A sharp gust cut through Mat’s coat, making him shiver. “And put your coat on; it’s cold,” he added as the boy ducked past Thera into the tent. Rustles and scraping sounds from inside said that Olver was setting to work, with or without his coat, but Thera remained crouched at the tent’s entrance, peering at Mat. For all the care anybody but Mat Cauthon took, the boy could catch his death.

As soon as Olver disappeared, Egeanin stepped closer to Mat, her fists on her hips again, and he groaned under his breath. “We are going to settle matters now, Cauthon,” she said in a hard voice. “Now! I won’t have our journey wrecked by you countermanding my orders.”

“There’s nothing to settle,” he told her. “I was never your hired hand, and that’s that.” Somehow, her face managed to grow harder, as good as shouting that she did not see matters like that. The woman was as tenacious as a snapping turtle, but there had to be some way to pry her jaws from his leg. Burn him if he wanted to be alone with the dice rolling in his head, yet that was better than having to listen to them while arguing with her. “I’m going to see Tuon before we leave.” The words popped out of his mouth before they were clear in his head. He realized that they had been lying there for some time, though, murky and slowly solidifying.

The blood drained from Egeanin’s cheeks as soon as Tuon’s name left his mouth, and he heard a squeak from Thera followed by the snap of the tentflaps being jerked shut. The onetime panarch had absorbed a great many Seanchan ways while she was Suroth’s property, and many of their taboos as well. Egeanin was made of harder stuff, however. “Why?” she demanded. In almost the same breath, she went on, anxious and furious all at once. “You mustn’t call her that. You must show respect.” Harder in some ways.

Mat grinned, but she did not seem to see the joke. Respect? There was precious little respect in stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth and rolling them up in a wall hanging. Calling Tuon High Lady or anything else was not going to change that. Of course, Egeanin was more willing to talk about freeing damane than she was about Tuon. If she could have pretended the kidnapping never happened, she would have, and as it was, she tried. Light, she had tried to ignore it while it was happening. In her mind, any other crimes she might have committed paled to nothing beside that.