Mat unsheathed his belt knife, and hesitated. Luck. It only explodes sometimes, she said. Luck. As carefully as he could, he slit along the length of the tube. It was a tube, and of paper, as he had thought—he had found bits of paper on the ground after fireworks were set off, back home—layers of paper, but all that filled the inside was something that looked like dirt, or maybe tiny gray-black pebbles and dust. He stirred them on his palm with one finger. How in the Light could pebbles explode?
“The Light burn me!” Thom roared. He thrust his harp into its case as if to protect it from what was in Mat’s hand. “Are you trying to kill us, boy? Haven’t you ever heard those things explode ten times as hard for air as for fire? Fireworks are the next thing to Aes Sedai work, boy.”
“Maybe,” Mat said, “but Aludra did not look like any Aes Sedai to me. I used to think that about Master al’Vere’s clock—that it had to be Aes Sedai work—but once I got the back of the cabinet open, I saw it was full of little pieces of metal.” He shifted uncomfortably at the memory. Mistress al’Vere had been the first to reach him that time, with the Wisdom and his father and the Mayor all right behind her, and none believing he just meant to look. I could have put them all back together. “I think Perrin could make one, if he saw those little wheels and springs and I don’t know what all.”
“You would be surprised, boy,” Thom said dryly. “Even a bad clockmaker is a fairly rich man, and they earn it. But a clock does not explode in your face!”
“Neither did this. Well, it is useless, now.” He tossed the handful of paper and little pebbles into the fire to a screech from Thom; the pebbles sparked and made tiny flashes, and there was a smell of acrid smoke.
“You are trying to kill us.” Thom’s voice was unsteady, and it rose in intensity and pitch as he spoke. “If I decide I want to die, I will go to the Royal Palace when we reach Caemlyn, and I’ll pinch Morgase!” His long mustaches flailed. “Do not do that again!”
“It did not explode,” Mat said, frowning at the fire. He fished into the oiled-cloth roll on the other side of the log and pulled out a firework of the next larger size. “I wonder why there was no bang.”
“I do not care why there was no bang! Do not do it again!”
Mat glanced at him and laughed. “Stop shaking, Thom. There’s no need to be afraid. I know what is inside them, now. At least, I know what it looks like, but. . . . Don’t say it. I will not be cutting any more open, Thom. It is more fun to set them off, anyway.”
“I am not afraid, you mud-footed swineherd,” Thom said with elaborate dignity. “I am shaking with rage because I’m traveling with a goat-brained lout who might kill the pair of us because he cannot think past his own—”
“Ho, the fire!”
Mat exchanged glances with Thom as horses’ hooves approached. It was late for anyone honest to be traveling. But the Queen’s Guards kept the roads safe this close to Caemlyn, and the four who rode into the firelight certainly did not look like robbers. One was a woman. The men all wore long cloaks and seemed to be her retainers, while she was pretty and blue-eyed, in gold necklace and a gray silk dress and a velvet cloak with a wide hood. The men dismounted. One held her reins and another her stirrup, and she smiled at Mat, doffing her gloves as she came near the fire.
“I fear we are caught out late, young master,” she said, “and I would trouble you for directions to an inn, if you know one.”
He grinned and started to rise. He had made it as far as a crouch when he heard one of the men mutter something, and another produced a crossbow from under his cloak, already drawn, with a clip holding the bolt.
“Kill him, fool!” the woman shouted, and Mat tossed the firework into the flames and threw himself toward his quarterstaff. There was a loud bang and a flash of light—“Aes Sedai!” a man cried. “Fireworks, fool!” the woman shouted—and he rolled to his feet with the staff in his hand to see the crossbow bolt sticking out of the fallen log almost where he had been sitting, and the crossbowman falling with the hilt of one of Thom’s knives adorning his chest.
It was all he had time to see, for the other two men darted past the fire at him, drawing swords. One of them suddenly stumbled to his knees, dropping his sword to claw at the knife in his back as he fell facedown. The last man did not see his companion fall; he obviously expected to be one of a pair, dividing their opponent’s attention, as he thrust his blade at Mat’s middle. Feeling almost contemptuous, Mat cracked the fellow’s wrist with one end of his staff, sending the sword flying, and cracked his forehead with the other. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed.
From the corner of his eye, Mat saw the woman walking toward him, and he stuck a finger at her like a knife. “Fine clothes you wear for a thief, woman! You sit down till I decide what to do with you, or I’ll—”
She looked as surprised as Mat at the knife that suddenly bloomed in her throat, a red flower of spreading blood. He took a half step as if to catch her as she fell, knowing it was no good. Her long cloak settled over her, covering everything but her face, and the hilt of Thom’s knife.
“Burn you,” Mat muttered. “Burn you, Thom Merrilin! A woman! Light, we could have tied her up, given her to the Queen’s Guards tomorrow in Caemlyn. Light, I might even have let her go. She’d rob nobody without these three, and the only one that lives will be days before he can see straight and months before he can hold a sword. Burn you, Thom, there was no need to kill her!”
The gleeman limped to where the woman lay, and kicked back her cloak. The dagger had half fallen from her hand, its blade as wide as Mat’s thumb and two hands long. “Would you rather I had waited till she nested that in your ribs, boy?” He retrieved his own knife, wiping the blade on her cloak.
Mat realized he was humming “She Wore a Mask That Hid Her Face,” and stopped it. He bent down and hid hers with the hood of her cloak. “Best we move on,” he said quietly. “I do not want to have to explain this if a patrol of the Guards happens by.”
“With her in those clothes?” Thom said. “I should say not! They must have robbed a merchant’s wife, or some noblewoman’s carriage.” His voice became gentler. “If we’re going, boy, you had best see to saddling your horse.”
Mat gave a start and pulled his eyes from the dead woman. “Yes, I had better, hadn’t I?” He did not look at her again.
He had no such compunction about the men. As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers. It was after he had saddled his gelding and tied his things on behind, while he was kicking dirt onto the fire, that he found himself looking at the man who had shot the crossbow. There was something familiar about those features, about the way the smothering fire made shadows across them. Luck, he told himself. Always the luck.
“The crossbowman was a good swimmer, Thom,” he said as he climbed into the saddle.
“What foolery are you talking, now?” The gleeman was on his horse, too, and far more concerned with how his instrument cases rode behind his saddle than he was with the dead. “How could you know whether he could even swim at all?”
“He made it ashore from a small boat in the middle of the Erinin in the middle of the night. I guess that used up all his luck.” He checked the lashings on the roll of fireworks again. If that fool thought one of these was Aes Sedai, I wonder what he’d have thought if they all went off.
“Are you sure, boy? The chances of it being the same man. . . . Why, even you wouldn’t lay a wager against those odds.”
“I am sure, Thom.” Elayne, I will wring your neck when I put my hands on you. And Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s, too. “And I am sure I intend to have this bloody letter out of my hands an hour after we reach Caemlyn.”
“I tell you, there is nothing in that letter, boy. I played Daes Dae’mar when I was younger than you, and I can recognize a code or a cipher even when I don’t know what it
says.”
“Well, I never played your Great Game, Thom, your bloody Game of Houses, but I know when someone is chasing me, and they’d not be chasing this hard or this far for the gold in my pockets, not for less than a chest full of gold. It has to be the letter.” Burn me, pretty girls always get me in trouble. “Do you feel like sleeping tonight, after this?”
“With the sleep of an innocent babe, boy. But if you want to ride, I’ll ride.”
The face of a pretty woman floated into Mat’s head, with a dagger in her throat. You had no luck, pretty woman. “Then let’s ride!” he said savagely.
CHAPTER
45
Caemlyn
Mat had vague memories of Caemlyn, but when they approached it in the early hours after sunrise, it seemed as if he had never been there before. They had not been alone on the road since first light, and other riders surrounded them now, and trains of merchants’ wagons and folk afoot, all streaming toward the great city.
Built on rising hills, it was surely as large as Tar Valon, and outside the huge walls—a fifty-foot height of pale, grayish stone streaked with white and silver sparkling in the sun, spaced with tall, round towers with the Lion Banner of Andor waving atop them, white on red—outside those walls, it seemed as if another great city had been placed, wrapping around the walled city, all red brick and gray stone and white plastered walls, inns pushed in on houses of three and four stories so fine they must belong to wealthy merchants, shops with goods displayed on tables under awnings crowding against wide, windowless warehouses. Open markets under red and purple roof tiles lined the road on both sides, men and women already crying their wares, bargaining at the top of their voices, while penned calves and sheep and goats and pigs, caged geese and chickens and ducks, added to the din. He seemed to remember thinking Caemlyn was too noisy when he was here before; now it sounded like a heartbeat, pumping wealth.
The road led to arched gates twenty feet high, standing open under the watchful eye of red-coated Queen’s Guards in their shining breastplates—they eyed Thom and him no more than anyone else, not even the quarterstaff slanted across his saddle in front of him; all they cared was that people keep moving, it seemed—and then they were within. Slender towers here rose even taller than those along the walls, and gleaming domes shone white and gold above streets teeming with people. Just inside the gates the road split into two parallel streets, separated by a wide strip of grass and trees. The hills of the city rose like steps toward a peak, which was surrounded by another wall, shining as white as Tar Valon’s, with still more domes and towers within. That was the Inner City, Mat recalled, and atop those highest hills stood the Royal Palace.
“No point waiting,” he told Thom. “I’ll take the letter straight on.” He looked at the sedan chairs and carriages making their way through the crowds, the shops with all their goods displayed. “A man could earn some gold in this city, Thom, once he found a game of dice, or cards.” He was not quite so lucky at cards as at dice, but few except nobles and the wealthy played those games anyway. Now that’s who I should find a game with.
Thom yawned at him and hitched at his gleeman’s cloak as if it were a blanket. “We have ridden all night, boy. Let’s at least find something to eat, first. The Queen’s Blessing has good meals.” He yawned again. “And good beds.”
“I remember that,” Mat said slowly. He did, in a way. The innkeeper was a fat man with graying hair, Master Gill. Moiraine had caught up to Rand and him there, when he had thought they were finally free of her. She’s off playing her game with Rand, now. Nothing to do with me. Not anymore. “I will meet you there, Thom. I said I’d have this letter out of my hands an hour after I arrived, and I mean to. You go on.”
Thom nodded and turned his horse aside, calling over his shoulder through a yawn. “Do not become lost, boy. It’s a big city, Caemlyn.”
And a rich one. Mat heeled his mount on up the crowded street. Lost! I can find my bloody way. The sickness appeared to have erased parts of his memory. He could look at an inn, its upper floors sticking out over the ground floor all the way around and its sign creaking in the breeze, and remember seeing it before, yet not recall another thing he could see from that spot. A hundred paces of street might abruptly spark in his memory, while the parts before and after remained as mysterious as dice still in the cup.
Even with the holes in his memory he was sure he had never been to the Inner City or the Royal Palace—I couldn’t forget that!—yet he did not need to remember the way. The streets of the New City—he remembered that name suddenly; it was the part of Caemlyn less than two thousand years old—ran every which way, but the main boulevards all led to the Inner City. The Guards at the gates made no effort to stop anyone.
Within those white walls were buildings that could almost have fit in Tar Valon. The curving streets topped hills to reveal thin towers, their tiled walls sparkling with a hundred colors in the sunlight, or to look down on parks laid out in patterns made to be viewed from above, or to show sweeping vistas across the entire city to the rolling plains and forests beyond. It did not really matter which streets he took here. They all spiraled in on what he sought, the Royal Palace of Andor.
In no time, he found himself crossing the huge oval plaza before the Palace, riding toward its tall, gilded gates. The pure white Palace of Andor would certainly not have been out of place among Tar Valon’s wonders, with its slender towers and golden domes shining in the sun, its high balconies and intricate stonework. The gold leaf on one of those domes could have kept him in luxury for a year.
There were fewer people in the plaza than elsewhere, as if it were reserved for great occasions. A dozen of the Guards stood before the closed gates, bows slanted, all at exactly the same angle, across their gleaming breastplates, faces hidden by the steel bars of their burnished helmets’ face-guards. A heavyset officer, with his red cloak thrown back to reveal a knot of gold braid on his shoulder, was walking up and down the line, eyeing each man as if he thought he might find rust or dust.
Mat drew rein and put on a smile. “Good morning to you, Captain.”
The officer turned, staring at him through the bars of his face-guard with deep, beady eyes, like a pudgy rat in a cage. The man was older than he had expected—surely old enough to have more than one knot of rank—and fat rather than stocky. “What do you want, farmer?” he demanded roughly.
Mat drew a breath. Make it good. Impress this fool so he doesn’t keep me waiting all day. I don’t want to have to flash the Amyrlin’s paper around to keep from kicking my heels. “I come from Tar Valon, from the White Tower, bearing a letter from—”
“You come from Tar Valon, farmer?” The fat officer’s stomach shook as he laughed, but then his laughter cut off as if severed with a knife, and he glared. “We want no letters from Tar Valon, rogue, if you have such a thing! Our good Queen—may the Light illumine her!—will take no word from the White Tower until the Daughter-Heir is returned to her. I never heard of any messenger from the Tower wearing a countryman’s coat and breeches. It is plain to me you are up to some trick, perhaps thinking you’ll find a few coins if you come claiming to carry letters, but you will be lucky if you don’t end in a prison cell! If you do come from Tar Valon, go back and tell the Tower to return the Daughter-Heir before we come and take her! If you’re a trickster after silver, get out of my sight before I have you beaten within an inch of your life! Either way, you half-wit looby, be gone!”
Mat had been trying to edge a word in from the beginning of the man’s speech. He said quickly, “The letter is from her, man. It is from—”
“Did I not tell you to be gone, ruffian?” the fat man bellowed. His face was growing nearly as red as his coat. “Take yourself out of my sight, you gutter scum! If you are not gone by the time I count ten, I will arrest you for littering the plaza with your presence! One! Two!”
“Can you count so high, you fat fool?” Mat snapped. “I tell you, Elayne sent—”
“Guards!??
? The officer’s face was purple now. “Seize this man for a Darkfriend!”
Mat hesitated a moment, sure no one could take such a charge seriously, but the red-coated Guards dashed toward him, all dozen men in breastplates and helmets, and he wheeled his horse and galloped ahead of them, followed by the fat man’s shouts. The gelding was no racer, but it outdistanced men afoot easily enough. People dodged out of his way along the curving streets, shaking fists after him and shouting as many curses as the officer had.
Fool, he thought, meaning the fat officer, then added another for himself. All I had to do was say her bloody name in the beginning. “Elayne, the Daughter-Heir of Andor, sends this letter to her mother, Queen Morgase.” Light, who could have thought they’d think that way about Tar Valon. From what he remembered of his last visit, Aes Sedai and the White Tower had been close behind Queen Morgase in the Guards’ affections. Burn her, Elayne could have told me. Reluctantly, he added, I could have asked questions, too.
Before he reached the arched gates that let out into the New City, he slowed to a walk. He did not think the Guards from the Palace could still be chasing him, and there was no point in attracting the eyes of those at the gate by galloping through, but they looked at him no more now than when he had first entered.
As he rode under the broad arch, he smiled and almost turned back. He had suddenly remembered something, and had an idea that appealed to him a good deal more than walking through the Palace gates. Even if that fat officer had not been watching the gates, he thought he would like it better.