The Warder cut in smoothly, bowing and offering her his arm. “We are in public, Nynaeve. Whatever you want to say in public, you may. May I escort you to the boat?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding so vigorously that her hat nearly fell off. She straightened it hurriedly with both hands. “Yes. In public. You will escort me.” Taking his arm, she regained some measure of composure, at least insofar as her face went. Gathering her dustcloak in her free hand, she practically dragged him across the quay toward the landing.
Mat wondered whether she might be ill. He rather enjoyed seeing Nynaeve dropped a peg or six, but she hardly ever let it last two breaths. Aes Sedai could not Heal themselves. Maybe he should suggest to Elayne that she deal with whatever was wrong with Nynaeve. He avoided Healing like death or marriage himself, but it was different for other people as he saw it. First, though, he had a few choice words to say about secrets.
Opening his mouth, he raised an admonitory finger . . . .
. . . and Elayne poked him in the chest with hers, her scowl beneath that plumed hat so cold it made his toes hurt. “Mistress Corly,” she said in the icy voice of a queen pronouncing judgment, “explained to Nynaeve and me the significance of those red flowers on the basket, which I see you at least have shame enough to have hidden.”
His face went redder than Nynaeve’s had thought of. A few paces away, Reanne Corly and the other two were tying on hats and adjusting dresses the way women did every time they stood up, sat down or moved three steps. Yet despite giving their attention to their clothes, they had enough left over for glances in his direction, and for once they were neither disapproving nor startled. He had not known the bloody flowers meant anything! Ten sunsets would not have done for his face.
“So!” Elayne’s voice was low, for his ears alone, but it dripped disgust and contempt. She gave her cloak a twitch, to keep it from touching him. “It’s true! I could not believe it of you, not even you! I’m sure Nynaeve couldn’t. Any promise I made to you is abolished! I will not keep any promise to a man who could force his attentions on a woman, on any woman, but especially on a Queen who has offered him—”
“Me force my attentions on her!” he shouted. Or rather, he tried to shout; choking made it come out in a wheeze.
Seizing Elayne’s shoulders, he pulled her away from the carriages a little distance. Shirtless dockmen in stained green leather vests hurried by, carrying sacks on their shoulders or rolling barrels along the quay, some pushing low barrows loaded with crates, all giving the coaches a wide berth. The Queen of Altara might not have much power, but her sigil on a coach door ensured that commoners would give it room. Nalesean and Beslan were chatting as they led the Redarms onto the landing, Vanin bringing up the rear and staring gloomily at the choppy river; he claimed to have a tender belly when it came to boats. The Wise Women from both coaches had gathered around Reanne, watching, but they were not close enough to overhear. He whispered hoarsely just the same.
“You listen to me! That woman won’t take no for an answer; I say no, and she laughs at me. She’s starved me, bullied me, chased me down like a stag! She has more hands than any six women I ever met. She threatened to have the serving women undress me if I didn’t let her—” Abruptly, what he was saying hit him. And who he was saying it to. He managed to close his mouth before he swallowed a fly. He became very interested in one of the dark metal ravens inlaid in the haft of the ashandarei, so he would not have to meet her eyes. “What I mean to say is, you don’t understand,” he muttered. “You have it all backwards.” He risked a glance at her under the edge of his hatbrim.
A faint blush crept into her cheeks, but her face became solemn as a marble bust. “It . . . appears that I may have misunderstood,” she said soberly. “That is . . . very bad of Tylin.” He thought her lips twitched. “Have you considered practicing different smiles in a mirror, Mat?”
Startled, he blinked. “What?”
“I have heard reliably that that is what young women do who attract the eyes of kings.” Something cracked the sobriety of her voice, and this time her lips definitely twitched. “You might try batting your eyelashes, too.” Catching her lower lip with her teeth, she turned away, shoulders shaking, dustcloak streaming behind as she hurried toward the landing. Before she darted beyond hearing, he heard her chortle something about “a taste of his own medicine.” Reanne and the Wise Women scurried in her wake, a flock of hens following a chick instead of the other way around. The few bare-chested boatmen up out of their boats stopped coiling lines or whatever they were doing and bowed their heads respectfully as the procession went by.
Snatching off his hat, Mat considered throwing it down and jumping on it. Women! He should have known better than to expect sympathy. He would like to throttle the bloody Daughter-Heir. And Nynaeve, too, on general principle. Except, of course, that he could not. He had made promises. And those dice were still using his skull for a dice cup. And one of the Forsaken might be around somewhere. Settling the hat squarely back on his head, he marched down the landing, brushed past the Wise Women and caught up to Elayne. She was still trying to fight down giggles, but every time she cut her eyes his way, the color in her cheeks renewed itself and so did the giggles.
He stared straight ahead. Bloody women! Bloody promises. Removing his hat long enough to pull the leather cord from around his neck, he reluctantly shoved it in her direction. The silver foxhead dangled beneath his fist. “You and Nynaeve will have to decide which of you wears this. But I want it back when we leave Ebou Dar. You understand? The moment we leave—”
Suddenly he realized he was walking alone. Turning, he found Elayne standing stock still two paces back, staring at him with Reanne and the rest clustered behind her.
“What’s the matter now?” he demanded. “Oh. Yes, I know all about Moghedien.” A skinny fellow with red stones on his brass-hoop earrings, bending over a mooring line, jerked around so fast at that name that he pitched over the side with a loud yell and a louder splash. Mat did not care who heard. “Trying to keep her secret—and two of my men dead!—after you promised. Well, we’ll talk about that later. I made a promise, too; I promised to keep the pair of you alive. If Moghedien shows up, she’ll go after you two. Now, here.” He pushed the medallion at her again.
She shook her head slowly in puzzlement, then turned to murmur to Reanne. Only after the older women were on their way toward where Nynaeve stood beckoning them at the head of a flight of boat stairs did Elayne take the foxhead, turning it over in her fingers.
“Do you have any notion what I would have done to have this for study?” she said quietly. “Any notion at all?” She was tall for a woman, but she still had to look up at him. She might never have seen him before. “You are a troublesome man, Mat Cauthon. Lini would say I was repeating myself, but you . . . !” Expelling her breath, Elayne reached up to pull his hat off and slip the cord over his head. She actually tucked the foxhead into his shirt and patted it before handing him his hat. “I won’t wear that while Nynaeve doesn’t have one, or Aviendha, and I think they feel the same. You wear it. After all, you can hardly keep your promise if Moghedien kills you. Not that I think she’s still here. I think she believes she killed Nynaeve, and I would not be surprised if that was all she came for. You must be careful, though. Nynaeve says there’s a storm coming, and she doesn’t mean this wind. I. . . .” That faint blush returned to her cheeks. “I am sorry I laughed at you.” She cleared her throat, looking away. “Sometimes I forget my duty to my subjects. You are a worthy subject, Matrim Cauthon. I will see that Nynaeve understands the right of . . . of you and Tylin. Perhaps we can help.”
“No,” he spluttered. “I mean, yes. I mean. . . . That is. . . . Oh, kiss a flaming goat if I know what I mean. I almost wish you didn’t know the truth.” Nynaeve and Elayne sitting down to discuss him with Tylin over tea. Could he ever live that down? Could he ever again look any of them in the eye afterward? But if they did not. . . . He was between the wolf and the bear wit
h nowhere to run. “Oh, sheep swallop! Sheep swallop and bloody buttered onions!” He nearly wished she would call him down for his language the way Nynaeve would, just to change the subject.
Her lips moved silently, and for an instant he had the strange impression that she was repeating what he had just said. Of course not. He was seeing things; that was all. Aloud, she said, “I understand.” Sounding just as if she did. “Come along, now, Mat. We can’t waste time standing in one spot.”
Gaping, he watched her lift skirts and cloak to make her way along the landing. She understood? She understood, and not one acid little comment, not one cutting remark? And he was her subject. Her worthy subject. Fingering the medallion, he followed. He had been sure the fight would be to ever get it back. If he lived as long as two Aes Sedai, he still would never understand women, and noblewomen were purely the worst.
When he reached the steps Elayne had gone down, the boat’s two brass-earringed oarsmen were already using their long sweeps to push the vessel away. Elayne was herding Reanne and the last of the Wise Women into the cabin, and Lan stood up in the bows with Nynaeve. A shout from Beslan called him on to the next boat, which held all of the men except the Warder.
“Nynaeve said there wasn’t room for any of us,” Nalesean said as the boat rocked its way out into the Eldar. “She said we’d crowd them.” Beslan laughed, looking around their own boat. Vanin sat beside the cabin door with his eyes closed, trying to pretend he was somewhere else. Harnan and Tad Kandel, an Andoran despite being as dark as either of the boatmen, had climbed atop the cabin; the rest of the Redarms hunkered about the deck, trying to keep out of the way of the rowers. Nobody went into the cabin, all apparently waiting to see whether Mat and Nalesean and Beslan wanted it.
Mat put himself beside the tall bowpost, peering after the other boat, crawling on its sweeps just ahead. The wind whipped the dark choppy waters, and his scarf as well, and he had to hold on to his hat. What was Nynaeve up to? The other nine women on the second boat were all in the cabin, leaving the deck to her and Lan. They stood up in the bows, Lan with his arms folded, Nynaeve gesturing as though explaining. Except that Nynaeve seldom explained anything. Better say never than seldom.
Whatever she was doing, it did not last long. There were whitecaps out in the bay, where Sea Folk rakers and skimmers and soarers heaved at their anchors. The river was not so bad, but the boat still wallowed more than Mat remembered from any previous trip. Before long, Nynaeve was draped over the railing, losing her breakfast while Lan held her. That reminded Mat of his own belly; tucking his hat under his arm so it could not blow away, he pulled out the wedge of cheese.
“Beslan, is this storm likely to break before we can come back from the Rahad?” He took a bite of the sharp-tasting cheese; they had fifty different sorts in Ebou Dar, all good. Nynaeve was still hanging over the side. How much had the woman eaten this morning? “I don’t know where we’ll shelter if we’re caught.” He could not think of a single inn he had seen in the Rahad that he would take the women into.
“No storm,” Beslan said, seating himself on the railing. “These are the winter trade winds. The trades come twice a year, in late winter and late summer, but they have to blow much harder before it comes to storm.” He directed a sour look out toward the bay. “Every year those winds bring—brought—ships from Tarabon, and Arad Doman. I wonder whether they ever will again.”
“The Wheel weaves,” Mat began, and choked on a crumb of cheese. Blood and ashes, he was starting to sound like some gray-hair resting his aching joints in front of the fireplace. Worrying about taking the women into a rough inn. A year ago, half a year, he would have taken them, and laughed when their eyes popped, laughed at every prim sniff. “Well, maybe we’ll find you some fun in the Rahad, anyway. At the least, somebody will try to cut a purse, or pull Elayne’s necklace off.” Maybe that was what he needed to clean the taste of sobriety from his tongue. Sobriety. Light, what a word to apply to Mat Cauthon! Tylin must be scaring him more than he thought, if he was shriveling up this way. Maybe he needed some of Beslan’s sort of fun. That was crazy—he had never seen the fight he would not rather walk around—but maybe. . . .
Beslan shook his head. “If anyone can find it, you can, but. . . . We’ll be with seven Wise Women, Mat. Seven. With just one at your side, you could slap a man, even in the Rahad, and he would swallow his tongue and walk away. And the women. What’s the fun of kissing a woman without the risk she’ll decide to stick a knife in you?”
“Burn my soul,” Nalesean muttered into his beard. “It sounds as though I’ve dragged myself from bed for a dull morning.”
Beslan nodded in commiseration. “If we’re lucky, though. . . . The Civil Guard does send patrols to the Rahad occasionally, and if they’re after smugglers, they always dress like anyone else. They seem to think nobody will notice a dozen or so men together carrying swords, whatever they wear, and they’re always surprised when the smugglers ambush them, which is what nearly always happens. If Mat’s ta’veren luck works for us, we might be taken for the Civil Guard, and some smugglers might attack us before they see the red belts.” Nalesean brightened and began rubbing his hands together.
Mat glared at them. Maybe Beslan’s sort of fun was not what he needed. For one thing, he had more than enough of women with knives. Nynaeve still hung over the side of the boat ahead; that would teach her to gorge herself. Wolfing down the last of the cheese, he began on the bread and tried to ignore the dice in his head. An easy trip with no trouble did not sound bad at all. A quick trip, with a quick departure from Ebou Dar.
The Rahad was everything he remembered, and everything Beslan feared. The wind made climbing the cracked gray stone steps at the boat landing into a perilous feat, and after that, it grew worse. Canals ran everywhere, just as across the river, but here the bridges were plain, the grimy stone parapets broken and crumbling; half the canals were so silted that boys waded waist-deep in them, and hardly a barge was to be seen. Tall buildings stood crowded together, blocky structures with scabrous once-white plaster gone in huge patches to reveal rotting red brick, bordering narrow streets with broken paving stones. In those streets where even the fragments had not been ripped up. Morning did not really reach into the shadows of the buildings. Dingy laundry hung drying from every third window, except where a structure stood empty. Some did, and those windows gaped liked eye sockets in a skull. A sour-sweet smell of decay permeated the air, last month’s chamber pots and ancient refuse moldering wherever it had been flung, and for every fly on the other side of the Eldar, a hundred buzzed here in clouds of green and blue. He spotted the peeling blue door of The Golden Crown of Heaven and shuddered at the thought of taking the women in there if the storm broke, despite what Beslan said. Then he shuddered again for having shuddered. Something was happening to him, and he did not like it.
Nynaeve and Elayne insisted on taking the lead, with Reanne between them and the Wise Women close behind. Lan stayed at Nynaeve’s shoulder like a wolfhound, hand on sword hilt, eyes constantly searching, radiating menace. In truth, he was probably enough protection for two dozen pretty sixteen-year-old girls carrying sacks of gold, even here, but Mat insisted that Vanin and the rest keep their eyes open. In fact, the former horsethief and poacher kept so close to Elayne that anyone could have been forgiven for thinking he was her Warder, if a rather fat and rumpled one. Beslan rolled his eyes expressively at Mat’s instructions, and Nalesean irritably stroked his beard and muttered that he could still be in bed.
Men strutted arrogantly along the streets with often ragged vests and no shirts, wearing great brass hoops in their ears and brass finger rings set with colored glass, one knife or sometimes two stuck behind their belts. Hands hovering near those knives, they stared as though daring someone to give the wrong twist to a look. Others skulked from corner to corner, doorway to doorway with hooded eyes, imitating the slat-ribbed dogs that sometimes snarled from a dark alleyway barely wide enough for a man to squeeze into. Thos
e men hunched over their knives, and there was no way to tell which would run and which stab. By and large, the women made any of the men appear humble, parading in worn dresses and twice as much brass jewelry as the men. They carried knives too, of course, and their bold dark eyes sent ten sorts of challenge in every glance. In short, the Rahad was the sort of place where anyone wearing silk could hardly hope to walk ten steps without being cracked over the head. After which they had best hope to wake stripped to the skin and tossed onto a pile of rubbish in an alley, since the alternative was not to wake at all. But. . . .
Children darted from every second door with chipped pottery cups of water, sent by their mothers in case the Wise Women wished a drink. Men with scarred faces and murder etched into their eyes stared openmouthed at seven Wise Women together, then bobbed jerky bows and inquired politely if they could be of assistance, was there anything that required carrying? Women, sometimes with as many scars and always eyes to make Tylin flinch, curtsied awkwardly and breathlessly asked whether they might supply directions, had anyone made a bother of themselves to bring so many Wise Women? If so, the strong implication was, Tamarla and the rest had no need of troubling themselves if they would just supply the name.
Oh, they glared at the soldiers as hotly as ever, though even the hardest flinched away from Lan after a single look. And, oddly enough, from Vanin. A few of the men growled at Beslan and Nalesean whenever they gazed too long at a woman’s deep neckline. Some growled at Mat, though he could not understand why; unlike those two, he was never in danger of his eyeballs falling down the front of a woman’s dress. He knew how to look discreetly. Nynaeve and Elayne were ignored, for all their finery, and so was Reanne in her red wool dress; they did not have the red belt. But they did have the protection of those belts. Mat realized that Beslan had been right. He could empty his purse on the ground, and no one would pick up a copper, at least so long as the Wise Women remained. He could pinch the bottom of every woman in sight, and even if she had apoplexy, she would walk away.
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