Winter's Heart

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: Another Plan

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 midafternoon. 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 I were her husband.'

'Oh,' Mat said. Riselle had worked quickly once she made her mind up. Her marriage to Banner-General Yamada had been announced publicly yesterday and was to take place tomorrow, though by custom there was usually a wait of months between. Yamada might be a good general—Mat did not know—but he had never stood a chance against Riselle and that marvelous bosom. Today they were looking at a vineyard in the Rhiannon Hills that the groom was buying for her wedding gift. 'I just thought you might want to—I don't know—take her with us, or something.'

'I'm not a child, Mat,' Olver said dryly. Folding the linen cloth back around his striped turtle shell, he added that to the scrip. 'You will play Snakes and Foxes with me, won't you? Riselle enjoys playing, and you never have time any more.' Despite the clothes Mat was bundling up in a cloak that would go into a pack hamper, the boy had a spare pair of breeches and some clean shirts and stockings in the scrip, too. And the game of Snakes and Foxes his dead father had made for him. You were less likely to lose what you kept on your person, and Olver had already lost more in his ten years than most people did in a lifetime. But he still believed you could win at Snakes and Foxes without breaking the rules, too.

'I will,' Mat promised. He would if he managed to make it out of the city. He was certainly breaking enough rules to deserve to win. 'You just take care of Wind till I get there.' Olver grinned widely, and for him, that was very wide indeed. The boy loved that leggy gray gelding almost as much as he did Snakes and Foxes.

Unfortunately, Beslan was another who seemed to think you could win at Snakes and Foxes.

'Tonight,' he growled, stalking up and down in front of the fireplace in Tylin's sitting room. The slender man's eyes were cold enough to take away the warmth of the blaze, and his hands were clasped behind his back as if to keep them from the hilt of his narrow-bladed sword. The jeweled cylinder-clock on the wave-carved marble mantel chimed four times for the second hour of the morning. 'With a few days' warning, I could have laid on something magnificent!'

'I don't want anything magnificent,' Mat told him. He did not want anything from the man, but by chance Beslan had seen Thom slipping into the stableyard of The Wandering Woman a little earlier. Thom had gone to keep Joline amused until Egeanin brought her sul'dam that evening, to settle her nerves and jolly her along with courtly manners, but there could have been any number of reasons for him to visit the inn. Well, maybe not that many, with it full of Seanchan, but several, surely. Only, Beslan had leaped to the reason like a duck leaping on a beetle, and he refused to be left out. 'It will be enough if a few of your friends fire some of the stores the Seanchan have stockpiled on the Bay Road. After midnight, mind, as near as they can reckon it; better an hour later than any time before.' With any luck, he would be out of the city before midnight. 'That will draw their attention away south, and you know losing stores will hurt them.'

'I said I would do it,' Beslan said sourly, 'but you can't say setting fires is exactly a grand gesture.'

Sitting back, Mat rested his hands on the bamboo-carved arms of the chair and frowned. He wanted to rest his hands, anyway, but his signet ring made a metallic clicking on the gilded wood as he tapped his fingers. 'Beslan, you will be seen at an inn when those fires are set, won't you?' The other man grimaced. 'Beslan?'

Beslan flung up his hands. 'I know; I know. I mustn't endanger Mother. I'll be seen. By midnight, I will be as drunk as an innkeeper's husband! You can wager I'll be seen! It just isn't very heroic, Mat. I'm at war with the Seanchan whether or not Mother is.'

Mat tried not to sigh. He almost succeeded.

There was no way to hide the three Redarms moving horses out of the stables, of course. Twice that morning he noticed serving women handing coins to others, and both times the woman doing the handing over glared when she saw him. Even with Vanin and Harnan apparently still solidly ensconced in the long barracks room near the stables, the Palace knew that Mat Cauthon was leaving soon, and wagers were being paid already. He just