Crossroads of Twilight (20 page)

The noise of people shouting for horse handlers to bring their teams, and others demanding at the top of their lungs to know what was happening, was beginning to fill the camp. Adria, a slim woman holding a flowered green robe around her, came running up in bare feet and vanished into the yellow wagon, where the other four contortionists lived. Somebody in the green wagon bellowed hoarsely that people were trying to sleep. A handful of performers’ children, some performers themselves, dashed by, and Olver
looked up from folding the game. That was his most prized possession, but if not for that, he plainly would have gone after them. It was going to take some time yet before the show was ready to travel, but that was not what made Mat groan. He had just heard those bloody dice start rattling in his head again.

A Fan of Colors

Mat did not know whether to curse or weep. With the soldiers gone and Ebou Dar about to be left in his dust, there seemed no reason for the dice, but there never was a bloody reason he could see until it was too late. Whatever was coming might lie days in the future or only an hour, but he had never been able to figure it out ahead of time. The only certainties were that something important—or dire—was going to happen and that he would not be able to avoid it. Sometimes, like that night at the gate, he did not understand why the dice had been tumbling even after they stopped. All he really knew for sure was that however much the dice made him twitch like a goat with the itch, once they started, he did not want them to stop ever. But they did. Sooner or later, they always did.

“Are you all right, Mat?” Olver said. “Those Seanchan can’t catch us.” He attempted gruff conviction, but a hint of question hung in his voice.

Abruptly Mat realized he had been staring at nothing. Egeanin frowned at him while fiddling absentmindedly with her wig, plainly angry that he was ignoring her. Domon’s eyes had a studious look; if he was not deciding whether to be upset on Egeanin’s behalf, Mat would eat his cap. Even Thera was peeking at him past the tent’s entry flap, and she always tried to keep out of Egeanin’s sight. He could not explain. Only a man with porridge for brains would believe he got warnings from hearing dice no one could see. Or maybe
a man marked by the Power. Or by the Dark One. He was not anxious to have any of those things suspected about him. And it might be that night at the gate all over again. No, this was not a secret he cared to reveal. It would do no good, anyway.

“They’ll never catch us, Olver, not you and me.” He ruffled the boy’s hair, and Olver gave a wide-mouthed grin, confidence restored as easy as that. “Not so long as we keep our eyes open and our wits about us. Remember, you can find a way out of any difficulty if you keep your eyes and wits sharp, but if you don’t, you’ll trip over your own feet.” Olver nodded gravely, but Mat meant the reminder for the others. Or maybe himself. Light, there was no way any of them could be more alert. Except for Olver, who thought it was all a great adventure, they had all been jumping out of their skins since before leaving the city. “Go help Thera like Juilin told you, Olver.”

A sharp gust cut through Mat’s coat, making him shiver. “And put your coat on; it’s cold,” he added as the boy ducked past Thera into the tent. Rustles and scraping sounds from inside said that Olver was setting to work, with or without his coat, but Thera remained crouched at the tent’s entrance, peering at Mat. For all the care anybody but Mat Cauthon took, the boy could catch his death.

As soon as Olver disappeared, Egeanin stepped closer to Mat, her fists on her hips again, and he groaned under his breath. “We are going to settle matters now, Cauthon,” she said in a hard voice. “Now! I won’t have our journey wrecked by you countermanding my orders.”

“There’s nothing to settle,” he told her. “I was never your hired hand, and that’s that.” Somehow, her face managed to grow harder, as good as shouting that she did not see matters like that. The woman was as tenacious as a snapping turtle, but there had to be some way to pry her jaws from his leg. Burn him if he wanted to be alone with the dice rolling in his head, yet that was better than having to listen to them while arguing with her. “I’m going to see Tuon before we leave.” The words popped out of his mouth before they were clear in his head. He realized that they had been lying there for some time, though, murky and slowly solidifying.

The blood drained from Egeanin’s cheeks as soon as Tuon’s name left his mouth, and he heard a squeak from Thera followed by the snap of the tentflaps being jerked shut. The onetime panarch had absorbed a great many Seanchan ways while she was Suroth’s property, and many of their taboos as well. Egeanin was made of harder stuff, however. “Why?” she demanded. In almost the same breath, she went on, anxious and furious all at
once. “You mustn’t call her that. You must show respect.” Harder in some ways.

Mat grinned, but she did not seem to see the joke. Respect? There was precious little respect in stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth and rolling them up in a wall hanging. Calling Tuon High Lady or anything else was not going to change that. Of course, Egeanin was more willing to talk about freeing
damane
than she was about Tuon. If she could have pretended the kidnapping never happened, she would have, and as it was, she tried. Light, she had tried to ignore it while it was happening. In her mind, any other crimes she might have committed paled to nothing beside that.

“Because I want to talk with her,” he said. And why not? He had to, sooner or later. People had begun trotting up and down the narrow street, now, half-dressed men with their shirts hanging out and women with their hair still wrapped in night-kerchiefs, some leading horses and others just milling about as far as he could make out. A wiry boy a little bigger than Olver went past doing handsprings wherever the crowd gave him a pace of room, practicing or maybe playing. The sleepy fellow in the deep green wagon still had not appeared. Luca’s Grand Traveling Show would not be traveling anywhere for hours yet. There was plenty of time. “You could come with me,” he suggested in his most innocent voice. He should have thought of this before.

The invitation made Egeanin go fence-post stiff for true. It hardly seemed possible her face could grow any paler, but an extra scrap of color leached out. “You will show her fitting respect,” she said hoarsely, clutching the knotted scarf with both hands as though trying to squeeze the black wig tighter onto her head. “Come, Bayle. I want to make sure my things are stowed properly.”

Domon hesitated as she turned and hurried away into the crowd without looking back, and Mat watched him warily. He had vague memories of a flight on Domon’s rivership, once, but vague was the best he could say of them. Thom was friendly with Domon, a point in the Illianer’s favor, yet he was Egeanin’s man to the knife, ready to back her on anything down to disliking Juilin, and Mat trusted him no further than he did her. Which was to say, not very far. Egeanin and Domon had their own goals, and whether Mat Cauthon kept a whole hide did not factor in them. He doubted that the man really trusted him, for that matter, but then, neither of them had much choice at the moment.

“Fortune prick me,” Domon muttered, scratching the bristles growing
above his left ear, “whatever you do be up to, you may be in over your head. I think she do be tougher than you do suspect.”

“Egeanin?” Mat said incredulously. He looked around quickly to see whether anyone in the alley had heard his slip. A few glanced at him and Domon as they brushed by, but nobody glanced twice. Luca was not the only one eager to be gone from a city where the flow of patrons for the show had dried up and night lightning setting the harbor on fire was a fresh memory. They might all have fled that first night, leaving Mat nowhere to hide, except for Luca arguing them out of it. That promised gold had made Luca very persuasive. “I know she’s tougher than old boots, Domon, but old boots don’t count with me. This isn’t a bloody ship, and I’m not letting her take charge and ruin everything.”

Domon grimaced as if Mat were goose-brained. “The girl, man. Do you believe you could be so calm if you did be carried off in the night? Whatever you be playing at, with that wild talk of her being your wife, have a care or she may shave your head at the shoulders.”

“I was just cutting the fool,” Mat muttered. “How many times do I have to say it? I was unnerved for a minute.” Oh, he had been that. Learning who Tuon was, while he was wrestling with her, would have unnerved a bloody Trolloc.

Domon grunted in disbelief. Well, it was hardly the best story Mat had ever come up with. Except for Domon, everyone who had heard him babbling seemed to accept the tale, though. Mat thought they had, anyway. Egeanin might get a knot in her tongue at the very thought of Tuon, but she would have said plenty if she believed he had been serious. Likely she would have put her knife in him.

Peering in the direction Egeanin had gone, the Illianer shook his head. “Try to keep a grip on your tongue from now on. Eg— . . . Leilwin . . . do near have a fit whenever she do think about what you did say. I’ve heard her muttering under her breath, and you can wager the girl herself does take it no lighter. You ‘cut the fool’ with her, and you may get us all shortened.” He slid a finger across his throat expressively and gave a curt nod before pushing through the crowd after Egeanin.

Watching him go, Mat shook his own head. Tuon, tough? True, she was the Daughter of the Nine Moons and all of that, and she had been able to get under his skin with a look back in the Tarasin Palace, when he thought she was just another Seanchan noblewoman with her nose in the air, but that was just because she kept turning up where he did not expect. No more than
that. Tough? She looked like a doll made of black porcelain. How tough could she be?

It was all you could do to keep her from breaking your nose and maybe more,
he reminded himself.

He had been careful not to repeat what Domon called “wild talk,” but the truth of it was, he
was
going to marry Tuon. The thought made him sigh. He knew it as sure as prophecy, which it was, in a way. He could not imagine how such a marriage could come about; it seemed impossible, on the face of it, and he would not weep if that proved to be so. But he knew it would not. Why did he always find himself bloody lumbered with bloody women who pulled knives on him or tried to kick his head off? It was not fair.

He intended to go straight to the wagon where Tuon and Selucia were being kept, with Setalle Anan to watch—the innkeeper could make a stone seem soft; a pampered noblewoman and a lady’s maid would give her no trouble, especially with a Redarm on duty outside. At least, they had not so far, or he would have heard—but he found his feet wandering, taking him along the winding streets that ran through the show. Bustle filled all of them, wide and narrow alike. Men rushed by leading horses that frisked and shied, too long without exercise. Other people were taking down tents and packing the storage wagons, or hauling cloth-wrapped bundles and brass-bound chests and casks and canisters of every size out of the house-like wagons that had been standing here for months, partially unloading so everything could be repacked for travel even while the teams were being harnessed. The din was constant: horses whickered, women shouted for children, children cried over lost toys or yelled for the pure pleasure of noise, men bellowed to know who had been at their harness or who had borrowed some tool. A troupe of acrobats, slender but muscular women who worked on ropes dangling from tall poles, had surrounded one of the horse handlers, all of them waving their arms and giving voice at the top of their lungs and nobody listening. Mat paused a moment trying to figure out what they were arguing over, but eventually he decided they were not sure themselves. Two fighting coatless men rolled on the ground, watched closely by the likely cause, a willowy hot-eyed seamstress named Jameine, but Petra appeared and pulled them apart before Mat could even get a bet down.