Your One Favorite Mat moment.

[Roxinos]

I think I'm going to start quoting the bits that people mention whenever I want to.

 

And I'm going to start with RAW's.

 

I'm not quite certain what bits he was referring to, but after a reading, I'll try my best to capture the part he was talking about. It is indeed awesome.

 

"We are bloody well getting out of here now," Mat said again later, and this time there was argument. There had been argument for the past half-hour, near enough. Outside, the sun was past its noon peak. The trade winds cut the heat a little; stiff yellow curtains fastened over the tall windows bulged and snapped at gusts. Three hours back in the Tarasin Palace, the dice still bouncing in his head, and he wanted to kick something. Or somebody. He tugged at the scarf tied around his neck; it felt as though the rope that had given him the scar under that scarf was back and tightening slowly. "Love of the Light, are you all blind? Or just deaf?"

 

[...]

 

"This is preposterous," Merilille announced. "I've never heard of any Shadowspawn called a gholam. Have any of you?" That was directed to Adeleas and Vandene, Sareitha and Careane. Facing Tylin, the cool-eyed Aes Sedai serenity of all five made a fair job of turning their high-backed armchairs into thrones. He could not understand why Nynaeve and Elayne just sat like lumps, coolly serene too, but absolutely silent. They knew, they understood, and for some reason, Merilille and that lot slathered their tongues with meekness for them, now. Mat Cauthon, on the other hand, was a hairy-eared lout who needed to be kicked, and from Merilille on down, they were all ready to do the kicking.

 

"I saw the thing," he snapped, "Elayne saw the thing, Reanne and the Wise Women saw it. Ask any of them!"

 

[...]

 

"No one denies the word of Elayne Aes Sedai, Master Cauthon," said Renaile din Calon Blue Star in a cool deep voice. Even had the dignified woman in silks to match the red-and-yellow floor tiles not been named to him earlier, the old memories meshed into his own would have identified her has Windfinder and Mistress of the Ships by the ten fat gold rings in her earlobes, those in each ear connected by a golden chain and half-hidden by the narrow wings of white in her straight black hair. The medallions clustered along the finer chain that ran to her nose ring would tell him what clan she came from among other things. So would teh tattoos on her slim dark hands. "What we question is the danger," she continued. "We do not like leaving the water without good cause."

 

[...]

 

"Whoever sent the gholam has to know the Bowl is here in the Tarasin Palace, now. If he, or she, sends the gholam here, some of you are going to die. Maybe a lot of you. I can't protect all of you at once. Maybe he'll get the Bowl, too. And that's on top of Falion Bhoda; small chance she's alone, even with Ispan a prisoner, so that means we have the Black Ajah to worry about, as well. Just in case the Forsaken and gholam aren't enough for you." Reanne and the Wise Women drew themselves up even more indignantly than Merilille and her friends at mention of the Black Ajah, and the Aes Sedai, stiffening and gathering skirts, looked ready to stalk out in a huff. Press on; taht was all he could do. "Now. Now do you see why you all have to leave the palace and take the Bowl somewhere the gholam doesn't know about? Somewhere the Black Ajah doesn't know? Do you see why it has to be done now?"

 

Renaile's sniff would have startled geese in the next room. "You merely repeat yourself, Master Cauthon. Merilille Sedai says she has never heard of his gholam. Elayne Sedai says there was a strange man, a creature, but little else. What is this...statis-box? You have not explained that. How do you know what you claim to know? Why should we go any further from the water than we are on the word of a man who creates fables from air?"

 

Mat looked to Nynaeve and Elayne, though with little hope. If they would only open their mouths, this could have been finished long since, but they gazed back at him, practicing expressionless Aes Sedai masks till their jaws must be creaking. He could not understand their silence. A bare-bones account of events in the Rahad had been all they gave, and he was willing to bet they would not have mentioned the Black Ajah at all had there been any other way to explain showing up in the palace with an Aes Sedai bound and shielded. [...]

 

[...]

 

"I read a book once that talked about--" he began, and Renaile cut him off.

 

"A book," she sneered. "I will not abandon the salt for a book Aes Sedai do not know."

 

Suddenly it struck Mat that he was the only man present. Lan had gone off at Nynaeve's command, gone as tamely as Beslan had at his mother's. Thom and Juilin were packing to leave. Had probably finished packing by now. If there was any use to it; if they ever did leave. The only man, surrounded by a wall of women who apparently intended to let him beat his head against that wall till his brains were scrambled. It made no sense. None. They looked at him, waiting.

 

[...] Why did they not say something? Were they trying to get back at him? Was it just a case of "Mat wants to be in charge so much, let him see how well he can do without us"? He might have believed it of Nynaeve, any time but this anyway, but not of Elayne, not anymore. So why?

 

Reanne and the Wise Women did not huddle away from him as they did from the Aes Sedai, but their manner toward him had changed. Tamarla gave him a decently respectful nod. Honey-haired Famelle went so far as a friendly smile. Strangely, Reanne blushed, a pale stain. But they did not count as opposition, really. The six women had not said a dozen unprompted words between them since entering this room. Every one would jump if Nynaeve or Elayne snapped their fingers, and keep jumping until told to stop.

 

He turned to the rest of the Aes Sedai. Faces infinitely calm, infinitely patient. Except.... Merilille's eyes flickered past him toward Nynaeve and Elayne for one instant. Sareitha began slowly smoothing her skirts under his gaze, seemingly unaware of doing so. A dark suspicion bloomed in his mind. Hands moving on skirts. Reanne's blush. Birgitte's ready quiver. A murky suspicion. He did not really know of what. Just that he had been going about this the wrong way. He gave Nynaeve a stern look, and Elayne a sterner. Butter would not have melted on their bloody tongues.

 

Slowly he walked toward the Seal Folk. He just walked, but he heard someone with Merilille sniff, and Sareitha muttered, "Such insolence!" Well, he was about to show them insolence. If Nynaeve and Elayne did not like it, they shold have taken him into their confidence. Light, but he hated being used. Especially when he did not know how, or why.

 

Stopping in front of Renaile's chair, he studied the dark faces of the Atha'an Miere women behind it before looking down to her. She frowned, stroking a knife set with moonstones thrust behind her sash. She was a handsome woman rather than pretty, somewhere in her middle years, and under different circumstances he might have enjoyed looking at her eyes. They were large black pools a man could spend an evening just gazing into. Under different circumstances. Somehow, the Sea Folk were the fly in the cream pitcher, and he had not a clue how to pluck it out. He managed to keep his irritation under control. Barely. What to bloody do?

 

"You can all channel, I understand," he said quietly, "but that doesn't mean much to me." As well be straight from the start. "You can cask Adeleas or Vandene how much I care whether a woman can channel."

 

Renaile looked past him toward Tylin, but it was not to the Queen she spoke. "Nynaeve Sedai," she said dryly, "I believe there was no mention in your bargain of my having to listen to this young oakum picker. I--"

 

"I don't bloody care about your bargains with anybody else, you daughter of the sands," Mat snapped. So his irritation was not that well under control. A man could only take so much.

 

Gasps rose among the women behind her. Something over a thousand years ago a Sea Folk woman had called an Essenian soldier a son of the sands just before trying to plant a blade in his ribs; the memory lay tucked inside Mat Cauthon's head, now. It was not the worst insult among the Atha'an Miere, but it came close. Renaile's face gorged with blood; hissing, eyes bulging in fury, she leaped to her feet, that moonstone-studded dagger flashing in her fist.

 

Mat snatched it out of her hand before the blade could reach his chest and he shoved her back into her chair. He did have quick hands. He could still hold on to his temper, too. No matter how many women thought they could dance him for a puppet, he could--"You listen to me, you bilge stone." All right; maybe he could not hold it. "Nynaeve and Elayne need you, or I'd leave you for the gholam to crack your bones and the Black Ajah to pick over what's left. Well, as far as you're concerned, I'm the Master of the Blades, and my blades are bare." What that meant exactly, he had no idea, except for having once heard, "When the blades are bare, even the Mistress of the Ships bows to the Master of the Blades." "This is my bargain between you and me. You go where Nynaeve and Elayne want, and in return, I won't tie the lot of you across horses like packsaddles and haul you there!"

 

That was no way to go on, not with the Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships. Not with a bilgeboy off a broken-backed darter, for that matter. Renaile quivered with the effort of not going for him with her bare hands, and never mind her dagger in his hand. "It is agreed, under the Light!" she growled. Her eyes nearly started out of her head. Her mouth worked, confusion and disbelief suddenly chasing one another across her face. This time, the gasps sounded as if the wind had ripped the curtains down.

 

"It is agreed," Mat said quickly, and touching his fingers to his lips, he pressed them to hers.

 

After a moment, she did the same, fingers trembling against his mouth. He held out the dagger, and she stared dully at it before taking it from him. The blade went back into its jeweled sheath. It was not polite to kill someone you had sealed a bargain with. At least, not until the terms were fulfilled. Murmurs began among the women behind her chair, rising, and Renaile stirred herself to clap her hands once. That silenced Windfinders to Wavemistresses as quickly as the two deckhands in training.

 

"I think I have just made a bargain with a ta'veren," she said in that cool, deep voice.

[deathgate]

1. When he kidknaps Tuon and finds out she is the daughter of the nine moons. With much resignation he then unknowingly proposes to her, very grudgingly accepts the fate that has been dogging him for several books and finds he is stuck with a future wife who is everything he doesn't like in a woman.

 

2. While trying to escape battle and Rand his new memories save his own life and the future Band of the Red Hand over and over again. This is where he takes his huge step toward keeping up with Rand (one power) and Perrin (wolf power).

 

3. The many mentioned scene with Galad and Gawyn. After being a troublemaker and the weak link of the three taveren he steps up and starts his ascent to probable favorite character.

[Roxinos]

1. "Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would [he] still have [proposed to her] if [the 'Finns] hadn't said anything [about his marrying the Daughter of the Nine Moons]?"