A Crown of Swords (The Wheel of Time 7)

“Mat, doesn’t Haesel have the most beautiful eyes?” Olver said, beaming at the big-eyed young woman Mat had met the last time he came to the palace. She beamed back and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Oh, but Alis and Loya are so sweet, I could never choose.” A plump woman just short of her middle years looked up from unpacking Olver’s saddlebags to give him a broad grin, and a slender girl with bee-stung lips patted the towel she had just put on his washstand, then flung herself onto the bed to tickle Olver’s ribs till he fell over laughing helplessly.

Mat snorted. Harnan and that lot were bad enough, but now these women were encouraging the boy! How was he ever going to learn to behave if women did that? Olver ought to be playing in the streets like any other ten-year-old. He had had no serving women falling over him in his rooms. Tylin had seen to that, he was sure.

He had time to check on Olver, and to look in on Harnan and the rest of the Redarms, sharing a long room lined with beds not far from the stables, and to saunter down to the kitchens for some bread and beef — he had not been able to face that porridge back at the inn. Still Nynaeve and Elayne had not returned. He finally looked over the books in his sitting room and began reading The Travels of Jain Farstrider, though he barely made out a word for worrying. Thom and Juilin came in just as the women finally bustled in exclaiming over finding him there, as if they thought he would not keep his word.

He closed the book gently, set it gently on the table beside his chair. “Where have you been?”

“Why, we went for a walk,” Elayne said brightly, blue eyes wider than he remembered seeing before. Thom frowned and produced a knife from his sleeve, rolling it back and forth through his fingers. He very markedly did not so much as glance at Elayne.

“We had tea with some women your innkeeper knows,” Nynaeve said. “I won’t bore you with talk about needlework.” Juilin started to shake his head, then stopped before she noticed.

“Please, don’t bore me,” Mat said dryly. He supposed she knew one end of a needle from the other, but he suspected she would as soon stick one through her tongue as talk about needlework. Neither woman cracked her teeth about civility, confirming his worst suspicions. “I’ve told off two fellows to walk out with each of you this afternoon, and there will be two more tomorrow and every day. If you’re not inside the palace or under my nose, you’ll have bodyguards. They know their turns already. They’ll stay with you at all times — all times — and you will let me know where you’re headed. No more making me worry till my hair falls out.”

He expected indignation and argument. He expected weaseling over what they had or had not promised. He expected that demanding this whole loaf might get him a slice at the end; a butt slice, if his luck was in. Nynaeve looked at Elayne; Elayne looked at Nynaeve.

“Why, bodyguards are a wonderful idea, Mat,” Elayne exclaimed, her cheek dimpling in a smile. “I suppose you were right about that. It’s very smart of you to have your men already to a schedule.”

“It is a wonderful notion,” Nynaeve said, nodding enthusiastically, “Very smart of you, Mat.”

Thom dropped the knife with a muffled curse and sat sucking on a nicked finger, staring at the women.

Mat sighed. Trouble; he had known it. And that was before they told him to forget the Rahad for the time being.

Which was how he found himself on a bench in front of a cheap tavern not far from the riverfront called The Rose of the Elbar, drinking from one of the dented tin cups chained to the bench. At least they washed the cups out for each new patron. The stink from a dyer’s shop across the way only raised the style of the Rose. Not that it was a shabby neighborhood really, though the street was too narrow for carriages. A fair number of brightly lacquered sedan chairs swayed through the crowd. If far more passersby wore wool and perhaps a guild vest than silk, the wool was as often well cut

as frayed. The houses and shops were the usual array of white plaster, and if most were small and even run-down, the tall house of a wealthy merchant stood on a corner to his right and on the left a diminutive palace — smaller than the merchant’s house, at least — with a single green-banded dome and no spire. A pair of taverns and an inn in plain sight looked cool and inviting. Unfortunately, the Rose was the only one where a man could sit outside, the only one in just the right spot. Unfortunately.

“I doubt I’ve ever seen such splendid flies,” Nalesean grumbled, waving away several choice specimens from his cup. “What is it we’re doing again?”

“You are swilling that foul excuse for wine and sweating like a goat,” Mat muttered, tugging his hat to shade his eyes better. “I’m being ta’veren.” He glared at the dilapidated house, between the dyer’s and a noisy weaver’s establishment, that he had been told to watch. Not asked — told — that was what it came to, however they phrased it, squirming around their pledges. Oh, they made it sound like asking, made it sound like pleading at the end, which he would believe when dogs danced, but he knew when he had been bullied. “Just be ta’veren, Mat,” he mimicked. “I know you’ll just know what to do. Bah!” Maybe Elayne bloody Daughter-Heir and her bloody dimple knew, or Nynaeve with her bloody hands twitching to yank her bloody braid, but he would be burned if he did. “If the pig-kissing Bowl is in the Rahad, how am I supposed to find it on this flaming side of the river?”

“I do not remember them saying,” Juilin said wryly, and took a long swallow of some drink made from a yellow fruit grown in the countryside. “You’ve asked that fifty times, at least.” He claimed the pale drink was refreshing in the heat, but Mat had taken a bite of one of those lemons, and he was not about to swallow anything made from them. With his head still throbbing faintly, he himself drank tea. It tasted as if the tavern-keeper, a scrawny fellow with beady suspicious eyes, had been dumping new leaves and water in yesterday’s leavings since the founding of the city. The taste suited his mood.

“What interests me,” Thom murmured over steepled fingers, “is why they asked so many questions about your innkeeper.” He did not seem very upset at the women still keeping secrets; sometimes, he was decidedly odd. “What do Setalle Anan and these women have to do with the Bowl?”

Women did pass in and out of the dilapidated house. A steady stream of women, just about, some well dressed if none in silks, and not one man. Three or four wore the red belt of a Wise Woman. Mat had considered following some of them when they left, but it felt too planned. He did not know how ta’veren worked — he had never really seen any sign of it in himself — but his luck was always best when everything was random. Like with dice. Most of those little iron tavern puzzles eluded him, however lucky he felt.

He ignored Thom’s question; Thom had asked it at least as often as Mat had asked how he was to find the Bowl here. Nynaeve had told him to his face she had not promised to tell him every last thing she knew; she said she would tell him whatever he needed to know; she said . . . Watching her nearly choke from not calling him names was not nearly enough vengeance.

“I suppose I should take a walk down the alley,” Nalesean sighed. “In case one of those women decides to climb over the garden wall.” The narrow gap between the house and the dyer lay in full view for its whole length, but another alleyway ran along behind the shops and houses. “Mat, tell me again why we’re doing this instead of playing cards.”

“I’ll do it,” Mat said. Maybe he would find out how ta’veren worked behind the garden wall. He went, and found out nothing.

By the time twilight began creeping over the street and Harnan came with a bald-headed, narrow-eyed Andoran named Wat, the only possible effect of being ta’veren he had seen was that the tavern-keeper brewed a fresh pot of tea. It tasted almost as bad as the old.

Back in his rooms in the palace, he found a note, an invitation of sorts, elegantly lettered on thick white paper that smelled like a garden of flowers.

My little rabbit, I expect to have you for dinner tonight in my apartments.

No signature, but he hardly needed one. Light! The woman had no shame at all! There was a red-painted iron lock on the door to the corridor; he found the key and locked it. Then, for good measure, he jammed a chair under the latch on the door to Nerim’s room. He could do well enough without dinner. Just as he was about to climb into bed, the lock rattled; out in the hall, a woman laughed at finding the door secured.

He should have been able to sleep soundly then, but for some reason he lay there listening to his belly grumble. Why was she doing this? Well, he knew why, but why him? Surely she had not decided to toss all decency over the barn just to bed a ta’veren. He was safe now, anyway. Tylin would not batter down the door, after all. Would she? Not even most birds could get in through the wrought-iron arabesques screening the balconies. Besides, she would need a long ladder to reach that high. And men to carry it. Unless she climbed down from the roof on a rope. Or she could . . . The night passed, his stomach rumbled, the sun rose, and he never closed his eyes or had a decent thought. Except that he did make a decision. He thought of a use for the sulking room. He certainly never sulked.

At first light, he sneaked out of his rooms and found another of the palace servants he remembered, a balding fellow named Madic, with a smug, self-satisfied air and a shy twist to his mouth that said he was not satisfied at all. A man who could be bought. Though the startled look that flashed across his square face, and the smirk he barely bothered to hide, said he knew exactly why Mat was slipping gold into his hand. Blood and ashes! How many people knew what Tylin was up to?

Nynaeve and Elayne did not seem to, thank the Light. Though that did mean they chided him about missing dinner with the Queen, which they had learned about when Tylin inquired whether he was ill. And worse . . .

“Please,” Elayne said, smiling almost as if the word did not pain her, “you must put your best foot forward with the Queen. Don’t be nervous. You’ll enjoy an evening with her.”