Mat squatted beside her, fascinated. He had seen fireworks twice in his life. Peddlers had brought them to Emond's Field, at great expense to the Village Council. When he was ten, he had tried to cut one open to see what was inside, and had caused an uproar. Bran al'Vere, the Mayor, had cuffed him; Doral Barran, who had been the Wisdom then, had switched him; and his father had strapped him when he got home. Nobody in the village would talk to him for a month, except for Rand and Perrin, and they mostly told him what a fool he had been. He reached out to touch one of the cylinders. Aludra slapped his hand away.
“Attend me first, I say! These smallest, they will make a loud bang, but no more.” They were the size of his little finger. “These next, they make a bang and a bright light. The next, they make the bang, and the light, and many sparkles. The last” — these were fatter than his thumb — “make all of those things, but the sparkles, they are many colors. Almost like a nightflower, but not up in the sky.”
Nightflower? Mat thought.
“You must be especially careful of these. You see, the fuse, it is very long.” She saw his blank look, and waggled one of the long, dark cords at him. “This, this!”
“Where you put the fire,” he muttered. “I know that.” Thom made a sound in his throat and stroked his mustaches with a knuckle as if covering a smile.
Aludra grunted. “Where you put the fire. Yes. Do not stay close to any of them, but these largest, you run away from when you light the fuse. You comprehend me?” She briskly rolled up the long cloth. “You may sell these if you wish, or use them. Remember, you must never put this close to fire. Fire will make them all explode. So many as this at once, it could destroy a house, maybe.” She hesitated over retying the cords, then added, “And there is one last thing, which you may have heard. Do not cut open any of these, as some great fools do to see what is inside. Sometimes when what is inside touches air, it will explode without the need of fire. You can lose fingers, or even a hand.”
“I've heard that,” Mat said dryly.
She frowned at him as if wondering whether he meant to do it anyway, then finally pushed the rolled bundle toward him. “Here. I must go now, before these sons of goats awaken.” Glancing at the still open door, and the rain falling in the night beyond, she sighed. “Perhaps I will find somewhere else dry. I think I will go toward Lugard, tomorrow. These pigs, they will expect me to go to Caemlyn, yes?”
It was even further to Lugard than to Caemlyn, and Mat suddenly remembered that hard end of bread. And she had said she had no money. The fireworks would buy no meals until she found someone who could afford them. She had never even looked at the gold and silver that had spilled from his pockets when he fell; it glittered and sparkled among the straw in the lantern light. Ah, Light, I cannot let her go hungry, I suppose. He scooped up as much as he could reach quickly.
“Uh... Aludra? I have plenty, you can see. I thought perhaps...” He held out the coins toward her. “I can always win more.”
She paused with her cloak half around her shoulders, then smiled at Thom as she swept it the rest of the way on. “He is young yet, eh?”
“He is young,” Thom agreed. “And not half so bad as he would like to think himself. Sometimes he is not.”
Mat glowered at both of them and lowered his hand.
Lifting the shafts of her cart, Aludra got it turned around and started for the door, giving Tammuz a kick in the ribs as she passed. He groaned groggily.
“I would like to know something, Aludra,” Thom said. “How did you light that lantern so quickly in the dark?”
Stopping short of the door, she smiled over her shoulder at him. “You wish me to tell you all of my secrets? I am grateful, but I am not in love. That secret, not even the Guild knows, for it is my discovery alone. I will tell you this much. When I know how to make it work properly, and work only when I want it to, sticks will make my fortune for me.” Throwing her weight against the shafts, she pulled the cart into the rain, and the night swallowed her.
“Sticks?” Mat said. He wondered if she might not be a little strange in the head.
Tammuz groaned again.
“Best we do the same as she, boy,” Thom said. “Else it's a choice between slitting four throats and maybe spending the next few days explaining ourselves to the Queen's Guards. These look the sort who'd set them on us out of spite. And they have enough to be spiteful for, I suppose.” One of Tammuz's companions twitched as if coming to, and muttered something incomprehensible.
By the time they had gathered everything and saddled the horses, Tammuz was up on his hands and knees with his head hanging, and the others were stirring and groaning, too.
Swinging into his saddle, Mat stared at the rain outside the open door, falling harder than ever. “A bloody hero,” he said. “Thom, if I ever look like acting the hero again, you kick me.”
“And what would you have done differently?”
Mat scowled at him, then pulled up his hood and spread the tail of his cloak over the fat roll tied behind the high cantle of his saddle. Even with oiled cloth, a little more protection from the rain could not hurt. “Just kick me!” He booted his horse in the ribs and galloped into the rainy night.
Chapter 41
(Wolf)
A Hunter's Oath
As the Snow Goose moved toward the long stone docks of Illian, sails furled and propelled by its sweeps, Perrin stood near the stern watching great numbers of longlegged birds wading in the tall marsh grass that all but encircled the great harbor. He recognized the small white cranes, and could guess at their much larger blue brothers, but many of the crested birds — redfeathered or rosy, some with flat bills broader than a duck's — he did not know at all. A dozen sorts of gulls swooped and soared above the harbor itself, and a black bird with a long, sharp beak skimmed just above the water, its underbeak cutting a furrow. Ships three and four times as long as the Snow Goose lay anchored across the expanse of the harbor, waiting their turns at the docks, or for the tides to shift so they could sail beyond the long breakwater. Small fishing boats worked close to the marsh, and in the creeks winding through it, two or three men in each dragging nets on long poles swung out from either side of the boat.
The wind carried a sharp scent of salt, and did little to break the heat. The sun stood well over halfway down to the horizon, but it seemed like noon. The air felt damp; it was the only way he could think of it. Damp. His nose caught the smell of fresh fish from the boats, of old fish and mud from the marsh, and the sour stink of a large tanning yard that lay on a treeless