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

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 103

Squaring his shoulders, and trying not to lean so obviously on his staff, Mat bristled. Ready with a quip? Come to think on it, the sun-dark man had a tongue like a rasp. And his eye for horses was not all that fine, either. “Will there be any questions if my friend here beds down with my men?” Mat asked roughly. “There shouldn’t be. There’s room for one more with my fellows.” Room for more than one, truth be told. Eight men had died so far, for following him to Ebou Dar.

“None from me, my Lord,” Surlivan said, though he eyed the scrawny man at Mat’s side and pursed his lips judiciously. Noal’s coat appeared of good quality, though, at least in the dim light, and he did have his lace, and in a better state than Mat’s. Perhaps that tipped the balance. “And she doesn’t need to know everything, so none from her, either.”

Mat scowled, but before intemperate words could put himself and Noal in the soup kettle, three armored Seanchan galloped up to the gate, and Surlivan turned to face them.

“You and your lady wife live in the Queen’s Palace?” Noal inquired, starting toward the gate.

Mat pulled him back. “Wait on them,” he said, nodding toward the Seanchan. His lady wife? Bloody women! Bloody dice in his bloody head!

“I have dispatches for the High Lady Suroth,” one of the Seanchan announced, slapping a leather satchel hanging from one armored shoulder. Her helmet bore a single thin plume, marking her a low-ranking officer, yet her horse was a tall dun gelding with a look of speed. The other two animals were sturdy enough, but there was nothing to be said for them beyond that.

“Enter with the blessings of the Light,” Surlivan said, bowing slightly.

The Seanchan woman’s bow from her saddle was a mirror of his. “The blessings of the Light be on you also,” she drawled, and the three of them clattered into the stableyard.

“It is very strange,” Surlivan mused, peering after the three. “They always ask permission of us, not them.” He flicked his rod toward the Seanchan guards on the other side of the gates. They had not stirred an inch from their rigid stance, or even glanced at the arrivals that Mat had noticed.

“And what would they do if you said they couldn’t go in?” Noal asked quietly, easing the bundle on his back.

Surlivan spun on his heel. “It is enough that I have given oath to my Queen,” he said in an expressionless voice, “and she has given hers . . . where she has given it. Give your friend a bed, my Lord. And warn him, there are things better left unsaid in Ebou Dar, questions better left unasked.”

Noal looked befuddled and began protesting that he was simply curious, but Mat exchanged further benisons and courtesies with the Altaran officer — as quickly as he could, to be sure — and hustled his newfound acquaintance through the gates, explaining about Listeners in a low voice. The man might have saved his hide from the gholam, but that did not mean he would let the fellow hand it over to the Seanchan. They had people called Seekers, too, and from the little he had heard — even people who spoke freely about the Deathwatch Guard locked their teeth when it came to the Seekers — from the little he had heard, Seekers made Whitecloak Questioners look like boys tormenting flies, nasty but hardly anything to worry a man.

“I see,” the old man said slowly. “I hadn’t known that.” He sounded irritated with himself. “You must spend a good deal of time with the Seanchan. Do you know the High Lady Suroth as well, then? I must say, I had no idea you had such high connections.”

“I spend time with soldiers in taverns, when I can,” Mat replied sourly. When Tylin let him. Light, he might as well be married! “Suroth doesn’t know I’m alive.” And he devoutly hoped it remained that way.

The three Seanchan were already out of sight, their horses being led into the stables, but several dozen sul’dam were giving damane their evening exercise, walking them in a big circle around the stone-paved yard. Nearly half the gray-clad damane were dark-skinned women, lacking the jewelry they had worn as Windfinders. There were more like them in the Palace and elsewhere; the Seanchan had had a rich harvest from Sea Folk vessels that had failed to escape. Most wore sullen resignation or stony faces, but seven or eight stared ahead of them, lost and confused, disbelieving still. Each of those had a Seanchan-born damane at her side, holding her hand or with an arm around her, smiling and whispering to her under the approving eyes of the women who wore the bracelets attached to their silvery collars. A few of those dazed women clutched the damane walking with them as if holding to lifelines. It would have been enough to make Mat shiver, if his damp clothes had not already been doing the job.

He tried to hurry Noal across the yard, but the circle brought a damane who was neither Seanchan nor Atha’an Miere near him, linked to a plump, graying sul’dam, an olive-skinned woman who might have passed for Altaran and someone’s mother. A stern mother with a possibly fractious child, from the way she regarded her charge. Teslyn Baradon had fleshed out after a month and a half in Seanchan captivity, yet her ageless face still looked as if she ate briars three meals a day. On the other hand, she walked placidly on her leash and obeyed the sul’dam’s murmured directions without hesitation, pausing to bow very deeply to him and Noal. For an instant, though, her dark eyes flashed hatred at him before she and the sul’dam continued their circuit of the stable-yard. Placidly, obediently. He had seen damane upended and switched till they howled in this same stableyard for making any sort of fuss, Teslyn among them. She had done him no good turns, and maybe a few bad, but he would not have wished this on her.

“Better than being dead, I suppose,” he muttered, moving on. Teslyn was a hard woman, likely plotting every moment how to escape, yet hardness only took you so far. The Mistress of the Ships and her Master of the Blades had died on the stake without ever screaming, but it had not saved them.

“Do you believe that?” Noal asked absently, fumbling awkwardly with his bundle again. His broken hands had handled that knife well enough, but they seemed clumsy at everything else.

Mat frowned at him. No; he was not sure he believed it. Those silver a’dam seemed too much like the invisible collar Tylin had on him. Then again, Tylin could tickle him under the chin the rest of his life if it kept him off the stake. Light, he wished those bloody dice in his head would just stop and get it over with! No, that was a lie. Since he had finally realized what they meant, he had neve