When he challenged them, Edesina fiercely, shaking out the black hair that spilled down her back. “I am grateful to you for res?cuing me from the Seanchan, Master Cauthon, and I will show my gratitude, but there are limits. I am not your servant to be ordered about. There were no Seanchan in the village, and we kept our faces hidden. There was no need to send your . . . watchdogs . . . after us.” The look she shot at the three Seanchan women could have fried eggs. Edesina was over being nervous about anyone with a Seanchan accent. She wanted some of her own back, and thesul’dam were close to hand. Mat was counting on that fabled Aes Sedai self-control to keep matters short of violence. He hoped it was not already stretched too far to hold. Those old memories recalled Aes Sedai going up like an Illuminator’s wares.
Bethamin’s dark face showed no sign of alarm. She had finished shaking out her cloak and hanging it on a peg while Edesina was speaking, then smoothed her dress over her hips. Tonight, she wore faded green petticoats. She complained that the Ebou Dari gar?ment was indecent, and he supposed that he would have to find her something else now they were away from the coast, but she did fill out that very low narrow neckline nicely. She sounded too much like a mother for his taste, though. “Theydid keep their faces hid?den, my Lord,” she drawled, “and they stayed together. No one tried to sneak off. Very well behaved, all in all.” A mother praising her children. Or maybe a dog trainer praising the dogs. Yellow-haired Seta nodded approvingly. Definitely a dog trainer.
“If my Lord wishes to keep them confined,” Renna said ful-somely, “we can always use thea’dam. They really shouldn’t be trusted loose.” She even offered him a bow, in the Seanchan way, bending herself at a sharp right angle. Her big brown eyes looked hopeful. Teslyn gasped and clutched her wet cloak to her bosom. She certainly was not over her fear of thesul’dam, for all she looked as though she could eat nails. Joline, haughty as ever, drew herself up, eyes flashing. Aes Sedai serenity or no, lightning might as well strike when Joline’s eyes started flashing. It was often so with pretty women.
“No,” Mat said hastily. “There’s no need for that. You give those things to me, and I’ll get rid of them.” Light, why had he ever saddled himself with these women? What seemed the best idea at the time could look pure quill stupid in hindsight. “All of you just have to be careful. We’re not thirty miles from Ebou Dar yet. The roads are full of bloody Seanchan.” He gave an apologetic look to the three Seanchan women. Theywere on his side, after all. In a manner of speaking. They had nowhere else to go except Egeanin, and they had realized who had the money. Bethamin’s eyebrows twitched upward in surprise. Seanchan nobles did not apologize, even with a glance.
“Seanchan soldiers did pass through the village yesterday,” Teslyn said, her Illianer accent particularly strong. Joline’s flashing eyes shifted to her, but she took no notice beyond turning away to hang up her own cloak. “They did ask questions about strangers on the road. And some did complain about being sent north.” Teslyn glanced over her shoulder at thesul’dam, then jerked her eyes away and took a deep breath. “It does seem the Return be aimed east. The soldiers did believe the Ever Victorious Army will present Illian to their empress before the end of spring. The City itself, and all the rest.” Supposedly Aes Sedai gave up the lands of their birth when they went to theWhiteTower, but to any Illianer, the city ofIllianwas ‘the City,’ and you could hear the capital.
“That’s good,” Mat said half to himself, thinking. Soldiers talked out of turn all the time; that was one reason you did not tell your plans to every trooper until the last minute. Teslyn’s thin eye?brows rose, and he added, “It means the road to Lugard will be clear most of the way.” Teslyn’s nod was curt and not very pleased. What Aes Sedai were supposed to do and what they did were often widely different.
“We didn’t speak to anyone, my Lord, only watched the girls,” Bethamin said, even more slowly than usual, and Seanchan usually talked like honey pouring in a snowstorm. She was clearly in charge among the threesul’dam, but she looked at each of the oth?ers before going on. “In Ebou Dar, all the talk in thesul’dam quar?ters was of Illian. A fat land and a fat city, where many would earn new names. And wealth.” She tossed that in as if wealth hardly counted alongside a new name. “We should have realized you’d want to know about such things.” Another deep breath almost popped her out of that dress. “If you have any questions, my Lord, we’ll tell you what we know.”
Renna made him another bow, her face eager, and Seta piped up with, “We could listen in the towns and villages where we stop, too, my Lord. The girls can be shifty, but you can trust us.”
Why, when a woman offered to help you, did she always start by sticking you in a pot of hot water and stoking up the fire? Joline’s face became a disdainful mask of ice. The Seanchan women were beneath her notice; she made that clear with a glance. It was Mat bloody Cauthon who received her freezing gaze. Edesina’s mouth thinned, and she tried to stare holes in him and thesul’damboth. Even Teslyn managed indignation. She was grateful for res?cue, too, but she was Aes Sedai. And she directed her frown at him. He suspected she would jump like a startled frog if one of thesul’dam clapped her hands.
“What I want,” he explained patiently, “is for all of you to stay with the wagons.” You had to be patient with women, including Aes Sedai. He was bloody well learning that by heart. “One whis?per there’s an Aes Sedai with this show, and we’ll be hip-deep in Seanchan hunting for her. Rumors of Seanchan with the show won’t serve us any better. Either way, somebody will come to find out what’s behind it sooner or later, and we’ll all be in the pickling kettle. Don’t flaunt yourselves. You need to stay low till we get closer to Lugard. That isn’t so much to ask, now is it?” Lightning lit up the wagon’s windows with a blue flash, and thunder crashed overhead, so close it rattled the wagon.
It was too much to ask, apparently, as the days wore on. Oh, the Aes Sedai kept their hoods well up when they went outside - the rain gave enough excuse for that; the rain and the cold - but one or another rode on the wagon seat as often as not, and they made no real effort to pass as servants around the showfolk. Not that they admitted who they were, of course, or ordered anyone about or even spoke to anyone much besides each other, but what servant clearly expected people to move out of her way? They went into the villages, too, and sometimes the towns, if they were sure there were no Seanchan there. When an Aes Sedai was sure of something, it had to be true. Twice they came scurrying back when they found a town half-full of settlers on their way north. They told him what they learned on their visits. He thought they did. Teslyn did seem grateful, after an Aes Sedai fashion. And Edesina. After a fashion.
Despite their differences, Joline, Teslyn and Edesina stuck together like herded geese. If you saw one, you saw all three. Likely that was because when you saw them taking a stroll, all neatly cloaked and hidden as they were, a minute later Bethamin and Renna and Seta appeared trailing after them. Oh so casually, but never letting ‘the girls’ out of sight. The goose-herds. A blind man could see there was tension between the two groups of women. A blind man could see none of them were servants. Thesul’damhad held respected positions, positions of authority, and they moved almost as arrogantly as the Aes Sedai. He was stuck with the story, though.
Bethamin and the other two were as leery of other Seanchan as the Aes Sedai were, yet they also followed the Aes Sedai when they went into a village or town, and Bethamin always reported the tid?bits they had picked up by eavesdropping, with Renna wearing an ingratiating smile and Seta chirping in that ‘the girls’ had missed this or that, or claimed not to have heard; you could never be sure with someone who had the audacity to call herself Aes Sedai; maybe he should reconsider having them leashed, just till every?thing was safe.
Their tales really were not that different from what the sisters told him. Townsfolk’s talk of what they had overheard from Sean?chan passing through. Many of the settlers were nervous, their heads full of tales about savage Aiel ravaging through Altara, though the local people all said that was up north somewhere. It seemed someone higher might be thinking the same, though, because many settlers had been diverted east, toward Illian. An alliance had been concluded with someone powerful who was expected to give the High Lady Suroth access to many lands. The women refused to be convinced that they need not listen for rumors. They never quite got around to handing over thea’dam, either. In truth, those silvery leashes and the threesul’dam were the only real lever he had with the Aes Sedai. Gratitude. From an Aes Sedai! Ha! Not that he really thought about putting those collars on the sisters again. Not often, anyway. He was well and truly stuck.
He truly did have no need of what thesul’dam and Aes Sedai learned. He had better sources, people he trusted. Well, he trusted Thorn, when the white-haired gleeman could be routed out from playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver or mooning over a much-creased letter he carried tucked in the breast of his coat. Thorn could walk into a common room, tell a story, maybe juggle a bit, and walk out knowing what was in the head of every man there. Mat trusted Juilin, too - he did almost as well as Thorn, without juggling or storytelling - but Juilin always insisted on taking Thera with him, demurely clutching his arm as they strolled into atown. Toget her used to freedom again, the man said. She smiled up at Juilin, those big eyes shining darkly, that full little mouth asking to be kissed. Maybe she had been Panarch of Tarabon, the way Juilin and Thorn claimed, but Mat was beginning to doubt it. He had heard some of the contortionists joking about how the Taraboner serving girl was wearing the Tairen thief-catcher out till he could barely walk. Panarch or serving girl, though, Thera still started to kneel any time she heard a drawling accent. Mat figured that any Seanchan who asked her a question would get everything she knew, beginning with Juilin Sandar and ending with which wagon the Aes Sedai were in, all answers delivered from her knees. Thera was a bigger danger than Aes Sedai andsul’dam put together, in his book. Juilin bridled at the slightest suggestion his woman might be unreliable, though, and spun his bamboo staff as if he was considering cracking Mat’s head for him. There was no solu?tion, but Mat found a stopgap, a way to get a little warn
