Then one of the ferries hit the rope-padded bumpers at the end of the landing, and the ramp came down to let the windowless pur?ple wagon rumble off onto the stones. Setalle was driving. Selucia sat on one side of her, peering out from the hood of a faded red cloak. On the other side, swathed in a dark cloak so not an inch of her showed, was Tuon.
Mat thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head. If his heart did not pound its way out of his chest first. The dice had started up in his head, that rattling feel of dice rolling across a table. They were going to come up the Dark One’s eyes, this time; he just knew it.
There was nothing to do except fall in beside the purple wagon, though, riding along as though life were wonderful, riding along the wide main street through criers for shops and hawkers selling things from trays. And Seanchan soldiers. They were not marching in formation now, and they eyed the brightly painted wagons with interest. Riding along and waiting for Tuon to shout. She had given her word, but a prisoner would say anything to get the shackles loosened. All she had to do was raise her voice, and summon a thousand Seanchan soldiers for rescue. The dice bounced and spun in Mat’s head. Riding along, waiting for the Dark One’s eyes.
Tuon never spoke a word. She peeked curiously past the edge of her deep cowl, curiously and cautiously, but she kept her face hid?den, and even her hands, all wrapped in that dark cloak and even huddling against Setalle like a child seeking the protection of her mother in a strange crowd. Never a word until they had passed the gates of Coramen and were rumbling toward the base of the ridge that rose behind the town, where Luca was already gathering the show’s wagons. That was when Mat really knew there was no escape for him. She was going to set the hook all right. She was just biding her bloody time.
He made sure all the Seanchan stayed in their wagons that night, and the Aes Sedai, too. Nobody had seen anysul’dam ordamane that Mat knew, but the Aes Sedai did not argue for once. Tuon did not argue, either. She made a demand that sent Setalle’s eyebrows almost to her hairline. It was phrased as a request, in a way, a reminder of a promise he had made, but he knew a demand when a woman made one. Well, a man had to trust the woman hewas going to marry. He told her he had to think on it, just so she would not start imagining she could have anything she wanted out of him. He thought on it all the day that Luca put on his show, thinking and sweating while as many Seanchan as not came to gape at the performers. He thought on it while the wagons wound eastward through the hills, moving slower than ever, but he knew what answer he had to give.
On the third day after leaving the river, they reached the salt town ofJurador, and he told Tuon that he would. She smiled at him, and the dice in his head stopped dead. He would always remember that. She smiled, andthen the dice stopped. A man could weep!
CHAPTER 29
Something Flickers
This do be madness,” Domon rumbled from where he stood with his arms folded as if blocking the way out of the wagon. Maybe he was. His jaw was thrust forward belligerently, sticking out a beard that was trimmed short but still longer than the hair on his head, and he was working his hands like a man thinking of making fists, or grappling with something. A wide man, Domon, and not as fat as he looked on first glance. Mat wanted to avoid fists or grappling, if he could.
He finished tying the black silk scarf around his neck, hiding his scar, and tucked the long ends into his coat. The chance that there was anyone in Jurador who knew about a man in Ebou Dar wearing a black scarf. . . . Well, the odds seemed good even dis?counting his luck. Of course, there was always his beingta’veren to be factored in, but if that was going to bring him face-to-face with Suroth or a fistful of servants from the Tarasin Palace, he could stay in bed with a blanket wrapped around his head, and it still would happen. Sometimes, you just had to trust to luck. The trouble was, when he woke this morning, the dice had again been tumbling in his head. They were bouncing off the inside of his skull still.
“I promised,” he said. It was good to be back in decent clothes.
The coat was a fine green wool, well cut and hanging almost to his knees and the turned-down tops of his boots. There was no embroi?dery - maybe it could do with a little - but he had a touch of lace at his cuffs. And a good silk shirt. He wished he had a mirror. A man needed to look his best on a day like this. Picking up his cloak from the bed, he swung it across his shoulders. Not a gaudy thing like Luca’s. Dark gray, nearly as dark as night. Only the lining was red. His cloak pin was simple silver knots no larger than his thumbs.
“She gave her word, Bayle,” Egeanin said. “Her word. She will not break that, ever.” Egeanin sounded absolutely convinced. More convinced than Mat was, anyway. But sometimes a man had to take a chance. Even if he was wagering his neck. Hehad promised. And he did have his luck.
“It still be madness,” Domon grumbled. But he moved grudg?ingly away from the door when Mat settled his broad-brimmed black hat on his head. Well, when Egeanin motioned him aside with a quick jerk of her head, anyway. He kept his glower, though.
She followed Mat out of the wagon, scowling herself and fid?dling with her long black wig. Maybe she still felt uneasy with it, or maybe it fit differently now that she had close to a month’s growth of her own hair underneath. Not enough to go about bare?headed yet, in any case. Not till there was at least another hundred miles between them and Ebou Dar. Maybe it would not be safe until they crossed theDamonaMountainsinto Murandy.
The sky was clear, the sun just cresting the horizon, invisible yet behind the show’s canvas wall, and the morning was warm only compared to a snowstorm. Not the crispness of a late-winter morn?ing in the Two Rivers, but a chill that slowly bored deep and put a faint mist in your breath. The showfolk were scurrying about like ants in a kicked anthill, filling the air with shouted demands to know who had moved those juggling rings or borrowed that pair of red-spangled breeches or shifted this performing platform. It looked and sounded like the start of a riot, yet there was no real anger in any of the voices. They shouted and waved arms all the time, but it never came to blows when there was a show in the off?ing, and somehow every performer would be in place and ready before the first patrons were let in. They might be slow packing up for the road, but performing meant money, and they could move fast enough for that.
“You reallydo think you can marry her,” Egeanin muttered, striding along at his side, kicking her worn brown woolen skirts. There was nothing dainty about Egeanin. She had a long stride, and she kept up easily. Dress or no dress, she seemed to need a sword on her hip. “There’s no other explanation for this. Bayle is right. Youare mad!”
Mat grinned. “The question is, does she mean to marry me? The strangest people marry, sometimes.” When you knew you were going to hang, the only thing to do was grin at the noose. So he grinned and left her standing there with a scowl on her hard face. He thought she was growling curses under her breath, though he did not understand why. She was not the one who had to marry the last person on earth she wanted to. A noblewoman, all cool reserve and her nose in the air, when he liked barmaids with ready smiles and willing eyes. The heir to a throne, and not just any throne; the Crystal Throne, the Imperial Throne of Seanchan. A woman who spun his head like a top and left him wondering whether he held her captive or she held him. When fate gripped you by the throat, there was nothing to do but grin.
He kept a jaunty pace till he was in sight of the windowless purple wagon, and then he missed a step. A cluster of acrobats, four limber men who called themselves the Chavana brothers though it was plain as their noses they came from different coun?tries, not just different mothers, rushed out of a green wagon nearby, shouting and gesturing wildly at one another. They spared a glance for the purple wagon and another for Mat, but they were too engrossed in their argument, and trotting too fast, for more. Gorderan was leaning against one of the purple wheels, scratching his head and frowning at the two women who stood at the foot of the wagon’s wooden steps. Two women. Both swathed in dark cloaks, faces concealed, yet there was no mistaking the flowered head scarf hanging out of the taller woman’s cowl. Well. He should have know Tuon would want her maid along. Noblewomen never went anywhere without a maid. Bet a penny or bet a crown, in the end it all came down to a toss of the dice just the same. They had had their chance to betray him. Still, he was betting on a woman making the same choice twice running. On two women doing it. What fool would make odds on that? But he had to toss the dice. Except, they were already rolling.
He met Selucia’s cold blue stare with a smile and swept off his hat to make an elegant leg to Tuon. Not too showy, with just a small flourish of his cloak. “Are you ready to go shopping?” He very nearly called her “my Lady,” but until she was willing to say his name. . . .
“I have been ready for an hour, Toy,” Tuon drawled coolly. Casually lifting an edge of his cloak, she glanced at the red silk lin?ing and eyed his coat before letting the cloak fall. “Lace suits you. Perhaps I will have lace added to your robes if I make you a cup?bearer.”
His smile slipped for an instant. Could she still make himda’covale if she married him? He would have to ask Egeanin. Light, why did
