she did not answer immediately. She scowled at Joline — or perhaps just looked; it was difficult to say with her at times — and at last sighed. "Very well. If you must know. She did say you still do be a child."

  "A child?" Joline's shock had no effect on the other woman.

  "Some," Teslyn said calmly, "do change little from the day they do put on novice white. Some do change no at all. Elaida does believe you have no grown up yet and never will."

  Joline tossed her head angrily, unwilling to let herself speak. To have that said by someone whose mother had been a child when she herself gained the shawl! Elaida had been petted too much as a novice, made over too much for her strength and the remarkable speed of her learning. Joline suspected that was why she was in such a fury about Elayne and Egwene and the wilder Nynaeve; because they were stronger than she, because they had spent far less time as novices, no matter that they had been pushed ahead too fast. Why, Nynaeve had never been a novice at all, and that was completely unheard of.

  "Since you did bring it up," Teslyn went on, "perhaps we should try to take advantage of the situation."

  "What do you mean?" Embracing the True Source, Joline channeled Air to lift the silver pitcher on the turquoise-inlaid side table and fill a silver goblet with punch. As always, the joy of embracing saidar thrilled her, soothing even as it exhilarated.

  "It do be obvious, I should think. Elaida's orders do still stand. Elayne and Nynaeve are to be returned to the Tower as soon as found. I did agree to wait, but perhaps we should wait no longer. A pity the al'Vere girl does no be with them. But two will put us back in Elaida's good graces, and if we can add the Cauthon boy… I do think those three will make her welcome us as if we di
d come with al'Thor himself. And this Aviendha will make a fine novice, wilder or no."

  The goblet floated into Joline's hand on Air, and she reluctantly released the Power. She had never lost the ardor she felt the first time she touched the Source. Dewmelon punch was a poor substitute for saidar. The worst part of her penance before leaving the Tower had been losing the right to touch saidar. Almost the worst part. She had set it all herself, but Elaida had made it clear that if she did not make it harsh, Elaida would. She had no doubt the result would have been much worse, then. "Her good graces? Teslyn, she humiliated us for no more reason than to show the others that she could. She sent us to this fly-ridden hole as far from everything important as she could, short of the other side of the Aryth Ocean, ambassadors to a queen with less power than a dozen of her own nobles, any one of whom could snatch the throne from her tomorrow if they could be bothered to. And you want to wheedle your way back into Elaida's favor?"

  "She do be the Amyrlin Seat." Teslyn touched the letter with the page lying atop it, moving the sheets a bit this way then a bit that, as if framing her thoughts. "Remaining silent for a time did let her know we are no lapdogs, but remaining silent too long could be seen as treason."

  Joline sniffed. "Ridiculous! When they're returned they'll only be punished for running away, and now for pretending to be full sisters." Her mouth tightened. They were both guilty there, and those who allowed them to, as well, but it made a sharp difference when one of them claimed her own Ajah. By the time the Green Ajah finished with Elayne for that, it would be a very chastened young woman indeed who took the throne of Andor. Though it might be best if Elayne secured the Lion Throne first. Her training had to be completed, either way. Joline did not intend to see Elayne lost to the Tower, whatever she had done.