Mat had no objection to the women staying apart. A tension he could not understand hung around them. At least, it did around Nynaeve and Elayne, and the Hunter seemed to be infected too. They sometimes stared at the Aes Sedai—the other Aes Sedai; he was not sure he would ever become used to thinking of Nynaeve and Elayne that way—a bit too intently, though Vandene and Adeleas appeared as oblivious as Aviendha. Whatever the reason, Mat wanted no part of it. It smelled like an argument burning to leap out, and whether it burst into flame or smoldered underground, a wise man stepped wide of women’s arguments. Medallion or no medallion, a wise man stepped very wide if the women were Aes Sedai.
A small irritant that, and so was the next, which was his own fault. Food. The smell of lamb and some sort of soup quickly wafted from the Aes Sedai’s fire. Expecting a quick arrival in Ebou Dar, he had said nothing about food to Vanin and the others, which meant they had a little dried meat and hard cakes of flatbread in their saddlebags. Mat had seen hardly a bird or squirrel, let alone sign of a deer, so hunting was out of the question. When Nerim set up a small folding table and stool for Mat—Lopin was putting up another for Nalesean—Mat told him to share out what he had tucked away in the packhorses’ panniers. The result was not as good as he hoped.
Nerim stood by Mat’s table, pouring water from a silver pitcher as if it were wine and mournfully watching delicacies vanish down the trooper’s gullets. “Pickled quail eggs, my Lord,” he would announce in a funereal tone. “They would have gone very well for my Lord’s breakfast in Ebou Dar.” And, “The best smoked tongue, my Lord. If my Lord only knew what I went through to find honey-smoked tongue in that wretched village, with no time to find anything and all the best taken by the Aes Sedai.” Actually, his biggest grievance seemed to be that Lopin had found potted larks for Nalesean. Every time Nalesean crunched one between his teeth, Lopin’s smug smile grew wider and Nerim’s face grew longer. For that matter, it was plain from the way some of the men sniffed the air that they would rather have had a slice of lamb and a bowl of soup than any amount of honey-smoked tongue or goose-liver pudding. Olver stared at the women’s fire with open wistfulness.
“You want to eat with them?” Mat asked him. “It’s all right, if you do.”
“I like kippered eel,” Olver said stoutly. In a darker tone, he added, “Anyway, she might put something in it.” His eyes followed Aviendha every time she shifted, and he seemed to have taken against the Hunter too, perhaps because she spent a good bit of time in obviously friendly chat with the Aiel woman. Aviendha at least must have felt the boy’s stare, because she glanced at him and frowned.
Wiping his chin and eyeing the Aes Sedai’s fire—come to think of it, he would rather have had lamb and soup himself—Mat noticed that Jaem was missing. Vanin grumped about being sent out again, but Mat sent him for the same reason he had had the man scout ahead during the day despite the fact that Jaem did too. He did not want to rely on what the Aes Sedai chose to tell him. He might have trusted Nynaeve—he did not think she would actually lie to him; as Wisdom, Nynaeve had always been death on anyone lying—but she kept peeping at him past Adeleas’ shoulder in a very suspicious way.
To his surprise, Elayne rose as soon as she finished eating and came gliding across that invisible line. Some women just seemed to skim over the ground. “Will you walk aside with me, Master Cauthon?” she asked coolly. Not polite, exactly, but not exactly rude either.
He motioned her to lead the way, and she floated out into the moon-shadowed trees beyond the sentries. That golden hair nestled about her shoulders, framing a face to make any man stare, and the moonlight softened her arrogance. If she had been anything but what she was. . . . And he did not mean just Aes Sedai, nor even that she belonged to Rand. Rand did seem to be tangling himself with the worst sort of woman for a man who had always known how to handle them. Then Elayne began talking, and he forgot everything else.
“You have a ter’angreal,” she said without preamble, and without looking at him. She just glided along, rustling the leaves on the ground, as if she expected him to heel like a hunting hound. “Some hold that ter’angreal are rightfully the property of Aes Sedai, but I do not require you to surrender it. No one will take it from you. Such things need study, however. For that reason, I want you to give the ter’angreal to me each evening when we stop. I will return it each morning before we start out.”
Mat gave her a sidelong look. She was serious, no doubt about it. “That’s very kind of you, letting me keep what’s mine. Only, what makes you think I have one of these . . . what did you call it? A ter-something?”
Oh, she did stiffen up at that, and looked at him too. He was surprised not to see fire leap from her eyes to light up the night. Her voice, on the other hand, was purest crystal ice. “You know very well what a ter’angreal is, Master Cauthon. I heard Moiraine speak of them to you in the Stone of Tear.”
“The Stone?” he said blandly. “Yes, I remember the Stone. A fine time we all had there. Do you remember something in the Stone that gives you a right to make demands of me? I don’t. I am just here to keep you and Nynaeve from getting holes poked in your hides in Ebou Dar. You can ask Rand about ter’angreal after I deliver you to him.”
For a long moment she stared at him as though meaning to beat him down by force of will, then turned on her heel without another word. He followed her back to the camp and was surprised to see her walk along the line of hobbled horses. She examined the fires and how the blankets were laid out, shook her head over the remains of the troopers’ meal. He had no idea what she was about until she returned to him with her chin raised.
“Your men have done very well, Master Cauthon,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “In general I am more than satisfied. But if you had planned ahead properly, they would not have had to gorge themselves on foods that will at the very least keep them awake tonight. Still, on the whole, you have done well. I’m sure you will think ahead in future.” Cool as you please she strode back to her own fire before he could say a word, leaving him staring.
Had that been the whole of it, though, the bloody Daughter-Heir thinking he was one of her subjects, and her and Nynaeve tight-lipped around Vandene and Adeleas—had that been all, he would have danced a jig. Right after Elayne’s “inspection,” before he could even reach his blanke