A third voice—Mat’s—muttered something that made someone else snap at him.

Nynaeve, likely
Egwene had started after Rand—he saw her a few paces from the corridor, hesitating, torn between
chasing him and not wanting to turn her back on that argument. Perrin stood half-turned the same way,
caught in the same pull.

It was Mat who moved.

Mat pushed himself off the log, swayed, steadied, and walked closer to the open chest. The Dragon
banner lay there, heavy and folded. Mat did not touch it. He stared at it like it might bite.

“I will not drag any of you by the scruff of the neck. If you want to run after Rand into the Blight, I will not
stop you.”

Moiraine’s reply snapped back, “Spoken like a practiced manipulator.”

Masimon’s head turned toward Mat. “You, at least, are practical.”

Mat barked a laugh that turned into a cough. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked
at his palm as if surprised it had not come away black.

“I’m practical,” Mat called hoarsely. “I’m also not stupid. Everyone says your name and bad things
happen.”

Masimon did not deny it. “And yet you are still standing.”

Mat’s shoulders hitched in a shrug that did not look careless. It looked like a man trying to pretend he
could still shrug. “Not for long, if this keeps up.”

Nynaeve shoved past Egwene and planted herself at Mat’s side, braid swinging. “We are not leaving
him,” she snapped. “Not with you. Not with anyone.”

Masimon’s gaze slid over her like a blade assessing a knot in wood. “Mat’s,” he said. “You can call it
loyalty if you like. The dagger in him will not care what you call it.”

Moiraine’s head turned toward Mat, and Rand saw it—the tiny tightening around her eyes. Calculating
the same fork Rand must have felt; choices that bite, and no good path forward.

Masimon lifted his free hand, palm up. “I can take him somewhere the Shadow will not look for a month,
perhaps two. I can put him in the hands of women who know how to cut poison out without cutting the
patient in half.” His voice did not rise. It did not need to. “If you prefer the White Tower, be honest about
what that means. Weeks. Politics. Questions. Leashes you cannot see until you are wearing them.”

Loial’s ears twitched violently. “The Horn…” he began, voice thick with dread. “The Horn of Valere
cannot simply—”

Masimon’s eyes flicked to the Ogier. “It will go where I go.”

Loial swallowed, and Mat saw his hands pensively rub on each other. Curiosity warred with fear on his
broad face. But Loial did not step toward Masimon. He stepped toward Perrin instead, as if choosing
people over relics.

Perrin took one step toward the trees—toward Rand—then stopped when Lan’s voice cut through the
clearing, low and fierce.

“He’s out there.”

Lan’s gaze was fixed on the forest, and Rand’s skin prickled, because Lan was looking not at the trees in
general, but in the direction Rand had run.

Muffled, he heard Moiraine say, “Find him.”

Lan moved at once, relentless.

Egwene made a sound and started after him, and Nynaeve grabbed her arm hard enough that Egwene
stumbled. Nynaeve said something in Egwene’s ear—Rand could not hear it, but he saw Egwene’s face
twist, saw her jerk free, and then both women followed Lan, skirts hitched, determined.

Perrin went too, axe in hand, moving like a man who had decided something and would not be turned.

That should have been it.

Mat remained, standing alone by the open chest, shoulders hunched. Masimon faced him, the Horn still
hovering beside the black gauntlet, the ruby catching sunlight. Moiraine’s attention flicked between Mat
and the forest, torn in a way Rand had never seen from her before, but she did not move. She could not
split herself. Not truly.

Mat’s voice carried faintly. “If I go with you, do I get to come back?”

Masimon’s answer came without hesitation. “If you want to.”

Mat let out a shaky laugh that had no humor in it. He fished in his pocket with fingers that trembled and
came out with a coin. One of the silver marks from Fal Dara, sharp-edged and too clean for Two Rivers
hands.

Mat swallowed. His throat worked too hard. “Heads, I go with Moiraine and chase that wool-headed—”
He did not finish. He didn’t have to. “Tails, I go with you and get fixed.” Mat held it up. “No funny
business.”

Masimon’s mouth curved. “I have no interest in cheating.”

Nynaeve would call it cowardice, but she was already off with Egwene and Lan to track Rand.

But then Mat coughed again, a wet sound, and pressed his knuckles to his lips to keep it all down by
force. His shoulders shook once. Mat flipped the coin. It flashed in the air, catching sun, turning end over
end, bright and indifferent. For a few moments it seemed to hang in the air, as if the Pattern itself held it
up and considered. It struck the ground with a sharp ping, spun, wobbled, and fell flat.

Mat stared at it, the Fal Daran silver mark, Tails up. He bent, slow, like an old man, and picked it up. He
did not show the face to anyone. He simply closed his fist around it until his knuckles whitened, then
looked at Masimon.

“Right,” Mat said hoarsely. “Right. Then… let’s be quick about it before I change my mind.”

Moiraine’s head snapped around. “Mat—”

Mat flinched at her voice but did not step back. “You said the Tower, Moiraine. You said later. You always
say later.” He tried for a grin and failed. “I’m tired of later.”

Moiraine’s expression did not crack, but Mat saw a flicker in her eyes, though not sure what it mean.
Masimon inclined his head, accepting, as if Mat’s choice had been an offer formally made.

“They will chase him until they cannot.” Masimon, turned his head toward the trees where Lan had
vanished.

Moiraine’s voice came out like ice. “They will not follow you.”

Masimon’s gaze returned to her face, and for an instant Mat thought he saw exhaustion there, buried
deep. Then it was gone.

“Then I have what I came for,” Masimon said, and Mat felt the words land like a stone.

The Horn drifted closer to Masimon’s shoulder. The air around it shimmered faintly. Mat licked his lips,
eyes darting to the Horn and then away, as if looking too long might make it call his name.

“Light,” Mat muttered, almost to himself. “Of course I pick the bloody option with the Horn.”

Masimon’s voice softened just a fraction. “You picked life.”

Mat’s laugh was sharp. “We’ll see.”

When he opened them, Mat was walking toward Masimon with the stiff determination of a man walking
to a whipping post because he had decided it was better than drowning.

Masimon turned his head once, as if he could feel Rand’s direction through the trees.

Gray.

Not mist—mist had motion, and mercy. This was the color of old bone ground into dust and spread
across the world until nothing else could be seen. The Skimming way held steady beneath my boots, a
broad slab of nothing pretending to be stone, and the air tasted of absence.
Mat Cauthon stood a few paces away, hunched as if waiting for a blow. The boy’s shoulders were too
narrow for the weight in his eyes. Fever made his face shiny, and the strain of holding himself upright
showed in the tightness at the corners of his mouth. He kept swallowing wrong, as though his own
throat had decided to betray him.

He’d come.

Not Rand. Not the Dragon Reborn. Not the prize I had measured a thousand times since the spring.

But he had come.

A consolation, yes. A cracked cup when you’d wanted a pitcher. And yet—Light, the Pattern had a mean
sense of humor—sometimes the cracked cup held the more interesting wine.

The coin.

I could still see it, upright in the crushed grass, trembling on its edge like a needle balancing between life
and death. The boy had looked at it as if it had spoken, and in that moment the air around him had
tightened, as though the Wheel itself had leaned in to listen.

Luck.

Not the tavern kind. Not the “good throw” kind.

The kind that bends men and nations.

I watched him, and felt the old, cold satisfaction settle behind my ribs. Rand had run. Fine. The Dragon
always ran at first. It was written in his bones. The Wheel would drag him back by the scruff soon
enough.

But Mat had stepped into the gray with me by choice.

That meant I had something I could use *now*.

“Keep your eyes on the platform,” I told him. “Not on the gray. People who stare into nothing too long
start inventing shapes.”

Mat dragged his gaze back to me. “It’s hard not to,” he rasped. “You expect me to just… walk on air and
not think about falling?”

“You will not fall,” I said. “Not here.” I did not add: Not unless I let you.

His jaw worked. “So we’re going to Godan.”

“We are going to near Godan,” I corrected.

He blinked at me. “Near?”

The boy was sharp when he stopped drowning in his own fear. I appreciated that. A dull tool was worse
than no tool.

“The estate is a story,” I said. “A good one. A useful one. But it is not where you will be Healed.”

Mat’s eyes narrowed, and he looked suddenly very Two Rivers, suspicious, stubborn, and offended at
being spoken around. “And where am I being Healed, then?”

“A place none can find again by accident,” I replied, and let my tone go flat so there would be no comfort
in it. “Call it a vault, if you like. Call it a hole. Call it prudence. You have been hunted since that night in
the two Rivers, Matrim Cauthon. You simply did not know it.”

His throat bobbed. “I didn’t ask to be hunted.”

“No one does,” I said, and that was the closest thing to sympathy I was willing to hand him in the gray.
Sympathy made men sloppy. “But you were in the same cart as the Dragon Reborn. That buys you
attention you can’t pay off.”

If I’d slapped Mat with a wet fish that might have gone over better. “Rand isn’t—” He swallowed and the
denial came out weaker. “He’s Rand.”

“And the sun is a lantern,” I said. “Believe whichever keeps you warm.”

Mat made a small, disgusted sound and looked away, then winced as if the motion hurt. It did. The
dagger’s rot sat in him like a second heart, beating wrong.

I kept my hands clasped behind my back, walking the platform with the measured pace of a man strolling
a garden path. If you walked as if you could fall, you invited the fall. The boy needed to see certainty.

“You said,” Mat began, voice hoarse, “you have women. Who can channel. Elia and Lyra.” The names
came out like a prayer he didn’t want to admit he was saying. “They’ll… fix it?”

“They will Heal you properly,” I said. “Not a patch. Not a bandage over that rot in you. Properly.”

Mat’s shoulders sagged a fraction, relief trying to break through his suspicion. He fought it, as if relief
were weakness.

“Then,” he muttered, “why not right now?”

“Because the weave needed is delicate,” I said. “And because I am not putting you on a stage with an
audience.” My eyes slid to him. “And because you will not scream in front of the others and make it
harder for them to choose later.”

His mouth twisted. “So I’m a lure.”

“You are,” I said. “And you are also a boy who deserves not to die from a cursed knife because he was
curious in the wrong city.”
That made him look at me again, the suspicion shifting into something more uncomfortable. He didn’t
like being cared for by a man he didn’t trust. Sensible.

We walked in silence for a time. Or perhaps time was only something the world pretended in places like
this. The gray never changed. Only the faint pressure ahead told me the exit was near.

Mat scraped his tongue over dry lips. “After,” he said, “you said we’d go to your estate. In Godan. High
Lord Matheo Saniago. Fine clothes, servants, all that.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me this… vault thing… isn’t that.”

“It is not,” I said.

He snorted, then immediately coughed. “Of course it isn’t.”

I allowed myself the smallest tilt of my mouth. “You are learning.”

He rubbed a hand across his face, smearing sweat. “So what am I, then? Your—what did you call it?
Asha’man?”

“You are not a man who can channel,” I said. “So no. You are whatever story keeps you alive and lets you
move.”

Mat’s eyes flicked, sharp. “And what story is that?”

I lifted my gaze to the pale seam forming ahead of us in the gray—light like a cut in cloth. “A wandering
minor Andoran nobleman,” I said. “Second or third son. No inheritance worth stealing. Just enough pride
to carry a sword without looking like a brigand. Looking for coin and name in a High Lord’s service.”

Mat barked a laugh that turned into another cough. “Andoran,” he muttered. “I barely remember
Caemlyn.”

“That is why it works,” I said. “No one can catch you in a lie you’ve never lived. You keep it broad. You
keep it dull. You let people underestimate you.”

Mat’s gaze drifted, and I saw the shape of his thoughts as plainly as if they were written on a page.
Home. The Two Rivers. Tam al’Thor’s steady hands. Bran al’Vere’s inn. The smell of sheep and
woodsmoke.

He swallowed. “What if I want to go back?” he asked, voice too casual. “After you fix me. Just… go
home.”

I stopped walking. Not abruptly; that would tell too much. I simply stopped as a man might stop to watch
a bird. The gray made that easy. Nothing moved unless you chose for it to move.

Mat halted too, frowning. “What?”

I looked at him then, properly, and let the truth show its teeth.

“The Shadow will soon know of your association with Rand,” I said. “Give it a year. If you don’t have
powerful friends, and soon, you’ll be dead.”

Mat’s face went white under the sweat. “That’s—Light, that’s—”

“True,” I finished. “I cannot Foretell your future. I’m no fool who calls guesses prophecy. But I believe it
involves a great deal more greatness than you might want.”

His jaw clenched. “I don’t want greatness,” he muttered. “I want to live.”

“Then stop wishing for small lives,” I said, and felt the old bitterness rise like bile. “Small lives are for
small times.”

His eyes flashed with anger, but the anger was thin. Fear was thicker.

“You could,” I went on, giving him the one sweet piece on the hook, “be useful in ways swords cannot.”

Mat blinked. “Meaning?”

“Spying,” I said. “Listening. Smiling. Being where you shouldn’t be and not looking like you know it.” I let
my gaze rest on him. “You’d be good at it.”

Mat’s mouth opened, closed. “I’m not a bloody spy.”

“You are a gambler,” I said. “And gamblers live by reading people and surviving bad odds.” I shrugged.
“Call it whatever makes you sleep.”

His voice came out rough. “And if I want to go back to Rand?”

That surprised me—not because it was loyalty, but because it was *Rand*. A shepherd with the Power in
his veins. A man the Wheel would not let go.

Mat’s eyes held mine, stubborn now, a challenge. He wanted the choice to be his.

I nodded once. “Then I will find Rand again,” I said. “And I will bring you to him.”

Mat stared. “How?”

There it was. The question beneath all the others. Not “will you.” Not “should you.” *How can anyone do
anything in a world this wide?* I let a beat pass. Let the gray press on us like a tomb. Then I leaned
closer, just enough that my words felt private even in emptiness.

“Tell me, Mat,” I said softly, “tell me what you remember of the All Seeing Eye.”
At first, nothing. Then Mat’s pupils widened as if someone had opened a shutter inside his head. His
mouth parted, and his gaze drifted past me, past the gray, past the platform, to a place that wasn’t here.
I felt the shift like a change in weather. Old memories, not his, stirring under his skin. The Pattern tugging
on a thread and finding it tied to something ancient.

Mat’s voice came out in a low babble, not the rough Two Rivers drawl, but a cadence that scraped like
iron. The Old Tongue slid into his mouth as if it had been waiting there all his life.

“…*under the Banner of the Nine Moons*…” he whispered—then shook his head violently, as if trying to
fling the words away. “No. No, I didn’t—Light, I didn’t say that.”

He swallowed. His eyes were hazy, frightened. “I… I saw—”

“A general,” I said quietly, and watched the word land. “A man who has stood on maps and moved
armies with a finger.”

Mat flinched as if I’d struck him. “I’m not—”

“Not yet,” I agreed. “But you are not nothing either. You are a lever the Wheel likes to use.”

His breathing quickened, and then he forced it down. Stubborn boy. He would be stubborn to the end,
and that would save him or damn him depending on the day.

I straightened. “I can offer you power,” I said. “As much as I can help a man without channeling. Training.
Discipline. Knowledge that does not exist in your Age.” I kept my voice even, so it would not sound like
seduction. “Not pretty power. Useful power.”

Mat’s throat bobbed. “Will it keep me alive?”

I did not promise. Promises were the beginning of chains. “It will help,” I said.

Mat stared at me for a long moment. The gray seam ahead widened, light bleeding through. The exit was
close; the world would be back soon, with its smells and its lies and its knives.

Mat looked down at his coin again, the one that had stood on edge. He turned it between thumb and
forefinger, and I saw the tremor in his hand. Then he tucked it away as if putting a decision in his pocket.

“All right,” he said hoarsely. “All right. Heal me. Teach me. And if you try to use me like—like a bloody dog
—”

“I will,” I said, and let the honesty hit him like cold water. “But I will feed you first.”

His mouth twisted. “Light, you’re a bastard.”

“I’ve been called worse by better men,” I said.

The seam of light yawned wide. Mat’s shoulders hunched as if expecting the world to punch him the
moment he stepped out. I watched him, and felt the familiar weight settle again: responsibility, yes, but
also opportunity. Rand had run. Fine. I could chase. The Dragon always circled back.

But in my hand now was a boy with a cursed wound, a bent coin, and a mind that answered to Old
Tongue when I spoke the right name. A consolation prize and a dangerous one.

“Stay on my left,” I told Mat, voice turning brisk. “Speak only if spoken to. And if anyone asks you why an
Andoran lordling is so far from home—”

Mat grimaced. “We had business.”

“Good,” I said. “You can learn.”

We stepped through.

And the gray shut behind us like a mouth closing.

Gray.

Not mist—mist had motion, and mercy. This was the color of old bone ground into dust and spread
across the world until nothing else could be seen. The Skimming way held steady beneath my boots, a
broad slab of nothing pretending to be stone, and the air tasted of absence.

Mat Cauthon stood a few paces away, hunched as if waiting for a blow. The boy’s shoulders were too
narrow for the weight in his eyes. Fever made his face shiny, and the strain of holding himself upright
showed in the tightness at the corners of his mouth. He kept swallowing wrong, as though his own
throat had decided to betray him.

He’d come.

Not Rand. Not the Dragon Reborn. Not the prize I had measured a thousand times since the spring.

But he had come.

A consolation, yes. A cracked cup when you’d wanted a pitcher. And yet—Light, the Pattern had a mean
sense of humor—sometimes the cracked cup held the more interesting wine.

The coin.

I could still see it, upright in the crushed grass, trembling on its edge like a needle balancing between life
and death. The boy had looked at it as if it had spoken, and in that moment the air around him had
tightened, as though the Wheel itself had leaned in to listen.

Luck.

Not the tavern kind. Not the “good throw” kind.

The kind that bends men and nations.

I watched him, and felt the old, cold satisfaction settle behind my ribs. Rand had run. Fine. The Dragon
always ran at first. It was written in his bones. The Wheel would drag him back by the scruff soon
enough.

But Mat had stepped into the gray with me by choice.

That meant I had something I could use *now*.

“Keep your eyes on the platform,” I told him. “Not on the gray. People who stare into nothing too long
start inventing shapes.”

Mat dragged his gaze back to me. “It’s hard not to,” he rasped. “You expect me to just… walk on air and
not think about falling?”

“You will not fall,” I said. “Not here.” I did not add: *Not unless I let you.*

His jaw worked. “So we’re going to Godan.”

“We are going to *near* Godan,” I corrected.

He blinked at me. “Near?”

The boy was sharp when he stopped drowning in his own fear. I appreciated that. A dull tool was worse
than no tool.

“The estate is a story,” I said. “A good one. A useful one. But it is not where you will be Healed.”

Mat’s eyes narrowed, and he looked suddenly very Two Rivers—suspicious, stubborn, and offended at
being spoken around. “And where am I being Healed, then?”

“Somewhere you cannot find again by accident,” I replied, and let my tone go flat so there would be no
comfort in it. “Call it a vault, if you like. Call it a hole. Call it prudence. You have been hunted since
Shadar Logoth, Matrim Cauthon. You simply did not know it.”

His throat bobbed. “I didn’t ask to be hunted.”

“No one does,” I said, and that was the closest thing to sympathy I was willing to hand him in the gray.
Sympathy made men sloppy. “But you were in the same cart as the Dragon Reborn. That buys you
attention you can’t pay off.”

He stared at me as if I’d slapped him with a fish. “Rand isn’t—” He swallowed and the denial came out
weaker. “He’s Rand.”

“And the sun is a lantern,” I said. “Believe whichever keeps you warm.”
He made a small, disgusted sound and looked away, then winced as if the motion hurt. It did. The
dagger’s rot sat in him like a second heart, beating wrong.

I kept my hands clasped behind my back, walking the platform with the measured pace of a man strolling
a garden path. If you walked as if you could fall, you invited the fall. The boy needed to see certainty.

“You said,” Mat began, voice hoarse, “you have women. Who can channel. Elia and Lyra.” The names
came out like a prayer he didn’t want to admit he was saying. “They’ll… fix it?”

“They will Heal you properly,” I said. “Not a patch. Not a bandage over rot. Properly.”

Mat’s shoulders sagged a fraction, relief trying to break through his suspicion. He fought it, as if relief
were weakness.

“Then,” he muttered, “why not right now?”

“Because the weave needed is delicate,” I said. “And because I am not putting you on a stage with an
audience.” My eyes slid to him. “And because you will not scream in front of the others and make it
harder for them to choose later.”

His mouth twisted. “So I’m a lure.”

“You are,” I said. “And you are also a boy who deserves not to die from a cursed knife because he was
curious in the wrong city.”

That made him look at me again, the suspicion shifting into something more uncomfortable. He didn’t
like being cared for by a man he didn’t trust. Sensible.

We walked in silence for a time. Or perhaps time was only something the world pretended in places like
this. The gray never changed. Only the faint pressure ahead told me the exit was near.

Mat scraped his tongue over dry lips. “After,” he said, “you said we’d go to your estate. In Godan. High
Lord Matheo Saniago. Fine clothes, servants, all that.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me this… vault thing… isn’t that.”

“It is not,” I said.

He snorted, then immediately coughed. “Of course it isn’t.”

I allowed myself the smallest tilt of my mouth. “You are learning.”

He rubbed a hand across his face, smearing sweat. “So what am I, then? Your—what did you call it?
Asha’man?”
“You are not a man who can channel,” I said. “So. no. You are whatever story keeps you alive and lets you
move.”

Mat’s eyes flicked, sharp. “And what story is that?”

I lifted my gaze to the pale seam forming ahead of us in the gray—light like a cut in cloth. “A wandering
minor Andoran nobleman,” I said. “Second or third son. No inheritance worth stealing. Just enough pride
to carry a sword without looking like a brigand. Looking for coin and name in a High Lord’s service.”

Mat barked a laugh that turned into another cough. “Andoran,” he muttered. “I’ve never been within a
hundred miles of Caemlyn.”

“That is why it works,” I said. “No one can catch you in a lie you’ve never lived. You keep it broad. You
keep it dull. You let people underestimate you.”

Mat’s gaze drifted, and I saw the shape of his thoughts as plainly as if they were written on a page.
Home. The Two Rivers. Tam al’Thor’s steady hands. Bran al’Vere’s inn. The smell of sheep and
woodsmoke.

He swallowed. “What if I want to go back?” he asked, voice too casual. “After you fix me. Just… go
home.”

I stopped walking.

Not abruptly—abruptness was a tell. I simply stopped as a man might stop to watch a bird. The gray
made that easy. Nothing moved unless you chose for it to move.

Mat halted too, frowning. “What?”

I looked at him then, properly, and let the truth show its teeth.

“The Shadow will soon know of your association with Rand,” I said. “Give it a year. If you don’t have
powerful friends, you’ll be dead.”

Mat’s face went white under the sweat. “That’s—Light, that’s—”

“True,” I finished. “I cannot Foretell your future. I’m no Dreamer and no fool who calls guesses prophecy.
But I believe it involves a great deal more greatness than you might want.”

His jaw clenched. “I don’t want greatness,” he muttered. “I want to *live*.”

“Then stop wishing for small lives,” I said, and felt the old bitterness rise like bile. “Small lives are for
small times.”

His eyes flashed with anger, but the anger was thin. Fear was thicker.

“You could,” I went on, giving him the one sweet piece on the hook, “be useful in ways swords cannot.”
Mat blinked. “Meaning?”

“Spying,” I said. “Listening. Smiling. Being where you shouldn’t be and not looking like you know it.” I let
my gaze rest on him. “You would be good at it.”

Mat’s mouth opened, closed. “I’m not a bloody spy.”

“You are a gambler,” I said. “And gamblers live by reading people and surviving bad odds.” I shrugged.
“Call it whatever makes you sleep.”

His voice came out rough. “And if I want to go back to Rand?”

That surprised me—not because it was loyalty, but because it was *Rand*. A shepherd with the Power in
his veins. A man the Wheel would not let go.

Mat’s eyes held mine, stubborn now, a challenge. He wanted the choice to be his.

I nodded once. “Then I will find Rand again,” I said. “And I will bring you to him.”

Mat stared. “How?”

There it was. The question beneath all the others. Not “will you.” Not “should you.” *How can anyone do
anything in a world this wide?*

I let a beat pass. Let the gray press on us like a tomb. Then I leaned closer, just enough that my words felt
private even in emptiness.

“Tell me, Mat,” I said softly, “tell me what you know of the *All Seeing Eye*.”

He blinked.

At first, nothing.

Then his pupils widened as if someone had opened a shutter inside his head. His mouth parted, and his
gaze drifted past me, past the gray, past the platform, to a place that wasn’t here.

I felt the shift like a change in weather.

Old memories, not his, stirring under his skin. The Pattern tugging on a thread and finding it tied to
something ancient.

Mat’s voice came out in a low babble, not the rough Two Rivers drawl, but a cadence that scraped like
iron. The Old Tongue slid into his mouth as if it had been waiting there all his life.

“…*under the Banner of the Nine Moons*…” he whispered—then shook his head violently, as if trying to
fling the words away. “No. No, I didn’t—Light, I didn’t say that.”

He swallowed. His eyes were hazy, frightened. “I… I saw—”

“A general,” I said quietly, and watched the word land. “A man who has stood on maps and moved
armies with a finger.”

Mat flinched as if I’d struck him. “I’m not—”

“Not yet,” I agreed. “But you are not nothing either. You are a lever the Wheel likes to use.”

His breathing quickened, and then he forced it down. Stubborn boy. He would be stubborn to the end,
and that would save him or damn him depending on the day.

I straightened. “I can offer you power,” I said. “As much as I can make a man without channeling.
Training. Discipline. Knowledge that does not exist in your Age.” I let my voice go flat, so it would not
sound like seduction. “Not pretty power. Useful power.”

Mat’s throat bobbed. “Will it keep me alive?”

I did not promise. Promises were the beginning of chains.

“It will help,” I said.

Mat stared at me for a long moment. The gray seam ahead widened, light bleeding through. The exit was
close; the world would be back soon, with its smells and its lies and its knives.

Mat looked down at his coin again, the one that had stood on edge. He turned it between thumb and
forefinger, and I saw the tremor in his hand.

Then he tucked it away as if putting a decision in his pocket.

“All right,” he said hoarsely. “All right. Heal me. Teach me. And if you try to use me like—like a bloody dog
—”

“I will,” I said, and let the honesty hit him like cold water. “But I will feed you first.”

His mouth twisted. “Light, you’re a bastard.”

“I’ve been called worse by better men,” I said.

The seam of light yawned wide.

Beyond it, I could smell salt, tar, wet wood—Tear’s coast, Godan’s air, the Bay’s breath. Somewhere, gulls
cried.

Mat’s shoulders hunched as if expecting the world to punch him the moment he stepped out.

I watched him, and felt the familiar weight settle again: responsibility, yes, but also opportunity. Rand
had run. Fine. I could chase. The Dragon always circled back.
But in my hand now was a boy with a cursed wound, a bent coin, and a mind that answered to Old
Tongue when I spoke the right name.

A consolation prize.

A dangerous one.

“Stay on my left,” I told Mat, voice turning brisk. “Speak only if spoken to. And if anyone asks you why an
Andoran lordling is so far from home—”

Mat grimaced. “We had business.”

“Good,” I said. “You can learn.”

We stepped through.

And the gray shut behind us like a mouth closing.

For a moment Matrim Cauthon was not Matrim Cauthon.

He stood on a ridge of black glass under a sky the color of bruised steel, banners snapping so hard they
sounded like whips. Men in shining mail waited below him in neat squares, too still, too perfect—soldiers
who had learned obedience the way a man learned breathing. A man beside him wore white and gold,
hair like sunlight and eyes like judgement, and when he spoke the air itself seemed to straighten.

*Hold the left. Let them commit. Then break them.*

Mat opened his mouth to answer, and the words that came out were not his. The Old Tongue rolled over
his teeth like it had been waiting there a thousand years.

Then something screamed—metal on stone, or the world splitting—and the ridge fell away beneath his
boots.

He jerked awake with a gasp.

No pain.

That was wrong enough to make him freeze.

Mat lay still, staring at a ceiling of dark wood beams, letting his breath go in and out carefully as if he
might start hurting if he breathed too hard. He swallowed once, expecting the familiar sickness to grab
him like a fist.

Nothing.

He swallowed again, harder, almost daring it.

Nothing again.
Light.

His fingers twitched under the blanket. He could feel his own skin without that crawling wrongness
underneath it. His chest rose and fell without the sour taste filling his throat. The fever that had lived
behind his eyes for weeks—weeks? days? time had become a muddle since Shadar Logoth—was
simply… gone.

Mat’s head turned slowly.

Two women stood near the bed.

Beautiful did not cover it. Beautiful was a ribbon in a girl’s hair on Bel Tine, a smile across a room at the
Winespring Inn. These women were the kind of beautiful that made a man remember he had a tongue
and promptly forget how to use it.

One had pale hair and a bright, wicked smile that looked like it could talk a guard into handing over his
purse and thanking her for the honor. The other was dark-eyed and calm, her face smooth and sure in a
way that made Mat feel as if she could see lies crawling across his skin.

“Awake,” the pale one said, voice warm.

“Do not sit up too quickly,” the dark-eyed one added, tone steady as a river rock.

Mat tried anyway, because if the world had taught him anything it was that people who told him not to
do something usually had a reason they didn’t want him to know. He pushed himself upright, expecting
dizziness to slam him back down.

He sat up easily.

His mouth fell open.

The pale-haired woman laughed softly. “See? Told you.”

Mat stared at his own hands like they belonged to someone else. “I—” His voice rasped. He cleared his
throat. His throat obeyed. “I don’t feel… like death.”

“You were dying,” the dark-eyed woman said matter-of-factly. “Not quickly, which is what made it cruel.”

“Hooks,” the pale-haired one said, as if discussing burrs in wool. “We pulled them out.”

Mat blinked at them. “We?”

“Elia,” said the pale one, dipping her head.

“Lyra,” said the other. She studied him a heartbeat. “You are fortunate.”
Mat barked a laugh that came out half strangled. “Fortunate,” he repeated. “That’s one way of saying ‘I
shouldn’t be alive.’”

The door opened before he could decide whether to flirt, panic, or bolt out the window.

Masimon stepped in like he owned the room.

Which, Mat decided with a sour sort of resignation, he probably did.

He looked at Mat once—just once—and the look wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cruel either. It was the look of a
man checking whether a tool had come out of the forge straight.

“You’re awake,” Masimon said.

“That’s what they tell me,” Mat muttered, then winced, waiting for his own sarcasm to bring the sickness
back like punishment.

It didn’t.

Masimon’s mouth twitched as if he’d heard something mildly amusing but refused to give it oxygen. He
set a bundle—no, a *pile*—on a chair near the bed.

Metal. Leather. Cloth.

And coins.

Light, so many coins.

Mat’s eyes widened before he could stop them. His fingers tightened on the blanket as if he had to
physically restrain himself from grabbing the pile and running.

Masimon pointed at the heap with a casualness that made it worse. “That,” he said, “is your life.”

Mat licked his lips. “I’m listening.”

Masimon’s voice was even. “You are Mat of House Cauthon,” he said. “From the Mountains of Mist north
of Baerlon. A minor Andoran nobleman. Second son. Looking for honor, glory, and a story worth telling at
a table full of girls.”

Mat stared. “I’m—what?”

“You got lost in Tear trying to take a shortcut,” Masimon continued, tone of a man reciting a simple list.
“Because you’re young, proud, and foolish. You met High Lord Matheo while he was out hunting. He
took pity on you.”

Masimon leaned in just enough that Mat felt the weight of him. Those eyes did not miss things. They did
not forgive them either.
“And you will play along,” Masimon said softly. “Dear boy.”

Mat’s stomach tightened. “Is this where you tell me what it costs?”

Masimon straightened. “It costs you staying alive,” he said. “Which is more expensive than you can
afford on your own.”

Elia’s smile flickered, just a hair, as if she approved. Lyra remained calm, but her eyes sharpened briefly
on Masimon as if she were checking his tone.

Mat looked back at the coins. “That’s a lot of money for ‘minor.’”

Masimon shrugged. “Minor is a matter of perspective. To peasants, you will look like the Light’s own
cousin.”

Mat’s mouth twisted. “That’s comforting.”

Masimon ignored him and picked up a breastplate from the heap—proper plate, bright and fitted, with a
polish Mat had only ever heard about in stories and Warders. He set it down again like it weighed
nothing. “Wear it when you must,” he said. “Do not wear it when you should not be noticed.”

Mat’s eyes snagged on a long ash-wood lance, on a sword with a hilt too fine for a village blacksmith, on
a saddle that looked like it belonged under a lord rather than a fool from the Two Rivers.

He swallowed. “Where are the others?” he asked, and tried to keep his voice casual.

Masimon’s gaze flicked to him. “Chasing your shepherd,” he said.

Mat’s belly sank. “Rand ran.”

Masimon’s expression went tight for a heartbeat—something like irritation, something like a headache.
“Yes.”

Mat almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“And they didn’t come with you,” Mat said, more statement than question.

“No,” Masimon said. “They were wise enough to fear me. Foolish enough to let the Dragon walk away
alone.”

Mat’s chest tightened at the word *Dragon*. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want it. It fit Rand like a
hangman’s rope.

Masimon turned away as if the conversation bored him. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

Mat blinked. “Leaving where? Godan?”

Masimon’s mouth quirked without humor. “Not yet.”

Mat’s suspicion flared. “So this ‘High Lord Matheo’ estate isn’t where we are?”

Masimon looked back at him. “This is the vault,” he said flatly.

Mat stared. “Vault.”

“A place you will not describe to anyone,” Masimon said. “A place you will not find again by accident. A
place where two women can Heal you without a dozen eyes watching and making their own stories.”

Mat’s throat bobbed. “So you’re hiding.”

Masimon’s gaze was steady. “I am surviving,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

Mat hesitated, then asked the only question that mattered. “Did you… do anything to me? Other than—”
He waved at his own body. “Not dying.”

Elia laughed softly as if he were adorable. Lyra’s expression stayed calm, but her eyes went sharp as
needles.

Masimon answered without flinching. “No funny business,” he said dryly, and for the first time Mat
heard something like faint amusement. “If you’re asking whether you’re bound to me, no. If you’re
asking whether you owe me, yes.”

Mat snorted. “That’s more like it.”

Masimon’s hand moved and the air *creased*.

Mat’s skin prickled. Not saidar like Moiraine’s shimmering—this felt like a cold breath across the back of
his neck, something oily and sweet and wrong in a way that made Mat want to spit.

A slit opened in the air.

Not a Waygate. Not a door.

A wound.

Beyond it was night, damp air, and the scent of pines.

Masimon glanced at Mat’s heap of gear. “Take what you can carry,” he said. “You can complain later.”

Mat grabbed the coin-pouch first, because he wasn’t an idiot. Then he pulled on the fine clothes with
clumsy fingers, half expecting the fabric to bite him for daring. It didn’t. It just fit, soft and expensive and
wrong on his skin.

He stepped through the slit into a different world.

---

The forest south of Godan smelled like wet earth and wild things. It was quiet in the way forests were
quiet when they were deciding whether you belonged in them.

Mat had hunted rabbits with boys back home. This was different. This was a nobleman’s hunt—horses,
spears, a sense that you were supposed to pretend it was sport rather than killing.

Masimon didn’t pretend.

When a boar charged out of brush like a living boulder, Mat’s breath caught. The thing had tusks like
knives. It could have gutted a man and kept going.

Masimon stepped into it as if he’d been waiting.

The spear went in clean, quick. The boar stumbled, bellowed, then fell.

Mat stared. He hadn’t seen anyone kill like that except Lan, and Lan did it with a sword. Masimon did it
like a butcher who knew his cuts.

“Light,” Mat muttered. “Remind me not to make you angry.”

Masimon wiped the spear with a cloth as if cleaning up after dinner. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “It’s
easier.”

They took a stag too. Masimon let Mat have enough of it that Mat could honestly say he’d helped. Mat’s
hands shook a little afterward, not from fear—though there was fear—but from the simple fact that he
was alive and the world was still insisting he do things.

By the time the slit in the air took them back, Mat had blood on his boots and a story that could stick.

Then Godan came into view.

It wasn’t Caemlyn with its shining walls and palace-towers, and it wasn’t Fal Dara with its hard stone and
colder men. Godan was a town that had decided to become a city and was in the middle of tearing itself
apart to do it.

Walls were being pulled down in places, rebuilt thicker elsewhere. Scaffolding climbed like vines. Men
hammered timbers into ship keels. Tar stank in the air. Soldiers drilled on scraped earth, their
movements sharp and hungry, while overseers shouted and scribes made marks on wax tablets.

It looked… busy.

Like a man building armor because he’d heard a rumor about a knife.

Mat swallowed. “They’re building ships,” he murmured, more to himself than to Masimon.
Masimon’s gaze ran over the work like a man checking progress on a garden. “Yes,” he said.

“And an army,” Mat added, eyes catching the drill lines.

Masimon’s mouth tightened. “Also yes.”

Mat turned in the saddle, trying to make sense of it. “For what?”

Masimon didn’t answer right away. “For the year that’s coming,” he said at last. “Not the year you think
you’re living in.”

Mat didn’t like that. It sounded too much like prophecy, and prophecies in Thom’s stories always ended
with someone dead.

They rode past peasants. Mat had seen hungry people before—traveling, in Baerlon, on roads where war
rumors had started to bite. But Tear’s hunger wore different clothes. It bowed more. It kept its eyes
down as if looking up might cost you teeth. A man in rags stumbled with a load of wood too heavy. A
foreman cuffed him without breaking stride. Mat’s stomach twisted.

Back home, even Master Luhhan wouldn’t do that, and Master Luhhan could shout a man bald.

Mat watched a thin woman with cracked hands step into the mud to make room for a fat merchant’s
cart. No one looked at her twice.

Mat’s fingers curled on the reins. “Light,” he muttered. “Is it always like this?”

Masimon’s eyes stayed forward. “Not in Godan and Tear,” he said. “In the two cities it is… less ugly.”

“That’s a fine comfort,” Mat snapped before he could stop himself.

Masimon glanced at him. “My people are fed better than others,” he said quietly. “Change comes
slowly.”

“Slowly,” Mat echoed, watching a child with a face too thin for her eyes. “Slowly looks like starving.”

Masimon’s expression went flat. “I’m already upsetting the apple cart,” he said. “If I kick it over, the
wheels crush the ones underneath first. But I assure you—one year from now—you will see noticeable
improvements.”

Mat stared at him, trying to decide whether that was truth or the kind of lie men told themselves to
sleep.

Masimon’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Have you changed your mind?” he asked, as simply as if
offering Mat a different road at a crossroads.

Mat’s belly tightened.

Rand was out there—alone. Moiraine and the others chasing him. The world splitting wider every hour.
And Mat was here, in fine clothes, with too much money and a dead-eyed certainty that this man could
do things Aes Sedai couldn’t.

Mat didn’t trust Masimon.

But the boy in him—the boy who’d lain in a bed waiting to die—remembered waking up without pain.

“I don’t—” Mat began, then swallowed. “I don’t like you.”

Masimon’s mouth twitched. “Good.”

“I don’t trust you,” Mat added.

“Better.”

Mat’s hand went to his pocket and felt the coin. It was warm from his body, solid and simple. A piece of
home.

He pulled it out.

Masimon’s gaze sharpened. “No funny business,” he said dryly.

Mat snorted despite himself. “You think I can cheat luck?”

“I think you can try,” Masimon said. “And I don’t like surprises that aren’t mine.”

Mat set the coin on his thumb. His breath came short. He hated that it came down to this. He hated that
it felt right anyway.

“Heads,” Mat muttered, “I stay with you. Tails, I go back and find Rand and get myself killed in some
noble, woolheaded way.”

He flicked.

The coin spun up, caught the sun, flashed—

—and for a heartbeat Mat’s head went hazy, the world tilting sideways like a map on a table.

A voice that wasn’t his whispered in his skull: *Hold the left… let them commit… then break them…*

The coin clinked to the dirt.

Mat stared.

Heads.

His stomach dropped as if he’d just stepped off a roof.

Masimon exhaled quietly, relief. “Good,” he said, and his tone held no triumph, only decision. “Then we
begin.”

Mat swallowed. “Light help me,” he muttered.

Masimon didn’t disagree.

---

The estate lay south of Godan, walled and guarded, less a home than a fortified pocket of order. The
gates opened with the practiced smoothness of men used to obeying.

Mat rode in with the stag’s antlers strapped behind him and felt like a child dressed in his father’s coat.
Servants moved too quickly. Guards watched too calmly.

And then he saw her.

A woman stood in the yard with spears in her hands as if they belonged there, hair the color of a raven’s
wing in the sun, skin sun-browned, eyes like flint. She wore [cadin’sor], though Mat didn’t know the
name for it yet; he only knew she didn’t look like any Wetlander woman he’d ever seen.

She looked at Mat, at his fine clothes and noble tack and the stag horns, and her mouth tightened as if
she’d bitten something sour.

“You smell like a goat dressed as a rooster,” she said flatly.

Mat stared. “I—what?”

Masimon’s eyes slid to her, faint amusement flickering. “Aviendha,” he said, as if introducing a knife.
“This is Mat.”

Aviendha’s gaze flicked to Masimon. “He is soft,” she said. “His hands are soft. Why is he here?”

Mat bristled. “My hands are—” He looked down. Light. His hands *were* soft now. He didn’t know
whether to be offended or embarrassed.

Masimon’s voice was dry. “Because he’s lucky.”

Aviendha’s eyes narrowed. “Luck is not a spear.”

Masimon’s gaze stayed on her a heartbeat. “It can be,” he said. “If you know where to aim it.”

Mat didn’t like the way they talked around him.

He didn’t like the way Aviendha looked at him like she was deciding whether he was worth the air he
breathed.
And, Light help him, he didn’t like that some stubborn part of him wanted to prove he was.

---

The next morning came too quickly.

Masimon woke Mat before the sun was fully up and spoke in the same calm voice he might have used to
order breakfast.

“We’re taking Logain,” he said.

Mat blinked blearily. “Taking who?”

“The false Dragon,” Masimon replied. “From his Aes Sedai escort.”

Mat sat up so fast he nearly fell off the bed. “You’re—Light, you’re kidnapping a man from Aes Sedai?”

Masimon’s expression remained untroubled. “Yes.”

Mat gaped. “Why?”

Masimon looked at him as if Mat had asked why a man drank water. “Because the Tower will break him
and leave him to fade away,” he said. “And I can use him better. Because I will not leave weapons lying on
the table when children are about to start throwing stones.”

Mat swallowed. “That’s… that’s insane.”

Masimon’s mouth twitched. “Probably,” he said. “Dress.”

Mat stumbled into his “minor Andoran noble kit” like a man putting on armor for a dream he didn’t
want. Breastplate. Sword. Money. Too much money. Masimon watched him with that measuring gaze
again, then tossed him a cloak.

“You’re here,” Masimon said, “because you’re lucky.”

Mat’s stomach sank. “That’s not a plan.”

“It’s the best plan,” Masimon said. “The world is full of good plans that die to bad luck.”

Aviendha was waiting in the yard, wrapped in a dark shawl despite the mild air, spear in hand. She
looked like she could stab a Trolloc and complain it was messy.

“You will be quiet,” she told Mat without preamble.

Mat scowled. “I’m always quiet.”

Aviendha’s eyebrows lifted in flat disbelief.

Masimon didn’t smile, but something in his eyes suggested he found it funny. “She’s there,” he said,
nodding toward Aviendha, “to find the sisters.”

Mat frowned. “Find them how?”

Aviendha’s mouth tightened. “I can feel women holding their power,” she said, as if explaining to a child.
“Aes Sedai hide behind calm faces. They cannot hide what they are.”

Mat didn’t like that either.

They rode out before dawn, slipping onto a road that ran between low hills and scattered farms. Mist
clung to the ground in pale ribbons, and Mat thought it looked like the kind of morning you got lost on if
you weren’t careful.

Masimon chose a place where the road narrowed between trees and a shallow ditch. “They pass here,”
he said.

Mat’s mouth went dry. “How do you know?”

Masimon’s gaze flicked to him. “Because I watch,” he said. “Because Tear watches. Because the Tower is
not as subtle as it thinks.”

They waited.

Horses approached. Hooves, leather creak, low voices. A column came into view: Aes Sedai in their
cloaks, Warders riding like wolves, and in the center a man in chains with a face like carved stone.

Logain.

Mat had seen him once, from a distance, in stories and whispers. Up close, even chained, the man
looked dangerous.

Masimon’s hand lifted.

Mat felt the hair on his arms rise. A mist spilled across the road.

Not the natural morning mist. This was thicker, whiter, and it moved with purpose. It rolled like a tide,
silent as death, and as it touched the first Warder’s horse, the animal’s head dipped as if pulled by
invisible weight.

Men swayed in their saddles.

One tried to shout, but the shout turned into a yawn.

Aes Sedai eyes widened. Aviendha’s spear snapped up, and she hissed something under her breath, eyes
locked on the women like a hawk watching snakes.
The mist thickened. Bodies slumped. Horses stood docile, blink-slow. Even the Warders, those iron men,
listed as if a giant hand had pressed down on their necks.

Mat stared, heart hammering. “Light,” he whispered. “What is that?”

“ A Sleeping spell,” Masimon said. “.”

The column sagged into silence.

For a heartbeat Mat thought it had worked perfectly.

Then someone moved.

A tall young man—blond, straight-backed even in his saddle—blinked hard, face tightening like he was
fighting through a dream. His hand went to his sword. His eyes, blue and furious, snapped to Masimon.

Galad.

Mat knew the type at a glance even without a name: too pretty, too righteous, too convinced the world
should behave if you glared at it hard enough.

Galad’s sword came free with a clean ring that cut through the muffled silence like a bell.

He spurred his horse forward—through the mist—eyes locked on Masimon as if he’d found the Dark One
himself.

“In the Light’s name,” Galad shouted, voice clear where everyone else’s had died, “stand and be judged!”

And then he was off the saddle, moving like a Warder despite not wearing the color-shifting cloak, blade
sweeping in a bright arc straight for Masimon’s throat.

Mat’s breath caught.

Masimon turned just enough, too calm, too quick.

Steel met and the sound of that first clash hit Mat like a hammer, because it meant the plan had gone
tits-up the moment it began.