“How much for one of the cabins?” Mat asked. “To ourselves. You can put whoever is in it now with someone else.” He did not want to sleep out in the cold night. And if you don’t overwhelm a fellow like this, he’ll steal your breeches and say he is doing you a favor. His stomach rumbled loudly. “And we eat what you eat, not with the crew. And plenty of it!”

“Mat,” Thom said, “I’m the one who is supposed to be drunk here.” He turned to the captain, flourishing his patch-covered cloak as well as he could with blanketroll and instrument cases hung about him. “As you may have noticed, Captain, I am a gleeman.” Even in the open air, his voice suddenly seemed to echo. “For the price of our passages, I would be more than glad to entertain your passengers and your crew—”

“My crew is aboard to work, gleeman, not be entertained.” The captain stroked his pointed beard; his pale eyes priced Mat’s plain coat to the copper. “So you want a cabin, do you?” He barked a laugh. “And my meals? Well, you can have my cabin and my meals. For five gold crowns from each of you! Andoran weight!” Those were the heaviest. He began to laugh so hard his words came out in wheezes. Flanking him, Sanor and Vasa grinned wide grins. “For ten crowns, you can take my cabin, and my meals, and I’ll move in with the passengers and eat with the crew. Burn my soul, I will! By the Stone, I swear it! For ten gold crowns. . . .” Laughter choked off anything else.

He was still laughing and gasping for breath and wiping tears from his eyes when Mat pulled out one of his two purses, but laughter stopped by the time Mat had counted five crowns into his hands. The captain blinked in disbelief; the two big crewmen looked poleaxed.

“Andoran weight, you said?” Mat asked. It was hard to judge without scales, but he laid seven more on the pile. Two actually were Andoran, and he thought the others made up the weight. Close enough, for this fellow. After a moment, he added another two gold Tairen crowns. “For whoever you’ll be pushing out of the cabin they paid for.” He did not think the passengers would see a copper of it, but it sometimes paid to appear generous. “Unless you mean to share with them? No, of course not. They ought to have something for having to crowd in with others. There’s no need for you to eat with your crew, Captain. You are welcome to share Thom’s meals and mine in your cabin.” Thom stared at him as hard as the others did.

“Are you . . . ?” The bearded man’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Are you . . . by any chance . . . a young lord in disguise?”