Watching him go, Mat muttered to himself. “I will wager this”—he gave Gaebril’s wash-leather purse a toss—“that Gaebril says the same.” Whatever games they played in the Palace, he wanted no place in any of them. And he meant to make sure Egwene and the others were out of them, too. Fool women! Now I have to keep their bacon from burning instead of looking after my own! He did not start to run until the streets hid him from the Palace.

When he came dashing into The Queen’s Blessing, nothing very much had changed in the library. Thom and the innkeeper still sat over the stones board—a different game, he saw from the positions of the stones, but no better for Gill—and the calico cat was back on the table, washing herself. A tray holding their unlit pipes and the remains of a meal for two sat near the cat, and his belongings were gone from the armchair. Each man had a wine cup at his elbow.

“I will be leaving, Master Gill,” he said. “You can keep the coin and take a meal out of it. I’ll stay long enough to eat, but then I am on the road to Tear.”

“What is your hurry, boy?” Thom seemed to be watching the cat more than the board. “We only just arrived here.”

“You delivered the Lady Elayne’s letter, then?” the innkeeper said eagerly. “And kept your skin whole, it seems. Did you really climb over that wall like the other young man? No, that does not matter. Did the letter soothe Morgase? Do we still have to keep tiptoeing on eggs, man?”

“I suppose it soothed her,” Mat said. “I think it did.” He hesitated a moment, bouncing Gaebril’s purse on his hand. It made a clinking sound. He had not looked to see if it really held ten gold marks; the weight was about right. “Master Gill, what can you tell me of Gaebril? Aside from the fact that he does not like Aes Sedai. You said he had not been in Caemlyn long?”

“Why do you want to know about him?” Thom asked. “Basel, are you going to place a stone or not?” The innkeeper sighed and stuck a black stone on the board, and the gleeman shook his head.

“Well, lad,” Gill said, “there is not much to tell. He came out of the west during the winter. Somewhere out your way, I think. Maybe it was the Two Rivers. I’ve heard the mountains mentioned.”

“We have no lords in the Two Rivers,” Mat said. “Maybe there are some up around Baerlon. I do not know.”