Winter's Heart (80 page)

In any case, Tuon was a minor irritant. A fly on his ear. No more than that. It took more than chattering women or staring girls to make him sweat. Absent as she was, however, Tylin did. If she came back and caught him preparing to leave, she might change her mind about selling. She was a High Lady herself now, after all, and he was sure she would shave her hair to a crest before much longer. A proper Seanchan High Blood, and who knew what she would do then? Tylin caused a little sweat, but there was more than enough else to drench a man in it.

He continued to hear from Noal about the
gholam
’s murders, and sometimes from Thom. There was a fresh one every night, though no one but those two and him seemed to connect the killings. Mat kept to open places as much as he could, with people around as often as possible. He stopped sleeping in Tylin’s bed, and never spent two nights running in the same place. If that meant a night in a stable loft, well, he had slept in haylofts before, although he did not recall hay sticking through his clothes quite that sharply. Still, better stuck by hay than having his throat torn out.

He had sought out Thom straight away after he decided to try freeing Teslyn, and had found him in the kitchens chatting with the cooks over a honey-glazed chicken. Thom got on as well with cooks as he did with farmers and merchants and nobles. He had a way of getting on with everyone, did Thom Merrilin, a way of hearing everyone’s gossip and fitting it together to make a picture. He could look at things from a slant and see what others missed. As soon as he finished the chicken, Thom had come up with the only way to get the Aes Sedai past the guards. The whole thing had almost seemed easy, then. For a very short while. But other obstacles arose.

Juilin possessed the same sort of twisty way of looking at things, perhaps from his years as thief-catcher, and some nights Mat met with him and Thom in the tiny room the two men shared in the servants’ quarters to try planning how to overcome those obstacles. Those were what really made Mat sweat.

At the first of those meetings, the night Tylin left, Beslan barged in looking for Thom, so he said. Unfortunately, he had listened at the door first, hearing enough that he could not be foisted off with a story. Very unfortunately, he wanted to take part. He even told them just how to do it.

“An uprising,” he said, squatting on the three-legged stool between the two narrow beds. A washstand with a chipped white pitcher and bowl and no mirror finished crowding the room. Juilin sat on the edge of one bed in his shirtsleeves, his face unreadable, and Thom was stretched out on the other examining his knuckles with a frown. That left Mat to lean against the door to keep anyone else from barging in. He did not know whether to laugh or cry. Plainly Thom had known about this madness all along; this was what he had been trying to cool down. “The people will rise when I give the word,” Beslan went on. “My friends and I have talked to men all over the city. They are ready to fight!”

Sighing, Mat eased his weight more onto his good leg. He suspected that when Beslan gave the word, he and his friends would rise alone. Most people were more willing to talk about fighting than to do it, especially against soldiers. “Beslan, in gleeman’s tales, grooms with pitchforks and bakers with cobblestones defeat armies because they want to be free.” Thom snorted so hard, his long white mustache stirred. Mat ignored him. “In real life, the grooms and the bakers get killed. I know good soldiers when I see them, and the Seanchan are very good.”

“If we free the
damane
along with the Aes Sedai, they will fight beside us!” Beslan insisted.

“There must be two hundred or more
damane
up in the attic, Beslan, most of them Seanchan. Free them, and like as not, every last one will run to find a
sul’dam.
Light, we couldn’t even trust all the women who aren’t Seanchan!” Mat held up a hand to forestall Beslan’s protest. “We have no way to find out which we can trust, and no time to. And if we did, we’d have to kill the rest. I’m not up to killing a woman whose only crime is that she’s on a leash. Are you?” Beslan looked away, but his jaw was set. He was not giving up.

“Whether we free any
damane
or not,” Mat went on, “if the people rise up, the Seanchan will turn Ebou Dar into a slaughter yard. They put down rebellions hard, Beslan. Very hard! We could kill every
damane
in the attic, and they would bring in more from the camps. Your mother will come back to find rubble inside the walls and your head stuck up outside them. Where hers will soon join it. You don’t think they’ll believe she did not know what her own son was planning, do you?” Light,
did
she? The woman was brave enough to try it. He did not think she was stupid enough, but . . .

“She says we are mice,” Beslan said bitterly. “ ‘When wolfhounds pass by, mice lie quiet or get eaten,’ ” he quoted. “I don’t like being a mouse, Mat.”

Mat breathed a little more easily. “Better a live mouse than a dead one, Beslan.” Which might not have been the most diplomatic way to put it—Beslan grimaced at him—but it was true.

He encouraged Beslan to join the meetings, if just to keep a rein on him, but Beslan seldom came, and it fell to Thom to try to cool the man’s ardor when and as he could. The most he could persuade Beslan to promise was that he could not call for the rising until the rest of them had been gone a month, to let them get clear. That was something settled, if not satisfactorily. Everything else seemed to be take two steps and hit a stone wall. Or a trip wire.

Juilin’s lady love had quite a hold on him. For her, he seemed to not to mind doffing his Tairen clothes for a servant’s green-and-white livery, or missing sleep to spend two nights sweeping the floor not far from the stairs that led up to the kennels. No one looked twice at a servant pushing a broom, not even the other servants. The Tarasin Palace had enough of those that they did not all know one another, and if they saw a man in livery with a broom, they assumed he was supposed to be using it. Juilin spent two whole days sweeping, too, and finally reported that
sul’dam
inspected the kennels first thing in the morning and just after dark, and
might be in or out at any time of the day between, but at night the
damane
were left to themselves.

“I overheard a
sul’dam
say she was glad she wasn’t out in the camps where . . .” Lying stretched out on his thin mattress, Juilin paused to yawn copiously behind his hand. Thom was sitting on the edge of his bed, which left the stool for Mat. It was better than standing, if not by much. Most people would be asleep at that hour. “Where she’d have to stand guard some nights,” the thief-catcher continued when he could speak again. “Said she liked being able to let the
damane
sleep all night, too, so they were all fresh come sunrise.”

“So we must move at night,” Thom murmured, fingering his long white mustache. There was no need to add that anything moving at night drew eyes. Seanchan patrolled the streets at night, which the Civil Guard never had. The Guard had been amenable to bribes, too, until the Seanchan disbanded them. Now, at night, it was as likely to be the Deathwatch Guards in the street, and anyone who tried to bribe them might not live to face trial.

“Have you found an
a’dam
yet, Juilin?” Mat asked. “Or the dresses? Dresses can’t be as difficult as an
a’dam.
”

Juilin yawned into his hand again. “I’ll get them when I get them. They don’t just leave either lying about, you know.”

Thom discovered that simply walking
damane
through the gates was not possible. Or rather, as he freely admitted, Riselle had discovered it. It seemed that one of the high-ranking officers staying at The Wandering Woman had a singing voice she found most entertaining.

“One of the Blood can take
damane
out with no questions asked,” Thom said at their next meeting. This time, he and Juilin both were sitting on their beds. Mat was beginning to hate that stool. “Or few enough, anyway.
Sul’dam,
though, need an order signed and sealed by one of the Blood, an officer who’s captain or above, or a
der’sul’dam.
The guards at the gates and on the docks have lists of every seal in the city that qualifies, so I can’t just make any sort of seal and think it will be accepted. I need a copy of the right sort of order with the right sort of seal. That leaves the question of who will be our three
sul’dam.
”

“Maybe Riselle will be one,” Mat suggested. She did not know what they were doing, and telling her would be a risk. Thom had asked her all sorts of questions, as if he was trying to learn about life under the Seanchan, and she had been happy enough to ask her Seanchan friend, but she might not be happy enough to chance her pretty head going up on a spike.
She could do worse than say no. “And what about your lady love, Juilin?” He had a thought on the third. He had asked Juilin to find a
sul’dam
dress that would fit Setalle Anan, though there had been no chance to actually put it to her, yet. He had only been back to The Wandering Woman once since Joline had walked into the kitchen, to make sure she understood he was doing all he could. She did not, but Mistress Anan had actually managed to smother the Aes Sedai’s anger before she could begin shouting. She would make the perfect
sul’dam
for Joline.

Juilin shrugged uncomfortably. “I had a hard enough time convincing Thera to run away with me. She is . . . timid, now. I can help her overcome that, in time—I know I can—but I don’t think she is up to anything like pretending to be a
sul’dam.
”

Thom tugged at his mustaches. “It’s unlikely Riselle would leave under any circumstances. It seems she likes Banner-General Lord Yamada’s singing well enough that she has decided to marry him.” He sighed regretfully. “There will be no more information from that well, I fear.” And no more pillowing his head on her bosom, his expression said. “Well, both of you think on who we can ask. And see if you can lay hands on a copy of those orders.”

Thom managed to find the proper inks and paper, and was ready to imitate anyone’s hand and seal. He was contemptuous of seals; anyone with a turnip and a knife could copy those, he said. Writing another man’s hand so the man himself would think he had written it was an art. But none of them were able to find a copy of orders with the necessary seal to copy. Like
a’dam,
the Seanchan did not leave orders lying about. Juilin seemed to making no progress with the
a’dam,
either. Two steps forward, and a stone wall. And six days were gone, just like that. Four left. To Mat, it felt as if six years had passed since Tylin’s departure, and four hours remained till she came back.

On the seventh day, Thom stopped Mat in the hallway as soon as he came in from his ride. Smiling as though making idle conversation, the one-time gleeman pitched his voice low. The servants hurrying past could not have heard more than a murmur. “According to Noal, the
gholam
killed again last night. The Seekers have been ordered to find the killer if they have to stop eating or sleeping to do it, though I can’t find out who gave the order. Even the fact that they have been ordered to do anything seems to be a secret. They are practically readying the rack and heating their irons already, though.”

No matter that Thom’s voice was low, Mat looked around to see
whether anyone was listening. The only person in sight was a stout gray-haired man named Narvin, in livery but neither hurrying nor carrying anything. Servants as high as Narvin did not carry or hurry. He blinked at the sight of Mat trying to look every direction at once, and frowned. Mat wanted to snarl, but instead he grinned as disarmingly as he knew how, and Narvin went off scowling. Mat was sure the fellow had been responsible for the first attempt to remove Pips from the stable.

“Noal told you about the Seekers?” he whispered incredulously as soon as Narvin was far enough away.

Thorn waved a lean hand dismissively. “Of course not. Just about the killing. Though he does seem to hear whispers, and know what they mean. A rare talent, that. I wonder whether he really has been to Shara,” he mused. “He said he . . .” Thom cleared his throat under Mat’s glare. “Well, later for that. I do have other resources than the much-lamented Riselle. Several of them are Listeners. Listeners really do seem to hear everything.”

“You’ve been talking to Listeners?” Mat’s voice squeaked like a rusty hinge. He thought his throat might have rusted solid!

“There’s nothing to it, as long as they don’t know you know,” Thom chuckled. “Mat, with Seanchan you have to assume they are all Listeners. That way, you learn what you want to know without saying the wrong thing in the wrong ear.” He coughed and knuckled his mustache, not quite hiding a smile so self-deprecating it all but invited praise. “I just happen to know two or three who really are. In any case, more information never hurts. You do want to be gone before Tylin returns, don’t you? You seem to looking a little . . . forlorn . . . with her gone.”

Mat could only groan.

That night, the
gholam
struck again. Lopin and Nerim were bubbling over with the news before Mat had finished his breakfast fish. The whole city was in an uproar, they claimed. The latest victim, a woman, had been discovered at the mouth of an alley, and suddenly people were talking, putting together one killing with another. There was a madman on the loose, and the people were demanding more Seanchan patrols on the streets at night. Mat pushed his plate away, all hunger gone. More patrols. And if that were not bad enough, Suroth might come back early if she learned of this, bringing Tylin with her. At best, he could only count on two more days. He thought he might lose what he’d already eaten.

He spent the rest of the morning pacing—well, limping—up and down the carpet in Tylin’s bedchamber, ignoring the pain in his leg while
he tried to think of something, anything, that would let him carry out the impossible in two days. The pain really was less. He had given up the walking stick, pushing himself to regain strength. He thought he might manage two or three miles on foot without needing to rest the leg. Without resting it very much, anyway.