Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

"Now Jac gets an hour when the sky is clear, and Willi gets an hour when my father’s not near. It's the hayloft with Moril, for he shows no fear, and Keilin comes at midday: he's oh so bold! Lord Brelan gets an evening when the night is cold. Master Andril gets a morning, but he's very old. Oh, what, oh, what is a poor girl to do? My loves are so many and the hours so few."

Tuon looked doubtful, but with Selucia at her shoulder, she walked over to stand in front of the singer, who faltered a moment at Tuon's intense scrutiny before catching the song up again. She sang over the top of Tuon's head, plainly attempting to ignore her. It seemed that with every other verse, the woman in the song added a new lover to her list. The male musician, playing the dulcimer, smiled at Selucia and got a frosty stare back. The two women got other looks as well, the one so small and with very short black hair, the other rivaling the singer and with her head wrapped in a scarf, but no more than glances. The patrons were intent on their own business.

"It isn't a hell," Mat said softly, "but what is it? Why would so many people be here in the middle of the day?" It was mornings and evenings when common rooms filled up like this.

"The locals are selling olive oil, lacquerware or lace," Thom replied just as quietly, "and the outlanders are buying. It seems local custom is to begin with a few hours of drink and conversation. And if you have no head for it," he added dryly, "you sober up to find you've made much less of a bargain than you thought in your wine."

"Light, Thom, she'll never believe this place is a hell. I thought you were taking us somewhere merchants' guards drink, or apprentices. At least she might believe that."

"Trust me, Mat. I think you'll find she has lived a very sheltered life in some ways."

Sheltered? When her own brothers and sisters tried to kill her? "You wouldn't care to wager a crown on it, would you?"

Thom chuckled. "Always glad to take your coin."

Tuon and Selucia came gliding back, faces expressionless. "I expected rougher garb on the patrons," Tuon said quietly, "and perhaps a fight or two, but the song is too salacious for a respectable inn. Though she is much too covered to sing it properly, in my opinion. What is that for?" she added in tones of suspicion as Mat handed Thom a coin.

"Oh," Thom said, slipping the crown into his coat pocket. "I thought you might be disappointed that only the more successful blackguards were present—they aren't always so colorful as the poorer sort—but Mat said you'd never notice."

She leveled a look at Mat, who opened his mouth indignantly. And closed it again. What was there to say? He was already in the pickling kettle. No need to stoke the fire.

As the innkeeper approached, a round woman with suspiciously black hair beneath a white lace cap and stuffed into a gray dress embroidered in red and green across her more than ample bosom, Thom slipped away with a bow and a murmured, "By your leave, my Lord, my Lady." Murmured, but loud enough for Mistress Heilin to hear.

The innkeeper had a flinty smile, yet she exercised it for a lord and lady, curtsying so deeply that she grunted straightening back up, and she seemed only a little disappointed that Mat wanted wine and perhaps food, not rooms. Her best wine. Even so, when he paid, he let her see that he had gold in his purse as well as silver. A silk coat was all very well, but gold wearing rags got better service than copper wearing silk.

"Ale," Tuon drawled. "I've never tasted ale. Tell me, good mistress, is it likely any of these people will start a fight any time soon?" Mat nearly swallowed his tongue.

Mistress Heilin blinked and gave her head a small shake, as if uncertain she really had heard what she thought she had. "No need to worry, my Lady," she said. "It happens time to time, if they get too far in their cups, but I'll settle them down hard if it does."

"Not on my account," Tuon told her. "They should have their sport."

The innkeeper's smile went crooked and barely held, but she managed another curtsy then scurried away clutching Mat's coin and calling, "Jera, wine for the lord and lady, a pitcher of the Kiranaille. And a mug of ale."

"You mustn't ask questions like that, Precious," Mat said quietly as he escorted Tuon and Selucia to an empty table. Selucia refused a chair, taking Tuon's cloak and draping it over the chair she held for Tuon, then standing behind it. "It isn't polite. Besides, it lowers your eyes." Thank the Light for those talks with Egeanin, whatever name she wanted to go by. Seanchan would do any fool thing or refuse to do what was sensible to avoid having their eyes lowered.

Tuon nodded thoughtfully. "Your customs are often very peculiar, Toy. You will have to teach me about them. I have learned some, but I must know the customs of the people I will rule in the name of the Empress, may she live forever."

"I'll be glad to teach you what I can," Mat said, unpinning his cloak and letting it fall carelessly over the low back of his chair. "It will be good for you to know our ways even if you end up ruling a sight less than you expect to." He set his hat on the table.

Tuon and Selucia gasped as one, hands darting for the hat. Tuon's reached it first, and she quickly put it on the chair next to her. "That is very bad luck, Toy. Never put a hat on a table." She made one of those odd gestures for warding off evil, folding under the middle two fingers and extending the other two stiffly. Selucia did the same.

"I'll remember that,' he said dryly. Perhaps too dryly. Tuon gave him a level look. Very level.

"I have decided you will not do for a cupbearer, Toy. Not until you learn meekness, which I almost despair of teaching you. Perhaps I will make you a running groom, instead. You are good with horses. Would you like trotting at my stirrup when I ride? The robes are much the same as for a cupbearer, but I will have yours decorated with ribbons. Pink ribbons."

He managed to maintain a smooth face, but he felt his cheeks growing hot. There was only one way she could know pink ribbons had any special significance to him. Tylin had told her. It had to be. Burn him, women would talk about anything!

The arrival of the serving maid with their drink saved him from having to make any response. Jera was a smiling young woman with nearly as many curves as the singer, not so well displayed yet not really concealed by the white apron she wore tied snugly. Her dark woolen dress fit quite snugly, too. Not that he gave her more than a glance, of course. He was with his wife-to-be. Anyway, only a complete woolhead looked at a woman while with another.

Jera placed a tall pewter wine pitcher and two polished pewter cups on the table and handed a thick mug of ale to Selucia, then blinked in confusion when Selucia transferred the mug to Tuon and took a cup of wine in return. He handed her a silver penny to settle her discomposure, and she gave him a beaming smile with her curtsy before darting off to another call from the innkeeper. It was unlikely she received much in the way of silver.

"You could have smiled back at her, Toy," Tuon said, holding the mug up for a sniff and wrinkling her nose. "She is very pretty. You were so stone-faced, you probably frightened her." She took a sip, and her eyes widened in surprise. "This actually is quite good."

Mat sighed and took a long swallow of dark wine that smelled faintly of flowers. In none of his memories, his own or those other men's, could he recall having understood women. Oh, one or two things here and there, but never anywhere near completely.

Sipping her ale steadily—he was not about to tell her ale was taken in swallows, not sips: she might get herself drunk deliberately, just to experience a hell fully; he was not ready to put anything past her today. Or any day—taking sips between every sentence, the maddening little woman questioned him on customs. Telling her how to behave in a hell was easy enough. Keep to yourself, ask no questions, and sit with your back to a wall if you could and near to a door in case of a need to leave suddenly. Better not to go at all, but if you had to. . . . Yet she quickly passed on to courts and palaces, and got few answers there. He could have told her more of customs in the courts of Eharon or Shiota or a dozen other dead nations than in those of any nation that still lived. Scraps of how things were done in Caemlyn and Tear were all he really knew, and bits from Fal Dara, in Shienar. Well, that and Ebou Dar, but she already knew those ways.

"So you have traveled widely and been in other palaces than the Tarasin," she said finally, and took the last bit of ale in her mug. He had not finished half his wine yet; he thought Selucia had not taken above two small swallows of hers. "But you are not nobly born, it seems. I thought you must not be."