Giving him half an ear in return, Marah seized a passing serving maid, a smoky-eyed cat of a woman he knew well. "Air Captain Yulan's cup is almost empty, Caira," Marah said angrily. "You are supposed to keep it full! If you can't do your job, girl, there are plenty in Ebou Dar who will!" Caira, several years older than Marah, made her a mocking curtsy. And scowled at Mat. Before Caira could straighten her knees again, Marah turned to grab a boy who was walking by carefully balancing a tray piled with dirty dishes. "Stop lollygagging, Ross!" she snapped. "There is work to be done. Do it, or I'll take you out to the stables, and you will not like that, I tell you!"
Marah's youngest brother glared at her. "I can't wait till spring, when I can work on the boats again," he muttered sullenly. "You've been in a bad skin ever since Frielle got married, just because she's younger than you and you haven't been asked yet."
She directed a cuff at his head that he easily eluded, though the stacked cups and plates rattled and nearly fell. "Why not just pin up your petticoats at the fishing docks?" he shouted, darting off before she could slap at him again.
Mat sighed as she finally turned her full attention to him. Pinning up petticoats was a new one on him, but from Marah's face, he could guess. Steam should have been jetting from her ears. "If you want to eat, you must come back later. Or you can wait, if you like. I don't know how long before you can be served."
Her smile was malicious. No one would choose to wait in that common room. Every seat was taken by a Seanchan, and there were more Seanchan standing, enough that the aproned maids were forced to weave their way carefully, holding trays of food and drink aloft. Caira was filling the dark little man's cup and offering him the sort of sultry smiles she had once offered Mat. He did not know why she had soured on him, but he had as many women in his life as he could handle at the moment. What was an Air Captain, anyway? He would have to find out. Later.
"I will wait in the kitchen," he told Marah. "I want to tell Enid how much I enjoyed her cooking."
She started to protest, but a Seanchan woman raised her voice demanding wine. Grim-eyed in blue-and-green armor, with a helmet carrying two plumes under her arm, she wanted her stirrup cup right then. All of the maids seemed occupied, so Marah grimaced at him one last time and went scurrying, trying to set her face in a pleasant smile. And not getting far with it. Holding his walking staff wide, Mat flourished a bow to her retreating back.
The good smells that had mingled with sweet pipesmoke in the common room permeated the kitchen, roasting fish, baking bread, meats sizzling on the spits. The room was hot from the iron stoves and the ovens and the fire in the long brick fireplace, and six sweating women and three potboys were dashing about under the orders of the chief cook. Wearing a snowy white apron as if it were a tabard of office and wielding a long-handled wooden spoon to reign over her domain, Enid was the roundest woman Mat had even seen. He did not think he could have gotten his arms around her had he wanted to. She recognized him right away, and a sly grin split her wide olive face.
"So, you found out I was right," she said, pointing the spoon at him. "You squeezed the wrong melon, and it turned out the melon was a lionfish in disguise and you were just a plump grunter." Throwing back her head, she cackled with laughter.
Mat forced a grin. Blood and bloody ashes! Everybody really did know! / have to get out of this bloody city, he thought grimly, or I'll hear them bloody laughing at me the rest of my life!
Suddenly his fears about the gold began to seem foolish. The gray floorstone in front of the stoves appeared firmly in place, no different from any other in the kitchen. You had to know the trick in order to lift it. Lopin and Nerim would have told him if so much as a single coin had vanished between their visits. Mistress Anan likely would have tracked down and skinned the culprit if anyone tried thieving in her inn. He might as well be on his way. Maybe Aludra's willpower would be weaker at this hour. Maybe she would give him breakfast. He had slipped out of the Palace without waiting to eat.
So as not rouse curiosity about his visit, he did tell Enid how much he had enjoyed her gilded fish, how it was better than that served in the Tarasin Palace, without having to exaggerate even a whisker. Enid was a marvel. The woman positively beamed, and to his surprise, lifted one out of the oven onto a platter just for him. Somebody in the common room could just wait, she told him, setting the platter at the end of the kitchen's long worktable. A wave of her spoon brought a stout potboy with a stool.
Looking at the golden-crusted flatfish, he felt his mouth watering. Aludra likely would be no weaker now than any other time. And if she was upset over being disturbed so early, she might not give him breakfast. His stomach rumbled loudly. Hanging his cloak on a peg beside the door to the stableyard and propping his walking staff beneath, he tucked his hat under the stool and turned back his lace to keep it out of the platter.
By the time Mistress Anan came in through the door to the stableyard, swinging her cloak off and shaking rain onto the floor, little remained beyond a tangy taste on his tongue and fine white bones on the platter. He had learned to enjoy a number of odd things since coming to Ebou Dar, but he left the eyes staring up at him. The things were on the same side of the fish's head!
Another woman slipped in behind Mistress Anan as he dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin. She closed the door behind her quickly, and kept her damp cloak on with the hood pulled well up. Rising, he caught a glimpse of the face inside that hood and nearly knocked his stool over. He thought he covered well, though, making a leg to the women, but his head was spinning.
"It is well you are here, my Lord," Mistress Anan said briskly, handing her cloak to a potboy. "I would have sent for you, otherwise. Enid, clear the kitchen, please, and watch the door. I need to speak with the young lord alone."
The cook briskly herded the under-cooks and potboys out into the stableyard, and despite their muttered complaints about the rain and wails about the food burning, it was clear they were as accustomed to this as Enid. She herself did not even glance at Mistress Anan and her companion again before hurrying through the door into the common room with her long spoon held up like a sword.
"What a surprise," Joline Maza said, tossing her hood back. Her dark woolen dress, with a deep neckline in the local style, fit loosely and looked worn and frayed. You would never have thought it from her carefree attitude, though. "When Mistress Anan told me she knew a man who might take me with him when he left Ebou Dar, I never guessed it was you." Pretty and brown-eyed, she had a smile almost as warm as Caira's. And an ageless face that screamed Aes Sedai. With dozens of Seanchan just the other side of a door guarded by a cook with a spoon.
Removing her cloak, Joline turned to hang it on one of the pegs, and Mistress Anan made an irritated sound in her throat. "That isn't safe yet, Joline," she said, sounding more as if talking to one of her daughters than to an Aes Sedai. "Until I have you safely—"
Suddenly a commotion rose at the door to the common room, Enid protesting in a shout that no one could enter, and a voice almost as loud, in Seanchan accents, demanding that she move aside.
Ignoring the protests of his leg, Mat moved faster than he thought he ever had in his life, grabbing Joline by the waist and plunking himself down on the bench by the door to the stableyard with the Aes Sedai on his lap. Hugging her close, he pretended to be kissing her. It was a fool way to try hiding her face, but all he could think of short of throwing her cloak over her head. She gasped indignantly, but fear widened her eyes when she finally heard the Seanchan voice, and she snaked her arms around him in a flash. Praying for his luck to hold, he watched the door open.