Winter's Heart

Seanchan galloped up to the gate, and Surlivan turned to face them.

'You and your lady wife live in the Queen's Palace?' Noal enquired, 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 never wanted the dice to stop.

The room Chel Vanin and the surviving Redarms shared lay not far from the stables, a long white-plastered chamber with a low ceiling and too many beds for those who remained alive. Vanin, a balding suety heap, was lying on one in his shirtsleeves, an open book propped on his chest. Mat was surprised the man could read. Spitting through a gap in his teeth, Vanin eyed Mat's mud-smeared clothes. 'You been fighting again?' he asked. 'She won't like that, I reckon.' He did not rise. With a few startling exceptions, Vanin considered himself as good as any lord or lady.

'Trouble, Lord Mat?' Harnan growled, leaping to his feet. He was a solid man, physically and by temperament, but his heavy jaw clenched, twisting the hawk crudely tattooed on his cheek. 'Begging your pardon, but you're in no condition for it. Tell us what he looks like, and we'll sort him out for you.'

The last three gathered behind him with eager expressions, two grabbing for their coats while still tucking in shirttails. Metwyn, a boyish-appearing Cairhienin who was ten years older than Mat, instead picked up his sword from where it was propped at the foot of his bed and eased a little of the blade out of the scabbard to check the edge. He was the best of them with a sword, very good indeed, though Gorderan came close for all he looked a blacksmith. Gorderan was not nearly as slow as his thick shoulders made him appear. A dozen Redarms had followed Mat Cauthon to Ebou Dar, eight of those were dead, and the rest were stuck here in the Palace where they could not pinch the maids, get into a fight over dice, and drink till they fell on their faces, as they could have staying at an inn and knowing the innkeeper would see them carried up to their beds, though maybe with their purses a little lighter than they had been.

'Noal here can tell you what happened better than I can,' Mat replied, pushing his hat back on his head. 'He'll be bedding in here with you. He saved my life tonight.'

That brought exclamations of shock, and cries of approbation for Noal, not to mention slaps on the back that almost toppled the old fellow. Vanin went so far as to mark his place in the book with a fat finger and sit up on the side of his thin mattress.

Setting his bundle down on a vacant bed, Noal told the tale with elaborate gestures, playing down his own role and even making himself a bit of a buffoon, slipping in the mud and gaping at the gholam while Mat fought like a champion. The man was a natural storyteller, as good as a gleeman for making you see what he described. Harnan and the Redarms laughed genially, knowing what he was about, not stealing their captain's thunder, and approving of it, but laughter died when he came to Mat's attacker slipping away through a tiny hole in a wall. He made you see that, too. Vanin put down his book and spat through his teeth again. The gholam had left Vanin and Harnan half-dead in the Rahad. Half-dead because it was after other prey.

'The thing wants me for some reason, it seems,' Mat said lightly when the old man finished and sank onto the bed with his belongings, seemingly exhausted. 'It probably played at dice with me some time I don't recall. None of you has to worry, as long as you don't get between it and me.' He grinned, trying to make it all a joke, but no one so much as smiled. 'In any case, I'll parcel out gold to you in the morning. You'll book passage on the first ship leaving for Illian, and take Olver with you. Thom and Juilin, too, if they'll go.' He imagined the thief-catcher would, anyway. 'And Nerim and Lopin, of course.' He had gotten used to having a pair of serving men look after him,