“Are you sure, boy? The chances of it being the same man. . . . Why, even you wouldn’t lay a wager against those odds.”

“I am sure, Thom.” Elayne, I will wring your neck when I put my hands on you. And Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s, too. “And I am sure I intend to have this bloody letter out of my hands an hour after we reach Caemlyn.”

“I tell you, there is nothing in that letter, boy. I played Daes Dae’mar when I was younger than you, and I can recognize a code or a cipher even when I don’t know what it says.”

“Well, I never played your Great Game, Thom, your bloody Game of Houses, but I know when someone is chasing me, and they’d not be chasing this hard or this far for the gold in my pockets, not for less than a chest full of gold. It has to be the letter.” Burn me, pretty girls always get me in trouble. “Do you feel like sleeping tonight, after this?”

“With the sleep of an innocent babe, boy. But if you want to ride, I’ll ride.”

The face of a pretty woman floated into Mat’s head, with a dagger in her throat. You had no luck, pretty woman. “Then let’s ride!” he said savagely.

CHAPTER
45

Caemlyn

Mat had vague memories of Caemlyn, but when they approached it in the early hours after sunrise, it seemed as if he had never been there before. They had not been alone on the road since first light, and other riders surrounded them now, and trains of merchants’ wagons and folk afoot, all streaming toward the great city.

Built on rising hills, it was surely as large as Tar Valon, and outside the huge walls—a fifty-foot height of pale, grayish stone streaked with white and silver sparkling in the sun, spaced with tall, round towers with the Lion Banner of Andor waving atop them, white on red—outside those walls, it seemed as if another great city had been placed, wrapping around the walled city, all red brick and gray stone and white plastered walls, inns pushed in on houses of three and four stories so fine they must belong to wealthy merchants, shops with goods displayed on tables under awnings crowding against wide, windowless warehouses. Open markets under red and purple roof tiles lined the road on both sides, men and women already crying their wares, bargaining at the top of their voices, while penned calves and sheep and goats and pigs, caged geese and chickens and ducks, added to the din. He seemed to remember thinking Caemlyn was too noisy when he was here before; now it sounded like a heartbeat, pumping wealth.