Mat decided he had had as much as one man could take in a night. He went back to the stable and went to sleep, with his saddle for a pillow. His dreams would have been pleasant, except that they all involved Myrelle and Siuan and Leane and Halima. When it came to dreams, a man just naturally lacked the sense to pour water out of a boot.

The next day had to be better, he thought, especially when dawn found Vanin in the loft, asleep on his saddle. Talmanes understood and would hold where he was; Warders had been seen watching the Band’s preparations, no doubt letting themselves be seen, but no one had come near the Band. A less pleasant surprise was finding Olver’s gray in the yard behind the stable, and Olver himself curled up in his blankets in a corner.

“You need somebody to watch your back,” he told Mat darkly. “She cannot be trusted.” There was no need for him to name Aviendha.

Olver had no interest in playing with the children in the village, so Mat had to endure the stares and smiles as the boy trailed him around Salidar, doing his best to imitate a Warder’s flowing stride and looking nine ways at once for Aviendha. Who was still nowhere to be seen, any more than Elayne or Nynaeve. And “the Amyrlin” was still busy. Thom and Juilin were also “busy.” Vanin managed to hear a few things, but nothing that made Mat happy. If Nynaeve had really Healed Siuan and Leane, she would be worse than ever; she had always had a large opinion of herself, and after doing what could not be done, her head would be bigger than a dewmelon. Yet that was the mildest of it. Logain and the Red Ajah made Mat wince. That sounded the sort of thing no Aes Sedai would forgive. If Gareth Bryne was leading their army, it was no mob of farmers and street sweepings with a few Warders for stiffening. Add in the foodstuffs Vanin saw being wrapped or stuck in barrels for travel, and it sounded like trouble. The worst kind of trouble Mat could imagine, short of finding one of the Forsaken across the table from him and a dozen Trollocs coming in the door. None of it made them any less fools; it made them very dangerous fools. Thom and his “help them make it work.” If the gleeman ever came out of hiding, maybe he could pull a “how” out of one of his tales.