linch—but she almost nodded. “There is just one thing, Egeanin.” This still could blow up in his face like one of Aludra’s fireworks, but he did not hesitate. Sometimes, you just had to toss the dice. “I don’t need any gold, but I do have need of three sul’dam who will keep their mouths shut. Do you think you supply could those?”
After a moment that seemed to stretch hours, she nodded, and he smiled to himself. His horse had crossed first.
“Domon,” Thom said in a flat voice around the pipestem clenched between his teeth. He was lying with a thin pillow doubled up beneath his head, and he seemed to be studying the faint blue haze that hung in the air of the windowless room. The single lamp gave a fitful light. “And Egeanin.”
“And she is of the Blood, now.” Sitting on the edge of his bed, Juilin peered into the charred bowl of his pipe. “I do not know as I like that.”
“Are you saying we can’t trust them?” Mat demanded, tamping down his tabac with a careless thumb. He snatched his thumb out with a mild oath and stuck it in his mouth to suck the burn away. Yet again he had the choice of the stool or standing, but for once he did not mind the stool. Dealing with Egeanin had taken little enough of the afternoon, but Thom had been out of the Palace until after dark, while Juilin had taken even longer to appear. Neither appeared nearly as pleased with Mat’s news as he expected. Thom had just sighed that he had finally gotten a good look at one of the accepted seals, but Juilin glowered whenever he looked at the bundle lying in the corner of the room where he had hurled it. There was no bloody need for the man to carry on so just because they no longer needed the sul’dam dresses. “I tell you, they’re both scared spitless over the Seekers,” Mat went on when his thumb was cooled. Maybe not exactly spitless, but frightened nonetheless. “Egeanin may be Blood, but she never twitched an eyelid when I told her what I wanted sul’dam for. She just said she knew three who would do what we need, and she could have them ready tomorrow.”
“An honorable woman, Egeanin,” Thom mused. Every so often he paused to blow a smoke ring. “Odd, true, but then, she is Seanchan. I think even Nynaeve came to like her, and I know Elayne did. And she liked them. Even if they were Aes Sedai, as she believed. She was very useful in Tanchico. Very useful. More than merely competent. I truly would like to know how she came be raised to the Blood, but yes, I believe we can trust Egeanin. And Domon. An interesting man, Domon.”
“A smuggler,” Juilin muttered disparagingly. “And now he belongs to her. So’jhin are more than just property, you know. There are so’jhin who tell Blood what to do.” Thom raised a shaggy eyebrow at him. Just that, but after a moment, the thief-catcher shrugged. “I suppose Domon is trustworthy,” he said reluctantly. “For a smuggler.”
Mat snorted. Maybe they were jealous. Well, he was ta’veren, and they had to live with it. “Then tomorrow night, we leave. The only change in the plan is that we have three real sul’dam and one of the Blood to get us through the gates.”
“And these sul’dam are going to take three Aes Sedai out of the city, let them go, and never think of raising an alarm,” Juilin muttered. “Once, while Rand al’Thor was in Tear, I saw a tossed coin land on its edge five times in a row. We finally walked away and left it standing there on the table. I suppose anything can happen.”
“Either you trust them or you don’t, Juilin,” Mat growled. The thief-catcher glared at the bundled dresses in the corner, and Mat shook his head. “What did they do to help you in Tanchico, Thom? Blood and ashes, don’t the two of you go all flat-eyed on me again! You know, and they know, and I might as well.”
“Nynaeve said not to tell anyone,” Juilin said as if that really mattered. “Elayne said not to. We promised. You might say we swore an oath.”
Thom shook his head on the pillow. “Circumstances alter cases, Juilin. And in any case, it wasn’t an oath.” He blew three perfect smoke rings, one inside the other. “They helped us acquire and dispose of a sort of male a’dam, Mat. The Black Ajah apparently wanted to use it on Rand. You can see why Nynaeve and Elayne wanted it kept quiet. If word spread that such a thing ever existed, the Light knows what kind of tales would spring up.”
“Who cares what stories people tell?” A male a’dam? Light, if the Black Ajah had gotten that onto Rand’s neck, or the Seanchan had . . . Those colors whirled through his head again, and he made himself stop thinking about Rand. “Gossip isn’t going to hurt . . . anybody.” No colors that time. He could avoid it as long as he did not think about . . . The colors swirled again, and he ground his teeth on his pipestem.
“Not true, Mat. Stories have power. Gleemen’s tales, and bards’ epics, and rumors in the street alike. They stir passions, and change the way men see the world. Today, I heard a man say that Rand had sworn fealty to Elaida, that he was in the White Tower. The fellow believed it, Mat. What if, say, enough Tairens begin to believe? Tairens dislike Aes Sedai. Correct, Juilin?”
“Some do,” Juilin allowed, then added as though Thom had dragged it from him, “Most do. But riot many of us have met Aes Sedai, not to know it. They way the law was, forbidding channeling, few Aes Sedai came to Tear, and they very seldom advertised who they were.”
“That’s beside the point, my fine Aes Sedai-loving Tairen friend. And it gives weight to my argument in any event. Tear holds to Rand, the nobles do at least, because they’re afraid if they do not, he’ll come back, but if they believe the Tower holds him, then maybe he can’t come back. If they believe he’s a tool of the Tower, it is just one more reason for them to turn on him. Let enough Tairens believe those two things, and he might as well have left Tear as soon as he drew Callandor. That is just the one rumor, and just Tear, but it could do as much harm in Cairhien, or Illian, or anywhere. I don’t know what sort of tales might spring from a male a’dam, in a world with the Dragon Reborn, and Asha’man, but I’m too old to want to find out.”
Mat understood, in a manner of speaking. A man always tried to make whoever was commanding the troops against him believe that he was doing something other than what he was, that he was going where he had no intention of going, and the enemy tried to do the same to him, if the enemy was any good at the craft. Sometimes both sides could get so confused that very strange things happened. Tragedies, sometimes. Cities burned that no one had any interest in burning, except that the burners believed what was untrue, and thousands died. Crops destroyed for the same reason, and tens of thousands died in the famine that followed.
“So I won’t crack my teeth about this a’dam for men,” he said. “I suppose somebody has thought to tell . . . him?” Colors flashed. Maybe he could just ignore them, or grow used to them. They were gone as fast as they came, and they did not hurt. He just did not like things he could not understand. Especially when they might have to do with the Power in some way. The silver foxhead under his shirt might protect him against the Power, but that protection had as many holes as his own memories.
“We have not exactly been in regular communication,” Thom said dryly, waggling his eyebrows. “I suppose Elayne and Nynaeve have found some way to let him know, if they think it important.”
“Why should they?” Juilin said, bending to tug off a boot with a grunt. “The thing is at the bottom of the sea.” Scowling, he hurled the boot at the bundled dresses in the corner. “Are you going to let us get any sleep tonight, Mat? I don’t think we’ll have any tomorrow night, and I like to sleep at least every other night.”
That night, Mat chose to sleep in Tylin’s bed. Not for old times’ sake. That thought made him laugh, though his laughter had too much of the sound of a whimper to be very funny. It was just that a good feather mattress and goose-down pillows were preferable to a hayloft when a man did not know when his next decent night’s sleep would come.
The trouble was that he could not sleep. He lay there in the dark with an arm behind his head and the medallion’s leather cord looped through itself on his wrist, ready to hand in case the gholam slid through the crack under the door, but it was not the gholam that kept him awake. He could not stop going over the plan in his head. It was a good plan, and simple; as simple as it could be, in the circumstances. Only, no battle ever went according to plan, even the best. Great captains earned their reputation not just for laying brilliant plans, but for still being able to find victory after those plans began to fall apart. So when first light illumined the windows, he was still lying there, rolling the medallion across the back of his fingers and trying to think of what was going to go wrong.
CHAPTER
30
Cold, Fat Raindrops
The day dawned cold, with gray clouds that obscured the rising sun and winds off the Sea of Storms that rattled loose panes of glass in the window casements. In stories, not the sort of day for grand rescues and escapes. It was a day for murders. Not a pleasant thought when you were hoping to live past another dawn. But the plan was simple. Now that he had a Seanchan Blood to use, nothing could possibly go wrong. Mat tried very hard to convince himself of that.
Lopin brought him breakfast, bread and ham and some hard yellow cheese, while he dressed. Nerim was folding a few last pieces of clothing that were to go to the inn, including some of the shirts Tylin had had made. They were good shirts, after all, and Nerim claimed he could do something about the lace, though as usual he made it sound as if he was offering to sew a shroud. The lugubrious, gray-haired little fellow was handy with a needle, as Mat knew well. He had sewn up enough of Mat’s wounds.
“Nerim and I will take Olver out by the refuse gate at the rear of the Palace,” Lopin recited with exaggerated patience, his hands clasped at his waist. Servants in a palace seldom missed meals, and his dark Tairen coat fit more tightly than ever over his round belly. For that matter, the bottom of the coat did not appear to flare as much as it once had. “There is never anyone there except the guards until the refuse cart leaves in the afternoon, and they are accustomed to us taking my Lord’s things out th
at way, so they won’t remark us. At The Wandering Woman, we will secure my Lord’s gold and the rest of my Lord’s garments, and Metwyn, Fergin and Gorderan will meet us with the horses. We and the Redarms will then take young Olver through the Dal Eira Gate at midafternoon. I have the lottery tokens for the horses, including both pack animals, in my pocket, my Lord. There is an abandoned stable on the Great North Road, about a mile north of the Circuit of Heaven, where we will wait until we see my Lord. I trust I have my Lord’s instructions correctly?”
Mat swallowed the last of the cheese and dusted his hands. “You think I’m making you go over it too often?” he said, shrugging into his coat. A plain dark green coat. A man wanted to be plain while about business like today’s. “I want to make sure you have it by heart. Remember, if you don’t see me before sunrise tomorrow, you keep moving until you find Talmanes and the Band.” The alarm would go up with the morning inspection of the kennels, and if he was not out of the city before that, he expected to learn whether his luck ran to stopping a headsman’s axe. He had been told that he was fated to die and live again—a prophecy, or near enough one—but he was pretty sure that had already happened.