“Of course I am.” Light, if I say that much more often, I may start believing it. “What about you? Do you serve Morgase and Gaebril loyally?”
Tallanvor gave him a look as hard as the dice’s mercy. “I serve Morgase, Thom Grinwell. Her, I serve to the death. Fare you well!” He turned and strode back toward the Palace with a hand gripping his sword hilt.
Watching him go, Mat muttered to himself. “I will wager this”—he gave Gaebril’s wash-leather purse a toss—“that Gaebril says the same.” Whatever games they played in the Palace, he wanted no place in any of them. And he meant to make sure Egwene and the others were out of them, too. Fool women! Now I have to keep their bacon from burning instead of looking after my own! He did not start to run until the streets hid him from the Palace.
When he came dashing into The Queen’s Blessing, nothing very much had changed in the library. Thom and the innkeeper still sat over the stones board—a different game, he saw from the positions of the stones, but no better for Gill—and the calico cat was back on the table, washing herself. A tray holding their unlit pipes and the remains of a meal for two sat near the cat, and his belongings were gone from the armchair. Each man had a wine cup at his elbow.
“I will be leaving, Master Gill,” he said. “You can keep the coin and take a meal out of it. I’ll stay long enough to eat, but then I am on the road to Tear.”
“What is your hurry, boy?” Thom seemed to be watching the cat more than the board. “We only just arrived here.”
“You delivered the Lady Elayne’s letter, then?” the innkeeper said eagerly. “And kept your skin whole, it seems. Did you really climb over that wall like the other young man? No, that does not matter. Did the letter soothe Morgase? Do we still have to keep tiptoeing on eggs, man?”
“I suppose it soothed her,” Mat said. “I think it did.” He hesitated a moment, bouncing Gaebril’s purse on his hand. It made a clinking sound. He had not looked to see if it really held ten gold marks; the weight was about right. “Master Gill, what can you tell me of Gaebril? Aside from the fact that he does not like Aes Sedai. You said he had not been in Caemlyn long?”
“Why do you want to know about him?” Thom asked. “Basel, are you going to place a stone or not?” The innkeeper sighed and stuck a black stone on the board, and the gleeman shook his head.
“Well, lad,” Gill said, “there is not much to tell. He came out of the west during the winter. Somewhere out your way, I think. Maybe it was the Two Rivers. I’ve heard the mountains mentioned.”
“We have no lords in the Two Rivers,” Mat said. “Maybe there are some up around Baerlon. I do not know.”
“That could be it, lad. I had never even heard of him before, but I do not keep up with the country lords. Came while Morgase was still in Tar Valon, he did, and half the city was afraid the Tower was going to make her disappear, too. The other half did not want her back. The riots started up again, the way they did last year at the tail of winter.”
Mat shook his head. “I do not care about politics, Master Gill. It’s Gaebril I want to know about.” Thom frowned at him, and began cleaning the dottle from his long-stemmed pipe with a straw.
“It is Gaebril I am telling you about, lad,” Gill said. “During the riots, he made himself leader of the faction supporting Morgase—got himself wounded in the fighting, I hear—and by the time she returned, he had it all suppressed. Gareth Bryne didn’t like Gaebril’s methods—he can be a very hard man—but Morgase was so pleased to find order restored that she named him to the post Elaida used to hold.”
The innkeeper stopped. Mat waited for him to go on, but he did not. Thom thumbed his pipe full of tabac and walked over to light a spill at a small lamp kept for the purpose on the mantel above the fireplace.
“What else?” Mat asked. “The man has to have a reason for what he does. If he marries Morgase, would he be king when she dies? If Elayne were dead, too, I mean?”
Thom choked lighting his pipe, and Gill laughed. “Andor has a queen, lad. Always a queen. If Morgase and Elayne both died—the Light send it not so!—then Morgase’s nearest female relative would take the throne. At least there’s no question of who that is this time—a cousin, the Lady Dyelin—not like the Succession, after Tigraine vanished. It took two years before Morgase sat on the Lion Throne, then. Dyelin could keep Gaebril as her advisor, or marry him to cement the line—though she would not likely do that unless Morgase had had a child by him—but he would be the Prince Consort even then. No more than that. Thank the Light, Morgase is a young woman, yet. And Elayne is healthy. Light! The letter did not say she is ill, did it?”
“She is well.” For now, at least. “Isn’t there anything else you can tell me about him? You do not seem to like him. Why?”
The innkeeper frowned in thought, and scratched his chin, and shook his head. “I suppose I would not like him marrying Morgase, but I do not truly know why. He’s said to be a fine man; the nobles all look to him. I do not like most of the men he’s brought into the Guards. Too much has changed since he came, but I cannot lay it all at his door. There just seem to be too many people muttering in corners since he came. You would think we were all Cairhienin, the way they were before this civil war, all plotting and trying to find advantage. I keep having bad dreams since Gaebril came, and I am not the only one. Fool thing to worry about, dreams. It is probably only worry about Elayne, and what Morgase means to do concerning the White Tower, and people acting like Cairhienin. I just do not know. Why are you asking all these questions about Lord Gaebril?”
“Because he wants to kill Elayne,” Mat said, “and Egwene and Nynaeve with her.” There was nothing useful in what Gill had told him that he could see. Burn me, I don’t have to know why he wants them dead. I just have to stop it. Both men were staring at him again. As if he were mad. Again.
“Are you coming down sick again?” Gill said suspiciously. “I remember you staring crossways at everyone the last time. It’s either that, or else you think this is some sort of prank. You have the look of a prankster to me. If that is it, it’s a nasty one!”
Mat grimaced. “It is no bloody prank. I overheard him telling some man called Comar to cut Elayne’s head off. And Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s while he was about it. A big man, with a white stripe in his beard.”
“That does sound like Lord Comar,” Gill said slowly. “He was a fine soldier, but it is said he left the Guard over some matter of weighted dice. Not that anyone says it to his face; Comar was one of the best blades in the Guards. You really mean it, don’t you?”
“I think he does, Basel,” Thom said. “I very much think he does.”
“The Light shine on us! What did Morgase say? You did tell her, didn’t you? The Light burn you, you did tell her!”
“Of course, I did,” Mat said bitterly. “With Gaebril standing right there, and her gazing at him like a lovesick lapdog! I said, ‘I may be a simple village man who just climbed over your wall half an hour past, but I already happen to know your trusted advisor there, the one you seem to be in love with, intends to murder your daughter.’ Light, man, she’d have cut my head off!”
“She might have at that.” Thom stared into the elaborate carvings on the bowl of his pipe and tugged one mustache. “Her temper was ever as sudden as lightning, and twice as dangerous.”
“You know it better than most, Thom,” Gill said absently. Staring at nothing, he scrubbed both hands through his graying hair. “There has to be something I can do. I haven’t held a sword since the Aiel War, but. . . . Well, that would do no good. Get myself killed and do nothing by it. But I must do something!”
“Rumor.” Thom rubbed the side of his nose; he seemed to be studying the stones board and talking to himself. “No one can keep rumors from reaching Morgase’s ears, and if she hears it strongly enough, she will start to wonder. Rumor is the voice of the people, and the voice of the people often speaks truth. Morgase knows that. There is not a man alive I would back against her in the Game
. Love or no love, once Morgase starts examining Gaebril closely, he’ll not be able to hide as much as his childhood scars from her. And if she learns he means harm to Elayne”—he placed a stone on the board; it seemed an odd placement at first glance, but Mat saw that in three more moves, a third of Gill’s stones would be trapped—“Lord Gaebril will have a most elaborate funeral.”