The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 167

“Aren't you about ready to sell those things?” Thom was settling his gleeman's cloak on his shoulders. It covered his leathercased harp and flute, but his bundle of clothes and blankets he slung on his back outside the patchcovered cloak.

“Not until I figure out how they work, Thom. Besides, think what fun it will be when I set them all off.”

The gleeman shuddered. “As long as you don't do it all at once, boy. As long as you don't throw them in the fireplace at supper. I'd not put it past you, the way you've been behaving with them. You're lucky the captain here did not throw us off the ship two days ago.”

“He wouldn't.” Mat laughed. “Not while that purse was in the offing. Eh, Derne?”

Derne was tossing the purse of gold in his hand. “I have not asked before this, but you've given me the gold, now, and you'll not take it back. What is this all about? All this flaming speed.”

“A wager, Derne.” Yawning, Mat picked up his quarterstaff, ready to go. “A wager.”

“A wager!” Derne stared at the heavy purse. The other just like it was locked in his money chest. “There must be a flaming kingdom riding on it!”

“More than that,” Mat said.

Rain bucketed down on the deck so hard that he could not see the gangplank except when lightning crackled above the city; the roar of the downpour barely let him hear himself think. He could see lights in windows up a street, though. There would be inns, up there. The captain had not come on deck to see them ashore, and none of the crew had stayed out in the rain, either. Mat and Thom made their way to the stone dock alone.

Mat cursed when his boots sank into the mud of the street, but there was nothing for it, so he kept on, striding along as fast as he could with his boots and the butt of his staff sticking at every step. The air smelled of fish, rank even with the rain. “We'll find an inn,” he said, loudly, so he could be heard, “and then I will go out looking.”

“In this weather?” Thom shouted back. Rain was rolling down his face, but he was more interested in keeping his instruments covered than his face.

“Comar could have left Caemlyn before us. If he had a good horse instead of the crowbaits we were riding, he could have set out downriver from Aringill maybe a full day ahead of us, and I don't know how much of that we caught up with that idiot Derne.”

“It was a quick passage,” Thom allowed. “Swift deserves its name.”

“Be that as it may, Thom, rain or no rain, I have to find him before he finds Egwene and Nynaeve, and Elayne.”

“A few more hours won't make much difference, boy. There are hundreds of inns in a city the size of Tear. There may be hundreds more outside the walls, some of them little places with no more than a dozen rooms to let, so tiny you could walk right by them and never know they were there.” The gleeman hitched the hood of his cloak up more, muttering to himself. “It will take weeks to search them all. But it will take Comar the same weeks. We can spend the night in out of the rain. You can wager whatever coin you have left that Comar won't be out in it.”

Mat shook his head. A tiny inn with a dozen rooms. Before he left Emond's Field, the biggest building he had ever seen was the Winespring Inn. He doubted if Bran al'Vere had any more than a dozen rooms to let. Egwene had lived with her parents and her sisters in the rooms at the front of the second floor. Burn me, sometimes I think we should never any of us have left Emond's Field. But Rand surely had had to, and Egwene would probably have died if she had not gone to Tar Valon. Now she might die because she did go. He did not think he could settle for the farm again; the cows and the sheep certainly would not play dice. But Perrin still had a chance to go home. Go home, Perrin, he found himself thinking. Go home while you still can. He gave himself a shake. Fool! Why would he want to? He thought of bed, but pushed it away. Not yet.

Lightning streaked across the sky, three jagged bolts together, casting a stark light over a narrow house that seemed to have bunches of herbs hanging in the windows, and a shop, shut up tight, but a potter's from the sign with its bowls and plates. Yawning, he hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and tried to pull his boots out of the clinging mud more quickly.

“I think I can forget about this part of the city, Thom,” he shouted. “All this mud, and that stink of fish. Can you see Nynaeve or Egwene — or Elayne! — choosing to stay here? Women like things neat and tidy, Thom, and smelling good.”

“May be, boy,” Thom muttered, then coughed. “You would be surprised what women will put up with. But it may be.”

Holding his cloak to keep the roll of fireworks covered, Mat lengthened his stride. “Come on, Thom. I want to find Comar or the girls tonight, one or the other.”

Thom limped after him, coughing now and again.

They strode through the wide gates in the city — unguarded, in the rain — and Mat was relieved to feel paving stones under his feet again. And not more than fifty paces up the street was an inn, the windows of the common room spilling light onto the street, music drifting out into the night. Even Thom covered that last fifty paces through the rain quickly, limp or no limp.

The White Crescent had a landlord whose girth made his long blue coat fit snugly below the waist as well as above, unlike those of most of the men in the lowbacked chairs at the tables. Mat thought the landlord's baggy breeches, tied at the ankle above low shoes, had to be big enough for two ordinary men to fit inside, one in each leg. The serving women wore dark, highnecked dresses and short white aprons. There was a fellow playing a hammered dulcimer between the two stone fireplaces. Thom eyed the fellow critically and shook his head.

The rotund innkeeper, Cavan Lopar by name, was more than glad to give them rooms. He frowned at their muddy boots, but silver from Mat's pocket — the gold was running low — and Thom's patchcovered cloak smoothed his fat forehead. When Thom said he would perform for a small fee some nights, Lopar's chins waggled with pleasure. Of a big man with a white streak in his beard, he knew nothing, nor of three women meeting the descriptions Mat gave. Mat left everything but his cloak and his quarterstaff in his room, barely looking to see that it had a bed — sleep was enticing, but he refused to let himself think of it — then wolfed down a spicy fish stew and rushed back out into the rain. He was surprise