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

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 108

The newly arrived ships disgorged people and animals and cargo for days on end, enough that the city’s massive walls would have burst from the inside had they all stayed, but they flowed through the city and out into the countryside with their families and their crafts and their livestock, prepared to put down roots. Soldiers passed through in thousands, too, well-ordered infantry and cavalry with the flair of veterans, moving north in bright-colored armor, and east across the river. Mat gave up trying to count them. Sometimes he saw strange creatures, though most of those were unloaded above the city to avoid the streets. Torm like three-eyed bronze-scaled cats the size of horses, sending most real horses around them into a frenzy just by their presence, and corlm, like hairy wingless birds as tall as a man, tall ears twitching constantly and long beaks seeming to yearn for flesh to rend, and huge s’redit with their long noses and longer tusks. Raken and the larger to’raken flew from their landing site below the Rahad, huge lizards spreading wings like bats and carrying men on their backs. The names were easy enough to pick up; any Seanchan soldier was eager to discuss the necessity of scouts on raken and the abilities of corlm at tracking, whether s’redit were useful for more than moving heavy loads and torm too intelligent to trust. He learned a great deal of interest from men who wanted what most soldiers did, a drink and a woman and a bit of a gamble, not necessarily in any given order. Those soldiers were indeed veterans. Seanchan was an Empire larger than all the nations between the Aryth Ocean and the Spine of the World, all under one Empress, but with a history of almost constant rebellions and revolts that kept its soldiers’ skills keen. The farmers would be harder to dig out.

Not all the soldiers left, of course. A strong garrison remained, not only Seanchan, but steel-veiled Taraboner lancers and Amadician pikemen with their breastplates painted to resemble Seanchan armor. And Altarans, too, besides Tylin’s House armsmen. According to the Seanchan, the Altarans from inland, with red slashes crisscrossing their breastplates, were Tylin’s as much as the fellows guarding the Tarasin Palace, which, strangely, did not seem to best please her. It did not please the fellows from inland very much, either. They and the men in Mitsobar’s green-and-white eyed each other like strange tomcats in a small room. There was plenty of glaring going on, Taraboners at Amadicians, Amadicians at Altarans, and the other way round, well-aged, longstanding animosities bubbling to the surface, but no one went further than shaken fists and a few curses. Five hundred men of the Deathwatch Guards had come off the ships and remained in Ebou Dar for some reason. The ordinary sort of crime expected in any large city had fallen off dramatically under the Seanchan, but the Guards took to patrolling the streets as if they expected cutpurses, bullyboys and maybe fully armed bands of brigands to spring out of the pavement. The Altarans and the Amadicians and the Taraboners kept their tempers reined in. No one but a fool argued with the Deathwatch Guards, not more than once. And another contingent of the Guards had taken up residence in the city, too, a hundred Ogier, of all things, in the red-and-black. Sometimes they patrolled with the others, and sometimes they wandered about with their long-handled axes on their shoulders. They were not at all like Mat’s friend Loial. Oh, they had the same wide noses and tufted ears and long eyebrows that drooped to their cheeks beside eyes the size of teacups, but the Gardeners looked at a man as though wondering whether he needed pruning of a few limbs. Nobody at all was fool enough to argue even once with the Gardeners.

Seanchan flowed out from Ebou Dar, and news flowed in. Even when they had to sleep in the attic, merchants preened in the common rooms of inns, smoking their pipes and telling what they knew that no one else did. So long as the telling did not affect their profits. The merchants’ guards cared little for profits they would not share and told everything, some of it true. Seamen spread tales for anyone who would buy a mug of ale, or better, hot spiced wine, and when they had drunk enough, they talked even more, of ports they had visited, and events they had witnessed, and likely dreams they had had after the last time their heads were full of fumes. Still, it was clear the world outside Ebou Dar was seething like the Sea of Storms. Tales of Aiel looting and burning came from everywhere, and armies were on the move other than the Seanchan, armies in Tear and Murandy, in Arad Doman and Andor, in Amadicia, which was not yet entirely under Seanchan control, and dozens of armed gatherings too small to be called armies in the heartland of Altara itself. Except for the men in Altara and Amadicia, no one really seemed sure who intended to fight whom, and there was some doubt about Altara. Altarans had a way of taking advantage of troubles to try paying off grievances against their neighbors.

The news that shook the city most, though, was of Rand. Mat tried his best not to think of him, or Perrin, but avoiding those odd swirls of color in his head was difficult when the Dragon Reborn was on everyone’s lips. The Dragon Reborn was dead, some claimed, murdered by Aes Sedai, by the whole White Tower descending on him at once in Cairhien, or maybe it was in Illian, or Tear. No, they had kidnapped him, and he was held prisoner in the White Tower. No, he had gone to the White Tower on his own and sworn fealty to the Amyrlin Seat. The last gained great credence because a number of men claimed to have seen a proclamation, signed by Elaida herself, that announced as much. Mat had his doubts, about Rand being dead or swearing fealty, at least. For some odd reason, he felt sure he would know if Rand died, and as for the other, he did not believe the man would put himself within a hundred miles of the White Tower voluntarily. Dragon Reborn or no Dragon Reborn, he had to have more sense than that.

That news — all the versions of it — stirred the Seanchan the way a stick stirs an antheap. High-ranking officers strode the halls of the Tarasin Palace at every hour of the day and night, their odd, plumed helmets beneath their arms, their boots ringing on the floor tiles, their faces set. Couriers raced away from Ebou Dar, on horses and on to’raken. Sul’dam and damane began patrolling the streets instead of just standing guard at the gates, once more hunting for women who could channel. Mat kept out of the officers’ way and nodded politely to the sul’dam when he passed one in the streets. Whatever Rand’s situation was, he could do nothing about it in Ebou Dar. First, he had to get out of the city.

The morning after the gholam tried to kill him, Mat burned every last one of the long pink ribbons, the whole great wad of them, in the fireplace as soon as Tylin left her apartments. He also burned a pink coat she had had made for him, two pairs of pink breeches and a pink cloak. A stench of burning wool and silk filled the rooms, and he opened some windows to let it out, but he did not really care. He felt a great relief dressing himself in bright blue breeches and embroidered green coat, and a blue cloak with painfully ornate working. Even all the lace did not bother him. At least none of it was pink. He never wanted to see anything that pa