I will do what I must. She clamped down firmly on butterflies in the pit of her belly. By the time she tossed the shift down over her stockings, she was eager to don the blue dress and go out into the heat just to escape Elayne’s eyes.
Elayne was just finishing helping her with the rows of small buttons up the back—and muttering that no one had helped her, as if anyone needed help with breeches—when the wagon door banged open, letting in a wave of hot air. Startled, Nynaeve jumped and covered her bosom with both hands before she could stop herself. When Birgitte climbed in instead of Valan Luca, she tried to pretend she was adjusting the neckline.
Smoothing identical brilliant blue silk over her hip, the taller woman pulled her thick black braid over one bare shoulder with a self-pleased grin. “If you want to draw attention, don’t bother fiddling. It is too obvious. Just breathe deeply.” She demonstrated, then laughed at Nynaeve’
s scowl.
Nynaeve made an effort to keep her temper. Though why she should, she did not know. She could hardly imagine that she had felt guilt over what had happened. Gaidal Cain was probably glad to get away from the woman. And Birgitte got to wear her hair the way she wanted. Not that that had anything to do with anything. “I knew someone like you in the Two Rivers, Maerion. Calle knew every merchant’s guard by his first name, and she certainly had no secrets from any of them.”
Birgitte’s smile tightened. “And I knew a woman like you, once. Mathena looked down her nose at men, too, and even had a poor fellow executed for coming on her by accident while she swam naked. She had never even been kissed, until Zheres stole one from her. You’d have thought she had discovered men for the first time. She became so besotted, Zheres had to go live on a mountain to escape her. Watch out for the first man to kiss you. One has to come along sooner or later.”
Fists clenching, Nynaeve took a step toward her. Or tried to. Somehow Elayne was in between them, hands upraised.
“Both of you stop it this minute,” she said, eyeing them in turn with equal haughtiness. “Lini always said ‘Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack,’ but you will stop clawing at one another right now! I will not put up with it any longer!”
To Nynaeve’s surprise, Birgitte actually blushed and mumbled a sullen apology. To Elayne, of course, but the apology itself was the surprise. Birgitte had chosen to stay close to Elayne—there was no need for her to hide—but after three days the heat was apparently affecting her as badly as it did Elayne. For herself, Nynaeve gave the Daughter-Heir her frostiest stare. She had managed to maintain an even disposition while they waited, cooped up together—she had—but Elayne certainly had no room to talk.
“Now,” Elayne said, still in that icy tone, “did you have some reason for barging in like a bull, or have you simply forgotten how to knock?”
Nynaeve opened her mouth to say something about cats—just a gentle reminder—but Birgitte forestalled her, if in a tighter voice.
“Thom and Juilin are back from the town.”
“Back!” Nynaeve exclaimed, and Birgitte glanced at her before returning to Elayne.
“You did not send them?”
“I did not,” Elayne said grimly.
She was out of the door, Birgitte at her heels, before Nynaeve could say a word. There was nothing for it but to follow, grumbling to herself. Elayne had better not suddenly think she was the one giving orders. Nynaeve had still not forgiven her for revealing so much to the men.
The dry heat seemed even worse outside, for all the sun still sat on the canvas wall around the menagerie. Sweat popped out on her brow before she reached the foot of the ladder, but for once she did not grimace.
The two men sat on three-legged stools beside the cookfire, hair wild and coats looking as if they had rolled in the dirt. A trickle of red ran from beneath a wadded cloth Thom was pressing to his scalp, down across a fan of dried blood that covered his cheek and stained one long white mustache. A purple lump the size of a hen’s egg stood out beside Juilin’s eye, and he held his thumb-thick staff of pale ridged wood in a hand roughly wrapped with a bloody bandage. That ridiculous conical red cap, sitting on the back of his head, appeared to have been trampled.
From the noises inside the canvas walls, the horse handlers were already at work cleaning cages, and no doubt Cerandin was with her s’redit—none of the men would go near them—but there was relatively little stir around the wagons as yet. Petra was smoking his long-stemmed pipe while he helped Clarine prepare their breakfast. Two of the Chavanas were studying some piece of apparatus with Muelin, the contortionist, while the other pair were chatting with two of the six female acrobats Luca had hired away from Sillia Cerano’s show. They claimed to be sisters named Murasaka, despite being even more disparate in looks and coloring than the Chavanas. One of the pair lounging in colorful silk robes with Brugh and Taeric had blue eyes and almost white hair, the other skin nearly as dark as her eyes. Everyone else was already garbed for the day’s first performance, the men bare-chested in colorful breeches, Muelin in gauzy red and a tight matching vest, Clarine in high-necked green sequins.
Thom and Juilin attracted a few looks, but fortunately no one thought it necessary to come inquire after their health. Perhaps it was the hangdog way they sat, shoulders slumped, eyes on the ground under their boots. Doubtless they knew they were in for a tongue-lashing that would sear their hides. Nynaeve certainly intended to give them one.
Elayne, though, gasped at the sight of them and went running to kneel beside Thom, all the anger of a moment before taking wing. “What happened? Oh, Thom, your poor head. That must hurt so. This is beyond my abilities. Nynaeve will take you inside and see to it. Thom, you are too old to get yourself into scrapes like this.”
Indignantly, he fended her off as best he could while holding his compress in place. “Leave over, child. I’ve had worse than this falling out of bed. Will you leave over?”
Nynaeve was not about to do any Healing, despite being angry enough. She planted herself in front of Juilin, fists on her hips and a brook-no-nonsense, answer-me-right-now look on her face. “What do you mean, sneaking off without telling me?” As well to start letting Elayne know that she was not in charge. “If you had gotten your throat cut instead of a mouse on your eye, how would we know what had happened to you? There was no reason for you to go. None! Finding a ship has been seen to.”
Juilin glared up at her, shoving his cap forward over his forehead. “Seen to, is it? Is that why the three of you have taken to stalking about like—?” He cut off as Thom groaned loudly and swayed.
Once the old gleeman had quieted Elayne’s concerned flutters with protestations that it had just been a momentary pang, that he was fit to attend a ball—and given Juilin a significant glance he obviously hoped the women would not see—Nynaeve turned a dangerous eye back to the dark Tairen, to learn just what it was he thought they had been stalking about like.
“A good thing we did go,” he told her instead in a tight voice. “Samara’s a school of silverpike around a chunk of bloody meat. There are mobs on every street hunting Darkfriends and anybody else who isn’t ready to hail the Prophet as the one true voice of the Dragon Reborn.”
“It started three hours or so ago, near the river,” Thom put in, giving in with a sigh to Elayne’s bathing his face with a damp cloth. He appeared to be ignoring her mutters, which must have taken some doing, since Nynaeve could clearly hear “foolish old man” and “need someone to take care of you before you get yourself killed” among other things in a tone easily as exasperated as it was fond. “How it began, I don’t know. I heard Aes Sedai blamed, Whitecloaks, Trollocs, everybody but the Seanchan, and if they knew the name, they’d blame them, too.” He winced at Elayne’s pressure. “The last hour we were a little too personally involved in getting clear to learn much.”
“There are fires,” Birgitte said. Petra and his wife noticed her pointing and stood to stare worriedly. Two dark plumes of smoke rose above the canvas wall in the direction of the town.
Juilin rose and looked Nynaeve in the eyes with a hard gaze. “It is time to go. Maybe we’ll stand out enough for Moghedien to find us, but I doubt it; there are people running every direction they can run. In another two hours, it won’t be a pair of fires, it will be fifty, and avoiding her won’t do much good if we’re torn to pieces by a mob. They’ll turn to the shows once they have smashed what can be smashed in the town.”
“Don’t use that name,” Nynaeve said sharply, with a frown for Elayne that the younger woman did not see. Letting men know too much was always a mistake. The trouble was, he was right, but letting a man know that too quickly was a mistake, too. “I will consider your suggestion, Juilin. I would hate to run away for no reason, and then learn that a ship had come right after we left.” He stared at her as if she were mad, and Thom shook his head despite Elayne’s holding it still for her washing, but a figure making his way through the wagons brightened Nynaeve. “Perhaps it’s come already.”