A Crown of Swords (81 page)

“Why, we went for a walk,” Elayne said brightly, blue eyes wider than he remembered seeing before. Thom frowned and produced a knife from his sleeve, rolling it back and forth through his fingers. He very markedly did not so much as glance at Elayne.

“We had tea with some women your innkeeper knows,” Nynaeve said. “I won’t bore you with talk about needlework.” Juilin started to shake his head, then stopped before she noticed.

“Please, don’t bore me,” Mat said dryly. He supposed she knew one end of a needle from the other, but he suspected she would as soon stick one through her tongue as talk about needlework. Neither woman cracked her teeth about civility, confirming his worse suspicions. “I’ve told off two fellows to walk out with each of you this afternoon, and there will be two more tomorrow and every day. If you’re not inside the palace or under my nose, you’ll have bodyguards. They know their turns already. They’ll stay with you at all times—
all
times—and you will let me know where you’re headed. No more making me worry till my hair falls out.”

He expected indignation and argument. He expected weaseling over what they had or had not promised. He expected that demanding this whole loaf might get him a slice at the end; a butt slice, if his luck was in. Nynaeve looked at Elayne; Elayne looked at Nynaeve.

“Why, bodyguards are a
wonderful
idea, Mat,” Elayne exclaimed, her cheek dimpling in a smile. “I suppose you were right about that. It’s very smart of you to have your men already to a schedule.”

“It
is
a wonderful notion,” Nynaeve said, nodding enthusiastically. “Very smart of you, Mat.”

Thom dropped the knife with a muffled curse and sat sucking on a nicked finger, staring at the women.

Mat sighed. Trouble; he had known it. And that was before they told him to forget the Rahad for the time being.

Which was how he found himself on a bench in front of a cheap tavern not far from the riverfront called The Rose of the Eldar, drinking from one of the dented tin cups chained to the bench. At least they washed the cups out for each new patron. The stink from a dyer’s shop across the way only raised the style of the Rose. Not that it was a shabby neighborhood really, though the street was too narrow for carriages. A fair number of brightly lacquered sedan chairs swayed through the crowd. If far more passersby wore wool and perhaps a guild vest than silk, the wool was as
often well cut as frayed. The houses and shops were the usual array of white plaster, and if most were small and even run-down, the tall house of a wealthy merchant stood on a corner to his right and on the left a diminutive palace—smaller than the merchant’s house, at least—with a single green-banded dome and no spire. A pair of taverns and an inn in plain sight looked cool and inviting. Unfortunately, the Rose was the only one where a man could sit outside, the only one in just the right spot. Unfortunately.

“I doubt I’ve ever seen such splendid flies,” Nalesean grumbled, waving away several choice specimens from his cup. “What is it we’re doing again?”

“You are swilling that foul excuse for wine and sweating like a goat,”Mat muttered, tugging his hat to shade his eyes better. “I’m being
ta’veren.
” He glared at the dilapidated house, between the dyer’s and a noisy weaver’s establishment, that he had been told to watch. Not asked—told—that was what it came to, however they phrased it, squirming around their pledges. Oh, they made it sound like asking, made it sound like pleading at the end, which he would believe when dogs danced, but he knew when he had been bullied. “Just be
ta’veren
, Mat,” he mimicked. “I know you’ll just
know
what to do. Bah!” Maybe Elayne bloody Daughter-Heir and her bloody dimple knew, or Nynaeve with her bloody hands twitching to yank her bloody braid, but he would be burned if he did. “If the pig-kissing Bowl is in the Rahad, how am I supposed to find it on this flaming side of the river?”

“I do not remember them saying,” Juilin said wryly, and took a long swallow of some drink made from a yellow fruit grown in the countryside. “You’ve asked that fifty times, at least.” He claimed the pale drink was refreshing in the heat, but Mat had taken a bite of one of those lemons, and he was not about to swallow anything made from them. With his head still throbbing faintly, he himself drank tea. It tasted as if the tavernkeeper, a scrawny fellow with beady suspicious eyes, had been dumping new leaves and water in yesterday’s leavings since the founding of the city. The taste suited his mood.

“What interests me,” Thom murmured over steepled fingers, “is why they asked so many questions about your innkeeper.” He did not seem very upset at the women still keeping secrets; sometimes, he was decidedly odd. “What do Setalle Anan and these women have to do with the Bowl?”

Women did pass in and out of the dilapidated house. A steady stream of women, just about, some well dressed if none in silks, and not one man. Three or four wore the red belt of a Wise Woman. Mat had considered following some of them when they left, but it felt too planned. He did not
know how
ta’veren
worked—he had never really seen any sign of it in himself—but his luck was always best when everything was random. Like with dice. Most of those little iron tavern puzzles eluded him, however lucky he felt.

He ignored Thom’s question; Thom had asked it at least as often as Mat had asked how he was to find the Bowl here. Nynaeve had told him to his face she had not promised to tell him every last thing she knew; she said she would tell him whatever he needed to know; she said. . . . Watching her nearly choke from not calling him names was not nearly enough vengeance.

“I suppose I should take a walk down the alley,” Nalesean sighed. “In case one of those women decides to climb over the garden wall.” The narrow gap between the house and the dyer lay in full view for its whole length, but another alleyway ran along behind the shops and houses. “Mat, tell me again why we’re doing this instead of playing cards.”

“I’ll do it,” Mat said. Maybe he would find out how
ta’veren
worked behind the garden wall. He went, and found out nothing.

By the time twilight began creeping over the street and Harnan came with a bald-headed, narrow-eyed Andoran named Wat, the only possible effect of being
ta’veren
he had seen was that the tavernkeeper brewed a fresh pot of tea. It tasted almost as bad as the old.

Back in his rooms in the palace, he found a note, an invitation of sorts, elegantly lettered on thick white paper that smelled like a garden of flowers.

My little rabbit, I expect to have you for dinner tonight in my apartments.

No signature, but he hardly needed one. Light! The woman had no shame at all! There was a red-painted iron lock on the door to the corridor; he found the key and locked it. Then, for good measure, he jammed a chair under the latch on the door to Nerim’s room. He could do well enough without dinner. Just as he was about to climb into bed, the lock rattled; out in the hall, a woman laughed at finding the door secured.

He should have been able to sleep soundly then, but for some reason he lay there listening to his belly grumble. Why was she doing this? Well, he knew why, but why him? Surely she had not decided to toss all decency over the barn just to bed a
ta’veren.
He was safe now, anyway. Tylin would not batter down the door, after all. Would she? Not even most birds could get in through the wrought-iron arabesques screening the balconies. Besides,
she would need a long ladder to reach that high. And men to carry it. Unless she climbed down from the roof on a rope. Or she could. . . . The night passed, his stomach rumbled, the sun rose, and he never closed his eyes or had a decent thought. Except that he did make a decision. He thought of a use for the sulking room. He certainly never sulked.

At first light, he sneaked out of his rooms and found another of the palace servants he remembered, a balding fellow named Madic, with a smug, self-satisfied air and a shy twist to his mouth that said he was not satisfied at all. A man who could be bought. Though the startled look that flashed across his square face, and the smirk he barely bothered to hide, said he knew exactly why Mat was slipping gold into his hand. Blood and ashes! How many people knew what Tylin was up to?

Nynaeve and Elayne did not seem to, thank the Light. Though that did mean they chided him about missing dinner with the Queen, which they had learned about when Tylin inquired whether he was ill. And worse. . . . “Please,” Elayne said, smiling almost as if the word did not pain her, “you must put your best foot forward with the Queen. Don’t be nervous. You’ll enjoy an evening with her.”

“Just don’t do anything to offend her,” Nynaeve muttered. There was no doubt with her that being civil hurt; her brows drew down in concentration, her jaw tightened, and her hands trembled to pull her braid. “Be accommodating for once in your—I mean to say, remember she’s a decent woman, and don’t try any of your—Light, you know what I mean.”

Nervous. Ha! Decent woman. Ha!

Neither seemed the least concerned that he had wasted a whole afternoon. Elayne patted his shoulder sympathetically and asked him please to try another day or two; it certainly was better than tramping through the Rahad in this heat. Nynaeve said the exact same thing, the way women did, but without the shoulder pat. They admitted right out that they intended to spend the day trying to spy on Carridin with Aviendha, though they evaded his question of who it was they thought they might recognize. Nynaeve let that slip, and Elayne gave her such a look he thought he might see Nynaeve’s ears boxed for once. They meekly accepted his stricture not to lose sight of their bodyguards, and meekly let him see the disguises they intended to wear. Even after Thom’s description, seeing the pair suddenly turn into Ebou Dari women in front of his eyes was almost as big a shock as their meekness. Well, Nynaeve made a sickly stab at meekness, growling when she realized he had meant what he said about the Aielwoman
needing no bodyguard, but she came close. Either one of these women folding her hands and answering submissively made him nervous. Both of them together—with Aviendha nodding
approvingly
!—and he was happy to send them on their way. Just to be sure, though, he ignored their suddenly flat mouths and made them demonstrate their disguises for the men he was sending along first. Vanin leaped at the chance to be one of Elayne’s guards, knuckling his forehead right and left like a fool.

The fat man had not learned much watching on his own. Just as on the day before, a surprising number of people had come to call on Carridin, including some in silk, but that was not proof they were all Darkfriends. All said and done, the man was the Whitecloak ambassador; more folk who wanted to trade into Amadicia probably went to him than to the Amadician ambassador, whoever he or she was. Vanin did say two women had definitely been watching Carridin’s palace, too—the look on his face when Aviendha suddenly turned into a third Ebou Dari woman was a wonder—and also an old man, he thought, though the fellow proved surprisingly spry. Vanin had not managed to get a good look at him despite spotting him three times. Once Vanin and the women left, Mat sent off Thom and Juilin to see what they could uncover concerning Jaichim Carridin and a bent, white-haired old man with an interest in Darkfriends. If the thief-catcher could not discover a way to trip Carridin on his face, it did not exist, and Thom seemed to have a way of putting together all the gossip and rumor in a place and filtering out the truth. All that was the easy part, of course.

For two days he sweated on that bench, with an occasional stroll down the alley beside the dyer’s, and the only thing that changed was that the tea got worse again. The wine was so bad, Nalesean began drinking ale. The first day, the tavernkeeper offered fish for a midday meal, but by the smell they had been caught last week. The second day, he offered a stew of oysters; Mat ate five bowls of that despite the bits of shell. Birgitte declined both.

He had been surprised when she caught up to him and Nalesean hurrying across the Mol Hara that first morning. The sun barely made a rim above the rooftops, but already people and carts dotted the square. “I must have blinked,” she laughed. “I was waiting the way I thought you’d come out. If you don’t mind company.”

“We move fast sometimes,” he said evasively. Nalesean looked at him sideways; of course, he had no idea why they had crept out through a tiny side door near the stables. It was not that Mat thought Tylin would actually
leap on him in the halls in broad daylight, but then again, it never hurt to be careful. “Your company is welcome any time. Uh. Thanks.” She just shrugged and murmured something he did not catch and fell in on the other side of him.

That was the beginning with her. Any other woman he had ever known would have demanded to know thanks for what, and then explained why none were necessary at such length that he wanted to cover his ears, or upbraided him at equal length for thinking they were, or sometimes made it clear she expected something more substantial than words. Birgitte just shrugged, and over the next two days, something startling occurred in his head.

Normally, to him, women were to admire and smile at, to dance with and kiss if they would allow, to snuggle with if he was lucky. Deciding which women to chase was almost as much fun as chasing them, if not nearly so much as catching them. Some women were just friends, of course. A few. Egwene, for one, though he was not sure how that friendship would survive her becoming Amyrlin. Nynaeve was sort of a friend, in a way; if she could forget for one hour that she had switched his bottom more than once and remember he was not a boy anymore. But a woman friend was different from a man; you always knew her mind ran along other paths than yours, that she saw the world with different eyes.

Birgitte leaned toward him on the bench. “Best be wary,” she murmured. “That widow is looking for a new husband; the sheath on her marriage knife is blue. Besides, the house is over there.”

He blinked, losing sight of the sweetly plump woman who rolled her hips so extravagantly as she walked, and Birgitte answered his sheepish grin with a laugh. Nynaeve would have flayed him with her tongue for looking, and even Egwene would have been coolly disapproving. By the end of the second day on that bench, he realized he had sat all that time with his hip pressed against Birgitte’s and never once thought of trying to kiss her. He was sure she did not want to be kissed by him—frankly, considering the dog-ugly men she seemed to enjoy looking at, he might have been insulted if she had—and she was a hero out of legend whom he still half-expected to leap over a house and grab a couple of the Forsaken by the neck on the way. But that was not it: He would as soon have thought of kissing Nalesean. The same as the Tairen, just exactly the same as, he
liked
Birgitte.