A Crown of Swords (83 page)

Tylin did not answer, only kept him tiptoeing backward, until suddenly his shoulders bumped against something that stopped him. With that flaming dagger never easing a hair, he could not move his head, but eyes that had been focused on her face darted. They were in the bedchamber, a flower-carved red bedpost hard between his shoulder blades. Why would she bring him . . . ? His face was suddenly as crimson as the bedpost. No. She could not mean to. . . . It was not decent! It was not possible!

“You can’t do this to me,” he mumbled at her, and if his voice was a touch breathy and shrill, he surely had cause.

“Watch and learn, my kitten,” Tylin said, and drew her marriage knife.

Afterward, a considerable time later, he irritably pulled the sheet up to his chest. A silk sheet; Nalesean had been right. The Queen of Altara hummed happily beside the bed, arms twisted behind her to do up the buttons of her dress. All he had on was the foxhead medallion on its cord—much good
that
had done—and the black scarf tied around his neck. A ribbon on her present, the bloody woman called it. He rolled over and snatched his silver-mounted pipe and tabac pouch from the small table on the other side from her. Golden tongs and a hot coal in a golden bowl of sand provided the means for lighting. Folding his arms, he puffed away as fiercely as he frowned.

“You should not flounce, duckling, and you shouldn’t pout.” She yanked
her dagger from where it was driven into a bedpost beside her marriage knife, examining the point before sheathing it. “What is the matter? You know you enjoyed yourself as much as I did, and I. . . .” She laughed suddenly, and oh so richly, resheathing the marriage knife as well. “If that is part of what being
ta’veren
means, you must be very popular.” Mat flushed like fire.

“It isn’t natural,” he burst out, yanking the pipestem from between his teeth. “I’m the one who’s supposed to do the chasing!” Her astonished eyes surely mirrored his own. Had Tylin been a tavern maid who smiled the right way, he might have tried his luck—well, if the tavern maid lacked a son who liked poking holes in people—but
he
was the one who chased. He had just never thought of it that way before. He had never had the need to, before.

Tylin began laughing, shaking her head and wiping at her eyes with her fingers. “Oh, pigeon. I do keep forgetting. You are in Ebou Dar, now. I left a little present for you in the sitting room.” She patted his foot through the sheet. “Eat well today. You are going to need your strength.”

Mat put a hand over his eyes and tried very hard not to weep. When he uncovered them, she was gone.

Climbing out of the bed, he tucked the sheet around him; for some reason, the notion of walking around bare felt uncomfortable. The bloody woman might leap out of the wardrobe. The garments he had been wearing lay on the floor.
Why bother with laces
, he thought sourly,
when you can just cut somebody’s clothes off!
She had no call to slice up his red coat that way, though. She had just enjoyed peeling him with her knife.

Not quite holding his breath, he pulled open the tall red-and-gilt wardrobe. She was not hiding inside. His choices were limited; Nerim had most of his coats for cleaning or mending. Dressing quickly, he chose a plain coat of dark bronze silk, then stuffed the sliced rags as far under the bed as he could reach until he could dispose of them without Nerim seeing. Or anyone else, for that matter. Too many people already knew entirely too much of what was going on between him and Tylin; there was no way he could face anybody knowing this.

In the sitting room, he lifted the lid of the lacquerware box by the door, then let it fall with a sigh; he had not really expected Tylin to replace the key. He leaned against the door. The unlocked door. Light, what was he going to do? Move back to the inn? Burn why the dice had stopped before. Only, he would not put it past Tylin to bribe Mistress Anan and Enid, or the innkeeper wherever he went. He would not put it past Nynaeve
and Elayne to claim he had broken some agreement and put an end to their promises. Burn all women!

A large parcel elaborately wrapped in green paper sat on one of the tables. It contained an eagle mask in black and gold and a coat covered with feathers to match. There was also a red silk purse holding twenty gold crowns and a note that smelled of flowers.

I would have bought you an earring, piglet, but I noticed your ear is not pierced. Have it done, and buy yourself something nice.

He nearly wept again.
He
gave
women
presents. The world was standing on its head!
Piglet?
Oh, Light! After a minute, he did take the mask; she owed him that much, for his coat alone.

When he finally reached the small, shaded courtyard where they had been meeting each morning beside a tiny round pool of lily pads and brightly spotted white fish, he found Nalesean and Birgitte ready for the Festival of Birds, too. The Tairen had contented himself with a plain green mask, but Birgitte’s was a spray of yellow-and-red with a crest of plumes, her golden hair hung loose, with feathers tied all down its length, and she wore a dress with a wide yellow belt, diaphanous beneath more red and yellow feathers. It did not reveal nearly as much as Riselle’s, yet it seemed about to every time she moved. He had never thought of her wearing a dress like other women.

“Sometimes it’s fun to be looked at,” she said, poking him in the ribs, when he commented. Her grin would have done for Nalesean saying how much fun it was to pinch serving girls. “There’s a lot more to it than feather dancers wore, but not enough to it to slow me down, and anyway, I cannot see we’ll have to move quickly on this side of the river.” The dice rattled in his head. “What kept you?” she went on. “You didn’t make us wait so you could tickle a pretty girl, I hope.” He hoped he was not blushing.

“I—” He was not certain what excuse he would have made, but just then half a dozen men wearing feathered coats strolled into the courtyard, all with those narrow swords on their hips, all but one wearing an elaborate mask with colorful crest and beak that represented no bird ever seen by human eyes. The exception was Beslan, twirling his mask by its ribbon. “Oh, blood and bloody ashes, what’s he doing here?”

“Beslan?” Nalesean folded his hands on the pommel of his sword and shook his head in disbelief. “Why, burn my soul, he says he intends to
spend the festival in your company. Some promise you two made, he says. I told him it would be deadly boring, but he wouldn’t believe me.”

“I cannot think it is ever boring around Mat,” Tylin’s son said; his bow took them all in, but his dark eyes especially lingered on Birgitte. “I’ve never had so much fun as I did drinking with him and the Lady Elayne’s Warder on Swovan Night, though truth, I remember little.” He did not seem to recognize that Warder. Strangely, considering the taste she had shown in men—Beslan was fine-looking, maybe a little too fine, not at all her sort—strangely, she smiled slightly, and preened under his scrutiny.

Right then, Mat did not care how out of character she behaved. Obviously Beslan suspected nothing, or that sword of his likely would already be out, but the last thing under the Light Mat wanted was a day in company with the man. It would be excruciating. He had some sense of decency, even if Beslan’s mother did not.

The only problem was Beslan, who took that bloody promise to attend all the festivals and feastdays together very seriously. The more Mat agreed with Nalesean that the day they had planned would be dull beyond belief, the more determined Beslan grew. After a bit, his face began to darken, and Mat began to think that sword might be unsheathed yet. Well, a promise was a promise. When he and Nalesean and Birgitte left the palace, half a dozen feathered fools strutted along. Mat was sure it would not have happened had Birgitte been wearing her proper clothes. The whole lot of them kept eyeing her and smiling.

“What was all that twisting around while he was spilling his eyes all over you?” he muttered as they crossed the Mol Hara. He tugged the ribbon holding the eagle mask tighter.

“I did not twist, I moved.” Her primness was so blatantly false, he would have laughed some other time. “Slightly.” Abruptly her grin was back, and she lowered her voice for his ear alone. “I told you sometimes it’s fun to be looked at; just because they’re all too pretty doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy them looking. Oh, you’ll want to look at her,” she added, pointing to a slender woman who went running by in a blue owl mask and rather fewer feathers than Riselle had worn.

That was one of the things about Birgitte; she would nudge him in the ribs and point out a pretty girl for his eye as readily as any man he had ever known, and expect him to point out in turn what she liked to see, which was generally the ugliest man in sight. Whether or not she chose to go half-naked today—a quarter, anyway—she was . . . well, a friend. A strange world, it was turning out to be. One woman he was beginning to think of
as a drinking companion, and another after him as intently as he had ever pursued any pretty woman, in those old memories or his own. More intently; he had never chased any woman who let him know she did not want to be chased. A very strange world.

The sun stood little more than halfway to its peak, but already celebrants filled the streets and squares and bridges. Tumblers and jugglers and musicians with feathers sewn about their clothes performed at every street corner, the music often drowned in laughter and shouting. For the poorer folk a few feathers laced into their hair sufficed, pigeon feathers gathered from the pavement for the street children dodging about and the beggars, but masks and costumes grew more elaborate as purses grew heavier. More elaborate, and frequently more scandalous. Men and women alike were often decked in feathers that revealed more skin than Riselle
or
that woman back in the Mol Hara. No commerce moved in the streets or canals today, though a number of shops seemed to be open—along with every tavern and inn, of course—but here and there a wagon made its way through the throng or a barge was poled along supporting a platform where young men and women posed in bright bird masks that covered their entire heads, with spreading crests sometimes rising a full pace, moving long colorful wings in such a way that the rest of their costumes were exposed only in flashes. Which was just as well, considering.

According to Beslan, these settings, as they were called, were usually presented in guild halls and private palaces and houses. The entire festival normally took place indoors for the most part. It did not snow properly in Ebou Dar even when the weather was as it should be—Beslan said he would like to see this snow, one day—but apparently ordinary winter was cold enough to keep people from running around outdoors all but unclothed. With the heat, everything was spilling into the streets. Wait until night fell, Beslan said; then Mat would really see something. As sunlight faded, so did inhibitions.

Staring at a tall slender woman gliding along through the crowd in mask and feathered cloak and beyond that, six or seven feathers, Mat wondered what inhibitions some of these folk had left to shed. He almost shouted at her to cover herself with that cloak. She was pretty, but out in the
street
, before the Light and everybody?

Those wagons carrying the settings attracted followers, of course, thick knots of men and women who shouted and laughed as they tossed coins, and sometimes folded notes, onto the wagons and squeezed everyone else in the street aside. He became used to fleeing ahead until they could duck
down a crossing street, or waiting until the setting went by to cross an intersection or bridge. While waiting, Birgitte and Nalesean tossed coins to filthy urchins and dirtier beggars. Well, Nalesean tossed; Birgitte concentrated on the children, and pressed each coin into a grubby hand like a gift.

In one of those waits, Beslan suddenly put a hand on Nalesean’s arm, raising his voice above the crowd and a cacophony of music coming from at least six different places. “Forgive me, Tairen, but not him.” A ragged man edged back into the throng, warily; gaunt-cheeked and bony, he seemed to have lost whatever pitiful feathers he might have found for his hair.

“Why not?” Nalesean demanded.

“No brass ring on his little finger,” Beslan replied. “He’s not in the guild.”

“Light,” Mat said, “a man can’t even beg in this city without belonging to a guild?” Maybe it was his tone. The beggar leaped for his throat, a knife appearing in his grimy fist.

Without thinking, Mat grabbed the man’s arm and spun, slinging him away into the crowd; some people cursed at Mat, some at the sprawling beggar. Some tossed the fellow a coin.

From the corner of his eye, Mat saw a second skinny man in rags try to push Birgitte out of the way to reach him with a long knife. It was a foolish mistake to underestimate the woman because of her costume; from somewhere among those feathers she produced a knife and stabbed him beneath the arm.

“Look out!” Mat shouted at her, but there was no time for warnings; even as he shouted, he drew from his coat-sleeve and threw sidearmed. The blade streaked past her face to sink into the throat of yet another beggar flaunting steel before he could plant it in her ribs.

Suddenly there were beggars everywhere with knives, and clubs studded with spikes; screams and shouts rose as people in masks and costumes scrambled to get out of the way. Nalesean slashed a man in rags across the face, sending him reeling; Beslan ran another through the middle, while his costumed cronies fought still others.

Mat had no time to see more; he found himself back-to-back with Birgitte and facing his own adversaries. He could feel her shifting against him, hear her mutter curses, but he was barely conscious of it; Birgitte could take care of herself, and watching the two men in front of him, he was not sure he could do the same. The hulking fellow with the toothless sneer had only one arm and a puckered socket where his left eye had been,
but his fist held a club two feet long, encircled by iron bands that sprouted spikes like steel thorns. His rat-faced little companion still had both eyes and several teeth, and despite sunken cheeks and arms that seemed all bone and sinew, he moved like a snake, licking his lips and flicking a rusty dagger from hand to hand. Mat aimed the shorter knife in his own hand first at one, then the other. It was still long enough to reach a man’s vitals, and they danced and shuffled, each waiting for the other to leap at him first.