The stout woman’s face fluttered from uneasiness to shock to beaming pleasure. By the time the Amyrlin swept out of the kitchen, Laras was all smiles. Her frown returned, though, as she looked from the Amyrlin’s departing back to her workers. The kitchen seemed to leap into motion. Laras’ grim stare settled on Nynaeve.
Turning the spit again, Nynaeve tried smiling at the big woman.
Laras’ frown deepened, and she began tapping her spoon on her thigh, apparently forgetting that for once it had been used for its intended purpose. It left smears of soup on the white of her apron.
I will smile at her if if kills me, Nynaeve thought, though she had to grit her teeth to do it.
Egwene and Elayne appeared, twisting their faces and scrubbing their mouths with their sleeves. At a stare from Laras, they dashed to the spit and resumed their labors.
“Soap,” Elayne muttered thickly, “tastes horrid!”
Egwene trembled as she spooned juice from the dripping pan over the roasts. “Nynaeve, if you tell me the Amyrlin told us to stay here, I will scream. I might run away for real.”
“We leave after the washing up is done,” she told them, “just as quickly as we can fetch our belongings from our rooms.” She wished she could share the eagerness that flashed in their eyes. Light send we aren’t walking into a trap we can’t get out of. Light send it so.
CHAPTER
30
The First Toss
After Nynaeve and the others left him, Mat spent most of the day in his room, except for one brief excursion. He was planning. And eating. He ate nearly everything the serving women brought him, and asked for more. They were more than happy to oblige. It was bread and cheese and fruit he asked for, and he piled winter-wrinkled apples and pears, wedges of cheese and loaves of bread inside the wardrobe, leaving empty trays for them to take away.
At midday he had to endure a visit from an Aes Sedai—Anaiya, he seemed to remember her name was. She put her hands on his head and sent cold chills through him. It was the One Power, he decided, not simply being touched by an Aes Sedai. She was a plain woman despite her smooth cheeks and Aes Sedai serenity.
“You seem much better,” she told him, smiling. Her smile made him think of his mother. “Even hungrier than I expected, so I hear, but better. I am informed you are trying to eat the larders bare. Believe me when I say we will see you have all the food you need. You do not have to worry that we’ll let you miss a meal before you are fully well again.”
He gave the grin he used on his mother when he especially wanted her to believe him. “I know you won’t. And I do feel better. I thought I might see some of the city this afternoon. If you have no objections, of course. Maybe visit an inn tonight. There’s nothing like a night of common-room talk to pick one’s spirits up.”
He thought her lips twitched on the edge of a bigger smile. “No one will try to stop you, Mat. But do not try to leave the city. It will only upset the guards, and bring you nothing but a trip back here under escort.”
“I would not do that, Aes Sedai. The Amyrlin Seat said I’d starve to death in a few days if I left.”
She nodded as if she did not believe a word he said. “Of course.” As she turned from him, her eyes fell on the quarterstaff he had brought from the practice yard, propped in the corner of the room. “You do not need to protect yourself from us, Mat. You are as safe here as you could be anywhere. Almost certainly safer.”
“Oh, I know that, Aes Sedai. I do.” After she left he frowned at the door, wondering if he had managed to convince her of anything.
It was more evening than afternoon when he left the room for what he hoped was the final time. The sky was purpling, and the setting sun painted clouds to the west in shades of red. Once he had his cloak around him, and the big leather scrip he had found on his one earlier foray dangling from his shoulder and bulging with the bread and cheese and fruit he had squirreled away, one look in the mirror told him there was no hiding what he intended. He tied the rest of his clothes up in a roll with the blanket from the bed and slung that across his shoulders, too. The quarterstaff did for a walking staff. He left nothing behind. His coat pockets held all his smaller belongings, and his belt pouch held the most important. The Amyrlin Seat’s paper. Elayne’s letter. And his dice cups.
He saw Aes Sedai as he made his way out of the Tower, and some of them noticed him, though most merely flickered an eyebrow, and none spoke to him. Anaiya was one. She gave him an amused smile and a rueful shake of her head. He returned a shrug and the guiltiest grin he could manage, and she went silently on, still shaking her head. The guards at the Tower gates simply looked at him.
It was not until he was across the big square and into the streets of the city that relief finally surged up in him. And triumph. If you can’t hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool. Then they stand around waiting to see you fall on your face. Those Aes Sedai will be waiting for the guards to bring me back. When I do not return by morning, then they’ll start a search. Not too frantic at first, because they’ll think I have gone to ground somewhere in the city. By the time they realize I haven’t, this rabbit will be a long way downriver from the hounds.
With as light a heart as he could remember having in years, or so it seemed, he began to hum “We’re Over the Border Again,” heading toward the harbor where vessels would be sailing down to Tear and all the villages along the Erinin between. He would not be going so far as that, of course. Aringill, where he would take to land again for the rest of the trip to Caemlyn, was only halfway downriver.
I’ll deliver your bloody letter. The nerve of her, thinking I’d say I would, then not. I will deliver the bloody thing if it kills me.
Twilight was beginning to cover Tar Valon, but there was still enough light to grace the fantastical buildings, and the oddly shaped towers connected by high bridges spanning open air over hundred-pace drops. People yet filled the streets, in so many different kinds of clothing that he thought every nation must be represented. Along the major avenues, pairs of lamplighters used their ladders to light lanterns atop tall poles. But in the part of Tar Valon he sought, the only light was what spilled from windows.
Ogier had built the great buildings and towers of Tar Valon, but other, newer parts had grown under the hands of men. Newer meaning two thousand years in some cases. Down near Southharbor, men’s hands had tried to match, if not duplicate, the fanciful Ogier work. Inns where ships’ crews caroused bore enough stonework for palaces. Statues in niches and cupolas on rooftops, ornately worked cornices and intricately carved friezes, all decorated chandlers’ shops and merchant houses. Bridges arched across the streets here, too, but the streets were cobblestone, not great paving blocks, and many of the bridges were wood instead of stone, sometimes as low as the second stories of the buildings they joined, and never higher than four.
The dark streets hummed with as much life as any in Tar Valon. Traders off their vessels and those who bought what the vessels carried, people who traveled the River Erinin and people who worked it, all filled the taverns and the common rooms of the inns, in company with those who sought the money such folk carried, by fair means or murky. Raucous music filled the streets from bittern and flute, harp and hammered dulcimer. The first inn Mat entered had three dice games in progress, men crouched in circles near the common-room walls and shouting the wins and losses.
He only meant to gamble an hour or so before finding a ship, just long enough to add a few coins to his purse, but he won. He had always won more than he lost, as far as he could remember, and there had been times with Hurin, and in Shienar, when six or eight tosses in a row won for him. Tonight, every toss won. Every toss.
From the looks some of the men gave him, he was glad he had left his own dice in his pouch. Those looks made him decide to move on. With surprise he realized that he had nearly thirty silver marks in his purse now, but he had not won so much from any one man that they would not all be glad to see him go.
Except for one dark sailor with tight curls—one of the Sea Folk, someone had said, though Mat wondered what one of the Atha’an Miere was doing so far from the sea—who followed him down the darkened street, arguing for a chance to make good his losses. He wanted to reach the docks—thirty silver marks was more than enough—but the sailor argued on, and he had only used half his hour, so he gave in, and with the man entered the next tavern they passed.
He won again, and it was as if a fever gripped him. He won every throw. From tavern to inn to tavern he went, never staying long enough to anger anyone with the amount of his winnings. And he still won every toss. He exchanged silver for gold with a money changer. He played at crowns, and fives, and maiden’s ruin. He played games with five dice, and with four, and three, and even only two. He played games he did not know before he squatted in the circle, or took a place at the table. And he won. Somewhere during the night, the dark sailor—Raab, he had said his name was—staggered away, exhausted but with a full purse; he had decided to put his wagers on Mat. Mat visited another money changer—or perhaps two; the fever seemed to cloud his brain as badly as his memories of the past were clouded—and made his way to another game. Winning.
And so he found himself, he did not know how many hours later, in a tavern filled with tabac smoke—The Tremalking Splice, he thought it was called—staring down at five dice, each showing a deeply carved crown. Most of the patrons here seemed interested only in drinking as much as they could, but the rattle of dice and shouts of players from another game in the far corner were almost submerged by a woman singing to a quick tune from a hammered dulcimer.
“I’ll dance with a girl with eyes of brown,
or a girl with eyes of green,
I’ll dance with a girl with any color eyes,
but yours are the prettiest I’ve seen.
I’ll kiss a girl with hair of black,
or a girl with hair of gold,
I’ll kiss a girl with any color hair,
but it’s you I want to hold.”
The singer had named the song as “What He Said to Me.” Mat remembered the tune as “Will You Dance With Me,” with different words, but at that moment all he could think of were those dice.
“The king again,” one of the men squatting with Mat muttered. It was the fifth time in a row Mat had thrown the king.
He had won the bet of a gold mark, not even caring by this time that his Andoran mark outweighed the other man’s Illianer coin, but he scooped the dice into the leather cup, rattled it hard, and spun them across the floor again. Five crowns. Light, it can’t be. Nobody ever threw the king six times running. Nobody.
“The Dark One’s own luck,” another man growled. He was a bulky fellow, his dark hair tied at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, with heavy shoulders, scars on his face, and a nose that had been broken more than once.
Mat was scarcely aware of moving before he had the bulky man by the collar, hauling him to his feet, slamming him back against the wall. “Don’t you say that!” he snarled. “Don’t you ever say that!” The man blinked down at him in astonishment; he was a full head taller than Mat.
“Just a saying,” somebody behind him was muttering. “Light, it’s just a saying.”
Mat released his grip on the scar-faced man’s coat and backed away. “I. . . . I . . . I don’t like anybody saying things like that about me. I’m no Darkfriend!” Burn me, not the Dark One’s luck. Not that! Oh, Light, did that bloody dagger really do something to me?
“Nobody said you was,” the broken-nosed man muttered. He seemed to be getting over his surprise, and trying to decide whether to be angry.
Gathering his belongings from where he had piled them behind him, Mat walked out of the tavern, leaving the coins where they lay. It was not that he was afraid of the big man. He had forgotten the man, and the coins, too. All he wanted was to be outside, in fresh air, where he could think.
In the street, he leaned against the wall of the tavern not far from the door, breathing the coolness in. The dark streets of Southharbor were all but empty, now. Music and laughter still floated from the inns and taverns, but few people made their way through the night. Holding the quarterstaff upright in front of him with both hands, he lowered his head to his fists and tried to think at the puzzle from every side.
He knew he was lucky. He could remember always being lucky. But somehow, his memories from Emond’s Field did not show him as lucky as he had been since leaving. Certainly he had gotten away with a great deal, but he could remember also being caught in pranks he had been sure would succeed. His mother had always seemed to know what he was up to, and Nynaeve able to see through whatever defenses he put up. But it was not just since leaving the Two Rivers that he had become lucky. The luck had come once he took the dagger from Shadar Logoth. He remembered playing at dice back home with a sharp-eyed, skinny man who worked for a merchant come down from Baerlon to buy tabac. He remembered the strapping his father had given him, too, on learning Mat owed the man a silver mark and four pence.
“But I’m free of the bloody dagger,” he mumbled. “Those bloody Aes Sedai said I was.” He wondered how much he had won tonight.
When he dug into his coat pockets, he found them filled with loose coins, crowns and marks, both silver and gold that glittered and glinted in the light from nearby windows. He had two purses now, it seemed, and both fat. He undid the strings, and found more gold. And still more stuffed into his belt pouch between and around and on top of his dice cups, crumpling Elayne’s letter and the Amyrlin’s paper. He had a memory of tossing silver pence to serving girls because they had pretty smiles or pretty eyes or pretty ankles, and because silver pence were not worth keeping.
Not worth keeping? Maybe they weren’t. Light, I’m rich! I am bloody rich! Maybe it was something the Aes Sedai did. Something they did Healing me. By accident, maybe. That could be it. Better that the other. Those bloody Aes Sedai must have done it to me.
A big man moved out from the tavern, the door already swinging shut to cut off the light that might have shown his face.
Mat pressed his back close against the wall, stuffed the purses back into his coat, and firmed his grip on the quarterstaff. Wherever his luck tonight had come from, he did not mean to lose all that gold to a footpad.
The man turned toward him, peered, then gave a start. “C-cool night,” he said drunkenly. He staggered closer, and Mat saw that most of his size was fat. “I have to. . . . I have to. . . .” Stumbling, the fat man moved on up the street, talking to himself disjointedly.
“Fool!” Mat muttered, but he was not sure whether he meant it for the fat man or for himself. “Time to find a ship to take me away from here.” He squinted at the black sky, trying to estimate how long till dawn. Two, maybe three hours, he thought. “Past time.” His stomach growled at him; he dimly recalled eating in some of the inns, but he did not remember what. The fever of the dice had had him by the throat. A hand pushed into the scrip found only crumbs. “Way past time. Or one of them will come pick me up with her fingers and stick me in her pouch.” He pushed away from the wall and started for the docks, where the ships would be.
At first he thought the faint sounds behind him were echoes of his boots on the cobblestones. Then he realized someone was following him. And trying to be stealthy. Well, these are footpads, for sure.
Hefting the quarterstaff, he briefly considered turning to confront them. But it was dark, and the footing on cobblestones uncertain, and he had no idea how many there were. Just because you did well against Gawyn and Galad doesn’t make you a bloody hero out of a story.
He turned down a narrower, twisting side street, trying to walk on tiptoe and move quickly at the same time. Every window was dark here, and most shuttered. He was almost to the end when he saw movement ahead, two men peering into the side street from where it let out onto another. And he heard slow footsteps behind him, soft scrapes of boot leather on stone.
In an instant he ducked into t
he shadowy corner where one building stuck out further than the next. It seemed the best he could do for the moment. Gripping the quarterstaff nervously, he waited.
A man appeared from back the way he had come, crouching as he eased himself ahead one slow step at a time, and then another man. Each carried a knife in his hand and moved as if stalking.
Mat tensed. If they came just a few steps closer before they noticed him hiding in the deeper shadows of the corner, he could take them by surprise. He wished his stomach would stop fluttering. Those knives were a great deal shorter than the practice swords, but they were steel, not wood.
One of the men squinted toward the far end of the narrow street and suddenly straightened, shouting, “Didn’t he come your way, then?”
“I have seen nothing but the shadows,” came the answer in a heavy accent. “I wish to be out of this. There are the strange things moving this night.”
Not four paces from Mat, the two men exchanged looks, sheathed their knives, and trotted back the way they had come.
He let out a long, slow breath. Luck. Burn me if it’s not good for more than dice.
He could no longer see the men at the mouth of the street, but he knew they were still out on the next street somewhere. And more behind him the other way.
One of the buildings he was crouched against stood only a single story high here, and the roof looked flat enough. And a white stone frieze carved in huge grape leaves ran up the joining of the two buildings.
Easing his quarterstaff up till one end rested on the edge of the roof, he gave it a hard shove. It landed with a clatter on the roof tiles. Not waiting to see if anyone had heard, he scrambled up the frieze, the big leaves giving easy toeholds even for a man in boots. In seconds he had the staff back in hand and was trotting across the roof, trusting to luck for his footing.