“Trained guard dogs, then,” Tuon said, gathering her reins. “Mounted, we can avoid them easily enough.”
“No need to try, and no use,” Mat told her. He should have expected this. “Those people are Tinkers, Tuatha’an, and they’re no danger to anybody. They couldn’t be violent if their lives depended on it. That’s no exaggeration, just simple truth. But they saw you two go haring off, trying to get away from me as it must have seemed, and me chasing after. Now that those dogs have a scent trail, the Tinkers will follow us all the way back to the show if need be to make sure you two haven’t been kidnapped or harmed. We’ll go meet them to save the time and trouble.” It was not the Tinkers’ time he cared about. Luca probably would not care one way or the other if a bunch of Tinkers getting in the way delayed the show setting out, but Mat certainly would.
Selucia scowled at him indignantly, and her fingers flew, but Tuon laughed. “Toy wishes to be commanding today, Selucia. I will let him command and see how he does.” Bloody kind of her.
They trotted back the way they had come—riding around the fallen trees this time, though now and then Tuon would gather her reins as if she meant to jump one, then give Mat a mischievous grin—and it was not long before the Tinkers came into sight running through the trees behind their huge mastiffs like a flight of butterflies, fifty or so men and women in bright colors, often in jarring combinations. A man might be wearing a red-and-blue striped coat and baggy yellow trousers tucked into knee boots, or a violet-colored coat above red trousers, or worse. Some women wore dresses striped in as many colors as there were colors and even colors Mat had no name for, while others wore skirts and blouses as varied in hue and as clashing as the men’s coats and trousers. A fair number had shawls, as well, to add more colors to the eye-scrambling blend. Except for the gray-haired man who had been driving the lead wagon, they all appeared to be short of their middle years. He must be the Seeker, the leader of the caravan. Mat dismounted, and after a moment, Tuon and Selucia did, too.
The Tinkers stopped at that, calling their dogs to heel. The big animals slumped to the ground, tongues lolling out, and the people came on more slowly. None carried so much as a stick, and though Mat wore no weapons that showed, they eyed him warily. The men clustered in front of him, while the women gathered around Tuon and Selucia. There was no threat in it, but as easily as that, Tuon and Selucia were separated from him, off where the Tinker women could make inquiries. Suddenly it occurred to him that Tuon might think it a fine game to claim he was trying to bother her. She and Selucia could ride off while he was trying to contend with Tinkers crowding around him and Pips so he could not climb into the saddle. That was all they would do, but unless he was willing to fight his way clear, they might keep him here for hours, maybe, to give that pair time to “escape.”
The gray-haired man bowed with his hands pressed to his chest. “Peace be on you and yours, my Lord. Forgiveness if we intrude, but we feared our dogs had frightened the ladies’ horses.”
Mat responded with a bow in the same fashion. “Peace be on you always, Seeker, and on all the People. The ladies’ horses weren’t frightened. The ladies are . . . impetuous at times.” What were the women saying? He tried to eavesdrop, but their voices were low murmurs.
“You know something of the People, my Lord?” The Seeker sounded surprised and had a right to. The Tuatha’an kept away from anywhere larger than a moderate-sized village. They would seldom encounter anyone in a silk coat.
“Only a little,” Mat replied. A very little. He had memories of meeting Tinkers, but he himself had never spoken to one before. What were those bloody women saying? “Will you answer me a question? I’ve seen a number of your caravans the past few days, more than I’d have expected to, and all heading toward Ebou Dar. Is there a reason?”
The man hesitated, darting a glance toward the women. They were still murmuring away, and he had to be wondering why their conversation was lasting so long. After all, it only needed a moment to say yes, I need help, or the opposite. “It is the people called Seanchan, my Lord,” he said finally. “Word is spreading among the People that there is safety where the Seanchan rule, and equal justice for all. Elsewhere. . . . You understand, my Lord?”
Mat did. Like the showfolk, Tinkers were strangers wherever they went, and worse, strangers with an undeserved reputation for thievery—well, they stole no more often than anyone else—and a deserved one for trying to entice young people into joining them. And on top of it, for Tinkers there was no question of fighting back if anybody tried to rob them or chase them away. “Take a care, Seeker. Their safety comes at a price, and some of their laws are harsh. You know what they do with women who can channel?”
“Thank you for your concern, my Lord,” the man said calmly, “but few of our women ever begin channeling, and if one does, we will do as we always do and take her to Tar Valon.”
Abruptly, the women began laughing, great gales and peals. The Seeker relaxed visibly. If the women were laughing, Mat was not the kind of man who would strike them down or kill them for getting in his way. For Mat’s part, he scowled. There was nothing in that laughter that he liked.
The Tinkers made their departure with more apologies from the Seeker for having bothered them, but the women kept looking back and laughing behind cupped hands. Some of the men leaned close as they walked, plainly asking questions, but the women just shook their heads. And looked back again, laughing.
“What did you tell them?” Mat asked sourly.
“Oh, that’s none of your business, now is it, Toy?” Tuon replied, and Selucia laughed. Oh, she bloody cackled, she did. He decided he was better off not knowing. Women just purely enjoyed planting needles in a man.
CHAPTER 9
A Short Path
Tuon and Selucia were not the only women who caused Mat trouble, of course. Sometimes it seemed that most of the trouble in his life came from women, which he could not understand at all since he always tried to treat them well. Even Egeanin gave her share of grief, though it was the smallest share.
“I was right. You do think you can marry her,” she drawled when he asked her for help with Tuon. She and Domon were seated on the steps of their wagon, with their arms around each other. A trickle of smoke rose from Domon’s pipe. It was midmorning on a fine day, though gathering clouds threatened rain for later, and the performers were putting on their acts for the inhabitants of four small villages that, combined, perhaps equaled Runnien Crossing in size. Mat had no desire to go watch. Oh, he still enjoyed watching the contortionists, and better still the female acrobats and tumblers, but when you saw jugglers and fire-eaters and the like every day just about, even Miyora and her leopards became, well, less interesting if not exactly ordinary.
“Never you mind what I think, Egeanin. Will you tell me what you know of her? Trying to find out from her is like fishing blindfolded and barehanded in a briar patch trying to catch a rabbit.”
“My name is Leilwin, Cauthon. Don’t forget it again,” she said in tones suitable for giving orders on a ship’s deck. Her eyes tried to drive the command home like blue hammers. “Why should I help you? You aim too high above yourself, a mole yearning for the sun. You could face execution for simply saying you want to marry her. It’s disgusting. Besides, I’ve left all that behind me. Or it’s left me,” she added bitterly. Domon gave her a one-armed hug.
“If you’ve left all that behind you, what do you care how disgusting my wanting to marry her is?” There. It was out in the open. Partly, at least.
Domon removed the pipe from his mouth long enough to blow a smoke-ring aimed at Mat’s face. “If she does no want to help you, then give over.” He gave it that same ship’s deck voice of command.
Egeanin muttered under her breath. She appeared to be arguing with herself. Finally, she shook her head. “No, Bayle. He’s right. If I’m cast adrift, then I have to find a new ship and a new course. I can never return to Seanchan, so I might as well cut the cable and be done with it.
”
What she knew of Tuon was mainly rumor—it seemed the Imperial family lived their lives behind walls even when in plain sight, and only whispers of what went on behind those walls escaped—yet those were sufficient to make the hair on the back of Mat’s neck stand up. His wife-to-be had had a brother and a sister assassinated? After they tried to have her killed, true, but still! What kind of family went around killing one another? The Seanchan Blood and the Imperial family, for starters. Half of her siblings were dead, assassinated, most of them, and maybe the others, too. Some of what Egeanin—Leilwin—had to tell was generally known among Seanchan, and hardly more comforting. Tuon would have been schooled in intrigue from infancy, schooled in weapons and fighting with her bare hands, heavily guarded yet expected to be her own last line of defense. All of those born to the Blood were taught to dissemble, to disguise their intentions and ambitions. Power shifted constantly among the Blood, some climbing higher, others slipping down, and the dance was only faster and more dangerous in the Imperial family. The Empress—she started to add, “May she live forever,” and half-choked in swallowing the words, then closed her eyes for a long moment before continuing—the Empress had borne many children, as every Empress did, so that among those who survived there would be one fit to rule after her. It would not do to have someone who was stupid or a fool ascend the Crystal Throne. Tuon was accounted very far from either. Light! The woman he was to marry was as bad as Warder and Aes Sedai wrapped into one. And maybe as dangerous.
He had several conversations with Egeanin—he was careful to name her Leilwin to her face lest she go for him with her dagger, yet he thought of her as Egeanin—trying to learn more, but her knowledge of the Blood was largely from the outside looking in, and her knowledge of the Imperial Court, by her own admission, little better than that of a street urchin in Seandar. The day he gave Tuon the mare, he had ridden alongside Egeanin’s wagon having one of those fruitless conversations. He had accompanied Tuon and Selucia for a time, but they kept looking at him sideways, then exchanging glances and giggling. Over what they had told the Tinker women, without a sliver of doubt. A man could only take so much of that sort of thing.
“A clever gift, that mare,” Egeanin said, leaning out from the driver’s seat to look up the line of wagons. Domon was handling the reins. She took her turn sometimes, but handling a team was not among the skills she had learned on ships. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” he asked.
She straightened and adjusted her wig. He did not know why she continued to wear the thing. Her own black hair was short, but no shorter than Selucia’s. “About courting gifts. Among the Blood, when you are courting someone higher than you, a traditional gift is something exotic or rare. Best of all is if you can connect the gift somehow to one of the recipient’s pleasures, and it’s well known the High Lady loves horses. It’s good you’ve acknowledged that you don’t expect to be her equal, too. Not that this is going to work, you understand. I don’t have a clue why she’s still here, now you’ve stopped guarding her, but you can’t believe she’ll actually say the words. When she marries, it will be for the good of the Empire, not because some layabout like you gave her a horse or made her smile.”
Mat ground his teeth to keep from shouting a curse. He had acknowledged what? No wonder a set of bloody dice had stopped. Tuon would let him forget this when it snowed on Sunday. He was certain sure of that.
If Leilwin bloody Shipless gave him small griefs, the Aes Sedai managed larger. Aes Sedai liked nothing better. He was resigned to them traipsing about every village and town they stopped at, asking questions and doing the Light knew what else. He had no choice but resignation, with no way to stop them. They claimed to be taking care—at least, Teslyn and Edesina did; Joline snapped that he was a fool for worrying—yet an Aes Sedai taking care was still clearly a woman of consequence whether or not anybody recognized what she was. Lacking the coin for silks, they had purchased bolts of fine wool in Jurador, and the seamstresses worked as hard for Aes Sedai as they did for Mat’s gold, so they strolled about dressed like wealthy merchants and as sure of themselves as any noble ever born. Nobody saw one of them walk five strides without knowing that she expected the world to conform itself to her. Three women like that, with a traveling show at that, were sure to cause talk. At least Joline left her Great Serpent ring in her belt pouch. The other two had lost theirs to the Seanchan. If Mat had seen Joline with the thing actually on her finger, he thought he would have wept.
He got no more reports on their activities from the former sul’dam. Joline had Bethamin firmly in hand; the tall dark woman ran when Joline said run and jumped when she said toad. Edesina was giving her lessons, too, but Joline considered Bethamin a personal project for some reason. She was never harsh that Mat saw, not after the face slapping, but you might have thought she was getting Bethamin ready to go to the Tower, and Bethamin returned a sort of gratitude that made it clear her loyalties had shifted. As for Seta, the yellow-haired woman was so frightened of the sisters that she did not dare follow them any longer. She actually shivered when he suggested it. Strange as it seemed, Seta and Bethamin had been so accustomed to how Seanchan women who could channel saw themselves that they had really believed Aes Sedai could not be much different. They were dangerous when off the leash, yet dangerous dogs could be handled by someone who knew how, and they were experts with that particular sort of dangerous dog. Now they knew that Aes Sedai were not dogs of any kind. They were wolves. Seta would have found another place to sleep had that been possible, and he learned from Mistress Anan that the Seanchan woman put her hands over her eyes whenever Joline or Edesina was teaching Bethamin in the wagon.
“I’m certain she can see the weaves,” Setalle said. He would have said she sounded envious except that he doubted she envied anyone. “She’s halfway to admitting it, or she wouldn’t hide her eyes. Soon or late, she’ll come around and want to learn, too.” Maybe she did sound envious at that.
He could have wished for Seta to come around soon rather than late. Another student would have left the Aes Sedai less time to trouble him. If the show was halted, he could hardly turn around without seeing Joline or Edesina peering around the corner of a tent or wagon at him. Usually, the foxhead cooled on his chest. He could not prove they were actually channeling at him, yet he was certain of it. He was unsure which of them found the loophole in his protection that Adeleas and Vandene had, that something thrown with the Power would hit him, but after that, he could barely leave his tent without getting hit by a rock, and later, by other things, burning sparks like a shower from a forge fire, stinging sparks that made him leap and his hair try to stand on end. He was positive that Joline was behind it. If for no other reason, he never saw her without Blaeric or Fen or both nearby for protection. And she smiled at him like a cat smiling at a mouse.
He was planning how to get her alone—it was that or spend his time hiding from her—when she and Teslyn got into a shouting match that cleared Edesina out of the whitewashed wagon almost as quickly as Bethamin and Seta, and those two ran out and stood gaping at the wagon. The Yellow sister calmly went back to brushing her long black hair, lifting it up with one hand and sweeping the wooden hairbrush down it with the other. Seeing Mat, she smiled at him without ceasing the motions of her brush. The medallion went cold, and the shouting vanished as though cut off by a knife.
He never learned what was said behind that Power-woven shield. Teslyn favored him somewhat, yet when he asked her, she gave him one of those looks and silence. It was Aes Sedai business and none of his. Whatever had gone on in there, though, the rocks stopped, and the sparks. He tried thanking Teslyn, but she was having none of it.
“When something be no to be spoken of, it be no to be spoken of,” she told him firmly. “It would be well for you to learn that lesson if you are to be around sisters, and I think your life be tied to Aes Sedai, now if it was no before.” Bloody thing for her to say.
She never cracked her
teeth about his ter’angreal, but the same could not be said of Joline and Edesina, even after the argument. They tried to bully him into handing it over every single day, Edesina cornering him by herself, Joline with her Warders glowering over her shoulders at him. Ter’angreal were rightfully the property of the White Tower. Ter’angreal needed proper study, particularly one with the odd properties this one possessed. Ter’angreal were potentially dangerous, too much so to be left in the hands of the uninitiated. Neither said especially a man’s hands, but Joline came close. He began to worry that the Green would have Blaeric and Fen simply take it from him. That pair still suspected he had been involved in what had happened to her, and the dark looks they gave him said they wanted any excuse to beat him like a drum.
“That would be stealing,” Mistress Anan told him in a lecturing tone, gathering her cloak around her. The sunlight was beginning to fade, and coolness already setting in. They were standing outside Tuon’s wagon, and he was hoping to get inside in time to be fed. Noal and Olver were already inside. Setalle was apparently off to visit the Aes Sedai, something she did frequently. “Tower law is quite clear on that. There might be considerable . . . discussion . . . over whether it had to be given back to you—I rather think it would not be, in the end—but Joline would face a fairly harsh penance for theft all the same.”
“Maybe she’d think it worth a penance,” he muttered. His stomach rumbled. The potted finches and creamed onions that Lopin had presented proudly for his midday meal had both turned out to be spoiling, to the Tairen’s extreme mortification, which meant Mat had had a heel of bread since breakfast and no more. “You know an awful lot about the White Tower.”
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