They heard him out, every face as blank as if they were stunned. They schooled themselves well. Or perhaps they were stunned at Merrilin’s plan apparently unraveling at the last instant.
Merrilin stroked one of his white mustaches with a long finger. He seemed to hiding a smile. “I fear you have mistaken me, Banner-General Karede.” For the space of a sentence his voice became extremely resonant. “I am a gleeman, a position higher than court-bard to be sure, but no general. The man you want is Lord Matrim Cauthon.” He made a small bow toward the young man, who was settling his flat-topped hat back on his head.
Karede frowned. Tylin’s Toy was the general? Were they playing a game with him?
“You have about a hundred men, Deathwatch Guards, and maybe twenty Gardeners,” Cauthon said calmly. “From what I hear, that could make an even fight against five times their number for most soldiers, but the Band aren’t most soldiers, and I have a sight more than six hundred. As for Chisen, if that’s the fellow who pulled back through the Narrows, even if he has figured out what I was up to, he couldn’t get back in less than five days. My scouts’ last reports had him pushing southwest along the Ebou Dar Road as fast he could march. The real question is this, though. Can you get Tuon to the Tarasin Palace safely?”
Karede felt as if Hartha had kicked him in the belly, and not only because the man had used the High Lady’s name so casually. “You mean to let me take her away?” he said incredulously.
“If she trusts you. If you can get her to the palace safely. She’s in danger till she reaches that. In case you don’t know it, your whole bloody Ever Victorious flaming Army is ready to slit her throat or bash in her head with a rock.”
“I know,” Karede said, more calmly than he felt. Why would this man just release the High Lady after the White Tower had gone to all the trouble of kidnapping her? Why, after fighting that short, bloody campaign? “We will die to the man if that is what is needed to see her safe. It will be best if we set out immediately.” Before the man changed his mind. Before Karede woke from this fever-dream. It surely seemed a fever-dream.
“Not so fast.” Cauthon turned toward the High Lady. “Tuon, do you trust this man to see you safe to the palace in Ebou Dar?” Karede stifled an impulse to wince. General and lord the man might be, but he had no right to use the High Lady’s name so!
“I trust the Deathwatch Guards with my life,” the High Lady replied calmly, “and him more than any other.” She favored Karede with a smile. Even as a child, smiles from her had been rare. “Do you by any chance still have my doll, Banner-General Karede?”
He bowed to her formally. The manner of her speaking told him she was still under the veil. “Forgiveness, High Lady. I lost everything in the Great Fire of Sohima.”
“That means you kept it for ten years. You have my commiseration on the loss of your wife, and of your son, though he died bravely and well. Few men will enter a burning building once. He saved five people before he was overcome.”
Karede’s throat tightened. She had followed news of him. All he could do was bow again, more deeply.
“Enough of that,” Cauthon muttered. “You’re going to knock your head on the ground if you keep that up. As soon as she and Selucia can get their things together, you take them out of here and ride hard. Talmanes, roust the Band. It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Karede, but I think I’ll sleep easier beyond the Narrows.”
“Matrim Cauthon is my husband,” the High Lady said in a loud, clear voice. Everyone froze where they stood. “Matrim Cauthon is my husband.”
Karede felt as if Hartha had kicked him again. No, not Hartha. Aldazar. What madness was this? Cauthon looked like a man watching an arrow fly toward his face, knowing he had no chance to dodge.
“Bloody Matrim Cauthon is my husband. That is the wording you used, is it not?” This had to be a fever-dream. It took a minute before Mat could speak. Burn him, it seemed to take a bloody hour before he could move. When he could, he snatched off his hat, strode to Tuon and seized the razor’s bridle. She looked down at him, cool as any queen on a bloody throne. All those battles with the flaming dice rattling away in his head, all those skirmishes and raids, and they had to stop when she said a few words. Well, at least this time he knew what had happened that was bloody fateful for Mat bloody Cauthon. “Why? I mean, I knew you were going to sooner or later, but why now? I like you, maybe more than like you, and I enjoy kissing you,” he thought Karede grunted, “but you haven’t behaved like a woman in love. You’re ice half the time and spend most of the rest digging under my skin.”
“Love?” Tuon sounded surprised. “Perhaps we will come to love one another, Matrim, but I have always known I would marry to serve the Empire. What do you mean, you knew that I was going to speak the words?”
“Call me Mat.” Only his mother had ever called him Matrim, when he was in trouble, and his sisters when they were carrying tales to get him in trouble.
“Your name is Matrim. What did you mean?”
He sighed. The woman never wanted much. Just her own way. Like just about every other woman he had ever known. “I went through a ter’angreal to somewhere else, another world maybe. The people there aren’t really people—they look like snakes—but they’ll answer three questions for you, and their answers are always true. One of mine was that I’d marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. But you haven’t answered my question. Why now?”
A faint smile on her lips, Tuon leaned down from her saddle. And rapped him hard on the top of his head with her knuckles! “Your superstitions are bad enough, Matrim, but I won’t tolerate lies. An amusing lie, true, but still a lie.”
“It’s the Light’s own truth,” he protested, clapping his hat on. Maybe it would give him some protection. “You could learn for yourself if you could make yourself talk to an Aes Sedai. They could tell you about the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn.”
“It could be the truth,” Edesina piped up as if she were being helpful. “The Aelfinn can be reached through a ter’angreal in the Stone of Tear, so I understand, and supposedly they give true answers.”
Mat glared at her. A fat lot of help she was, with her “so I understands” and “supposedlies.” Tuon continued to stare at him as if Edesina had not opened her mouth. “I answered your question, Tuon,