Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

"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 bare-handed 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."

"What I know, Lord Mat, is that you've made just about every misstep a man can make with Aes Sedai, short of trying to kill one. The reason I came with you in the first place instead of going with my husband, half the reason I'm still here, is to try to keep you from making too many missteps. Truth to tell, I don't know why I should care, but I do, and that's that. If you had let yourself be guided by me, you'd not be in trouble with them now. I can't say how much I can recover for you, not now, but I am still willing to try."

Mat shook his head. There were only two ways to deal with Aes Sedai without getting burned, let them walk all over you or stay away from them. He would not do the first and could not do the second, so he had to find a third way, and he doubted it could come from following Setalle's advice. Women's advice about Aes Sedai generally was to follow the first path, though they never worded it that way. They talked of accommodation, but it was never the Aes Sedai who was expected to do any accommodating. "Half the reason? What's the other . . . ?" He grunted as though he had been punched in the stomach. "Tuon? You think I can't be trusted with Tuon?"

Mistress Anan laughed at him, a fine rich laugh. "You are a rogue, my Lord. Now, some rouges make fine husbands, once they've been tamed a little around the edges—my Jasfer was a rogue when I met him—but you still think you can nibble a pastry here, nibble a pastry there, then dance off to the next."

"There's no dancing away from this one," Mat said frowning up at the wagon door. The dice clicked away in his head. "Not for me." He was not sure he really wanted to dance away anymore, but want and wish as he might, he was well and truly caught.