Nynaeve forced her jaws to unclench, forced her tone as smooth as she could make it. "You have a perfect right to do whatever you wish to me." Her fists in her skirts quivered more than her voice.

"A touch of temper showing? Just at the edges?" Birgitte grinned at her, at once amused and startlingly feral. "How long before it bursts into flame? I am willing to wear out any number of switches, if need be." The grin faded into seriousness. "I will make you see the right of this, or I will drive you away. There is no other course. I cannot – will not – leave Elayne. That bond honors me, and I will honor it, and her. And I will not allow you to think that you make my decisions, or made them. I am myself, not an appendage to you. Now go away. I must finish these arrows if I am to have even a few shafts that will fly true. I do not mean to kill you, and I would not have it happen by accident." Unstopping the glue pot, she bent over the table. "Do not forget to curtsy like a good girl on your way out."

Nynaeve made it as far as the foot of the steps before pounding her fist on her thigh in a fury. How dare the woman? Did she think that she could just...? Did she think that Nynaeve would put up with...? I thought she could do anything she wanted to you, a small voice whispered in her head. I said she could kill me, she snarled at it, not humiliate me! Before much longer everybody would be threatening her with that bloody Seanchan woman!

The wagons stood abandoned, except for a few rough-coated horse handlers for guards, near the tall sprawling canvas fence erected to contain Luca's show. From this large brown-grass meadow half a mile from Samara the gray stone walls of the city were clearly visible, with squat towers at the gates, and a few of the taller buildings showing roofs of thatch or tile. Outside the walls, villages of huts and rude shanties sprouted like mushrooms in every direction, full of the Prophet's followers, and they had stripped every tree for miles either for building or for firewood.

The show's entrance for patrons was on the other side, but two of the horse handlers with stout cudgels stood on this side to discourage any who did not want to pay from entering as the performers did. Nynaeve was almost upon them, striding as hard as she could and muttering angrily to herself, when their idiotic grins made her realize that the shawl was still looped over her elbows. Her stare wiped their faces blank. Only then did she cover herself properly, and slowly; she was not about to have these louts think they could make her yelp and leap. The skinny one, with a nose that took up half of his face, held the canvas flap aside, and she ducked through into pandemonium.

Everywhere people thronged, in noisy milling clusters of men and women and children, in chattering streams flowing from one attraction to the next. All but the s'redit performed on raised wooden stages Luca had had built. Cerandin's boar-horses had the largest crowd, the huge gray animals actually balancing on their forelegs, even the baby, long snouts curved up sinuously, while Clarine's dogs had the smallest, for all they did back-springs and flips over each others' backs. A good many people paused to stare at the lions and the hairy boarlike capars in their cages, the strangely horned deer from Arafel and Saldaea and Arad Doman and the bright birds from the Light knew where, and some waddling, brown-furred creatures with big eyes and round ears that sat placidly eating leaves from branches gripped in their forepaws. Luca's tale on where they came from varied – she supposed he did not know – and he had not been able to make up a name for them that pleased him. A huge snake from the marshes of Illian, four times as long as a man, earned nearly as many gasps as the s'redit, although simply lying there, apparently asleep, but she was pleased to see that Latelle's bears, at the moment standing atop huge red wooden balls that they rolled in circles with their feet, attracted few more than the dogs. Bears these people could see in their own forests, even if these did have white faces.

Latelle sparkled in the afternoon sunlight in her black spangles. Cerandin glittered almost as much in blue, and Clarine in green, though neither had quite as many sequins sewn on as Latelle, but every last one of the dresses had a collar right up under the chin. Of course, Petra and the Chavanas were performing attired only in bright blue breeches, but that was to show off their muscles. Only understandable. The acrobats were standing one atop the other's shoulders, four high. Not far from them, the strongman took a long bar with a large iron ball at each end – two men were needed to hand the thing up to him – and immediately began twirling it in his thick hands, even spinning the bar around his neck and across his back.

Thom was juggling fire, and eating it as well. Eight flaming batons made a perfect circle: then suddenly he had four in each hand, one sticking up from each cluster. Deftly popping each upraised flaming end into his mouth in turn, he appeared to swallow, and took them out extinguished, looking as if he had just had something tasty. Nynaeve could not fathom how he did not scorch his mustaches off, much less burn his throat. A twist of his wrists, and the unlit batons folded into the lit like fans. A moment later they were making two interlinked circles above his head. He wore the same brown coat he always did, though Luca had given him a red one sewn with sequins. From the way Thom's bushy eyebrows rose as she stalked past, he did not understand why she glared at him. His own coat, indeed!

She hurried on toward the thick, impatiently buzzing crowd circled around the two tall poles with the rope stretched tightly between. She had to use her elbows to reach the front row, though two women did glare and snatch their men out of her way when the shawl slipped. She would have glared back had she not been so busy blushing and covering herself. Luca was there, frowning as anxiously as a husband outside a birthing room, next to a thick fellow with his head shaved except for a grizzled topknot. She slipped in on the other side of Luca. The shaven-headed man had a villainous look; a long scar sliced down his left cheek, and a patch over that eye was painted with a scowling red replacement. Few of the men she had seen here were armed with more than a belt knife, but he wore a sword strapped to his back, the long hilt rising above his right shoulder. He looked vaguely familiar for some reason, but her mind was all on the highrope. Luca frowned at the shawl, smiled at her, and tried to put an arm around her waist.

While he was still trying to catch his breath from her elbow and she was still getting her shawl decently back in place, Juilin came staggering out of the crowd on the other side, conical red hat tilted jauntily, coat half off one shoulder and a wooden mug in his fist slopping over the rim. With the over-careful steps of a man whose head contains more wine than brains, he approached the rope ladder leading up to one of the high platforms and stared at it.

"Go on!" someone shouted. "Break your fool neck!"

"Wait, friend," Luca called, starting forward with smiles and flourishes of his cloak. "That is no place for a man with a belly full of —"

Setting the mug on the ground, Juilin scampered up the ladder and stood swaying on the platform. Nynaeve held her breath. The man had a head for heights, and well he should after a life of chasing thieves across the rooftops of Tear, but still...

Juilin turned as if lost; he appeared too drunk to see or remember the ladder. His eyes fixed on the rope. Tentatively, he put one foot onto the narrow span, then drew it back. Pushing the hat back to scratch his head, he studied the taut rope, and abruptly brightened visibly. Slowly he got down on hands and knees and crawled wobbling out onto the rope. Luca shouted for him to come down, and the crowd roared with laughter.