Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9)

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 102

“I don’t think I have ever seen the like,” someone said quietly beside him, and Mat gave a start at realizing he was no longer alone. The speaker was a stoop-shouldered, white-haired old man with a large hooked nose planted in the middle of a sad face and a bundle slung on his back. He was sliding a very long dagger into a sheath beneath his coat.

“I have,” Mat said hollowly. “In Shadar Logoth.” Sometimes bits of his own memory he thought lost floated up out of no where, and that one had just surfaced, watching the gholam. It was one memory he wished had remained lost.

“Not many survive a visit there,” the old man said, peering at him. His weathered face looked familiar, somehow, but Mat could not place him. “Whatever took you to Shadar Logoth?”

“Where are your friends?” Mat said. “The people you were shouting to?” The alleyway held only the two of them. The sounds from the street continued unabated, and undisturbed by any cries about anyone getting away if they did not hurry.

The old man shrugged. “I’m not certain anyone out there understood what I was shouting. It’s hard enough understanding them. Anyway, I thought it might scare off the fellow. Seeing that, though . . .” Gesturing toward the hole in the wall, he laughed mirthlessly, showing gaps in his teeth. “I think maybe you and I both have the Dark One’s own luck.”

Mat grimaced. He had heard that too often about himself, and he did not like it. Mainly because he was not sure it was not true. “Maybe we do,” he muttered. “Forgive me; I should introduce myself to the man who saved my neck. I’m Mat Cauthon. Are you new-come to Ebou Dar?” That bundle strapped to the fellow’s back gave him the look of a man on the move. “You will have a hard time finding a place to sleep.” He took care with the gnarled hand the other man put in his. It was all knobs, as if every bone had been broken at the same time and had healed badly. It had a strong grip, though.

“I am Noal Charin, Mat Cauthon. No, I have been here some time. But my pallet in the attic of The Golden Ducks is now occupied by a fat Illianer oil merchant who was rousted from his room this morning in favor of a Seanchan officer. I thought I’d find somewhere back in this alley for tonight.” Rubbing the side of his big nose with a crooked, knobby finger, he chuckled as if sleeping in an alley were of no moment. “It will not be the first time I’ve slept rough, even in a city.”

“I think I can do better for you than that,” Mat told him, but the rest of what he had been going to say died on his tongue. The dice were still spinning in his head, he realized. He had managed to forget them with the gholam trying to kill him, but they were still bouncing, still waiting to land. If they were warning of something worse than the gholam, he did not want to know. Only, he would. There was no doubt of that. He would, when it was too late.

Chapter 17

Pink Ribbons

Cold winds gusted through the Mol Hara, lifting Mat’s cloak and threatening to freeze the mud caking his clothing as he and Noal hurried out of the alley. The sun sat on the rooftops, half-hidden, and the shadows stretched long. With one hand for his staff and the other gripping the broken cord of the foxhead, stuffed into a coat pocket where he could snatch it out if need be, he had to let his cloak go where it would. He ached from head to foot, the dice rattled warning inside his skull, and he hardly noticed either thing. He was too busy trying to watch every direction at once, and wondering just how small a hole that thing could get through. He found himself uneasily eyeing cracks between the square’s paving stones. Though it hardly seemed likely the thing would come at him in the open.

A hum carried from surrounding streets, but here only a slat-ribbed dog moved, running past the fountained statue of long-dead Queen Nariene. Some said her uplifted hand pointed to the ocean’s bounty that had enriched Ebou Dar, and some that it pointed in warning of dangers. Others said her successor had wanted to draw attention to the fact that only one of the statue’s breasts was uncovered, proclaiming that Nariene had only been of middling honesty.

In other days the Mol Hara would have been full of strolling lovers and lingering street vendors and hopeful beggars at this hour even in winter, but beggars found themselves snatched off the streets and put to work, since the Seanchan came, and the rest stayed away even in daylight. The reason was the Tarasin Palace, that great mound of white domes and marble spires and wrought-iron balconies, the residence of Tylin Quintara Mitsobar, by the Grace of the Light, Queen of Altara — or as much of Altara as lay within a few days’ ride of Ebou Dar — Mistress of the Four Winds and Guardian of the Sea of Storms. And, perhaps more important, the residence of the High Lady Suroth Sabelle Meldarath, commanding the Forerunners for the Empress of the Seanchan, might she live forever. A position of much greater eminence in Ebou Dar, at the moment. Tylin’s green-booted guards stood at every entrance in their baggy white trousers and gilded breastplates worn over green coats, and so did men and women in those insectile helmets with armor striped in blue-and-yellow or green-and-white or any other combination you might happen to think of. The Queen of Altara required security and silence for her rest. Or rather, Suroth said she did, and what Suroth said Tylin wanted, Tylin soon decided that she did indeed want.

After a moment’s consideration, Mat led Noal to one of the stableyard gates. There was more chance of getting a stranger in there than if he used the grand marble stairs that led down into the square. Not to mention a much better chance of getting all the mud off him before he had to face Tylin. She had made her displeasure markedly known the last time he came back disheveled, after a tavern brawl.

A handful of Ebou Dari guards stood to one side of the open gates with halberds, and the same number of Seanchan on the other with tasseled spears, all as stiff as Nariene’s statue.

“The Light’s blessing on all here,” Mat murmured politely to the Ebou Dari guards. It was always best to be polite to Ebou Dari until you were sure of them. Afterwards, too, for that matter. Even so, they were more . . . flexible . . . than the Seanchan.

“And on you, my Lord,” their stocky officer replied, ambling forward, and Mat recognized him, Surlivan Sarat, a good fellow, always ready with a quip and possessing a fine eye for horses. Shaking his head, Surlivan tapped the side of his pointed helmet with the thin, gilded rod of his office. “Have you been in another fight, my Lord? She will go up like a waterspout,