The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,242

catch her as she fell, knowing it was no good. Her long cloak settled over her, covering everything but her face, and the hilt of Thom’s knife.

“Burn you,” Mat muttered. “Burn you, Thom Merrilin! A woman! Light, we could have tied her up, given her to the Queen’s Guards tomorrow in Caemlyn. Light, I might even have let her go. She’d rob nobody without these three, and the only one that lives will be days before he can see straight and months before he can hold a sword. Burn you, Thom, there was no need to kill her!”

The gleeman limped to where the woman lay, and kicked back her cloak. The dagger had half fallen from her hand, its blade as wide as Mat’s thumb and two hands long. “Would you rather I had waited till she nested that in your ribs, boy?” He retrieved his own knife, wiping the blade on her cloak.

Mat realized he was humming “She Wore a Mask That Hid Her Face,” and stopped it. He bent down and hid hers with the hood of her cloak. “Best we move on,” he said quietly. “I do not want to have to explain this if a patrol of the Guards happens by.”

“With her in those clothes?” Thom said. “I should say not! They must have robbed a merchant’s wife, or some noblewoman’s carriage.” His voice became gentler. “If we’re going, boy, you had best see to saddling your horse.”

Mat gave a start and pulled his eyes from the dead woman. “Yes, I had better, hadn’t I?” He did not look at her again.

He had no such compunction about the men. As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers. It was after he had saddled his gelding and tied his things on behind, while he was kicking dirt onto the fire, that he found himself looking at the man who had shot the crossbow. There was something familiar about those features, about the way the smothering fire made shadows across them. Luck, he told himself. Always the luck.

“The crossbowman was a good swimmer, Thom,” he said as he climbed into the saddle.

“What foolery are you talking, now?” The gleeman was on his horse, too, and far more concerned with how his instrument cases rode behind his saddle than he was with the dead. “How could you know whether he could even swim at all?”

“He made it ashore from a small boat in the middle of the Erinin in the middle of the night. I guess that used up all his luck.” He checked the lashings on the roll of fireworks again. If that fool thought one of these was Aes Sedai, I wonder what he’d have thought if they all went off.

“Are you sure, boy? The chances of it being the same man. . . . Why, even you wouldn’t lay a wager against those odds.”

“I am sure, Thom.” Elayne, I will wring your neck when I put my hands on you. And Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s, too. “And I am sure I intend to have this bloody letter out of my hands an hour after we reach Caemlyn.”

“I tell you, there is nothing in that letter, boy. I played Daes Dae’mar when I was younger than you, and I can recognize a code or a cipher even when I don’t know what it says.”

“Well, I never played your Great Game, Thom, your bloody Game of Houses, but I know when someone is chasing me, and they’d not be chasing this hard or this far for the gold in my pockets, not for less than a chest full of gold. It has to be the letter.” Burn me, pretty girls always get me in trouble. “Do you feel like sleeping tonight, after this?”

“With the sleep of an innocent babe, boy. But if you want to ride, I’ll ride.”

The face of a pretty woman floated into Mat’s head, with a dagger in her throat. You had no luck, pretty woman. “Then let’s ride!” he said savagely.

CHAPTER

45

Caemlyn

Mat had vague memories of Caemlyn, but when they approached it in the early hours after sunrise, it seemed as if he had never been there before. They had not been alone on the road since first light, and other riders surrounded them now, and trains of merchants’