“Because I want to talk with her,” he said. And why not? He had to, sooner or later. People had begun trotting up and down the narrow street, now, half-dressed men with their shirts hanging out and women with their hair still wrapped in night-kerchiefs, some leading horses and others just milling about as far as he could make out. A wiry boy a little bigger than Olver went past doing handsprings wherever the crowd gave him a pace of room, practicing or maybe playing. The sleepy fellow in the deep green wagon still had not appeared. Luca’s Grand Traveling Show would not be traveling anywhere for hours yet. There was plenty of time. “You could come with me,” he suggested in his most innocent voice. He should have thought of this before.

The invitation made Egeanin go fence-post stiff for true. It hardly seemed possible her face could grow any paler, but an extra scrap of color leached out. “You will show her fitting respect,” she said hoarsely, clutching the knotted scarf with both hands as though trying to squeeze the black wig tighter onto her head. “Come, Bayle. I want to make sure my things are stowed properly.”

Domon hesitated as she turned and hurried away into the crowd without looking back, and Mat watched him warily. He had vague memories of a flight on Domon’s rivership, once, but vague was the best he could say of them. Thom was friendly with Domon, a point in the Illianer’s favor, yet he was Egeanin’s man to the knife, ready to back her on anything down to disliking Juilin, and Mat trusted him no further than he did her. Which was to say, not very far. Egeanin and Domon had their own goals, and whether Mat Cauthon kept a whole hide did not factor in them. He doubted that the man really trusted him, for that matter, but then, neither of them had much choice at the moment.

“Fortune prick me,” Domon muttered, scratching the bristles growing above his left ear, “whatever you do be up to, you may be in over your head. I think she do be tougher than you do suspect.”