Crossroads of Twilight (The Wheel of Time 10)

“We have everything well in hand,” Setalle called back, calmly pushing her needle through the fabric stretched on her hoop. You would have thought that needlework was the most important thing. “Go on about your work. Don’t dawdle.” The woman was not Ebou Dari, but she certainly had soaked up Ebou Dari ways. After a moment, boots thumped back down the steps outside. It seemed Harnan had been too long in Ebou Dar, as well.

Tuon turned the new cup in her hands as though examining the flowers painted on it, and her lips quirked in a smile so small it almost might have been Mat’s imagination. She was more than pretty when she smiled, but it was one of those smiles that said she knew things he did not. He was going to break out in hives if she kept doing that. “I will not be known as a servant, Toy.”

“My name is Mat, not . . . that other thing,” he said, climbing to his feet and cautiously testing his hip. To his surprise, it ached no worse after smacking the floorboards. Tuon arched an eyebrow and hefted the cup in one hand. “I could hardly tell the showfolk I’d kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons,” he said in exas­peration.

“The High Lady Tuon, peasant!” Selucia said crisply. “She is under the veil!” Veil? Tuon had worn a veil in the palace, but not since.

The tiny woman gestured graciously, a queen granting license. “It is of no import, Selucia. He is ignorant, yet. We must educate him. But you will change this story, Toy. I will not be a servant.”

“It’s too late to change anything,” Mat said, keeping an eye on that cup. Her hands looked frail, with those long fingernails cut short, but he remembered how quick they were. “Nobody’s asking you to be a servant.” Luca and his wife knew the truth, but there had to be some reason to give everyone else why Tuon and Selucia were kept confined to this wagon and guarded. The perfect solu­tion had been a pair of serving girls, about to be dismissed for theft, who had intended to betray their mistress’s flight with her lover. It seemed perfect to Mat, anyway. To the showfolk, it only added to the romance. He had thought Egeanin was going to swal­low her tongue while he was explaining to Luca. Maybe she had known how Tuon would take it. Light, he almost wished the dice would stop. How could a man think with that in his head?

“I couldn’t leave you behind to raise an alarm,” he went on patiently. That was true, as far as it went. “I know Mistress Anan has explained it to you.” He thought about saying he had been babbling from nerves when he said she was his wife - she must think him a complete looby! - but it seemed best not to bring it up again. If she was willing to let the matter lie, all the better. “I know she’s already told you this, but I promise no one’s going to hurt you. We’re not after ransom, just getting away with our heads still attached. As soon as I can figure out how to send you home safe and sound, I will. I promise. I’ll make you as comfortable as I can until then. You’ll just have to put up with the other.”

Tuon’s big dark eyes crackled, heat lightning in a night sky, but she said, “It seems I will see what your promises are worth, Toy.” At her feet, Selucia hissed like a doused cat, her head half-turning as if to object, but Tuon’s left hand wiggled, and the blue-eyed woman blushed and went silent. The Blood used something like Maiden handtalk with their upper servants. Mat wished he understood the signals.

“Answer me a question, Tuon,” he said.

He thought he heard Setalle murmur, “Fool.” Selucia’s jaw knotted, and a dangerous look kindled in Tuon’s eyes, but if she was going to call him “Toy,” he would be burned if he gave her any titles.

“How old are you?” He had heard that she was only a few years younger than he, but looking at her in that sack of a dress, it seemed impossible.

To his surprise, that dangerous spark burst into flame. Not just heat lightning, this time. He should have been fried on the spot. Tuon threw back her shoulders and drew herself to her full height. Such as that was; he doubted she could reach five feet with her heels flat however she stretched. “My fourteenth true-name day will come in five months,” she said in a voice that was far from cold. In fact, it could have heated the wagon better than the stove. He felt a moment of hope, but she was not finished. “No; you keep your birth names here, don’t you. That will be my twentieth nam­ing day. Are you satisfied, Toy? Did you fear you had stolen a . . . child?” She almost hissed the last word.

Mat waved his hands in front of him, frantically dismissing the suggestion. A woman started hissing at him like a kettle, a man with any brains found a way to cool her down fast. She was gripping the cup so tightly that tendons stood out on the back of her hand, and he did not want to try his hip with another fall to the floor. Come to think on it, he was not sure how hard she had tried to hit him the first time. Her hands were very fast. “I just wanted to know, that’s all,” he said quickly. “I was curious, mak­ing conversation. I’m only a little older myself.” Twenty. So much for hoping she was too young to marry for another three or four years. Anything that came between him and his wedding day would have been welcome.

Tuon studied him suspiciously with her head tilted, then tossed the cup onto the bed beside Mistress Anan and seated herself on the stool again, taking as much care about arranging her volu­minous woolen skirts as if they had belonged to a silk gown. But she continued to examine him through her long eyelashes. “Where is your ring?” she demanded.

Unconsciously, he thumbed the finger on his left hand where the long ring usually lay. “I don’t wear it all the time.” Not when everybody in the Tarasin Palace knew he wore it. The thing would have stood out, with his rough layabout’s garb, in any case. It was not even his signet, anyway, just a carver’s try-piece. Strange, how his hand felt noticeably lighter without it. Too light. Strange that she remarked on it, too. But then, why not? Light, those dice had him shying at shadows and jumping at sighs. Or maybe it was just her, a discomforting thought.

He moved to sit on the unoccupied bed, but Selucia swung herself up onto it so quickly any of the acrobats might have been jealous, and stretched out with her head propped on her hand. That pushed her scarf askew for a moment, but she hurriedly straightened it, all the while staring at him proud and cold as a queen. He looked at the other bed, and Mistress Anan set down her embroidery long enough to ostentatiously smooth her skirts, mak­ing it clear she did not intend to share an inch. Burn her, she was behaving as though she were guarding Tuon from him! Women always seemed to club together so a man never had a fair chance. Well, he had managed to keep Egeanin from taking charge so far, and he was not about to be bullied by Setalle Anan or a bosomy lady’s maid or the high and mighty High Lady Daughter of the Nine bloody Moons! Only, he could hardly go shoving one of them out of the way to find a place to sit.

Leaning against a drawered cabinet at the foot of the bed Mis­tress Anan was seated on, he tried to think of what to say. He never had trouble thinking of what to say to women, but his brain seemed deafened by the sound of those dice. All three women gave him disapproving looks - he could all but hear one of them telling him not to slouch! - so he smiled. Most women thought his best smile very winning.

Tuon let out a long breath that did not sound won over in the slightest. “Do you remember Hawkwing’s face, Toy?” Mistress Anan blinked in surprise, and Selucia sat up on the bed frowning. At him. Why would she frown at him? Tuon just continued to look at him, hands folded in her lap, as cool and collected as a Wisdom at Sunday.

Mat’s smile felt frozen. Light, what did she know? How could she know anything? He lay beneath the burning sun, holding his side with both hands, trying to keep the last of life from leaking out and won­dering whether there was any reason to hold on. Aideshar was finished, after this day’s work. A shadow blotted the sun for an instant, and then a tall man in armor crouched beside him, helmet tucked under his arm, dark deep-set eyes framing a hooked nose. “You fought well against me today, Culain, and many days past,” that memorable voice said. “Will you live with me in peace?” With his last breath, he laughed in Artur Hawkwing’s face. He hated to remember dying. A dozen other encounters skit­tered through his mind, too, ancient memories that were his, now. Artur Paendrag had been a difficult man to get along with even before the wars started.

Drawing a deep breath, he took care choosing his words. This was no time to go spouting the Old Tongue. “Of course I don’t!” he lied. A man who could not lie convincingly got short shrift from women. “Light, Hawkwing died a thousand years ago! What kind of question is that?”

Her mouth opened slowly, and for a moment he was sure she meant to answer question with question. “A foolish one, Toy,” she replied finally, instead. “I can’t say why it popped into my head.”

The stiffness in Mat’s shoulders relaxed, a little. Of course. He was ta’veren. People did things and said things around him they never would elsewhere. Nonsense qualified. Still, a thing like that could become uncomfortable when it hit too close to home. “My name is Mat. Mat Cauthon.” He might as well not have spoken.

“I cannot say what I will do after returning to Ebou Dar, Toy. I have not decided. I may have you made da’covah. You are not pretty enough for a cupbearer, but it might please me to have you for one. Still, you have represented certain promises to me, so it pleases me now to promise, as well. So long as you keep your prom­ises, I will neither escape nor betray you in any way, nor will I cause dissension among your followers. I believe that covers everything necessary.” This time, Mistress Anan gaped at her, and Selucia made a sound in her throat, but Tuon appeared not to notice either woman. She just looked at him expectantly, waiting on a response.

He made a sound in his throat, too. Not a whimper, just a sound. Tuon’s face was as smooth as a stern mask of dark glass. Her calm was madness, but this made gibbering look sane! She would have to be insane to think he would believe that offer. Except, he thought she did mean it. That, or she was a better liar than he ever hoped to be. Again he had that queasy sense that she knew more than he did. Ridiculous, of course, but there it was. He swallowed a lump in his throat. A hard lump.

“Well, that does all right for you,” he said, trying to buy time, “but what about Selucia?” Time for what? He could not think with those dice pounding in his skull.

“Selucia follows my wishes, Toy,” Tuon said impatiently. The blue-eyed woman herself straightened and stared at him as though indignant that he had doubted that. For a lady’s maid, she could look fierce when she tried.

Mat did not know what to say or do. Without thinking, he spat on his palm and offered his hand as if sealing a bargain on a horse.

“Your customs are . . . earthy,” Tuon said in a dry voice, but she spat on her own palm and clasped his hand. “ ‘Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made.’ What does that writing on your spear mean, Toy?”

He did whimper this time, and not because she had read the Old Tongue inscription on his ashandarei. A bloody stone would have whimpered. The dice had stopped as soon as he touched her hand. Light, what had happened?

Knuckles rapped on the door, and he was so on edge that he moved without thought, spinning, a knife coming into either hand ready to throw at whatever came in. “Stay behind me,” he snapped.