Startled, she touched her cheek, not seeming to know whether to look at the coins or at him. “Get them out, you say. Just like that. Out of the Stone.” Abruptly she stabbed him in the ribs with a finger as hard as a tree stub. “You remind me of my husband, Mat Cauthon. He was a headstrong fool who would sail into the teeth of a gale and laugh, too. I could almost think you’ll manage it.” Suddenly she saw his muddy boots, apparently for the first time. “It took me six months to teach him not to track mud into my house. If you do get those girls out, whichever of them you have your eye on will have a hard time training you to make you fit to be let inside.”

“You are the only woman who could do that,” he said with a grin that broadened at her glare. Get them out. That’s all I have to do. Bring them right out of the Stone of bloody Tear. Thom coughed again. He isn’t going into the Stone like that. Only, how do I stop him? “Mother Guenna, can I leave my friend here? I think he is too sick to go back to the inn.”

“What?” Thom barked. He tried to push himself out of the chair, coughing so he could hardly speak. “I am no . . . such thing, boy! You think . . . walking into the Stone . . . will be like . . . walking into your mother’s kitchen? You think you . . . would make it . . . as far as the gates . . . without me?” He hung on the back of the chair, his wheezing and hacking keeping him from rising more than halfway to his feet.

Mother Guenna put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down as easily as a child. The gleeman gave her a startled look. “I will take care of him, Mat Cauthon,” she said.

“No!” Thom shouted. “You cannot . . . do this to me! You can’t . . . leave me . . . with this old. . . .” Only her hand on his shoulder kept him from doubling over.

Mat grinned at the white-haired man. “I have enjoyed knowing you, Thom.”

As he hurried out into the street, he found himself wondering why he had said that. He isn’t going to bloody die. That woman will keep him alive if she has to drag him kicking and screaming out of his grave by his mustaches. Yes, but who is going to keep me alive?

Ahead of him, the Stone of Tear loomed over the city, impregnable, a fortress besieged a hundred times, a stone on which a hundred armies had broken their teeth. And he had to get inside, somehow. And bring out three women. Somehow.

With a laugh that made even the sullen folk in the street look at him, he headed back for The White Crescent, uncaring of mud or the damp heat. He could feel the dice tumbling inside his head.

CHAPTER
53