Mat eyed them warily, mentally daring them to say a word more — just one word! — but once he asked after Nynaeve and Elayne, he quit worrying what they suspected. The women were not back. He almost leaped up, breeches or no. They were trying to wiggle out of their agreement already; he had to explain what he meant in between their outbursts of incredulity, in between expressing his opinions of Nynaeve bloody al’Meara and Elayne bloody Daughter-Heir. Not much chance they would have gone off to the Rahad without him, but he would not put it past them to try their hand spying on Carridin. Elayne would demand a confession and expect the man to break down; Nynaeve would try to beat one out of him.

"I doubt they are bothering Carridin," Juilin said, scratching behind his ear. "I believe Aviendha and Birgitte are taking a look at him, from what I heard. We didn’t see them go. I do not think you need to worry about him knowing what he’s seeing even if he walks right by them." Thom, pouring himself a golden goblet of the wine punch that Mat had found waiting, took up the explanation.

Mat put a hand over his eyes. Disguises made with the Power; no wonder they had slipped away like snakes whenever they wanted. Those women were going to make trouble. That was what women did best. It hardly surprised him to learn that Thom and Juilin knew less about this Bowl of the Winds than he did.

After they left to ready themselves for a trip to the Rahad, he had time to set his clothes to rights before Nynaeve and Elayne came back. He had time to check on Olver, in his room one floor down. The boy’s skinny frame had fleshed out somewhat, with Enid and the rest of the cooks at The Wandering Woman stuffing him, but he would always be short even for a Cairhienin, and if his ears shrank to half their size and his mouth to half its width, his nose would still stop him well short of handsome. No fewer than three serving women fussed over him while he sat cross-legged on his bed.

"Mat, doesn’t Haesel have the most beautiful eyes?" Olver said, beaming at the big-eyed young woman Mat had met the last time he came to the palace. She beamed back and ruffled the boy’s hair. "Oh, but Alis and Loya are so sweet, I could never choose." A plump woman just short of her middle years looked up from unpacking Olver’s saddlebags to give him a broad grin, and a slender girl with bee-stung lips patted the towel she had just put on his washstand, then flung herself onto the bed to tickle Olver’s ribs till he fell over laughing helplessly.

Mat snorted. Harnan and that lot were bad enough, but now these womenwere encouraging the boy! How was he ever going to learn to behave if women did that? Olver ought to be playing in the streets like any other ten-year-old. Hehad had no serving women falling over him in his rooms. Tylin had seen to that, he was sure.

He had time to check on Olver, and to look in on Harnan and the rest of the Redarms, sharing a long room lined with beds not far from the stables, and to saunter down to the kitchens for some bread and beef — he had not been able to face that porridge back at the inn. Still Nynaeve and Elayne had not returned. He finally looked over the books in his sitting room and began reading The Travels of Jain Farstrider, though he barely made out a word for worrying. Thom and Juilin came in just as the women finally bustled in exclaiming over finding him there, as if they thought hewould not keep his word.

He closed the book gently, set it gently on the table beside his chair. "Where have you been?"

"Why, we went for a walk," Elayne said brightly, blue eyes wider than he remembered seeing before. Thom frowned and produced a knife from his sleeve, rolling it back and forth through his fingers. He very markedly did not so much as glance at Elayne.

"We had tea with some women your innkeeper knows," Nynaeve said. "I won’t bore you with talk about needlework." Juilin started to shake his head, then stopped before she noticed.

"Please, don’t bore me," Mat said dryly. He supposed she knew one end of a needle from the other, but he suspected she would as soon stick one through her tongue as talk about needlework. Neither woman cracked her teeth about civility, confirming his worst suspicions. "I’ve told off two fellows to walk out with each of you this afternoon, and there will be two more tomorrow and every day. If you’re not inside the palace or under my nose, you’ll have bodyguards. They know their turns already. They’ll stay with you at all times — alltimes — and you will let me know where you’re headed. No more making me worry till my hair falls out."

He expected indignation and argument. He expected weaseling over what they had or had not promised. He expected that demanding this whole loaf might get him a slice at the end; a butt slice, if his luck was in. Nynaeve looked at Elayne; Elayne looked at Nynaeve.

"Why, bodyguards are a wonderfulidea, Mat," Elayne exclaimed, her cheek dimpling in a smile. "I suppose you were right about that. It’s very smart of you to have your men already to a schedule."

"It isa wonderful notion," Nynaeve said, nodding enthusiastically, "Very smart of you, Mat."

Thom dropped the knife with a muffled curse and sat sucking on a nicked finger, staring at the women.

Mat sighed. Trouble; he had known it. And that was before they told him to forget the Rahad for the time being.

Which was how he found himself on a bench in front of a cheap tavern not far from the riverfront called The Rose of the Elbar, drinking from one of the dented tin cups chained to the bench. At least they washed the cups out for each new patron. The stink from a dyer’s shop across the way only raised the style of the Rose. Not that it was a shabby neighborhood really, though the street was too narrow for carriages. A fair number of brightly lacquered sedan chairs swayed through the crowd. If far more passersby wore wool and perhaps a guild vest than silk, the wool was as often well cut as frayed. The houses and shops were the usual array of white plaster, and if most were small and even run-down, the tall house of a wealthy merchant stood on a corner to his right and on the left a diminutive palace — smaller than the merchant’s house, at least — with a single green-banded dome and no spire. A pair of taverns and an inn in plain sight looked cool and inviting. Unfortunately, the Rose was the only one where a man could sit outside, the only one in just the right spot. Unfortunately.

"I doubt I’ve ever seen such splendid flies," Nalesean grumbled, waving away several choice specimens from his cup. "What is it we’re doing again?"

"You are swilling that foul excuse for wine and sweating like a goat," Mat muttered, tugging his hat to shade his eyes better. "I’m being ta’veren." He glared at the dilapidated house, between the dyer’s and a noisy weaver’s establishment, that he had been told to watch. Not asked — told — that was what it came to, however they phrased it, squirming around their pledges. Oh, they made it sound like asking, made it sound like pleading at the end, which he would believe when dogs danced, but he knew when he had been bullied. "Just be ta’veren, Mat," he mimicked. "I know you’ll just knowwhat to do. Bah!" Maybe Elayne bloody Daughter-Heir and her bloody dimple knew, or Nynaeve with her bloody hands twitching to yank her bloody braid, but he would be burned if he did. "If the pig-kissing Bowl is in the Rahad, how am I supposed to find it on this flaming side of the river?"

"I do not remember them saying," Juilin said wryly, and took a long swallow of some drink made from a yellow fruit grown in the countryside. "You’ve asked that fifty times, at least." He claimed the pale drink was refreshing in the heat, but Mat had taken a bite of one of those lemons, and he was not about to swallow anything made from them. With his head still throbbing faintly, he himself drank tea. It tasted as if the tavern-keeper, a scrawny fellow with beady suspicious eyes, had been dumping new leaves and water in yesterday’s leavings since the founding of the city. The taste suited his mood.