Their tales really were not that different from what the sisters told him. Townsfolk’s talk of what they had overheard from Seanchan passing through. Many of the settlers were nervous, their heads full of tales about savage Aiel ravaging through Altara, though the local people all said that was up north somewhere. It seemed someone higher might be thinking the same, though, because many settlers had been diverted east, toward Illian. An alliance had been concluded with someone powerful who was expected to give the High Lady Suroth access to many lands. The women refused to be convinced that they need not listen for rumors. They never quite got around to handing over the a’dam, either. In truth, those silvery leashes and the three sul’dam were the only real lever he had with the Aes Sedai. Gratitude. From an Aes Sedai! Ha! Not that he really thought about putting those collars on the sisters again. Not often, anyway. He was well and truly stuck.
He truly did have no need of what the sul’dam and Aes Sedai learned. He had better sources, people he trusted. Well, he trusted Thorn, when the white-haired gleeman could be routed out from playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver or mooning over a much-creased letter he carried tucked in the breast of his coat. Thorn could walk into a common room, tell a story, maybe juggle a bit, and walk out knowing what was in the head of every man there. Mat trusted Juilin, too – he did almost as well as Thorn, without juggling or storytelling – but Juilin always insisted on taking Thera with him, demurely clutching his arm as they strolled into a town. To get her used to freedom again, the man said. She smiled up at Juilin, those big eyes shining darkly, that full little mouth asking to be kissed. Maybe she had been Panarch of Tarabon, the way Juilin and Thorn claimed, but Mat was beginning to doubt it. He had heard some of the contortionists joking about how the Taraboner serving girl was wearing the Tairen thief-catcher out till he could barely walk. Panarch or serving girl, though, Thera still started to kneel any time she heard a drawling accent. Mat figured that any Seanchan who asked her a question would get everything she knew, beginning with Juilin Sandar and ending with which wagon the Aes Sedai were in, all answers delivered from her knees. Thera was a bigger danger than Aes Sedai and sul’dam put together, in his book. Juilin bridled at the slightest suggestion his woman might be unreliable, though, and spun his bamboo staff as if he was considering cracking Mat’s head for him. There was no solution, but Mat found a stopgap, a way to get a little warning if the worst occurred.
“Of course I can follow them,” Noal said, with a gap-toothed grin that said it would be child’s play. Laying a gnarled finger alongside his bent nose, he slipped the other knobbly hand beneath his coat, where he kept his knives. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better just to make sure she can’t talk to anyone? Just a suggestion, lad. If you say not, then not.” Mat most emphatically said not. He had killed one woman in his life, and left another to be butchered. He was not going to add a third to his soul.
“It seems Suroth might have made an alliance with some king,” Juilin reported with a smile over a cup of mulled wine. At least Thera seemed to be making him smile more. She huddled beside Juilin’s stool in their cramped tent, her head lying on his lap, and he stroked her hair softly with his free hand. “At least, there’s considerable talk of some powerful new ally. And those settlers are all frightened out of their wits by Aiel.”
“Most of the settlers seem to be have been sent east,” Thorn said, peering sadly into his cup. As Juilin grew happier day by day, he seemed to grow sadder. Noal was out shadowing Juilin and Thera, and Lopin and Nerim were sitting cross-legged at the back of the tent, but the two Cairhienin serving men had their mending baskets out and were examining Mat’s good coats from Ebou Dar for any repairs they thought necessary, so the small tent still seemed crowded. “And a great many soldiers, too,” Thorn went on. “Everything says they’re going to fall on Illian like a hammer.”
Well, at least he knew he was hearing the unvarnished truth when he heard it from them. No Aes Sedai spinning words on their heads or sul’dam trying to smarm their way into his good graces. Bethamin and Seta had even learned to curtsy. Somehow, he felt more comfortable with Renna bending herself double. It seemed honest. Strange, but honest.
For himself, town or village, Mat took no more than a quick look around, with his collar turned up and his cap pulled down, before heading back to the show. He seldom wore a cloak. A cloak could make it difficult to use the knives he carried tucked about his person. Not that he expected to need them. It was just a prudent precaution. There was no drinking, no dancing, and no gambling. Especially no gambling. The sound of dice rattling on a table in an inn’s common room pulled at him, but his sort of luck with dice was bound to be remarked, even if it did not lead to somebody pulling a knife, and in this part of Altara both men and women carried knives tucked behind their belts and were ready to use them. He wanted to pass through unnoticed, so he walked by the dice games, nodded coolly to the tavern maids who smiled at him, and never drank more than a cup of wine and usually not that. After all, he had work to do back at the show. Work of a sort. He had begun it the very first night after leaving Ebou Dar, and a rough job it was.
“I need you to go with me,” he had said then, pulling open the cupboard built into the side of the wagon beneath his bed. He kept his chest of gold in there, all honestly come by through gambling. As honestly as he could, anyway. The greater part came from one horse race, and his luck was no better than any other man’s with horses. For the rest… If a man wanted to toss dice or play at cards or pitch coins, he had to be ready to lose. Domon, seated on the other bed rubbing a hand over the bristle on his shaved scalp, had learned that lesson. The fellow should have been willing to sleep on the floor like a good so’jbin, but in the beginning he had insisted on flipping a coin with Mat each night for the second bed. Egeanin got the first, of course. Tossing coins was as easy as dice.
As long as the coin did not land on edge, the way it sometimes did for him. But Domon had made the offer, not him. Until Mat had won four times straight, and then the fifth night the coin did land on edge, three times in a row. They took turn and turn about, now. But it was still Demon’s turn for the floor, tonight.
Finding the smallish washleather bag he was after, he stuffed it into his coat pocket and straightened, pushing the cupboard shut with his foot. “You have to face her sometime,” he said. “And I need you to smooth things over.” He needed someone to attract Tuon’s ire, someone to make him seem acceptable by comparison, but he could not say that, could he? “You’re a Seanchan noble, and you can keep me from putting my boot in my mouth.”
“Why do you need to smooth things over?” Egeanin’s drawl was hard as a saw. She stood against the wagon’s door with her fists on her hips, blue eyes augering out from beneath her long black wig. “Why do you need to see her? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” Mat scoffed, dodging the question. What answer could he give that did not sound insane? “You could tuck her under your arm almost as easily as I could. But I promise not to let her cut your head off or beat you up.”
“Egeanin do no be afraid of anything, boy,” Domon growled protectively. “If she does no want to go, then you trot off to court the girl by yourself. Stay the night, if you choose.”
Egeanin continued to glare at Mat. Or through him. Then she glanced at Domon, her shoulders slumped a little, and she snatched her cloak from its peg on the wall. “Get a move on, Cauthon,” she growled. “If it has to be done, best it’s done and over with.” She was out of the wagon in a flash, and Mat had to hurry to catch her up. You could almost think she did not want to be alone with Domon, as little sense as that made.