Mat sat Thom down in one of the high-backed chairs, and glanced through the nearest window. There were three good horses tied out back; he was surprised the Wise Woman had more than one, or any for that matter. He had not seen anyone in Tear riding except nobles and the wealthy, and these animals looked as if they had cost more than a little silver. Horses again. I don’t care about bloody horses now!

Mother Guenna brewed some sort of strong tea with a rank smell and forced it down Thom’s throat, holding his nose when he tried to complain. Mat decided she had less fat on her than he had thought, from the way she held the gleeman’s head steady in the crook of one arm while she poured the black liquid into him no matter how hard he tried to stop her.

When she took the cup away, Thom coughed and scrubbed at his mouth with equal vigor. “Gaaah! Woman . . . I don’t know . . . whether you . . . mean to drown me . . . or kill me . . . with the taste! You ought . . . to be a bloody . . . blacksmith!”

“You will take the same twice a day till that hacking is gone,” she said firmly. “And I have a salve that you’ll rub on your chest every night.” Some of the weariness left her voice as she confronted the gleeman, fists on her broad hips. “That salve stinks as bad as this tea tastes, but you will rub it on—thoroughly!—or I’ll drag you upstairs like a scrawny carp in a net and tie you to a bed with that cloak of yours! I never had a gleeman come to me before, and I’ll not let the first one that does cough himself to death.”

Thom glowered and blew out his mustaches with a cough, but he seemed to take her threat seriously. At least, he did not say anything, but he looked as if he meant to throw her tea and her salve right back at her.

The more this Mother Guenna talked, the more she sounded like the Amyrlin to Mat. From the sour look on Thom’s face, and the steady stare on hers, he decided he had better smooth matters over a little before the gleeman refused to take her medicines. And she decided to make him. “I knew a woman once who talked like you,” he said. “All fish and nets and things. Sounded like you, too. The same accent, I mean. I suppose she’s Tairen.”

“Perhaps.” The gray-haired woman suddenly sounded tired again, and she kept staring at the floor. “I knew some girls with the sound of your speech on their tongues, too. Two of them had it, anyway.” She sighed heavily.