For a moment, Mat lost track of where he was, and who he was with, as Tuon's words sparked a buried memory from a different time and place.

"I was thinking of getting a room here." The wine merchant looked up at him through lowered eyelashes, fingers toying with the stem of her empty goblet. In the dim lamplight, the latticed screens of the booth at which he'd joined her cast fascinating shadows on her face. "Would you like to join me upstairs for a nightcap?"

He reached out as if for the goblet, at the last second abandoning it to tangle his fingers with hers. She smiled at the contact. "I could be persuaded," he said, though at this point they both knew he would end up in her bed that night. Still, the niceties had to be observed. That was half the fun, after all. Dancing your way from the invitation to the consummation. "What do you have to offer?"

Her glance at him, suddenly direct and wicked, was answer enough, but she added, "I have a case of magnificent Eharoni red that no one here in Allorallen has the taste to appreciate. But travelers, they say, develop more nuanced palates."

He let his eyes drink her in. "I've found that to be true." He stroked a thumb across the base of her palm. In the morning he would be off on a Sea Folk raker to Barashta, and she was headed to Barsine. But there were many hours between now and the dawn. He had time enough for this.

Mat surfaced from the memory a little flushed. He certainly didn't have time enough for that, not on this side of the Trolloc Wars, anyway. But his memories weren't completely off-base. From anyone else, in any other inn, this would certainly have been an invitation. But this woman? In this inn? After he'd absolutely refused to stay past sundown? That wasn't an invitation, that was a challenge.

What game was she playing? He shook his head a little, to clear it, and his eye fell on the little cluster of silk rosebuds.

The strange request to go to Hinderstap. The generous gateway transportation agreement, connecting them to the outside world. And the unwilting silk rosebuds of the Seanchan Empress... may she live forever. Oh, burn him, she was gambling on immortality! Burn him for a bloody light-blinded fool, how had he not seen it earlier? Probably because you never thought anyone would volunteer to be trapped here!

Tuon's voice brought him back to himself. "You're going to break that chair if you keep gripping it like that," she said lightly.

"Damn the bloody chair," Mat spat out. His legs were working again, anyway. He let go and straightened up. "It's not the flaming chair I'm worried about. We're leaving. Now."

But when he looked at her, with her raised chin and narrowed eyes, he knew the hanging judge was making an appearance in Hinderstap. Her tone matched her face, and brooked no argument. "I said I would listen to you, not obey you unquestioningly. We're not in immediate danger. Look at the clock. We're almost an hour away from nightfall and we missed the most recent pickup window. The quicker we have this... discussion, the quicker we can leave. Or not, as the case may be." She flashed a half-smile. "Besides, you can't just pick me up and carry me out of here this time."

He saw her stance firm up subtly. Blood and bloody ashes, his wife was apparently dead set on facing him in combat tonight, one way or another. And worse luck, she was correct about the pickup. There wasn't enough time to get to the pickup location and catch the gateway, now. He'd been played.

His mind raced, evaluating strategies. Tuon wasn't going to budge, and he was certain she could break his arm if he tried to shift her with anything more forceful than words. If they had to be here, there were ways to make the private room defensible. Besides, a nice inn like The Constant Rabbit wasn't going to have people in the common room after dark. This wasn't the Tipsy Gelding, with their sunset dice games. Mat grabbed the chair again and threw himself into it, glaring at her. "Well, I'm not leaving you here."

"Keep your voice down. I wasn't asking you to leave. I want you to stay here with me."

Mat gave her his most dubious expression.

"I am serious, Knotai. The world needs us both. This is a golden opportunity."

"It's a golden opportunity to hem yourself in! Blood and bloody ashes, Tuon, I know you're smarter than this. There are a hundred reasons this won't work out the way you want it to. For one, you can't just rely on gateways to administrate the empire, especially if you want to go back to Seanchan someday. And you already declared Ebou Dar your capitol. Light, we're technically in Murandy! It's not even your territory; annexing Hinderstap is probably a violation of the Dragon's Peace!"

Tuon sighed. "I doubt the ruler of Murandy knows what a treasure he has in this place. I'm sure I could convince him to give it up. Ebou Dar can still be my administrative capitol. And you underestimate what can be done with gateways."

Mat gnashed his teeth. "And you are not even remotely dismayed by the idea that once night falls, you can't do anything? Think of all that—uh—practical working time, gone. Not to mention it's going to be bloody hard to direct the Last Battle if I'm busy trying to dismember all of my staff the moment the sun goes down."

"Yes, it's inconvenient not to do things at night," she said, somewhat impatiently. Mat rolled his eyes at this so hard he thought they might pop out of his head, and damn what she thought about it, he wasn't the one being ridiculous. "But I would have the rest of my eternal life to get things done. And surely it has occurred to you that you will need to sleep at some point in the Last Battle, at which point several other generals can step in to implement your plans. This is, in fact, what delegation is for."

Mat got up from the chair and started pacing. There were so many obvious arguments against this light-blinded plan that the real difficulty was figuring out which one to say first. "Look, what if one day Hinderstap just stops working like this and you gave up your freedom only to die normally? Or you set all these plans in motion that rely on your immortality, only to have them fall apart once it's gone? We've both seen situations before that were kind of like this—remember the village that just melted away? I'd been in others, before I met you. And they all stopped after a certain point. This is the Dark One's touch, Tuon. If we win the Last Battle, it might cure Hinderstap."

Tuon's face was a neutral mask. Normally that wasn't a good sign, but at least she wasn't flippantly countering his arguments, which probably meant at least one of them had struck home. But she wasn't budging, either. Fine. Time for backup plan number one.

"Look, you've heard me out, and clearly you have some compelling reason we should both become nocturnal axe murderers. Please enlighten me on what I'm missing here."

"That news of this village should come to me is fortunate." He noted she didn't say it was an omen, which was probably good—it meant this was just something she wanted to do, and not something she thought the Pattern also had an opinion on. "This is my opportunity to ensure the stability of my rule, and therefore of the Empire's rule, in perpetuity." Her voice became almost wistful. "I could get so much done if I didn't have to worry about dying at an assassin's blade!" Mat shook his head. He was still not used to the idea of assassins being a minor, everyday nuisance. He hoped he never would be. Someone in this relationship had to keep a sense of proportion.

"I have always lived with a knife at my throat," Tuon continued, "and I believe these threats have made me strong and successful. It has occurred to me that if I could not be killed, those kinds of threats would lose their power over me, and I might lose my edge. Yet, you yourself have shown me that it is possible to be both safe and successful."

She stepped closer. "You were right, in the garden. I do not believe that you will kill me. It shocked me, at first. I never thought I would not need to guard myself against the Prince of the Ravens. It is such a luxury to have you as my ally, to know that you would not intentionally betray me. I did not want it to make me soft and vulnerable. And yet, this way I have your strength, and your cunning, and even your love, and I think those are more dangerous to my enemies than to me."

She was practically in his arms now. "Consider it. Both of us could live forever." She held his gaze, and reached across to cup his cheek, as tenderly as she'd done in the garden. "I want you to live forever with me."

Mat felt his traitorous heart skip a beat—maybe several beats—and he mentally stomped on it. Yes, he'd wanted to hear those words from her, or something to the same tune, anyway, but context mattered! He had to concentrate. "Tuon, I love you, and it means a lot to me that you, uh, want to live forever with me—" he broke away from her and scrubbed a hand through his hair. His boots needed a shining. Light, he hoped he wasn't blushing. "Look. I appreciate it." He dragged his head up and made himself look at her directly. "Truly, I do."

She sighed. "And yet, once again, we are at an impasse."

Mat nodded, a little chagrined. But he had to make her understand. "Tuon, if I wanted to live forever, I'd be a hero. But I've never wanted immortality or glory. I don't want to be like a bloody Hero of the Horn, forever coming when I'm called, like a trained dog. And that kind of living forever, as unappealing as it is to me, is a damn sight better than this! Bound eternally to one specific plot of land, at risk of being brutally murdered, or perhaps murdering others every night. Who would want that?"

"Never growing older. Never dying. Finally having enough time to do everything you ever wanted," Tuon countered.

"Sure, everything you can do for twelve hours at a time, and none of it at night. Look, I get not wanting to die. I absolutely do not want to die anytime soon. But my least favorite memo—way of dying— is being messily slaughtered. This is a maximum slaughter plan." He hoped she wouldn't press him on his verbal slip. He'd done enough talking about horrible memories for one day.

"There are villagers who go to sleep before sundown, who do not have the dreams. The killing can be avoided. Besides, even if you were caught out, you would not remember it well. Just in flashes." Her eyes searched his face. She had been paying attention, and caught his slip. Well, bully for her, but Mat Cauthon wasn't going to say anything more about it.

What hadn't he tried yet? Pulling on her heartstrings, he supposed. She did have them, though she tried to hide it. And she'd tried to pull on his, so turnabout was fair play. "What about the people who live here, who never asked for any of this to happen to them? If you made Hinderstap's curse a part of your power, you would be invested in keeping it going and continuing this nightmare. I want to believe you're a better person than that. And I know you understood that they aren't happy with their immortality. Yes, your gateway offer was self-serving, but I know you also felt for them. I saw it on your face."

Tuon frowned, but he thought it was a thoughtful frown, rather than an angry one. Mat pressed his advantage. "Look, if you did this, you'd lose a part of what makes you human. Even assuming you fall asleep before sundown each night, this is unnatural."

"It's not like being a marath'damane," she said hotly. "They live unnaturally long lives, but this is not related to the Power."

"I wasn't saying that living a long time is the problem," he said, surprised by her reaction. And he wasn't the one who had brought up Aes Sedai, either. He'd struck a nerve, he guessed, but he wasn't sure how or why. "Aes Sedai live a long time and they're people—scary people, but people." Tuon frowned harder at this and opened her mouth to object, but he continued. "I mean that you wouldn't be human because you wouldn't be able to die. People do, or don't do, so many things because they know they're going to die. But you wouldn't understand all your people anymore because you wouldn't share their problems or concerns. How can you lead people if you don't understand them?"

For a moment she seemed caught, uncertain, but then her face hardened. "Sometimes you need to be apart from people to best understand and guide them. I am already different, apart. I have a responsibility. I mean to use all the tools at my disposal to carry it out."

Something about that phrasing pushed him from carefully banked frustration into anger. Before he'd really thought it through, Mat burst out, "Some tools only change you! I won't lie and say I've never wanted you to change your mind, but I don't want to change who you are."

He expected her to meet him fire for fire, but for some reason she just looked pleased. There was a silence, which she finally broke. "What do you mean, some tools only change you?" she asked him.

Mat looked away, feeling that old nauseous ache in his stomach, the one he always got when he thought about his time with the Shadar Logoth dagger. Burn me, I don't want to tell this story. I thought I would never have to tell it. But maybe she needs to hear it?

She pressed him, gently. "What did you mean?" A pause. "Mat, please?"

That's unexpected. He made his decision. "I wish I'd gotten better wine, now. I'd much rather be drunk for this. Also, we should barricade the door."