Mat met Tuon’s eyes. Big dark liquid eyes, in a smooth expres?sionless face. She had pushed her hood back a little, so he could see her face clearly. If he left her behind, then she could not say the words, or if she did, he would be too far way for the words to mat?ter. If he left her behind, he would never learn why she smiled those mysterious smiles, or what lay behind the mystery. Light, hewas a fool! Pips danced a few impatient steps.
“Everybody,” he said. Did Tuon nod slightly, as if to herself?Why would she nod? “Let’s ride,” he told Harnan.
They had to walk their horses through the crowds to get out of the show, but as soon as they reached the road, Mat put Pips to a gallop, cloak streaming behind and head down to keep his hat from blowing off. It was not a pace you could keep a horse at for long. The road wound around hills and crossed ridges, occasionally cutting through where the rise was not too high. They splashed across ankle-deep streams and thundered over low wooden bridges crossing deeper water. Trees began to appear on the slopes again, pine and leatherleaf showing green among the winter-bare branches of the others. Farms clung to some of the hills, low tile-roofed stone houses and taller barns, and now and then a hamlet of eight or ten houses.
A few miles from the show, Mat spotted a wide man ahead of them, sitting his saddle like a sack of suet. The horse was a leggy dun, eating ground at a steady trot. It figured that a horse thief had an eye for a good animal. Catching the sound of their hooves, Vanin looked back, but he only slowed to a walk. That was bad.
When Mat slowed Pips beside the dun, Vanin spat. “Best wager we got is we find her horse run to death, so I can track her afoot from there,” he muttered. “She’s pushing harder than I fig?ured, with her bareback. If we push, we can maybe catch her by sunset. If her horse don’t founder or die, that’s about the time she’ll make Coramen.”
Mat tipped back his head to glance at the sun, almost straight overhead. It was a long way to cover in less than half a day. If he turned back, he could be a good distance the other side of Jurador by sunset, in company with Thorn and Juilin and the others. With Tuon. With the Seanchan knowing to hunt Mat Cauthon. The man who had kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons could not own enough luck to get off with being madeda’covale. And sometime tomorrow or the next day, they would plant Luca on an impaling stake. Luca and Latelle,Petraand Clarine and the rest. A thicket of impaling stakes. The dice rattled and bounced in his head.
“We can make it,” he said. There was no other choice.
Vanin spat.
There was only one way to cover a great deal of ground quickly, on a horse, if you meant to be on a live horse at the end. They walked the animals for half a mile, then trotted half a mile. The same at a canter, then a run, and it was back to a walk. The sun began to slide downward, and the dice spun. Around sparsely forested hills and over tree-topped ridges. Streams that could be crossed in three strides, barely wetting the horses’ hooves, and streams thirty paces across with flat bridges of wood or sometimes stone. The sun sank lower and lower, and the dice spun faster and faster. Almost back to the Elbar, and no sign of Renna except scuffs on the hard dirt of the road that Vanin pointed to as if they were painted signs.
“Getting close, now,” the fat man muttered. He did not sound happy, though.
Then they rounded a hill, and there was another low bridge ahead. Beyond, the road twisted north to cross the next ridge through a saddle. The sun, sitting atop the ridge, blazed in their eyes. Coramen lay on the other side of that ridge. Pulling his hat low for shade, Mat searched the road for a woman, for anyone, mounted or afoot, and his heart sank.
Vanin cursed and pointed.
A lathered bay was laboring its way up the slope on the other side of the river, a woman frantically kicking its flanks, urging it to climb. Renna had been too anxious to reach the Seanchan to stick with the road. She was maybe two hundred paces from them, and she might as well have been miles. Her mount was on the point of collapsing, but she could get down and run within sight of the garrisons before they could reach her. All she had to do was reach the crest, another fifty feet.
“My Lord?” Harnan said. He had an arrow nocked and his bow half raised. Gorderan held the heavy crossbow to his shoulder, a thick pointed bolt in place.
Mat felt something flicker and die inside him. He did not know what. Something. The dice rolled like thunder. “Shoot,” he said.
He wanted to close his eyes. The crossbow snapped; the bolt made a black streak through the air. Renna slammed forward when it hit her back. She had almost managed to push herself erect against the bay’s neck when Harnan’s arrow took her.
Slowly, she toppled from the horse, sliding down the slope, rolling, bouncing off saplings, tumbling faster and faster until she splashed into the stream. For a moment, she floated facedown against the bank, and then the current caught her and pulled her away, skirts billowing up on the water. Slowly she drifted toward the Elbar. Maybe, eventually, she would reach the sea. And that made three. It hardly seemed to matter that the dice had stopped. That made three.Never again, he thought as Renna floated out of sight around a bend.If Idie for it, never again.
They did not press, riding back eastward. There was no point, and Mat felt too bone-weary. They did not stop, though, except to breathe and water the horses. No one wanted to talk.
It was the small hours of the night when they reached Jurador, the town a dark mass with the gates shut tight. Clouds covered the moon. Surprisingly, the canvas walls of Luca’s show were still in place just beyond the town. With a pair of bulky men wrapped in blankets snoring aware beneath the big banner as they guarded the entrance. Even from the road, in the dark, it was plain that wagons and tents filled the space behind the wall.
“At least I can tell Luca he doesn’t have to run after all,” Mat said wearily, turning Pips toward the banner. “Maybe he’ll give us a place to sleep a few hours.” For all the gold he had left, Luca should give them his own wagon, but knowing the man, Mat had hopes for clean straw somewhere. Tomorrow, he would set out to find Thorn and the others. And Tuon. Tomorrow, when he had rested.
A greater shock waited inside Luca’s huge wagon. It truly was roomy inside, at least for a wagon, with a narrow table sitting in the middle and space to walk around it. Table, cupboards and shelves all were polished till they glowed. Tuon was sitting in a gilded chair - Luca would have a chair, and gilded, when every?body else made do with stools! - with Selucia standing at her back. A beaming Luca was watching Latelle offer Tuon a plate of steam?ing pastries, which the dark little woman was examining as if she would actually eat something that Luca’s wife had cooked.
Tuon showed no surprise at all at Mat walking into the wagon. “Is she captured, or dead?” she said, picking up a pastry with her fingers curved in that curiously graceful way.
“Dead,” he said flatly. “Luca, what in the Light - ”
“I forbid it, Toy!” Tuon snapped, pointing a finger at him sharply. “I forbid you to mourn a traitor!” Her voice softened, slightly, but it remained firm. “She earned death by betraying the Empire, and she would have betrayed you as easily. She was trying to betray you. What you did was justice, and I name it so.” Her tone said that if she named a thing, then it was well and truly named.
Mat squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Is everyone else still here, too?” he demanded.
“Of course,” Luca said, still smiling like a bullgoose fool. “The Lady - the High Lady; forgive me, High Lady.” He bowed deeply. “She talked to Merrilin and Sandar, and. . . . Well, you see how it was. A very persuasive woman, the Lady. The High Lady. Cauthon, about my gold. Yousaid they were to hand it over, but Merrilin said he’d slit my throat first, and Sandar threatened to crack my head, and. . . .” He trailed off under Mat’s stare, then suddenly brightened again. “Look what the Lady gave me!” Snatching open one of the cupboards, he pulled out a folded paper that he held rev?erently in both hands. It was thick paper, and white as snow; expensive. “A warrant. Not sealed, of course, but signed. Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders is now under the personal protection of the High Lady Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag. Everyone will know who that is, of course. I could go to Seanchan. I could put on my show for the Empress! May she live forever,” he added hastily, with another bow to Tuon.
For nothing,Mat thought bleakly. He sank down on one of the beds with his elbows on his knees, earning a very pointed look from Latelle. Likely only Tuon’s presence kept her from clouting him!
Tuon raised a peremptory hand, a black porcelain doll but every inch a queen despite the shabby too-large dress. “You are not to use that except at need, Master Luca.Great need!”
“Of course, High Lady; of course.” Luca bobbed bows as if he might be kissing the floorboards any minute.
All for bloody nothing!
“I did make specific mention of who is not under my protec?tion, Toy.” Tuon took a bite of pastry and delicately brushed a crumb from her lip with a finger. “Can you guess whose name heads that list?” She smiled. Not a malicious smile. Another of those smiles for herself, amusement or delight in something he could not see. Suddenly, he noticed something. That little cluster of silk rosebuds he had given her w
