tried to board. None of them did.
“So you will be leaving me here,” Mallia told Mat. The captain’s smile was not as ready as it might have been. “Are you certain there is nothing I can do to help further? Burn my soul, I never saw such a rabble! Those soldiers ought to clear the docks—with the sword, if need be!—so decent traders can do business. Perhaps Sanor can make a path through this scum to your inn for you.”
So you’ll know where we are staying? Not bloody likely. “I had thought of eating before I went ashore, and maybe a game of dice to pass the time.” Mallia’s face went white. “But I think I would like a steady floor under me for my next meal. So we will leave you now, Captain. It has been an enjoyable voyage.”
While relief still battled consternation on the captain’s face, Mat picked up his things from the deck and, using the quarterstaff as a walking stick, made his way to the gangplank with Thom. Mallia followed as far as the head of the plank, murmuring regrets at their departure that jumped from real to insincere and back again. Mat was certain the man hated losing a chance to ingratiate himself with his High Lord Samon by learning details of a pact between Andor and Tar Valon.
As Mat and the gleeman pushed through the crowds, Thom muttered, “I know the man is far from likable, but why do you have to keep taunting him? Wasn’t it enough that you ate every scrap of what he thought would feed him all the way to Tear?”
“I have not been eating it all for nearly two days.” The hunger had simply been gone one morning, to his great relief. It had been as if Tar Valon had loosed its last hold on him. “I’ve been throwing most of it over the side, and a hard job it was making sure nobody saw.” Among these drawn faces, many of them children’s, it did not seem so funny anymore. “Mallia deserved taunting. What about that ship, yesterday? The one that was stuck on a mudbank or something. He could have stopped to help, but he would not go near it however much they shouted.” There was a woman with long, dark hair ahead who might have been pretty if she had not looked so bone weary, peering into the face of every man who passed her as if looking for someone; a boy little taller than her waist and two girls shorter clung to her, all crying. “All that talk about river brigands and traps. It didn’t look like any trap to me.”
Thom dodged around a high-wheeled cart—a cage holding two squealing pigs was lashed atop the canvas-covered mound—and nearly tripped over a sledge being pulled, by a man and a woman. “And you go out of your way to help people, do you? Strange how that has escaped my eye.”
“I’ll help anyone who can pay,” Mat said firmly. “Only fools in stories do something for nothing.”
The two girls sobbed into their mother’s skirts while the boy fought his tears. The woman’s deep-set eyes rested on Mat for a moment, studying his face, before drifting on; they looked as if she wished she could weep, too. On impulse he dug a fistful of loose coins out of his pocket without looking to see what they were and pressed them into her hand. She gave a start of surprise, stared at the gold and silver in her hand with incomprehension that quickly turned to a smile, and opened her mouth, tears of gratitude filling her eyes.
“Buy them something to eat,” he said quickly, and hurried on before she could speak. He noticed Thom looking at him. “What are you gawking at? Coin comes easily as long as I can find somebody who likes to dice.” Thom nodded slowly, but Mat was not sure he had gotten his point across. Bloody children’s crying was getting on my nerves, that’s all. Fool gleeman will probably expect me to give gold away to every waif that comes along, now. Fool! For an uncomfortable moment, he was not certain whether the last had been meant for Thom or himself.
Taking himself in hand, he avoided looking at any face long enough to really see it until he found the one he wanted, at the foot of the dock. The helmetless soldier in red coat and breastplate, urging people into the town, had the grizzled