Winter's Heart

contemptuous of seals; anyone with a turnip and a knife could copy those, he said. Writing another man's hand so the man himself would think he had written it was an art. But none of them were able to find a copy of orders with the necessary seal to copy. Like a'dam, the Seanchan did not leave orders lying about. Juilin seemed to making no progress with the a'dam, either. Two steps forward, and a stone wall. And six days were gone, just like that. Four left. To Mat, it felt as if six years had passed since Tylin's departure, and four hours remained till she came back.

On the seventh day, Thom stopped Mat in the hallway as soon as he came in from his ride. Smiling as though making idle conversation, the one-time gleeman pitched his voice low. The servants hurrying past could not have heard more than a murmur. 'According to Noal, the gholam killed again last night. The Seekers have been ordered to find the killer if they have to stop eating or sleeping to do it, though I can't find out who gave the order. Even the fact that they have been ordered to do anything seems to be a secret. They are practically readying the rack and heating their irons already, though.'

No matter that Thom's voice was low, Mat looked around to see whether anyone was listening. The only person in sight was a stout gray-haired man named Narvin, in livery but neither hurrying nor carrying anything. Servants as high as Narvin did not carry or hurry. He blinked at the sight of Mat trying to look every direction at once, and frowned. Mat wanted to snarl, but instead he grinned as disarmingly as he knew how, and Narvin went off scowling. Mat was sure the fellow had been responsible for the first attempt to remove Pips from the stable.

'Noal told you about the Seekers?' he whispered incredulously as soon as Narvin was far enough away.

Thom waved a lean hand disrnissively. 'Of course not. Just about the killing. Though he does seem to hear whispers, and know what they mean. A rare talent, that. I wonder whether he really has been to Shara,' he mused. 'He said he…' Thom cleared his throat under Mat's glare. 'Well, later for that. I do have other resources than the much-lamented Riselle. Several of them are Listeners. Listeners really do seem to hear everything.'

'You've been talking to Listeners?' Mat's voice squeaked like a rusty hinge. He thought his throat might have rusted solid!

'There's nothing to it, as long as they don't know you know,' Thom chuckled. 'Mat, with Seanchan you have to assume they are all Listeners. That way, you learn what you want to know without saying the wrong thing in the wrong ear.' He coughed and knuckled his mustache, not quite hiding a smile so self-deprecating it all but invited praise. 'I just happen to know two or three who really are. In any case, more information never hurts. You do want to be gone before Tylin returns, don't you? You seem to looking a little… forlorn… with her gone.'

Mat could only groan.

That night, the gholam struck again. Lopin and Nerim were bubbling over with the news before Mat had finished his breakfast fish. The whole city was in an uproar, they claimed. The latest victim, a woman, had been discovered at the mouth of an alley, and suddenly people were talking, putting together one killing with another. There was a madman on the loose, and the people were demanding more Seanchan patrols on the streets at night. Mat pushed his plate away, all hunger gone. More patrols. And if that were not bad enough, Suroth might come back early if she learned of this, bringing Tylin with her. At best, he could only count on two more days. He thought he might lose what he'd already eaten.

He spent the rest of the morning pacing—well, limping—up and down the carpet in Tylin's bedchamber, ignoring the pain in his leg while he tried to think of something, anything, that would let him carry out the impossible in two days. The pain really was less. He had given up the walking stick, pushing himself to regain strength. He thought he might manage two or three miles on foot without needing to rest the leg. Without resting it very much, anyway.

At midday, Juilin brought him the only really good news he had heard in an Age. It was not news, exactly. It was a cloth sack containing two dresses wrapped around the silver length of an a'dam.

Chapter 29: Another Plan

The beam-ceilinged basement of The Wandering Woman was large, yet it seemed as cramped as the room Thom and Juilin shared, though it held only five people. The oil lamp set on an upended barrel cast flickering shadows. Farther away, the basement was all shadow. The aisle between the shelves and the rough stone walls was barely wider than a barrel was tall, but that was not what made it seem crowded.

'I asked for your help, not a noose around my neck,' Joline said coldly. After near a week in Mistress Anan's care, eating Enid's cooking, the Aes Sedai no longer looked haggard. The frayed dress Mat had first seen on her was gone, replaced by high-necked fine blue wool with a touch of lace at her wrists and under her chin. In the wavering light, her face half shadowed, she looked furious, her eyes trying to bore holes through Mat's face. 'If anything went awry—anything!—I'd be helpless!'

He was having none of it. Offer to help out of the goodness of your heart—well, sort of—and see what it got you. He practically shook the a'dam under her nose. It wiggled in his hand like a long silver snake, glinting in the dim lamplight, the collar and bracelet both scraping across the stone floor, and Joline gathered her dark skirts and stepped back to avoid being touched. It might have been a viper from the way her mouth twisted. He wondered whether it would fit her; the collar seemed larger than her slim neck. 'Mistress Anan will take it off as soon as we get you outside the walls,' he growled. 'You trust her, don't you? She risked her head to hide you down here. I'm telling you, it is the only way!' Joline raised her chin stubbornly. Mistress Anan muttered angrily under her breath.

'She does not want to wear the thing,' Fen said in a flat voice behind Mat.

'If she doesn't want to wear it, then she doesn't wear it,' Blaeric said in an even flatter, at Fen's side.

Joline's dark-haired Warders were like peas in a pod for men so different. Fen, with his dark tilted eyes and a chin that could chip stone, was a touch shorter than Blaeric, and maybe a little heavier in the chest and shoulders, yet they could have worn each other's clothes without much difficulty. Where Fen's straight black hair hung almost to his shoulders, blue-eyed Blaeric's very short hair was slightly lighter in color. Blaeric was Shienaran, and he had shaved his topknot and was letting his hair grow in to avoid notice, but he did not like it. Fen, a Saldaean, seemed not to like much except for Joline. They both liked Joline a lot. The pair of them talked alike, thought alike, moved alike. They wore dingy shirts and workmen's plain woolen vests that hung down below their hips, yet anyone who took them for laborers, even in this poor light, was blind. By day, in the stables where Mistress Anan had them working… Light! They were looking at Mat as lions might look at a goat that had bared its teeth at them. He moved so he did not have to see the Warders even from the corner of his eye. The knives hidden about him in various places were small comfort, with them at his back.

'If you will not listen to him, Joline Maza, you will listen to me.' Planting her hands on her hips, Setalle rounded on the slender Aes Sedai, her hazel eyes glaring. 'I mean to see you back in the White Tower if I have to walk every step of the way pushing you! Perhaps along the way you will show me that you know what it means to be Aes Sedai. I'd settle for a glimpse of a grown woman. So far, all I have seen is a novice sniveling in her bed and throwing tantrums!'

Joline stared at her, those big brown eyes as wide as they would go, as if she could not believe her ears. Mat was not sure he believed his, either. Innkeepers did not leap down Aes Sedai's throats. Fen grunted, and Blaeric muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary.

'There's no need for you to go farther than beyond sight of the guards at the gates,' Mat told Setalle hastily, hoping to divert any explosion Joline might be considering. 'Keep the hood of your cloak pulled up…' Light, he had to get her one of those fancy cloaks! Well, if Juilin could steal an a'dam, he could steal a bloody cloak, too. '… and the guards will just see another sul'dam. You can be back here before daybreak, and no one the wiser. Unless you insist on wearing your marriage knife.' He laughed at his own joke, but she did not.

'Do you think I could remain anywhere women are turned into animals because they can channel?' she demanded, stalking across the floor till she stood toe-to-toe with him. 'Do you think I'd let my family stay?' If her eyes had glared at Joline, they blazed up at him. Frankly, he had never considered the question. Certainly he would like to see the damane freed, but why should it matter this much to her? Plainly, it did,