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

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 163

Mat understood, in a manner of speaking. A man always tried to make whoever was commanding the troops against him believe that he was doing something other than what he was, that he was going where he had no intention of going, and the enemy tried to do the same to him, if the enemy was any good at the craft. Sometimes both sides could get so confused that very strange things happened. Tragedies, sometimes. Cities burned that no one had any interest in burning, except that the burners believed what was untrue, and thousands died. Crops destroyed for the same reason, and tens of thousands died in the famine that followed.

“So I won’t crack my teeth about this a’dam for men,” he said. “I suppose somebody has thought to tell. . . him?” Colors flashed. Maybe he could just ignore them, or grow used to them. They were gone as fast as they came, and they did not hurt. He just did not like things he could not understand. Especially when they might have to do with the Power in some way. The silver foxhead under his shirt might protect him against the Power, but that protection had as many holes as his own memories.

“We have not exactly been in regular communication,” Thom said dryly, waggling his eyebrows. “I suppose Elayne and Nynaeve have found some way to let him know, if they think it important.”

“Why should they?” Juilin said, bending to tug off a boot with a grunt. “The thing is at the bottom of the sea.” Scowling, he hurled the boot at the bundled dresses in the corner. “Are you going to let us get any sleep tonight, Mat? I don’t think we’ll have any tomorrow night, and I like to sleep at least every other night.”

That night, Mat chose to sleep in Tylin’s bed. Not for old times’ sake. That thought made him laugh, though his laughter had too much of the sound of a whimper to be very funny. It was just that a good feather mattress and goose-down pillows were preferable to a hayloft when a man did not know when his next decent night’s sleep would come.

The trouble was that he could not sleep. He lay there in the dark with an arm behind his head and the medallion’s leather cord looped through itself on his wrist, ready to hand in case the gholam slid through the crack under the door, but it was not the gholam that kept him awake. He could not stop going over the plan in his head. It was a good plan, and simple; as simple as it could be, in the circumstances. Only, no battle ever went according to plan, even the best. Great captains earned their reputation not just for laying brilliant plans, but for still being able to find victory after those plans began to fall apart. So when first light illumined the windows, he was still lying there, rolling the medallion across the back of his fingers and trying to think of what was going to go wrong.

Chapter 30

Cold, Fat Raindrops

The day dawned cold, with gray clouds that obscured the rising sun and winds off the Sea of Storms that rattled loose panes of glass in the window casements. In stories, not the sort of day for grand rescues and escapes. It was a day for murders. Not a pleasant thought when you were hoping to live past another dawn. But the plan was simple. Now that he had a Seanchan Blood to use, nothing could possibly go wrong. Mat tried very hard to convince himself of that.

Lopin brought him breakfast, bread and ham and some hard yellow cheese, while he dressed. Nerim was folding a few last pieces of clothing that were to go to the inn, including some of the shirts Tylin had had made. They were good shirts, after all, and Nerim claimed he could do something about the lace, though as usual he made it sound as if he was offering to sew a shroud. The lugubrious, gray-haired little fellow was handy with a needle, as Mat knew well. He had sewn up enough of Mat’s wounds.

“Nerim and I will take Olver out by the refuse gate at the rear of the Palace,” Lopin recited with exaggerated patience, his hands clasped at his waist. Servants in a palace seldom missed meals, and his dark Tairen coat fit more tightly than ever over his round belly. For that matter, the bottom of the coat did not appear to flare as much as it once had. “There is never anyone there except the guards until the refuse cart leaves in the afternoon, and they are accustomed to us taking my Lord’s things out that way, so they won’t remark us. At The Wandering Woman, we will secure my Lord’s gold and the rest of my Lord’s garments, and Metwyn, Fergin and Gorderan will meet us with the horses. We and the Redarms will then take young Olver through the Dal Eira Gate at mid-afternoon. I have the lottery tokens for the horses, including both pack animals, in my pocket, my Lord. There is an abandoned stable on the Great North Road, about a mile north of the Circuit of Heaven, where we will wait until we see my Lord. I trust I have my Lord’s instructions correctly?”

Mat swallowed the last of the cheese and dusted his hands. “You think I’m making you go over it too often?” he said, shrugging into his coat. A plain dark green coat. A man wanted to be plain while about business like today’s. “I want to make sure you have it by heart. Remember, if you don’t see me before sunrise tomorrow, you keep moving until you find Talmanes and the Band.” The alarm would go up with the morning inspection of the kennels, and if he was not out of the city before that, he expected to learn whether his luck ran to stopping a headsman’s axe. He had been told that he was fated to die and live again — a prophecy, or near enough one — but he was pretty sure that had already happened.

“Of course, my Lord,” Lopin said blandly. “It will be as my Lord commands.”

“Certainly, my Lord,” Nerim murmured, funereal as ever. “My Lord commands, and we obey.”

Mat suspected they were lying, but two or three days waiting would not hurt them, and by that time, they would have to see he was not coming. Metwyn and the other two soldiers would convince them, if need be. Those three might follow Mat Cauthon, but they were not fool enough to stretch their necks on the chopping block if his head had already fallen. For some reason, he was not as sure of Lopin and Nerim.

Olver was not as upset over leaving Riselle as Mat had feared he would be. He brought the subject up while he was helping the boy bundle his belongings to be carried over to the inn. All of Olver’s things were laid out neatly on the narrow bed in what had been the sulking room, a small sitting room, when the apartments had been Mat’s.

“She is getting married, Mat,” Olver said patiently, as though explaining to someone who didn’t see the obvious. Popping open a narrow little carved box Riselle had given him, just long enough to make sure his redhawk’s feather was safe, he snapped it shut and tucked it into the leather scrip he would be carrying on his shoulder. He was as careful of the feather as he had been of the purse holding twenty gold crowns and a fistful of silver. “I don’t think her husband would like her to keep teaching me to read. I would not, if