“Are you crazy?” Luca spluttered. “If I try to chase those people out, I will have a riot! And they’ll want their coin back!” Light, the man would think of money with his neck stretched on the headsman’s block.
“Think what you’ll have if a thousand Seanchan find you here tomorrow.” Mat’s voice was as cold as he could make it. If he failed, the Seanchan would run Luca’s show down in short order however fast they flogged their horses. Luca knew it, too, from the twist of his mouth, as if he had just bitten a rotting plum. Mat made himself ignore the man. The dice were drumming hard, but they had not stopped yet. “Juilin, leave all the gold for Luca except one good purse.” Maybe the man could bribe his way clear, once the Seanchan saw he did not have their Daughter of the Nine bloody Moons. “Gather everybody and ride out as soon as you can. Once you’re out of sight of the town, take to the forest. I’ll find you.”
“Everybody?” Sheltering Thera with his body, Juilin jerked his head toward Tuon and Selucia. “Leave those two in Jurador, and the Seanchan might stop with getting them back. It might slow them down, at least. You keep saying you’re going to turn them loose sooner or later.”
Mat met Tuon’s eyes. Big dark liquid eyes, in a smooth expressionless face. She had pushed her hood back a little, so he could see her face clearly. If he left her behind, then she could not say the words, or if she did, he would be too far way for the words to matter. If he left her behind, he would never learn why she smiled those mysterious smiles, or what lay behind the mystery. Light, he was a fool! Pips danced a few impatient steps.
“Everybody,” he said. Did Tuon nod slightly, as if to herself? Why would she nod? “Let’s ride,” he told Harnan.
They had to walk their horses through the crowds to get out of the show, but as soon as they reached the road, Mat put Pips to a gallop, cloak streaming behind and head down to keep his hat from blowing off. It was not a pace you could keep a horse at for long. The road wound around hills and crossed ridges, occasionally cutting through where the rise was not too high. They splashed across ankle-deep streams and thundered over low wooden bridges crossing deeper water. Trees began to appear on the slopes again, pine and leatherleaf showing green among the winter-bare branches of the others. Farms clung to some of the hills, low tile-roofed stone houses and taller barns, and now and then a hamlet of eight or ten houses.
A few miles from the show, Mat spotted a wide man ahead of them, sitting his saddle like a sack of suet. The horse was a leggy dun, eating ground at a steady trot. It figured that a horse thief had an eye for a good animal. Catching the sound of their hooves, Vanin looked back, but he only slowed to a walk. That was bad.
When Mat slowed Pips beside the dun, Vanin spat. “Best wager we got is we find her horse run to death, so I can track her afoot from there,” he muttered. “She’s pushing harder than I figured, with her bareback. If we push, we can maybe catch her by sunset. If her horse don’t founder or die, that’s about the time she’ll make Coramen.”
Mat tipped back his head to glance at the sun, almost straight overhead. It was a long way to cover in less than half a day. If he turned back, he could be a good distance the other side of Jurador by sunset, in company with Thom and Juilin and the others. With Tuon. With the Seanchan knowing to hunt Mat Cauthon. The man who had kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons could not own enough luck to get off with being made da’covale. And sometime tomorrow or the next day, they would plant Luca on an impaling stake. Luca and Latelle, Petra and Clarine and the rest. A thicket of impaling stakes. The dice rattled and bounced in his head.
“We can make it,” he said. There was no other choice.
Vanin spat.
There was only one way to cover a great deal of ground quickly on a horse, if you meant to be on a live horse at the end. They walked the animals for half a mile, then trotted half a mile. The same at a canter, then a run, and it was back to a walk. The sun began to slide downward, and the dice spun. Around sparsely forested hills and over tree-topped ridges. Streams that could be crossed in three strides, barely wetting the horses’ hooves, and streams thirty paces across with flat bridges of wood or sometimes stone. The sun sank lower and lower, and the dice spun faster and faster. Almost back to the Eldar, and no sign of Renna except scuffs on the hard dirt of the road that Vanin pointed to as if they were painted signs.
“Getting close, now,” the fat man muttered. He did not sound happy, though.
Then they rounded a hill, and there was another low bridge ahead. Beyond, the road twisted north to cross the next ridge through a saddle. The sun, sitting atop the ridge, blazed in their eyes. Coramen lay on the other side of that ridge. Pulling his hat low for shade, Mat searched the road for a woman, for anyone, mounted or afoot, and his heart sank.
Vanin cursed and pointed.
A lathered bay was laboring its way up the slope on the other side of the river, a woman frantically kicking its flanks, urging it to climb. Renna had been too anxious to reach the Seanchan to stick with the road. She was maybe two hundred paces from them, and she might as well have been miles. Her mount was on the point of collapsing, but she could get down and run within sight of the garrisons before they could reach her. All she had to do was reach the crest, another fifty feet.
“My Lord?” Harnan said. He had an arrow nocked and his bow half raised. Gorderan held the heavy crossbow to his shoulder, a thick pointed bolt in place.
Mat felt something flicker and die inside him. He did not know what. Something. The dice rolled like thunder. “Shoot,” he said.
He wanted to close his eyes. The crossbow snapped; the bolt made a black streak through the air. Renna slammed forward when it hit her back. She had almost managed to push herself erect against the bay’s neck when Harnan’s arrow took her.
Slowly, she toppled from the horse, sliding down the slope, rolling, bouncing off saplings, tumbling faster and faster until she splashed into the stream. For a moment, she floated facedown against the bank, and then the current caught her and pulled her away, skirts billowing up on the water. Slowly she drifted toward the Eldar. Maybe, eventually, she would reach the sea. And that made three. It hardly seemed to matter that the dice had stopped. That made three. Never again, he thought as Renna floated out of sight around a bend. If I die for it, never again.
They did not press, riding back eastward. There was no point, and Mat felt too bone-weary. They did not stop, though, except to breathe and water the horses. No one wanted to talk.
It was the small hours of the night when they reached Jurador, the town a dark mass with the gates shut tight. Clouds covered the moon. Surprisingly, the canvas walls of Luca’s show were still in place just beyond the town. With a pair of bulky men wrapped in blankets snoring aware beneath the big banner as they guarded the entrance. Even from the road, in the dark, it was plain that wagons and tents filled the space behind the wall.
“At least I can tell Luca he doesn’t have to run after all,” Mat said wearily, turning Pips toward the banner. “Maybe he’ll give us a place to sleep a few hours.” For all the gold he had left, Luca should give them his own wagon, but knowing the man, Mat had hopes for clean straw somewhere. Tomorrow, he would set out to find Thom and the others. And Tuon. Tomorrow, when he had rested.
A greater shock waited inside Luca’s huge wagon. It truly was roomy inside, at least for a wagon, with a narrow table sitting in the middle and space to walk around it. Table, cupboards and shelves all were polished till they glowed. Tuon was sitting in a gilded chair—Luca would have a chair, and gilded, when everybody else made do with stools!—with Selucia standing at her back. A beaming Luca was watching Latelle offer Tuon a plate of steaming pastries, which the dark little woman was examining as if she would actually eat something that Luca’s wife had cooked.
Tuon showed no surprise at all at Mat walking into the wagon. “Is she captured, or dead?” she said, picking up a pastry with her fingers curved in that curiously graceful way.
“Dead,” he said
flatly. “Luca, what in the Light—”
“I forbid it, Toy!” Tuon snapped, pointing a finger at him sharply. “I forbid you to mourn a traitor!” Her voice softened, slightly, but it remained firm. “She earned death by betraying the Empire, and she would have betrayed you as easily. She was trying to betray you. What you did was justice, and I name it so.” Her tone said that if she named a thing, then it was well and truly named.
Mat squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Is everyone else still here, too?” he demanded.
“Of course,” Luca said, still smiling like a bullgoose fool. “The Lady—the High Lady; forgive me, High Lady.” He bowed deeply. “She talked to Merrilin and Sandar, and. . . . Well, you see how it was. A very persuasive woman, the Lady. The High Lady. Cauthon, about my gold. You said they were to hand it over, but Merrilin said he’d slit my throat first, and Sandar threatened to crack my head, and . . .” He trailed off under Mat’s stare, then suddenly brightened again. “Look what the Lady gave me!” Snatching open one of the cupboards, he pulled out a folded paper that he held reverently in both hands. It was thick paper, and white as snow; expensive. “A warrant. Not sealed, of course, but signed. Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders is now under the personal protection of the High Lady Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag. Everyone will know who that is, of course. I could go to Seanchan. I could put on my show for the Empress! May she live forever,” he added hastily, with another bow to Tuon.
For nothing, Mat thought bleakly. He sank down on one of the beds with his elbows on his knees, earning a very pointed look from Latelle. Likely only Tuon’s presence kept her from clouting him!
Tuon raised a peremptory hand, a black porcelain doll but every inch a queen despite the shabby too-large dress. “You are not to use that except at need, Master Luca. Great need!”
“Of course, High Lady; of course.” Luca bobbed bows as if he might be kissing the floorboards any minute.
All for bloody nothing!
“I did make specific mention of who is not under my protection, Toy.” Tuon took a bite of pastry and delicately brushed a crumb from her lip with a finger. “Can you guess whose name heads that list?” She smiled. Not a malicious smile. Another of those smiles for herself, amusement or delight in something he could not see. Suddenly, he noticed something. That little cluster of silk rosebuds he had given her was pinned to her shoulder.
Despite himself, Mat began to laugh. He threw his hat down on the floor and laughed. With everything, all his efforts, he did not know this woman at all! Not a bit! He laughed until his ribs hurt.
CHAPTER
30
What the Oath Rod Can Do
The sun sat on the horizon, perfectly silhouetting the White Tower in the distance, but the cold of the previous night seemed to be deepening, and dark gray clouds marching across the sky threatened a snowfall. Winter was diminishing, yet it had clung past when spring should have begun, loosening its hold fitfully. The noises of morning penetrated Egwene’s tent, isolated as it was from everything around it. The camp seemed to vibrate. Laborers would be bringing in water from the wells, and extra measures of firewood and charcoal in carts. Serving women would be fetching sisters’ breakfasts, and novices in the second sitting scurrying to theirs, those in the first and third to classes. It was a momentous day, though none of them knew it. Likely, today would see an end to the spurious negotiations that were going on in Darein, at a table under a pavilion at the foot of the bridge to Tar Valon. Spurious on both sides. Elaida’s raiders continued to strike with impunity on the other side of the river. In any case, today would be the last meeting for some time.
Peering at her own breakfast, Egwene sighed and picked a tiny black fleck out of the steaming porridge, wiping it from her fingers on a linen napkin without looking closely enough to be sure that it was a weevil. If you could not be sure, then you worried less about what remained in the bowl. She put a spoonful into her mouth and tried to concentrate on the sweet slivers of dried apricot that Chesa had blended in. Did something crack under her teeth?
“It all feeds the belly, my mother used to say, so pay it no mind,” Chesa murmured as if talking to herself. That was how she gave Egwene advice, without straying across the line between mistress and maid. At least, she gave advice when Halima was not present, and the other woman had left early this morning. Chesa was sitting on one of the clothing chests, in case Egwene wanted something or needed an errand run, but now and then her eyes strayed to the pile of garments that were to go the washwomen today. She never minded darning or mending in front of Egwene, but in her book, sorting laundry would have been stepping over that line.
Smoothing the grimace from her face, Egwene was about to tell the woman to go get her own breakfast—Chesa considered eating before Egwene finished another transgression—but before she could open her mouth, Nisao pushed into the tent, surrounded by the glow of saidar. As the entry flaps fell, Egwene caught a glimpse of Sarin, Nisao’s bald, black-bearded stump of a Warder, waiting outside. The small sister’s cowl was down, carefully arranged on her shoulders so the yellow velvet lining showed, yet she was clutching her cloak as though she felt the cold intensely. She said nothing, just gave Chesa a sharp look. Chesa waited for Egwene’s nod, gathered her own cloak and scurried out. She might not be able to see the light of the Power, but she knew when Egwene wanted privacy.
“Kairen Stang is dead,” Nisao said without preamble. Her face was smooth, her voice steady, and chill. Short enough to make Egwene feel tall, she stood as though straining for an extra inch. Nisao did not usually do that. “Seven sisters had already tested for resonance before I got there. There is no doubt she was killed using saidin. Her neck was broken. Shattered. As if her head had been wrenched around full circle. At least it was quick.” Nisao drew a deep, unsteady breath, then realized what she had done and pulled herself up even straighter. “Her Warder is primed for murder. Someone gave him an herbal concoction to put him to sleep, but he will be trouble to handle once he wakes.” She did not put the usual dismissive Yellow twist on the mention of herbs, a measure of her upset no matter how calm her face was.
Egwene set her spoon down on the tiny table and leaned back. Suddenly, her chair did not feel comfortable anymore. Now the next best after Leane was Bode Cauthon. A novice. She tried not to think of what else Bode was. With the extra days of practice, Bode could do the work almost as well as Kairen could have. Almost. She did not mention that, though. Nisao knew some secrets, but not all. “Anaiya, and now Kairen. Both Blue Ajah. Do you know of any other link between them?”
Nisao shook her head. “Anaiya had been Aes Sedai fifty or sixty years when Kairen came to the Tower, as I recall. Perhaps they had mutual acquaintances. I just don’t know, Mother.” Now she sounded tired, and her shoulders slumped a little. Her quiet investigation into Anaiya’s death had gotten nowhere, and she had to be aware Egwene was going to add Kairen.
“Find out,” Egwene ordered. “Discreetly.” This second murder would cause enough ruction without her adding to it. For a moment, she studied the other woman. Nisao might make excuses after the fact, or claim she had been doubtful from the start, but until then, she was always a model of Yellow Ajah self-assurance and absolute certainty. Not now, however. “Are many sisters walking about holding saidar?”
“I’ve noticed several, Mother,” Nisao said stiffly. Her chin rose within a fraction of defiance. After a moment, though, the glow around her winked out. She pulled her cloak tighter, as if she had suddenly lost warmth. “I doubt it would have done Kairen any good. Her death was too sudden. But it makes a person feel . . . safer.”
After the small woman left, Egwene sat stirring her porridge with her spoon. She did not see any more dark flecks, but her appetite was gone. Finally, she rose and settled the seven-striped stole around her neck, then swung her cloak onto her shoulders. Today of all days, she would not sit mired in gloom. Today of all days, she must follow her routine exactly.
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Outside, high-wheeled carts trundled along the frozen ruts of the camp streets, filled with big water barrels or piles of split firewood and sacks of charcoal, the drivers and the fellows riding behind alike enveloped in their cloaks against the cold. As usual, families of novices hurried along the wooden walkways, usually managing to make their courtesies to passing Aes Sedai without slowing. Failure in the proper respects to a sister could earn a switching, but so could tardiness, and teachers were generally less tolerant than Aes Sedai encountered in passing, who at least might make allowances for why a novice went rushing by.
The white-clad women still leapt out of the way at sight of the striped stole hanging from Egwene’s cowl, of course, but she refused to let her mood be soured, any more than it already was, by novices curtsying in the street, slipping and sliding on the ice-hard ground and sometimes almost falling on their faces before their cousins could grab them. “Cousin” was what members of the same family had taken to calling one another, and somehow that seemed to tie them closer together, as if they really were related, and close cousins at that. What did sour her mood were the few Aes Sedai she saw out and about, gliding along the walkways through ripples of curtsies. There were no more than a dozen or so between her tent and the Amyrlin’s study, but three out of every four were wrapped in the light of the Power as well as cloaks. They walked in pairs more often than not, followed by any Warders they had. They seemed watchful, too, enveloped in saidar or not, cowls swiveling constantly as they scanned everyone in sight.
It minded her of the time spotted fever had struck Emond’s Field, and everyone walked around clutching brandy-soaked handkerchiefs to their noses—Doral Barran, the Wisdom then, had said that would help stave it off—clutching their handkerchiefs and watching one another to see who would be the next to break out in spots and fall over. Eleven people died before the fever ran its course, but it was a month after the last person fell sick before everyone was willing to put those handkerchiefs away. For a long time, she had associated the smell of brandy with fear. She could almost smell it now. Two sisters had been murdered in their midst, by a man who could channel, not to mention apparently being able to come and go as he chose. Fear was running through the Aes Sedai faster than spotted fever ever could.
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