“I still think you’re reading too much into this,” he replied, shifting yet again on the burning bench.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. First, we should negotiate my price for taking you to Andor. I assume you want to reach Caemlyn?”
“Price?” Mat said. “But you think the Pattern forced you here! Why demand a price of me?”
“Because,” she said, raising a finger, “while I waited to find you—I honestly didn’t know if it would be you or young Perrin—I realized that there were several things I could provide you that no other could.” She reached into a pocket of her dress, pulling out several pieces of paper. One was the picture of Mat. “You didn’t ask where I got this.”
“You’re Aes Sedai,” Mat said, shrugging. “I figured you . . . you know, saidared it.”
“Saidared it?” she asked flatly.
He shrugged.
“I received this paper, Matrim—”
“Call me Mat,” he said.
“I received this paper, Matrim, from a Darkfriend,” she said, “who told me—thinking me a servant of the Shadow—that one of the Forsaken had commanded that the men in these pictures be killed. You and Perrin are in grave danger.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said, hiding the chill her announcement made him feel. “Verin, Darkfriends have been trying to kill me since the day I left the Two Rivers.” He paused. “Burn me. Since the day before I left the Two Rivers. What does it change?”
“This is different,” Verin said, growing stern. “The level of danger you are in . . . I . . . Well, let us simply agree that you are in great, great danger. I suggest that you be very careful during the next few weeks.”
“I’m always careful,” Mat said.
“Well, be more so,” she said. “Go into hiding. Don’t take chances. You will be essential before this is through.”
He shrugged. Go into hiding? He could do that. With Thom’s help, he could probably do himself up so that even his sisters wouldn’t recognize him. “I can do that,” he said. “Bloody simple cost. How long will it take you to get us to Caemlyn?”
“That wasn’t my cost, Matrim,” she said, amused. “That was a suggestion. One I think you should listen to with great prejudice.” She slipped a small folded piece of paper out from under the picture. It was sealed with a drop of blood-red wax.
Mat took it hesitantly. “It is?”
“Instructions,” Verin said. “Which you will follow on the tenth day after I leave you in Caemlyn.”
He scratched his neck, frowning, then moved to break the seal.
“You aren’t to open them until that day,” Verin said.
“What?” Mat demanded. “But—”
“That is my cost,” Verin said simply.
“Bloody woman,” he said, looking back at the paper. “I’m not going to swear to something unless I know what it is.”
“I doubt you will find my instructions harsh, Matrim,” she noted.
Mat scowled at the seal for a moment, then stood up. “I pass on it.”
She pursed her lips. “Matrim, you—”
“Call me Mat,” he said, grabbing his hat off the top of a cushion. “And I said there’s no deal. I’ll be in Caemlyn in twenty days of marching, anyway.” He pushed open the tent flaps, gesturing out. “I’m not going to have you tying strings around me, woman.”
She didn’t move, though she did frown. “I had forgotten how difficult you can be.”
“And proud of it,” Mat said.
“And if we have a compromise?” Verin asked.