“We ought to get out of here while we have the chance,” Rand said softly, but Mat shook his head, his eyes fixed oh the two plates the cook was filling with beef and potatoes and peas. She hardly looked at the two of them, keeping up her talk with the other women while she pushed things aside on the table with her elbows and set the plates down, adding forks.
“After we eat is time enough.” Mat slid onto a bench and began using his fork as if it were a shovel.
Rand sighed, but he was right behind Mat. He had had only a butt-end of bread to eat since the night before. His belly felt as empty as a beggar’s purse, and the cooking smells that filled the kitchen did not help. He quickly had his mouth full, though Mat was getting his plate refilled by the cook before he had finished half of his.
He did not mean to eavesdrop on the women’s talk, but some of the words reached out and grabbed him.
“Sounds crazy to me.”
“Crazy or not, it’s what I hear. He went to half the inns in town before he came here. Just walked in, looked around, and walked out without saying one word, even at the Royal Inn. Like it wasn’t raining at all.”
“Maybe he thought here was the most comfortable.” That brought gales of laughter.
“What I hear is he didn’t even get to Four Kings till after nightfall, and his horses blowing like they’d been pushed hard.”
“Where’d he come from, to get caught out after dark? Nobody but a fool or a madman travels anywhere and plans it that badly.”
“Well, maybe he’s a fool, but he’s a rich one. I hear he even has another carriage for his servants and baggage. There’s money there, mark my words. Did you see that cloak of his? I wouldn’t mind having that my ownself.”
“He’s a little plump for my taste, but I always say a man can’t be too fat if enough gold comes with it.” They all doubled over giggling, and the cook threw back her head and roared with laughter.
Rand dropped his fork on his plate. A thought he did not like bubbled in his head. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. Mat barely nodded, stuffing a piece of potato into his mouth.
Rand picked up his sword belt along with his cloak as he stood, and buckled it around his waist on the way to the back door. No one paid him any mind.
The rain was bucketing down. He swung his cloak around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head, holding the cloak closed as he trotted across the stableyard. A curtain of water hid everything except when lightning flashed, but he found what he was hunting. The horses had been taken into the stable, but the two black-lacquered carriages glistened wetly outside. Thunder grumbled, and a bolt of lightning streaked above the inn. In the brief burst of light he made out a name in gold script on the coach doors. Howal Gode.
Unmindful of the rain beating at him, he stood staring at the name he could no longer see. He remembered where he had last seen black-lacquered coaches with their owners’ names on the door, and sleek, overfed men in silk-lined velvet cloaks and velvet slippers. Whitebridge. A Whitebridge merchant could have a perfectly legitimate reason to be on his way to Caemlyn. A reason that sends him to half the inns in town before he chooses the one where you are? A reason that makes him look at you as if he’s found what he’s searching for?
Rand shivered, and suddenly he was aware of rain trickling down his back. His cloak was tightly woven, but it had never been meant to stand up to this kind of downpour. He hurried back to the inn, splashing through deepening puddles. Jak blocked the door as he started through.
“Well, well, well. Out here alone in the dark. Dark’s dangerous, boy.”
Rain slicked Rand’s hair down across his forehead. The stableyard was empty except for them. He wondered if Hake had decided he wanted the sword and the flute badly enough to forgo keeping the crowd in the common room.
Brushing water out of his eyes with one hand, he put the other on his sword. Even wet, the nobby leather made a sure grip for his fingers. “Has Hake decided all those men will stay just for his ale, instead of going where there’s entertainment, too? If he has, we’ll call the meal even for what we’ve done so far and be on our way.”
Dry in the doorway, the big man looked out at the rain and snorted. “In this?” His eyes slid down to Rand’s hand on the sword. “You know, me and Strom got a bet. He figures you stole that from your old grandmother. Me, I figure your grandmother’d kick you round the pigpen and hang you out to dry.” He grinned. His teeth were crooked and yellow, and the grin made him look even meaner. “Night’s long yet, boy.”
Rand brushed past him, and Jak let him by with an ugly chuckle.
Inside, he tossed off his cloak and dropped on the bench at the table he had left only minutes before. Mat was done with his second plate and working on a third, eating more slowly now, but intently, as if he planned to finish every bite if it killed him. Jak took up a place by the door to the stableyard, lean
ing against the wall and watching them. Even the cook seemed to feel no urge to talk with him there.
“He’s from Whitebridge,” Rand said softly. There was no need to say who “he” was. Mat’s head swiveled toward him, a piece of beef on the end of the fork suspended halfway to his mouth. Conscious of Jak watching, Rand stirred the food on his plate. He could not have gotten a mouthful down if he had been starving, but he tried to pretend an interest in the peas as he told Mat about the carriages, and what the women had said, in case Mat had not been listening.
Obviously he had not been. Mat blinked in surprise and whistled between his teeth, then frowned at the meat on his fork and grunted as he tossed the fork onto his plate. Rand wished he would make at least an effort to be circumspect.
“After us,” Mat said when he finished. The creases in Mat’s forehead deepened. “A Darkfriend?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Rand glanced at Jak and the big man stretched elaborately, shrugging shoulders as big as any blacksmith’s. “Do you think we can get past him?”
“Not without him making enough noise to bring Hake and the other one. I knew we should never have stopped here.”
Rand gaped, but before he could say anything Hake pushed through the door from the common room. Strom bulked large over his shoulder. Jak stepped in front of the back door. “You going to eat all night?” Hake barked. “I didn’t feed you so you could lie around out here.”
Rand looked at his friend. Later, Mat mouthed, and they gathered their things under the watchful eyes of Hake, Strom, and Jak.