Her flat tone and bared teeth made Luca snatch his hand back. From the wary gleam in his dark eyes, he suspected she might bite again. Thom was stroking his mustaches furiously, red in the face from the effort of not laughing. He knew what had happened, of course. He would. And as soon as she left, he would no doubt regale Luca with his version of events. Men could not avoid gossiping; it was in them at birth, and nothing women could do ever got it out of them.
The daylight was dimmer than she had thought. The sun sat red on the treetops to the west. "If you ever try this again without better light..." she growled, shaking a fist at Thom. "It's almost dusk!"
"I suppose," the man said, bushy eyebrow lifting, "this means you want to leave out the bit where I am blindfolded?" He was joking, of course. He had to be joking. "As you wish, Nana. From now on, only in the most perfect light."
It was not until she stalked away, swishing her skirts angrily, that she realized that she had agreed to actually do this fool thing. By implication, at least. They would try to hold her to it, as surely as the sun would set tonight. Fool, fool, fool woman!
The clearing where they – or Thom, at least, burn him and Luca both! – had been practicing stood some little distance from the camp over beside the road north. Doubtless Luca had not wanted to upset the animals should Thom put one of his knives through her heart. The man would likely have fed her corpse to the lions. The only reason he wanted her to wear that dress was so he could ogle what she had no intention of showing to anyone but Lan, and burn him, too, for a stubborn fool man. She wished she had him there so she could tell him so. She wished she had him there so she could be sure he was safe. She broke a dead dogfennel and used its feathery brown length like a whip to snap the heads off weeds that poked through the leaves on the ground.
Last night, Elayne had said, Egwene reported fighting in Cairhien, skirmishes with brigands, with Cairhienin who saw any Aiel as an enemy, with Andoran soldiers trying to claim the Sun Throne for Morgase. Lan had been involved in them; whenever Moiraine let him out of her sight, he apparently managed to take himself to the fighting, as if he could sense where it would be. Nynaeve had never thought that she would want the Aes Sedai to keep Lan on a short leash at her side.
This morning Elayne had still been disturbed about her mother's soldiers being in Cairhien, fighting Rand's Aiel, but what worried Nynaeve was the brigands. According to Egwene, if anyone could identify stolen property in a brigand's possession, if anyone could swear to seeing him kill anyone or burn so much as a shed, Rand was hanging him. He did not put his hands on the rope, but it was the same thing, and Egwene said he watched every execution with a face cold and hard as the mountains. That was not like him. He had been a gentle boy. Whatever had happened to him in the Waste had been very much for the worse.
Well, Rand was far away, and her own problems – hers and Elayne's – were no nearer solution. The River Eldar lay less than a mile north, spanned by a single lofty stone bridge built between tall metal pillars that glistened without a speck of rust. Remnants of an earlier time, certainly, perhaps even an earlier Age. She had gone up to it at midday, right after they arrived, but there had not been a boat in the river worthy of the name. Rowboats, small fishing boats working along the reed-lined banks, some strange, narrow little things that skittered over the water propelled by kneeling men with paddles, even a squat barge that looked to be moored in mud – there seemed to be a lot of mud showing on both sides, some of it dried hard and cracked, yet that was no wonder with the heat holding on so unseasonably – but nothing that could carry them swiftly away downriver as she wanted. Not that she knew where it was to take them, yet.
Rack her brains as she would, she could not remember the name of the town where the Blue sisters were supposed to be. She swiped savagely at a scatterhead, and it burst in little white feathers that floated to the ground. They probably were not there anymore in any case, if they ever had been. But it was the only clue they had to a safe place short of Tear. If she could only remember it.
The only good thing on the entire journey north was that Elayne had stopped flirting with Thom, There had not been an incident since joining the show. At least, it would have been good if Elayne had not apparently decided to pretend nothing had ever happened. Yesterday Nynaeve had congratulated the girl on coming to her senses, and Elayne had coolly replied, Are you trying to find out if I will stand in your way with Thom, Nynaeve? He's rather old for you, and I did think you had planted your affections elsewhere, but you are old enough to make your own decisions. I am fond of Thom, as I think he is of me. I look on him like a second father. If you want to flirt with him, you have my permission. But I really did think you were more constant.
Luca meant to cross the river in the morning, and Samara, the town on the other side, in Ghealdan, was no fit place to be. Luca had spent most of the day since their arrival over in Samara, securing a place to set up his show, he was only concerned that a number of other menageries had beaten him there, and he was not the only one to have more than animals. That was why he had grown particularly insistent about her letting Thom throw knives at her. She was lucky he did not want it done high walking with Elayne. The man seemed to think the most important thing in the world was that his show should be bigger and better than any other. For herself, the worrisome thing was that the Prophet was in Samara, his followers crowding the town and spilling out into tents, huts and shanties around it, a city that overwhelmed Samara's own not inconsiderable size. It had a high stone wall, and most of the buildings were stone as well, many as much as three stories, and there were more roofs of slate or tile than thatch.
This side of the Eldar was no better. They had passed three Whitecloak encampments before reaching their stopping place, hundreds of white tents in neat rows, and there had to be more they had not seen. Whitecloaks on this side of the river, the Prophet and maybe a riot waiting to happen on the other, and she had no idea where to go and no way to get there except in a lumbering wagon that moved no faster than she could walk. She wished she had never let Elayne talk her into abandoning the coach. Not seeing a weed close enough to snap without stepping aside, she broke the dogfennel in half, then again, until the pieces were no longer than her hand, and tossed them to the ground. She wished she could do the same with Luca. And Galad Damodred, for sending them running here. And al'Lan Mandragoran, for not being here. Not that she needed him, of course. But his presence would have been... a comfort.
The camp was quiet, with evening meals cooking over small fires beside the wagons. Petra was feeding the black-maned lion, thrusting huge pieces of meat through the bars on a stick. The female lions were already hunkered down over theirs companionably, letting out an occasional growl if someone came too close to their cage. Nynaeve stopped near Aludra's wagon; the Illuminator was working with wooden mortar and pestle on a table let down from the side of her wagon, muttering to herself over whatever she was compounding. Three of the Chavanas smiled at Nynaeve enticingly, motioning her to join them. Not Brugh, who still glowered over his lip, though she had given him a salve to make the swelling go down. Maybe if she hit the rest of them as hard, they would listen to Luca – and more importantly, to her! – and realize that she did not want their smiles. Too bad Master Valan Luca could not follow his own instructions. Latelle turned from the bear cage and gave her a tight smile; more of a smirk, really. Mainly, though, Nynaeve stared at Cerandin, who was filing the blunt toenails of one of the huge gray s'redit with what looked like a tool suitable for metal.