Inevitably, Tuon shook her head, and the pair of them glided away into the crowd with Mat hurrying to keep up as far as the next shop showing silks. The dice continued to bounce off the inside of his skull.
They were not the only ones from the show who had come into the town. He spotted Aludra, her face framed by beaded braids, walking through the crowd with a gray-haired man who had to be a salt merchant from the amount of bright embroidery covering his silk coat in flowers and hummingbirds. What would the Illumina?tor want with a salt merchant? Whatever she was saying to him, his pleased smile had added a few creases to his face, and he was nodding.
Tuon shook her head, and the two women glided toward the next shop, ignoring the shopkeeper’s deep bows. Well, most of those were directed at Mat. Maybe the skinny fool thought he wanted to buy silk for himself. Not that he would have passed up a new silk coat or three, but who could think about coats when he was waiting for those bloody dice to stop? Just a little embroidery, on the sleeves and shoulders.
Thorn went by clutching his bronze-colored cloak around him, knuckling his long white mustaches and yawning as if he had spent the night awake. He might have. The gleeman had not taken to drink again, but Lopin and Nerim complained about him remaining awake till all hours, burning a lamp so he could read and re-read his precious letter. What could be so fascinating in a letter from a dead woman? A dead woman. Light, maybe those people on the road . . . ! No; he was not going to think about that at all.
Tuon plucked one fold of silk and let it drop as she turned away without trying another. Selucia gave the stout shopkeeper such a stare before following that the woman started back in affront. Mat offered her a smile. Affronted shopkeepers could lead to town guards asking questions, and who could say where that might lead? He knew he could smile most women into feeling soothed. The round-faced woman sniffed at him and bent to smoothing the bolt of silk as tenderly as tucking in a babe. Most women, he thought sourly.
Down the street, a woman in a plain cloak let her hood fallback, and Mat’s breath caught in his throat. Edesina lifted her cowl again, but she took no hurry with it, and the damage was done anyway, an Aes Sedai’s ageless face displayed for anyone who knew what they were seeing. No one in the street gave a sign that they had noticed anything, but he could not see every face. Was anyone thinking of a reward? There might be no Seanchan in Jurador at the moment, but they did pass through.
Edesina glided around a corner, and two dark-cloaked shapes followed her. Two. Had thesul’dam left only one of their number in the camp to watch two Aes Sedai? Or maybe Joline or Teslyn was somewhere close by, and he had missed seeing her. He craned his neck, searching the throng for another plain cloak, but every one he saw had at least a little embroidery.
Abruptly, it hit him like a stone between the eyes. Every cloak he could see had at least a little embroidery. Where were bloody Tuon and bloody Selucia? Were the dice spinning faster?
Breathing hard, he went up on his toes, but the street was a river of embroidered cloaks, embroidered coats and dresses. It did not mean they were trying to escape. Tuonhad given her word; she had passed up a perfect chance for betrayal. But all either woman had to do was say three words, and anyone who heard them likely would recognize a Seanchan accent. That might be sufficient to set the hounds on his trail. There were two shops ahead that seemed to be offering cloth, one on either side of the street. Neither with a pair of dark-cloaked women at the tables out front. They could have turned a corner easily enough, but he had to trust to luck. His luck was especially good when the game was random. Bloody women probably thought itwas a bloody game. Burn him, let his luck run good.
Closing his eyes, he spun in a circle in the middle of the street and took a step. At random. He bumped into someone solid, hard enough to make them both grunt. A bulky fellow with a small mouth and a little poorly done scrollwork on the shoulders of his rough coat stood glaring at him when he opened his eyes, glaring and fingering the hilt of his curved knife. Mat did not care. He was facing straight at one of the two shops. Pulling his hat down tight, he ran. The dicewere rolling faster.
Divided shelves stuffed with bolts of cloth lined the walls of the shop from floor to ceiling, and more stood stacked on long tables out in the floor. The shopkeeper was a scrawny woman with a large mole on her chin, her assistant slim and pretty and angry-eyed. He dashed inside just in time to hear the shopkeeper say, “For the last time, if you won’t tell me what you’re here for, I’m going to send Nelsa for the guards.” Tuon and Selucia, faces still hidden in their hoods, were walking slowly along one wall full of cloth, stopping to touch a bolt but neither paying the shopkeeper any heed.
“They’re with me,” Mat said breathlessly. Tugging the purse from his pocket, he tossed it on the nearest clear table. The heavy clink it made landing put a wide smile on the shopkeeper’s narrow face. “Give them whatever they want,” he told her. And to Tuon, he added firmly, “If you’re going to buy anything, it’s going to be here. I’ve had all the exercise I care for this morning.”
He would have had the words back as soon as they left his mouth, if he could. Speak to a woman that way, and she flared in your face like one of Aludra’s firesticks, every time. But Tuon’s big eyes looked up at him from the shelter of her hood. And her full mouth curved slightly in a smile. It was a secret smile, for herself, not him. The Light only knew what it meant. He hated it when women did that. At least the dice had not stopped. That had to be a good sign, right?
Tuon had no need of words to make her choices, silently point?ing out bolt after bolt and measuring with her small dark hands how much the shopkeeper was to cut off with her shears. The woman did the work herself instead of delegating it to her assis?tant, and well she might, considering. Red silk in several shades went under those long sharp scissors, and green silk in a few shades, and more varieties of blue silk than Mat knew existed. Tuon chose out some fine linen in several thicknesses, and lengths of bright wool - she consulted Selucia over those in muffled whis?pers - but mostly it was silk. He got back much less of his purse than he had expected.
Once all that cloth had been folded and neatly tied, then bun?dled into a larger length of coarse linen - at no extra charge, thankyou very much - it made a mound as fat as a peddler’s pack. It did not surprise him at all to learn that he was expected to carry the thing across his shoulders, with his hat dangling in one hand. Dress your best, buy a woman silk, and she still found a way to make you work! Maybe she was making him pay for speaking firmly.
He earned plenty of stares from gaping fools as he made his way out of the town behind the two women. They glided along smug as cats full of cream. Even cloaked and hooded, their backs said it all. The sun was still well short of midday, but the line of people waiting to get into the show stretched down the road almost to the town. Most gaped and pointed as if he were a painted fool. One of the big horse handlers guarding the coin box gave a gap-toothed smirk and opened his mouth, but Mat returned him a level look, and the fellow decided to put his eyes back on the coins going from townsfolk to glass pitcher to box. Mat thought he had never been so relieved to be inside Luca’s show.
Before he and the two women had gotten three steps inside the entrance, Juilin came running up, for a wonder without Thera or his red cap. The thief-catcher’s face could have been carved from ancient oak. Eyeing the people flowing past them into the show, he pitched his voice low. Low and urgent. “I was coming to find you. It’s Egeanin; she’s been . . . hurt. Come quickly.”
The man’s tone said enough, but worse, Mat realized the dice in his head were drumming, now. He flung the pack of cloth at the horse handlers with a hasty injunction to guard it as close as the coin-box or he would set the women on them, but he did not wait to see whether they took him seriously. Juilin darted back the way he had come at a run, and Mat ran after him, along the wide main street of the show where noisy gawking crowds were watching the four bare-chested Chavana brothers stand on one another’s shoul?ders, and contortionists in filmy trousers and glittering vests sit on their own heads, and a slack-rope walker in spangled blue breeches climbing a long wooden ladder to begin her performance. Short of the slack-rope walker, Juilin dodged into one of the narrower streets, where laundry hung from lines between the tents and wag?ons, performers sat on stools and wagon steps waiting to go on, andshow children ran playing with balls and hoops. Mat knew where they were headed, now, but the thief-catcher ran too fast to over?take.
Ahead, he saw his green wagon. Latelle was peering under?neath, and Luca, in one of his bright red cloaks, was waving a pair of jugglers to move along. The two women, in baggy trousers and with faces painted white like a noble’s fools, took a good look under the wagon before they obeyed. As he came closer, he could see what they had they been staring at. Coatless, Domon was sit?ting on the ground under the edge of the wagon, cradling a limp Egeanin in his arms. Her eyes were closed, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner her mouth. Her wig hung askew. That stood out, for some reason. She always fussed so to keep that wig straight. The dice beat like thunder.
“This could be disaster,” Luca growled, splitting his glower between Mat and Juilin. It was an angry glower, though, not frightened. “You may have brought me to disaster!” He shooed away a gaggle of wide-eyed children, and growled at a plump woman in skirts that glittering with silvery spangles. Miyora made leopards do tricks that even Latelle would not try, but she merely tossed her head before gliding off. No one took Luca as ser
