Knife of Dreams

  "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."

  "That I am not," he told her firmly. "Nobles. . . ." He trailed off, clearing his throat. He could hardly tell her nobles were fools with their noses so high in the air they could not see where they were stepping. She was who and what she was, after all.

  Expressionless, Tuon studied him while pushing her empty mug to one side. Still studying, she flickered the fingers of her left hand over her shoulder, and Selucia clapped her own hands together loudly. Several of the other patrons looked at them in surprise. "You called yourself a gambler," Tuon said, "and Master Merrilin named you the luckiest man in the world."

  Jera came running, and Selucia handed her the mug. "Another, quickly," she commanded, though not in an unkindly way. Still, she had a regal manner to her. Jera dropped a hasty curtsy and scurried off again as though she had been shouted at.

  "I have luck sometimes," Mat said cautiously.

  "Let's see whether you have any today, Toy." Tuon looked toward the table where the dice were rattling on the tabletop.

  He could see no harm in it. It wa
s a certainty he would win more than he lost, yet he thought it unlikely one of the merchants would pull a knife however much his luck was in. He had not noticed anyone carrying one of those long belt knives that everybody wore farther south. Standing, he offered Tuon his arm, and she rested her hand lightly on his wrist. Selucia left her wine on the table and stayed close to her mistress.

  Two of the Altaran men, one lean and bald except for a dark fringe, the other round-faced above three chins, scowled when he asked whether a stranger might join the game, and the third, a graying, stocky fellow with a pendulous lower lip, went stiff as a fence post. The Taraboner woman was not so unfriendly.

  "Of course, of course. Why not?" she said, her speech slightly slurred. Her face was flushed, and the smile she directed at him had a slackness about it. Apparently she was one of those with no head for wine. It seemed the locals wanted to keep her happy because the scowls vanished, though the graying man remained wooden-faced. Mat fetched chairs from a nearby table for himself and Tuon. Selucia chose to remain standing behind Tuon, which was just as well. Six people crowded the table.

  Jera arrived to curtsy and proffer a refilled mug to Tuon with both hands and a murmured "My Lady," and another serving woman, graying and nearly as stout as Mistress Heilin, replaced the wine pitcher on the gambler's table. Smiling, the bald man filled the Taraboner's cup to the brim. They wanted her happy and drunk. She drained half the cup and with a laugh wiped her lips delicately with a lace-edged handkerchief. Getting it back up her sleeve required two tries. She would come away with no good bargains this day.

  Mat watched a little play and soon recognized the game. It used four dice rather than two, but without a doubt it was a version of Phi, Match, a game that had been popular for a thousand years before Artur Hawkwing began his rise. Small piles of silver admixed with a few gold coins lay in front of each of the players, and it was a silver mark that he laid in the middle of the table to buy the dice while the stout man was gathering his winnings from the last toss. He expected no trouble from merchants, but trouble was less likely if they lost silver rather than gold.

  The lean man matched the wager, and Mat rattled the crimson dice in the pewter cup, then spun them out onto the table. They came to rest showing four fives. "Is that a winning toss?" Tuon asked.

  "Not unless I match it," Mat replied, scooping the dice back into the cup, "without tossing a fourteen or the Dark One's eyes first." The dice clattered in the cup, clattered across the table. Four fives. His luck was in, for sure. He slid one coin over in front of himself and left the other.

  Abruptly, the graying fellow scraped back his chair and stood up. "I've had enough," he muttered, and began fumbling the coins in front of him into his coat pockets. The other two Altarans stared at him incredulously. "You're leaving, Vane?" the lean man said. "Now?"

  "I said I've had enough, Camrin." the graying man growled and went stumping out into the street pursued by Camrin's scowl at his back.

  The Taraboner woman leaned over unsteadily, her beaded braids clicking on the tabletop, to pat the fat man's wrist. "Just means I'll buy my lacquerware from you, Master Kostelle," she said fuzzily. "You and Master Camrin."

  Kostelle's triple chins wobbled as he chuckled. "So it does, Mistress Alstaing. So it does. Doesn't it, Camrin?"

  "I suppose," the bald man replied grumpily. "I suppose." He shoved a mark out to match Mat's.

  Once again the dice spun across the table. This time, they came up totaling fourteen. "Oh," Tuon said, sounding disappointed. "You lost."

  "I won, Precious. That's a winning toss if it's your first." He left his original bet in the middle of the table. "Another?" he said with a grin.

  His luck was in, all right, as strong as it had ever been. The bright red dice rolled across the table, bounced across the table, ricocheted off the wagered coins sometimes, and toss after toss they came to rest showing fourteen white pips. He made fourteen every way it could be made. Even at one coin to a wager, the silver in front of him grew to a tidy sum. Half the people in the common room came to stand around the table and watch. He grinned at Tuon, who gave him a slight nod. He had missed this, dice in a common room or tavern, coin on the table, wondering how long his luck would hold. And a pretty woman at his side while he gambled. He wanted to laugh with pleasure.

  As he was shaking the dice in the cup again, the Taraboner merchant glanced at him, and for an instant, she did not look drunk at all. Suddenly, he no longer felt like laughing. Her face slackened immediately, and her eyes became a tad unfocused once more, but for that instant they had been awls. She had a much better head for wine than he had supposed. It seemed Camrin and Kostelle would not get away with fobbing off shoddy work at top prices or whatever their scheme had been. What concerned him, though, was that the woman was suspicious of him. Come to think, she herself had not risked a coin against him. The two Altarans were frowning at him, but just the way men who were losing frowned over their bad luck. She thought he had found some way to cheat. Never mind that he was using their dice, or more likely the inn's dice; an accusation of cheating could get a man a drubbing even in a merchants' inn. Men seldom waited on proof of that charge.

  "One last toss," he said, "and I think I'll call it done. Mistress Heilin?" The innkeeper was among the onlookers. He handed her a small handful of his new-won silver coins. "To celebrate my good fortune, serve everybody what they want to drink until those run out." That brought appreciative murmurs, and someone behind him clapped him on the back. A man drinking your wine was less likely to believe you had bought it with cheated coin. Or at least they might hesitate long enough to give him a chance to get Tuon out.

  "He can't keep this run going forever," Camrin muttered, scrubbing a hand through the hair he no longer possessed. "What say you, Kostelle? Halves?" Fingering a gold crown free of the coins piled in front of him, he slid it over beside Mat's silver mark. "If there's only to be one more toss, let's make a real wager on it. Bad luck has to follow this much good." Kostelle hesitated, rubbing his chins in thought, then nodded and added a gold crown of his own.

  Mat sighed. He could refuse the bet, but walking away now might well trigger Mistress Alstaing's charge. So could winning this toss. Reluctantly he pushed out silver marks to match their gold. That left only two in front of him. He gave the cup an extra heavy shake before spilling the dice onto the table. He did not expect that to alter anything. He was just venting his feelings.

  The red dice tumbled across the tabletop, hit the piled coins and bounced back, spinning before they fell to a stop. Each showing a single pip. The Dark One's Eyes.

  Laughing just as if it were not just their own coin won back, Camrin and Kostelle began dividing their winnings. The watchers started drifting away, calling congratulations to the two merchants, murmuring words of commiseration to Mat, some lifting the cup he was paying for in his direction. Mistress Alstaing took a long pull at her winecup, studying him over the rim, to all outward appearance as drunk as a goose. He doubted she thought he had been cheating any longer, not when he was walking away with only one mark more than he sat down with. Sometimes bad luck could turn out to be good.

  "So your luck is not endless, Toy," Tuon said as he escorted her back to their table. "Or is it that you are lucky only in small things?'

  "Nobody has endless luck, Precious. Myself, I think that last toss was one of the luckiest I've ever made." He explained about the Taraboner woman's suspicions, and why he had bought wine for the whole common room.

  At the table, he held her chair for her, but she remained standing, looking at him. "You may do very well in Seandar," she said finally, thrusting her nearly empty mug at him. "Guard this until I return."

  He straightened in alarm. "Where are you going?" He trusted her not to run away, but not to stay out of trouble without him there to pull her out of it.

  She put on a long-suffering face. Even that was beautiful. "If you must know, I am going to the necessary, Toy."

  "Oh. The innkeeper can
tell you where it is. Or one of the serving women."

  "Thank you, Toy," she said sweetly. "I'd never have thought to ask." She waggled her fingers at Selucia, and the two of them walked toward the back of the common room having one of their silent talks and giggling.

  Sitting down, he scowled into his winecup. Women seemed to enjoy finding ways to make you feel a fool. And he was half-married to this one.

  "Where are the women?" Thom asked, dropping down into the chair beside Mat and setting a nearly full winecup on the table. He grunted when Mat explained, and went on in a low voice, leaning his elbows on the table to put his head close. "We have trouble behind and ahead. Far enough ahead that it may not bother us here, but best we leave as soon as they return."

  Mat sat up straight. "What kind of trouble?"

  "Some of those merchant trains that passed us the last few days brought news of a murder in Jurador about the time we left. Maybe a day or two later; it's hard to be sure. A man was found in his own bed with his throat ripped, only there wasn't enough blood." He had no need to say more.

  Mat took a long pull at his wine. The bloody gholam was still following him. How had it found out he was with Luca's show? But if it was still a day or two behind at the pace the show was making, likely it would not catch up to him soon. He fingered the silver foxhead through his coat. At least he had a way to fight it if it did appear. The thing carried a scar he had given it. "And the trouble ahead?"

  "There's a Seanchan army on the border of Murandy. How they assembled it without my learning about it before this. . . ." He puffed out his mustaches, offended by his failure. "Well, no matter. Everybody who passes through they make drink a cup of some herbal tea."

  "Tea?" Mat said in disbelief. "Where's the trouble in tea?"