Knife of Dreams (45 page)

“And tell no one what you saw,” Luca cautioned more than once. “We saw nothing out of the ordinary. We wouldn’t want to frighten the patrons away.” People looked at him as if he were insane. No one wanted to think of that melting village or the peddler, much less speak of them.

Mat was sitting in his tent in his shirtsleeves, waiting for Thom and Juilin to return from their trip into the town to learn whether there was a Seanchan presence. He was idly tossing a set of dice on his small table. After an early run of mostly high numbers, five single pips stared up at him ten times in a row; most men thought the Dark One’s eyes an unlucky toss.

Selucia pulled back the entry flap and strode in. Despite her plain brown divided skirts and white blouse, she managed to seem a queen entering a stable. A filthy stable, by the expression on her face, though Lopin and Nerim could have satisfied his mother when it came to cleaning.

“She wants you,” she drawled peremptorily, touching her flowered scarf to make sure her short yellow hair was covered. “Come.”

“What’s she want with me, then?” he said, and leaned his elbows on the table. He even stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. Once you let a woman think you would jump whenever she called, you never got out from under again.

“She’ll tell you. You are wasting time, Toy. She won’t be pleased.”

“If Precious expects me to come running when she crooks a finger, she better learn to like being displeased.”

Grimacing—if her mistress tolerated the name, Selucia took it for a personal affront—she folded her arms beneath that impressive bosom.

It was clear as good glass that she intended to wait there until he went with her, and he was of a mind to make it a long wait. He tossed the dice. The Dark One’s Eyes. Expecting him to jump when Tuon said toad. Hah! Another toss, spinning across the table, one die nearly going over the edge. The Dark One’s Eyes. Still, he had nothing else to do at the moment.

Even so, he took his time donning his coat, a good bronze-colored silk. By the time he picked up his hat, he could hear her foot tapping impatiently. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked. She hissed at him. She held the entry flap open, but she purely hissed like a cat.

Setalle and Tuon were sitting on one of the beds talking when he entered the purple wagon, but they cut off the instant he stepped through the door and gave him brief but appraising looks. Which told him the subject of their talk had been Mat Cauthon. It made his hackles rise. Plainly, whatever Tuon wanted was something they thought he would disapprove of. And just as plainly, she meant to have it anyway. The table was snug against the ceiling, and Selucia brushed past him to take a place behind Tuon as the tiny woman sat down on the stool, her face stern and those beautiful big eyes steady. Hang all the prisoners immediately.

“I wish to visit the common room of an inn,” she announced. “Or a tavern. I have never seen the inside of either. You will take me to one in this town, Toy.”

He let himself breathe again. “That’s easy enough. Just as soon as Thom or Juilin lets me know it’s safe.”

“It must be a low place. What is called a hell.”

His mouth fell open. Low? Hells were the lowest of the low, dirty and dimly lit, where the ale and wine were cheap and still not worth half what you paid, the food was worse, and any woman who sat on your lap was trying to pick your pocket or cut your purse or else had two men waiting
upstairs to crack you over the head as soon as you walked into her room. At any hour of the day or night you would find dice rolling in a dozen games, sometimes for surprising stakes given the surroundings. Not gold—only a stone fool displayed gold in a hell—but silver often crossed the tables. Few of the gamblers would have come by their coin by any means even halfway honest, and those few would be as hard-eyed as the headcrackers and knife-men who preyed on drunks in the night. Hells always had two or three strongarms with cudgels about to break up fights, and most days they worked hard for their pay. They usually stopped the patrons from killing one another, but when they failed, the corpse was dragged out the back and left in an alley somewhere or on a rubbish heap. And while they were dragging, the drinking never slowed, or the gambling either. That was a hell. How had she even heard of such places?

“Did you plant this fool notion in her head?” he demanded of Setalle.

“Why, what in the Light makes you think that?” she replied, going all wide-eyed the way women did when pretending to be innocent. Or when they wanted you to think they were pretending, just to confuse you. He could not see why they bothered. Women confused him all the time without trying.

“It’s out of the question, Precious. I walk into a hell with a woman like you, and I’ll be in six knife fights inside the hour, if I survive that long.”

Tuon gave a pleased smile. Just a flicker, but definitely pleased. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so for a fact.” Which produced another brief smile of delight. Delight! The bloody woman
wanted
to see him in a knife fight!

“Even so, Toy, you promised.”

They were arguing over whether he had made a promise—well, he was calmly presenting the logic that saying something was easy was no promise; Tuon just stubbornly insisted he had promised, while Setalle took up her embroidery hoop and Selucia watched him with the amused air of someone watching a man try to defend the indefensible; and he did not shout, no matter what Tuon said—when a knock came at the door.

Tuon paused. “You see, Toy,” she said after a moment, “that is how it is done. You knock and then wait.” She made a simple gesture over one shoulder at her maid.

“You may enter the presence,” Selucia called, drawing herself up regally. She probably expected whoever came in to prostrate themselves!

It was Thom, in a dark blue coat and dark gray cloak that would make him unremarked in any common room or tavern, neither well-to-do nor
poor. A man who could afford to pay for his own drink while listening to the gossip, or buy another man a cup of wine to pay for hearing his news and the latest rumors. He did not prostrate himself, but he did make an elegant bow despite his bad right leg. “My Lady,” he murmured to Tuon before turning his attention to Mat. “Harnan said he saw you strolling this way. I trust I’m not interrupting? I heard . . . voices.”

Mat scowled. He had
not
been shouting. “You’re not interrupting. What did you find out?”

“That there may be Seanchan in the town from time to time. No soldiers, but it seems they’re building two farm villages a few miles to the north of the road and three more a few miles south. The villagers come to town to buy things now and then.”

Mat managed to keep from smiling as he spoke over his shoulder. He even got a smattering of regret into his voice. “I’m afraid there’s no jaunt into Maderin for you, Precious. Too dangerous.”

Tuon folded her arms, emphasizing her bosom. There were more curves to her than he once had thought. Not like Selucia, certainly, but nice curves. “Farmers, Toy,” she drawled dismissively. “No farmer has ever seen my face. You promised me a tavern or a common room, and you won’t escape on this puny excuse.”

“A common room should present no difficulties,” Thom said. “It’s a pair of scissors or a new pot these farmers are after, not drink. They make their own ale, it seems, and don’t much like the local brew.”

“Thank you, Thom,” Mat said through gritted teeth. “She wants to see a hell.”

The white-haired man gave a wheezing cough and knuckled his mustache vigorously. “A hell,” he muttered.

“A hell. Do
you
know a hell in this town where I might take her without starting a riot?” He intended the question for sarcasm, but Thom surprised him by nodding.

“I might just know a place at that,” the man said slowly. “The White Ring. I intend to go there anyway, to see what news I can pick up.”

Mat blinked. However unremarked Thom might be elsewhere, he would be looked at askance in a hell wearing that coat. More than askance. The usual garb there was coarse dirty wool and stained linen. Besides, asking questions in a hell was a good way to have a knife planted in your back. But maybe Thom meant that this White Ring was not a hell at all. Tuon might not know the difference if the place were only a little rougher than the usual. “Should I get Harnan and the others?” he asked, testing.

“Oh, I think you and I should be protection enough for the lady,” Thom said with what might have been the ghost of a smile, and knots loosened in Mat’s shoulders.

He still cautioned the two women—there was no question of Selucia staying behind, of course; Mistress Anan refused Tuon’s invitation to accompany them, saying she had already seen as many hells as she had any wish to—about keeping their hoods well up. Tuon might believe no farmer had ever seen her face, but if a cat could gaze on a king, as the old saying said, then a farmer might have gazed on Tuon some time or other, and it would be just their luck to have one or two of them turn up in Maderin. Being
ta’veren
usually seemed to twist the Pattern for the worst in his experience.

“Toy,” Tuon said gently as Selucia settled the blue cloak on her slim shoulders, “I have met many farmers while visiting the country, but they very properly kept their eyes on the ground even if I allowed them to stand. Believe me, they never saw my face.”

Oh. He went to fetch his own cloak. White clouds nearly obscured the sun, still short of its midday peak, and it was a brisk day for spring, with a strong breeze to boot.

People from the town crowded the main street of the show, men in rough woolens or sober coats of finer stuff with just a touch of embroidery on the cuffs; women, many wearing lace caps, in somber, collared dresses beneath long white aprons or dark, high-necked dresses with embroidery curling across the bosom; children darting everywhere, escaping their parents and being chased down, all of them oohing and aahing at Miyora’s leopards or Latelle’s bears, at the jugglers or Balat and Abar eating fire, the lean brothers moving in unison. Not pausing for so much as a glimpse of the female acrobats, Mat threaded through the throng with Tuon on his arm, which he assured by placing her hand on his left wrist. She hesitated a moment, then nodded slightly, a queen giving assent to a peasant. Thom had offered his arm to Selucia, but she stayed at her mistress’s left shoulder. At least she did not try to crowd between.

Luca, in scarlet coat and cloak, was beneath the big banner at the entrance watching coins clink into the glass pitcher, clink again as they were dropped into the strongbox. He wore a smile on his face. The line waiting to get in stretched near a hundred paces along the canvas wall, and more people were trickling out of the town and heading toward the show. “I could take in a fine bit here over two or three days,” he told Mat. “After all, this place is solid, and we’re far enough from. . . .” His smile flickered out like a snuffed candle. “You think we’re far enough, don’t you?”

Mat sighed. Gold would defeat fear every time in Valan Luca.

He could not hold his cloak closed with Tuon on his arm, so it flared behind him in the stiff breeze, yet that was to the good. The gate guards, slouching in a ragged line, eyed them curiously, and one made a sketchy bow. Silk and lace had that effect, with country armsmen, at least, and that was what these men were no matter how brightly they had burnished their helmets and coin-armor coats. Most leaned on their halberds like farmers leaning on shovels. But Thom stopped, and Mat was forced to halt too, a few paces into the town. After all, he had no idea where The White Ring lay.

“A heavy guard, Captain,” Thom said, worry touching his voice. “Are there brigands in the area?”

“No outlaws around here,” a grizzled guard said gruffly. A puckered white scar slanting across his square face combined with a squint to give him a villainous appearance. He was not one of the leaners, and he held his halberd as if he might know how to use it. “The Seanchan cleaned out the few we hadn’t caught. Move along, now, old fellow. You’re blocking the way.” There was not a wagon or cart in sight, and the few people leaving the town afoot had plenty of room. The gate arch was wide enough for two wagons abreast, though it might be a squeeze.

“The Seanchan said we didn’t set enough guards,” a stocky fellow about Mat’s age put in cheerfully, “and Lord Nathin listens close when the Seanchan talk.”

The grizzled man clouted him with a gauntleted hand on the back of his helmet hard enough to stagger him. “You watch your mouth with people from off, Keilar,” the older man growled, “else you’ll be back behind a plow before you can blink. My Lord,” he added to Mat, raising his voice, “you want to call your servant before he gets himself in trouble.”

“My apologies, Captain,” Thom said humbly, ducking his white head, the very image of a chastened serving man. “No offense meant. My apologies.”

“He would have thumped you, too, if I hadn’t been here,” Mat told him when he caught up. Thom was limping noticeably. He must have been tired for it to show that much. “He almost did anyway. And what did you learn that was worth risking that?”

“I wouldn’t have asked without you, in that coat.” Thom chuckled as they walked deeper into the town. “The first lesson is what questions to ask. The second, and just as important, is when and how to ask. I learned there aren’t any brigands, which is always good to know, though I’ve heard of very few bands big enough to attack something as large as the show. I
learned Nathin is under the Seanchan thumb. Either he’s obeying a command with those extra guards, or he takes their suggestions as commands. And most important, I learned that Nathin’s armsmen don’t resent the Seanchan.”