Winter's Heart
Page 58
Mat shivered. She would bloody well shout for help if he tried to take the a’dam from her neck. Light, what was he thinking of! Bad enough that he was stuck with pulling three Aes Sedai’s bacon off the fire for them—Burn him, but he did seem to get lumbered with doing that every time he bloody turned around!—bad enough that, without thinking about trying to get any more out of Ebou Dar.
Ebou Dar was a great seaport, with perhaps the largest harbor in the known world, and the docks were long gray fingers of stone thrusting out from the quay that ran the whole length of the city. Almost all the mooring spots were taken by Seanchan vessels of every size, the crews in the rigging and cheering vigorously as Suroth passed by, a thunder of voices calling her name. The men on other ships waved their arms and shouted as well, though many appeared confused as to who or what they were cheering. No doubt they thought it expected of them. On those vessels, the wind blowing across the harbor stirred the Golden Bees of Illian, and the Crescent Moons of Tear, and the Golden Hawk of Mayene. Apparently Rand had not ordered the merchants there to stop trading with Seanchan-held ports, or else the merchants were going behind his back. Colors flashed through Mat’s skull, and he shook his head to clear it. Most merchants would trade with their mother’s murderer if it brought profit.
The southernmost dock had been cleared of ships, and Seanchan officers with thin plumes on their lacquered helmets stood waiting to hand Suroth and Tylin down into one of the large rowboats that stood waiting, eight men on the long oars of each. After Tylin gave Mat a last kiss, anyway, almost yanking his hair out to pull his head down, and after she pinched his bottom as though no one was bloody watching! Suroth frowned impatiently until Tylin was settled in the long boat, and in truth, the Seanchan woman did not stop chafing even then, twitching her fingers at Alwhin, her so’jhin, so the sharp-faced woman was continually scrambling across the benches to fetch her one thing or another.
The rest of the Blood received deep bows from the officers, but had to climb down the ladders with their so’jhin’s aid. The sul’dam helped the damane into the boats, and no one at all helped the white-robed folk load the pack hampers and themselves. Soon enough, the boats were crossing the harbor toward where the raken and to’raken were kept south of the Rahad, spidering through the sprawling anchored fleet of Seanchan ships and the scores of captured Sea Folk vessels that dotted the harbor. The greater number of those appeared to have been rerigged with ribbed Seanchan sails and different lines. Their crews were Seanchan, too. Excepting the Windfinders he tried not to think about, and maybe some who had been sold, the surviving Atha’an Miere were all in the Rahad with the other da’covale clearing the silted-up canals. And there was nothing he could do about it. He did not owe them anything, he had more on his plate than he could handle already, and there was nothing he could do. That was all there was to it!
He wanted to ride away immediately, to leave the Sea Folk ships behind him. No one on the docks paid him the slightest heed. The officers had gone away as soon as the boats cast off. Someone, he did not know who, had taken the packhorses away. The seamen climbed out of the rigging and went back to their work, and the members of the cargo-loaders guild began pushing their low, heavy barrows stacked with bales and crates and barrels. But if he left too soon, Tylin might decide he was planning to keep riding right out of the city and send for him, so he sat Pips on the end of the dock and waved like a bull goose fool till she was far enough away that she could not see him without a looking glass.
Despite the throbbing leg, he rode slowly back up almost the whole length of the quay. He avoided looking at the harbor again. Soberly dressed merchants stood watching their cargo being loaded or unloaded, sometimes slipping a purse to a man or woman in a green leather vest to obtain gentler handling for their goods or more speed, not that it seemed possible the guildfolk could move any faster. Southerners always seemed to move at a half trot unless the sun was right overhead, when the heat here could roast a duck, and with a gray sky and a cutting wind off the sea, it would have been cold no matter where the sun stood.
By the time he was abreast of the Mol Hara, he had counted more than twenty sul’dam patrolling the docks with damane, poking their noses into boats leaving anchored ships that were not Seanchan, boarding any vessel newly arrived at the docks or, for that matter, ready to cast off lines. He had been quite sure they would be there. It was going to have to be Valan Luca. The only alternative was just too hazardous, except in an emergency. Luca was chancy, too, but the only real choice left.
Back at the Tarasin Palace, he climbed down off Pips with a wince and pulled his walking staff out from behind the saddle girth. Letting a groom take the bay, he limped inside, his left leg barely able to support his weight. Maybe a soak in a hot bath would take some of the pain. Maybe then he could think. Luca had to be caught by surprise, but before it came to Luca, there were a few other little problems to overcome.
“Ah, there you are,” Noal said, popping up in front of him. Mat had caught only glimpses of the old man since getting him a bed, but he looked well-rested in his freshly brushed gray coat, considering that he vanished into the city every day and only returned to the Palace at night. Adjusting the bits of lace at his cuffs, he smiled confidingly, revealing the gaps in his teeth. “You are planning something, Lord Mat, and I would like to offer my services.”
“I’m planning to take the weight off my leg,” Mat said as casually as he could. Noal seemed harmless enough. According to Harnan, he told stories before going to sleep, stories that Harnan and the other Redarms seemed to swallow whole, even the one about some place called Shibouya, supposedly beyond the Aiel Waste, where women who could channel had tattooed faces, over three hundred crimes carried a penalty of death, and giants lived under the mountains, men taller than Ogier, with their faces on their bellies. He claimed to have been there. No one who made claims like that could be anything but harmless. On the other hand, the one time Mat had seen him handle those long daggers he carried under his coat, he had looked far from harmless. There was a way a man had of touching a weapon that said he was accustomed to using it. “If I decide to plan anything else, I’ll keep you in mind.”
Still smiling, Noal tapped one of those crooked fingers against the side of his beak of a nose. “You don’t trust me, yet. That is understandable. Although, if I meant you any harm, all I had to do was stand back that night in the alley. You have the look in your eye. I’ve seen great men laying plans, and villains dark as the Pit of Doom, too. There is a look a man gets, laying dangerous plans he doesn’t want known.”
“My eyes are just tired,” Mat laughed, leaning on his staff. Great men laying plans? The old fellow had probably seen them in Shibouya, with the giants. “I do thank you for that alley, you know. If there’s ever anything more I can do for you, ask. But right now, I am going to find a hot bath.”
“Does this gholam drink blood?” Noal asked catching Mat’s arm as he started to hobble by.
Light, he wished he had not mentioned that name where the old man could hear. He wished Birgitte had never told him about the thing. “Why do you ask?” Gholam lived on blood. They ate nothing else.
“There was another man found with his throat torn out, last night, only there was almost no blood on him or his bedding. Did I mention? He was at an inn down near the Moldine Gate. If that thing did leave the city, it’s back.” Glancing beyond Mat, he made a low, elaborate bow to someone. “If you change your mind, I am always ready,” he said in a lower voice when he straightened.
Mat looked over his shoulder as the old man hurried off. Tuon was standing beneath one of the gilded stand lamps, watching him through her veil. Looking at him, at least. Glancing? As always, the moment he saw her, she turned away and glided off down the hall, her pleated white skirts rustling faintly. There was no one with her, today.
For the second time that day, Mat shivered. A pity the girl had not gone with Suroth and Tylin. A man given a loaf should not complain that a few crumbs were
missing, but Aes Sedai and Seanchan, gholam stalking him and old men poking their noses in and skinny girls staring at him was enough to give any man the golliwogs. Maybe he should forget about wasting time soaking his leg.
He felt better once he had sent Lopin to fetch the rest of his own clothes from Beslan’s toy cupboard. And Nerim to find Juilin. His leg still hurt like fire and wobbled when he wanted to walk, but if he was not going to waste time, then he might as well get a move on about it. He wanted to be gone from Ebou Dar before Tylin came back, and that gave him ten days. Less, to be on the safe side.
When the thief-catcher stuck his head in at the bedroom door, Mat was studying himself in Tylin’s tall stand-mirror. The red . . . garments . . . were tucked away in the wardrobe with the rest of the gauds she had given him. Maybe Tylin’s next pretty could get some use of them. The coat he had put on was the plainest he owned, a fine-woven blue wool without a thread of embroidery. The sort of coat a man could be proud to wear, without having everybody stare at him. A decent coat.
“Maybe a little lace,” he muttered, fingering the neck of his shirt. “Just a little.” It really was a very plain coat, come to think. Almost sober.
“I don’t know anything about lace,” Juilin said. “Is that why you wanted me?”
“No, of course not. What are you grinning at?” The fellow was not just grinning; his smile nearly split his dark face in two.
“I am happy, that’s all. Suroth is gone, and I am happy. If you don’t want to ask me about lace, what do you want?”
Blood and bloody ashes! The woman he was interested in must be one of Suroth’s da’covale! One she had left behind. He certainly had no other reason to care whether she was gone, much less be happy over it. And the man wanted to take one of her property! Well, maybe that was not so much, compared to taking a couple of damane.
Limping over to put an arm around Juilin’s shoulders, Mat walked him out into the sitting room. “I need a damane dress to fit a woman about so high,” he held up a hand just about his shoulder, “and slender.” He gave the fellow his most sincere smile, but Juilin’s own smile faded markedly. “I need three sul’dam dresses, too, and an a’dam. And it came to me that the man who knows best how to steal something without getting caught would be a thief-catcher.”
“I am a thief-catcher,” the man growled, shaking off Mat’s arm, “not a thief!”
Mat let his own grin vanish. “Juilin, you know the only way to take those sisters out of the city is if the guards think they’re still damane. Teslyn and Edesina are wearing what they need, but we have to disguise Joline. Suroth will be back in ten days, Juilin. If we aren’t gone by then, in all likelihood your pretty will still be her property when we go.” He could not help feeling that if they were not gone by then, none of them would be going. Light, a man could shiver himself to death indoors in this city.
Stuffing his fists into the pockets of his dark Tairen coat, Juilin glared at him. Glared through him, really, at something the thief-catcher did not like. Finally he grimaced, and muttered, “It won’t be easy.”
The days that followed were anything but easy. The serving women clucked and laughed over his new clothes. His old clothes, that was. They grinned and made wagers where he could hear over how fast he could change back when Tylin returned—most seemed to think he would race through the halls ripping off whatever he was wearing as soon he heard she was on her way—but he paid them no mind. Except for the part about Tylin returning. The first time a serving woman mentioned it, he nearly jumped out of his skin thinking she actually had for some reason.
A number of the women and nearly all the men took his change of clothing to mean he was leaving. Running away, they called it disapprovingly, and did what they could to hamper him. In their eyes, he was the ointment to soothe Tylin’s aching, tooth, and they did not want her to come back and bite them for losing it. If he had not made sure Lopin or Nerim was always in Tylin’s apartments guarding his belongings, the clothes would have vanished again, and only Vanin and the Redarms kept Pips from disappearing out of the stables.
Mat tried to encourage the belief. When he went and two damane vanished at the same time, the events were sure to be linked, but with Tylin gone and his intention to run away plain before she returned, she would be safe from blame. Every day, even when it rained, he rode Pips in circles in the stable, for a longer time every day, as if trying to build up his stamina. Which he actually was, he realized after a while. His leg and hip still ached like fury, but he began to think he could manage as much as ten miles before needing to climb down. Eight miles, anyway.
Often, if the sky was clear, sul’dam were walking damane when he exercised. The Seanchan women were aware he was not Tylin’s property, but on the other hand, he heard some call him her toy! Tylin’s Toy, they said, as if that was his name! He was not important enough for them to learn if he had another. To them, someone was either da’covale or not, and this halfway business amused them no end. He rode to the sound of sul’dam laughing, and tried to tell himself it was all to the good. The more people who could tell that he worked to flee before Tylin returned, the better for her. It just was not very pleasant for him.
Now and then he saw Aes Sedai faces among the damane being walked, three besides Teslyn, but he had not a clue what Edesina looked like. She could have been the short pale woman who reminded him of Moiraine, or the tall one with silvery-golden hair, or the slender black-haired woman. Gilding along beside a sul’dam, any of them might have been taking a walk on her own, if not for the gleaming collar around her neck and the leash tying her to the sul’dam’s wrist. Teslyn herself looked increasingly grim every time he saw her, staring fixedly straight ahead. Every time, there seemed to be more determination on her face. And something that might have been panic, too. He began to worry about her, and her impatience.
He wanted to reassure Teslyn—he did not need those old memories to tell him that determination combined with panic could get people killed, but they confirmed it—he wanted to reassure her, only he dared not go near the kennels in the attic again. Tuon continued to be there when he turned around, looking at him or glancing or whatever she was doing, just too often for comfort. Not enough to make him think she was following him. Why would she do that? Just too often. Occasionally her so’jhin Selucia was with her, and now and then Anath, though the strange tall woman seemed to vanish from the Palace after a time, at least from the hallways. She was “on retreat,” he heard, whatever that was supposed to mean, and he only wished she had taken Tuon with her. He doubted the girl would believe he was taking sweets to a Windfinder a second time. Maybe she still wanted to buy him? If that was the case, he still could not understand why. He had never been able to understand what attracted women to a man—they seemed to go pop-eyed over the most ordinary looking fellows—but he knew he was no beauty, no matter what Tylin said. Women lied to get a man into bed, and they lied worse once they had him there.
In any case, Tuon was a minor irritant. A fly on his ear. No more than that. It took more than chattering women or staring girls to make him sweat. Absent as she was, however, Tylin did. If she came back and caught him preparing to leave, she might change her mind about selling. She was a High Lady herself now, after all, and he was sure she would shave her hair to a crest before much longer. A proper Seanchan High Blood, and who knew what she would do then? Tylin caused a little sweat, but there was more than enough else to drench a man in it.
He continued to hear from Noal about the gholam’s murders, and sometimes from Thom. There was a fresh one every night, though no one but those two and him seemed to connect the killings. Mat kept to open places as much as he could, with people around as often as possible. He stopped sleeping in Tylin’s bed, and never spent two nights running in the same place. If that meant a night in a stable loft, well, he had slept in haylofts before, although he did not recall hay sticking through his clothes quite that sharply. Still, better stuck by hay than having his throat torn out.
Juilin possessed the same sort of twisty way of looking at things, perhaps from his years as thief-catcher, and some nights Mat met with him and Thom in the tiny room the two men shared in the servants’ quarters to try planning how to overcome those obstacles. Those were what really made Mat sweat.
At the first of those meetings, the night Tylin left, Beslan barged in looking for Thom, so he said. Unfortunately, he had listened at the door first, hearing enough that he could not be foisted off with a story. Very unfortunately, he wanted to take part. He even told them just how to do it.
“An uprising,” he said, squatting on the three-legged stool between the two narrow beds. A washstand with a chipped white pitcher and bowl and no mirror finished crowding the room. Juilin sat on the edge of one bed in his shirtsleeves, his face unreadable, and Thom was stretched out on the other examining his knuckles with a frown. That left Mat to lean against the door to keep anyone else from barging in. He did not know whether to laugh or cry. Plainly Thom had known about this madness all along; this was what he had been trying to cool down. “The people will rise when I give the word,” Beslan went on. “My friends and I have talked to men all over the city. They are ready to fight!”
Sighing, Mat eased his weight more onto his good leg. He suspected that when Beslan gave the word, he and his friends would rise alone. Most people were more willing to talk about fighting than to do it, especially against soldiers. “Beslan, in gleeman’s tales, grooms with pitchforks and bakers with cobblestones defeat armies because they want to be free.” Thom snorted so hard, his long white mustache stirred. Mat ignored him. “In real life, the grooms and the bakers get killed. I know good soldiers when I see them, and the Seanchan are very good.”