Knife of Dreams

Mat watched a little play and soon recognized the game. It used four dice rather than two, but without a doubt it was a version of Phi, Match, a game that had been popular for a thousand years before Artur Hawkwing began his rise. Small piles of silver admixed with a few gold coins lay in front of each of the players, and it was a silver mark that he laid in the middle of the table to buy the dice while the stout man was gathering his wi

The lean man matched the wager, and Mat rattled the crimson dice in the pewter cup, then spun them out onto the table. They came to rest showing four fives.

“Is that a wi

“Not unless I match it,” Mat replied, scooping the dice back into the cup, “without tossing a fourteen or the Dark One’s eyes first.” The dice clattered in the cup, clattered across the table. Four fives. His luck was in, for sure. He slid one coin over in front of himself and left the other.

Abruptly, the graying fellow scraped back his chair and stood up. “I’ve had enough.” he muttered, and began fumbling the coins in front of him into his coat pockets. The other two Altarans stared at him incredulously.

“You’re leaving, Vane?” the lean man said. “Now?”

“I said I’ve had enough. Camrin.” the graying man growled and went stumping out into the street pursued by Camrin’s scowl at his back.

The Taraboner woman leaned over unsteadily, her beaded braids clicking on the tabletop, to pat the fat man’s wrist. “Just means I’ll buy my lacquerware from you, Master Kostelle,” she said fuzzily. “You and Master Camrin.”

Kostelle’s triple chins wobbled as he chuckled. “So it does. Mistress Alstaing. So it does. Doesn’t it, Camrin?”

“I suppose,” the bald man replied grumpily. “I suppose.” He shoved a mark out to match Mat’s.

Once again the dice spun across the table. This time, they came up totaling fourteen.

“Oh,” Tuon said, sounding disappointed. “You lost.”

“I won, Precious. That’s a wi

His luck was in. all right, as strong as it had ever been. The bright red dice rolled across the table, bounced across the table, ricocheted off the wagered coins sometimes, and toss after toss they came to rest showing fourteen white pips. He made fourteen every way it could be made. Even at one coin to a wager, the silver in front of him grew to a tidy sum. Half the people in the common room came to stand around the table and watch. He gri

As he was shaking the dice in the cup again, the Taraboner merchant glanced at him, and for an instant, she did not look drunk at all. Suddenly, he no longer felt like laughing. Her face slackened immediately, and her eyes became a tad unfocused once more, but for that instant they had been awls. She had a much better head for wine than he had supposed. It seemed Camrin and Kostelle would not get away with fobbing off shoddy work at top prices or whatever their scheme had been. What concerned him, though, was that the woman was suspicious of him. Come to think, she herself had not risked a coin against him. The two Altarans were frowning at him. but just the way men who were losing frowned over their bad luck. She thought he had found some way to cheat. Never mind that he was using their dice, or more likely the i

“One last toss.” he said, “and I think I’ll call it done. Mistress Heilin?” The i

“He can’t keep this run going forever,” Camrin muttered, scrubbing a hand through the hair he no longer possessed. “What say you, Kostelle? Halves?” Fingering a gold crown free of the coins piled in front of him, he slid it over beside Mat’s silver mark. “If there’s only to be one more toss, let’s make a real wager on it. Bad luck has to follow this much good.” Kostelle hesitated, rubbing his chins in thought, then nodded and added a gold crown of his own.

Mat sighed. He could refuse the bet, but walking away now might well trigger Mistress Alstaing’s charge. So could wi

The red dice tumbled across the tabletop, hit the piled coins and bounced back, spi

Laughing just as if it were not just their own coin won back, Camrin and Kostelle began dividing their wi

“So your luck is not endless, Toy,” Tuon said as he escorted her back to their table. “Or is it that you are lucky only in small things?’

“Nobody has endless luck, Precious. Myself, I think that last toss was one of the luckiest I’ve ever made.” He explained about the Taraboner woman’s suspicions, and why he had bought wine for the whole common room.

At the table, he held her chair for her, but she remained standing, looking at him. “You may do very well in Seandar,” she said finally, thrusting her nearly empty mug at him. “Guard this until I return.”

He straightened in alarm. “Where are you going?” He trusted her not to run away, but not to stay out of trouble without him there to pull her out of it.

She put on a long-suffering face. Even that was beautiful. “If you must know, I am going to the necessary, Toy.”

“Oh. The i

“Thank you, Toy,” she said sweetly. “I’d never have thought to ask.” She waggled her fingers at Selucia, and the two of them walked toward the back of the common room having one of their silent talks and giggling.

Sitting down, he scowled into his winecup. Women seemed to enjoy finding ways to make you feel a fool. And he was half-married to this one.

“Where are the women?” Thom asked, dropping down into the chair beside Mat and setting a nearly full winecup on the table. He grunted when Mat explained, and went on in a low voice, leaning his elbows on the table to put his head close. “We have trouble behind and ahead. Far enough ahead that it may not bother us here, but best we leave as soon as they return.”

Mat sat up straight. “What kind of trouble?”

“Some of those merchant trains that passed us the last few days brought news of a murder in Jurador about the time we left. Maybe a day or two later; it’s hard to be sure. A man was found in his own bed with his throat ripped, only there wasn’t enough blood.” He had no need to say more.