The sounds of mayhem followed. Clearly, darkness had fallen. Blood and bloody ashes, Mat had thought everyone staying at an inn like The Constant Rabbit would be in bed by curfew!

He grabbed the ashandarai and moved out of the likely ingress path. It was time to roll the dice.

"Tu—Fortuona," he corrected himself. A lot hung on this question, and there was no sense antagonizing her any more than he had to. "Time's up. Are we allies, or enemies? Light knows I don't relish fighting on two fronts, but I will if I have to. I'm not losing myself again. And I'm not losing you, either."

She smiled brilliantly. "We're allies. I do not intend for us to die in Hinderstap. When we die, we will die as who we are."

Mat nodded, not bothering to disguise his relief. "Couldn't have said it better myself." He spoke louder, to be heard over the screams and splintering wood. Mat blessed his foresight in barricading the door with a table and the heaviest of the indoor potted plants, though the planks on the door were starting to give way above the table. "Do you have any ranged weapons?"

In answer, she flourished two wicked-looking throwing knives from her sleeves. "I have more. Not as many as you, but more than these."

"Good. Remember, they fight like madmen—totally unconcerned with protecting themselves. Take the shots you can, but after that I'll clear the way, and you watch my back."

A face appeared in the hole in the door, snarling—Mat thought it might have been the man who spoke earlier at the meeting, about wanting to die in daylight. He'd half-expected Harolin. Tuon winged a throwing knife at the man and it hit him in the throat. His wife always went for the throat, which he rather admired. The man fell and was replaced by someone Mat didn't recognize. He followed Tuon's example and aimed for the throat with one of his knives. He knew the score, now; the important thing was to knock them out fast.

There were still noises of fighting outside, but no one else appeared in front of the hole hacked in the door. Maybe they'd all gotten distracted, fighting each other. Mat gingerly pulled away the barricade, then ducked behind it as something barreled over his head, sending splinters throughout the room. Tuon moved like a blur, incapacitating the man with quick jabs of hands and feet, although if there was any justice the man was probably half-concussed already from that fool move. Mat turned at just the right time and slashed another attacker approaching from behind, a lucky blow if there ever was one.

The private room was well-lit, but through what remained of the door Mat could see that the rest of The Constant Rabbit was darker—they'd have to maneuver through a hallway and the public common room to get out. Mat hated fighting in hallways with a polearm, but it wasn't like he was going to leave the thing behind, either, so after a quick peek down the hall he caught Tuon's eye and they left the private room.

His heart was pounding as they dashed down the corridor and stopped before the first intersection. Mat didn't hear anything, but suddenly a woman leapt out of the darkness. Mat saw the gleam of a knife in the dim corridor's oil lamp and he frantically reversed his grip, attempting to shove the butt of the ashandarai in her direction. Tuon's throwing knife hit her—again in the throat—which was a relief, since the ashandarai didn't have enough room to maneuver and would have missed her. "You know, I used to think your inability to kill a woman was endearing," Tuon said quietly. "Now, I begin to find it irritating."

"Now's not the time," Mat said, a little stung. "Run!"

"If not now, when?" he heard her say, but she ran.

They paused before the common room entrance. The path to the door—only a few paces—looked clear, but there were two groups fighting on each side. They stepped out of the corridor together, back to back, and tried not to attract attention. The group of two on the left, closest to Mat, turned and rushed them, and he had a few frantic and furious moments dispatching them. The group of three on the right were still busily reducing their own numbers, so Tuon opened the door and they ran out into the night in search of the pickup location.

They weren't attacked by anyone else, but by the time they got there, it looked just like any other spot in Hinderstap. Mat figured they'd missed the pickup some time ago, but the bright side was, they probably wouldn't need to wait a whole hour. Fortunately, there was a convenient sort of shed with some firewood stored in it that had a clear view of the spot. They climbed in together to wait for their ride home.

At first Tuon wanted to argue with him about his promise never to kill another woman, but he flatly refused to talk about it, so they sat in uncomfortable silence for a while. Well, it was uncomfortable for him. She was probably just fine. Or was she, really? This whole situation still seemed so bizarre. Mat recalled how she'd reacted to the ghost village from long-dead Shiota, she and Selucia pulling him back when he'd unconsciously stepped forward to save the sinking peddler. The two of them had stayed up all night praying to avert evil, afterwards. "Why did you want to do this, really?" Mat asked, not realizing he'd said it aloud until he heard himself. "It's not like you."

"What do you mean?" she said, turning to him. She was sitting cross-legged beside him, and her knee brushed one of his legs as she shifted.

"You wanted nothing to do with that ghost village, back when we were travelling with Luca's show. You pulled me away and holed up praying the whole night. This isn't the exact same situation, but the dead are still walking. I don't understand why you would even consider turning yourself into a kind of ghost."

She stared at him, another one of those soul-searching stares that made him think he'd drown in those eyes someday. He wondered what she saw. She said, abruptly, "Tell me about the current Amyrlin. Who is she? How did she come to power? You were childhood friends, were you not?"

Mat blinked in surprise. "Egwene? Yes, we were friends. Why do you want to know?" She remained silent. Mat sighed and just said the first things that came to his head. "Light, she's just... Egwene. She was always following us around and trying to find out what we were up to. It's funny that she's the Amyrlin now, but it kind of makes sense at the same time. She was always kind of bossy, even when we were children. And she always had ambition, too. I remember wondering how Rand was going to react when he found out that she wanted to go be a Wisdom—that's like a village healer, and leader of the Women's Circle—outside of Emond's Field. You have to understand, none of us had gone farther than the next village or two over, and here she was with these big dreams. She was the only one who was actually enthusiastic about leaving with Moiraine."

He leaned back against the shed and stared up at the crude roof. "She puts her heart and soul into things. Whatever she did, she wanted to be the best flaming version of it you'd ever seen. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she committed to it. When she became Amyrlin of the rebel Aes Sedai, I thought for sure they were setting her up to be a sacrificial lamb. I did what I could to back her up, once I realized she wouldn't be talked out of it. But Talmanes said she ended up having them by the scruff of the neck, and I believe him, since she clearly united the whole Tower behind her. Herding Aes Sedai is like herding sackfuls of cats, so that's really something."

He shrugged. "I already told you what I knew about her time in the collar. Not sure what else there is to say."

Tuon remained silent. Mat felt her withdraw into herself, tucking her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. She looked very small, suddenly.

Mat felt at a loss. The last time she'd come out with such a nonsequitur was when she'd suddenly questioned him about remembering Hawkwing's face. In hindsight, of course, it made sense—her prophecy had used those terms to describe him. Was she trying to gather information for some omen, then? Or wait—was it somehow actually an answer to his original question? What could Egwene have to do with Tuon trying to become an immortal ghost? They'd only met that one time!

Oh. They'd only met that one time, but Mat had been there for the whole thing, and it had not gone well for Tuon. Egwene had gotten under her skin and taken control of the conversation. Tuon's ignorance of Egwene's time as damane had been exposed in the most humiliating way, the secret that sul'dam could learn to channel had come out, and she'd been threatened with a damane collar, all in front of the High Blood. If Mat's threat assessment was correct, that was the group in Seanchan who were both most likely and most able to use the information about sul'dam against her. No wonder she was a little rattled by Egwene. Mat hadn't thought that anything could rattle Tuon, but she was human, after all.

But why Hinderstap? How was Hinderstap possibly supposed to help? And what had he done or said that convinced her not to go through with it, in the end? He thought back to her reactions, especially the ones that had surprised him. She'd been very insistent about hearing the song, which was all about choosing to live with fear. The thing was, though, she'd obviously done that every day of her life. She was used to being afraid of sudden death, and being immortal wouldn't save her from the collar.

So what else was she afraid of, that she thought Hinderstap might protect her from? Mat thought back to when she'd first seemed really interested in his counterarguments. She'd been pleased when he said he didn't want her to change—pleased, when he thought she'd be angry—and she'd been willing to listen to his point that tools could change you. Perhaps she was afraid of being changed, and she had thought Hinderstap would prevent that? It didn't really make sense to him, still, but it was quite possible that it just didn't make any sense at all. Fear made people do strange things. And trying to recreate Tuon's train of thought was a complicated business at the best of times.

Well, he'd gotten about as far as he could, and his best guess was still that Egwene had made her afraid of being collared. For whatever reason, she thought Hinderstap would keep her safe, and then he'd somehow changed her mind about it. Maybe he'd never really know why. But if he was right about what she was really scared about… what could he do?

Maybe what Egwene had said had made the threat of collaring real in a way it hadn't been before. Maybe Tuon was learning the same lesson about leashes that he had learned, these past few years. You could die; you could tame yourself enough to bear that kind of captivity; or you could escape.

Mat was uncomfortably aware that there were some things Tuon would die rather than do, so that crisis point would just have to be avoided. And he knew a little bit about taming, now, too. In his opinion, Tuon had been tamed in the service of the Seanchan Empire long enough already, and he couldn't bear to see her alive but utterly broken. That left one option: helping her slip the leash, by whatever means necessary. He wasn't sure how to manage it yet, but if there was one thing Mat Cauthon was good at, it was escape. And if Mat Cauthon couldn't get them out of this? Well, Tuon had named him "Knotai" after the Old Tongue word for "Devastation" or "Ruin". It was no coincidence that Knotai was very good at destruction. Perhaps it might come to that, in the end.

But first, he'd need to figure out how bad it really was. "A question for a question," Mat said, breaking the silence. She'd relaxed slightly while he was furiously thinking, and now he felt her tense against him. "I know every woman in Seanchan is tested to see if they are a channeler, until they're twenty-four." He swallowed. "Even in the imperial family."

She looked up at him, and this time he thought it was her that he saw drowning in those eyes. She knew the shape of what he was about to ask. "Does that include the Empress?"

Her flinch was practically invisible in the low light, but he was still pressed up against her in the small space, and so he felt it. She gave a short, sharp nod, then lowered her eyes, refusing to meet his gaze. Even though he was expecting this, it still felt like being punched in the gut. Mat felt her start to tremble and he clutched her to him, as if he could pull her away from the dark waters he imagined swirling around her. He felt breathless, but he forced the words out anyway. It would get worse before it got better.

"Have you...?" She seemed so fragile in this moment that he couldn't quite bring himself to finish the sentence, and there were too many questions anyway. Had she channeled? Had she found the collar fit? Had something irrevocable happened, the way it almost did tonight?

He felt her shake her head "no" against his chest, vehemently. The warmth of relief spread through him. They had time to figure it out. He would figure out the angles. They would figure out the angles. Together, they would make this come up roses. Even if he wasn't quite sure how, yet.

"You're crushing me." Tuon said, sounding somewhat muffled. He felt her arms tense in warning, and he quickly released her.

"Sorry!"

"Considering the circumstances, I will generously allow you to keep your limbs," she said dryly, examining the silk rosebuds. Apparently satisfied they would recover, she looked back up at him, as composed as ever. "I am sorry, too. I was... not thinking clearly, earlier today. Thank you for filling in as my Truthspeaker." She paused, and he witnessed as she let the mask slip again, just for a second. "My private Truthspeaker?"

Mat nodded. She relaxed, almost imperceptibly, and then the mask was back on. "I'll keep your secrets, but we are going to have to talk about this more, later. I can't help without knowing more of what's going on."

Tuon sighed, but dipped her head briefly in acknowledgment. The light changed, and they both turned to look at the rotating slash of their gateway back. It was only a few spans away.

"Last one to the gateway has to buy dinner for our real night out," said Mat, but Tuon was already halfway there. Ah well. He'd already won the important game. He loped towards the hole in the air, and breathed a sigh of relief when they were both safely out of Hinderstap. Disaster averted, at least for the moment.