“Maybe yes, maybe no. Firesticks, it says what they are much better than strikers, yes? I have smoothed the little holes that hold the sticks so they can no longer ignite on the wood. A good idea, no? And the heads, they are a new formulation. You will try them and tell me what you think?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

Nynaeve hurried on before the woman could press another box on her. She held the thing as if it might explode, which she was not certain it would not. Aludra had everyone trying out her strikers, or firesticks, or whatever she would decide to call them next. They certainly would light a fire or a lamp. They could also burst into flame if the blue-gray heads rubbed against each other or anything else rough. For herself, she would stick with flint and steel, or a coal kept properly banked in a box of sand. Much safer.

Juilin caught her before she could set foot on the steps of the wagon she shared with Elayne, his gaze going straight to her swollen eye. She glared at him so hard that he stepped back and snatched that ridiculous conical cap from his head. “I’ve been over the river,” he said. “There are a hundred or so Whitecloaks in Samara. Just watching, and being watched as hard themselves by Ghealdanin soldiers. But I recognized one. The young fellow who was sitting across from The Light of Truth in Sienda.”

She smiled at him, and he took another hasty step back, eyeing her warily. Galad in Samara. That was all they needed. “You always bring such wonderful news, Juilin. We should have left you in Tanchico, or better, on the dock in Tear.” That was hardly fair. Better he told her of Galad than that she walked around a corner into the man. “Thank you, Juilin. At least we know to keep an eye out for him, now.” His nod was hardly a proper response to graciously offered thanks, and he hurried away, clapping his hat on, as if he expected her to hit him. Men had no manners.

The interior of the wagon was far cleaner than it had been when Thom and Juilin purchased it. The flaking paint had all been scraped off—the men had grumbled about doing that—and the cabinets and the tiny table that was fastened to the floor oiled until they shone. The small brick stove with its metal chimney was never used—the nights were warm enough, and if they began cooking in here, Thom and Juilin would never take another turn—but it made a good place to keep their valuables, the purses and the jewelry boxes. The washleather pouch holding the seal—that she had stuffed in as far as it would go and had not touched since.

Elayne, seated on one of the narrow beds, stuffed something under the blankets when Nynaeve climbed inside, but before she could ask what it was, Elayne exclaimed, “Your eye! What happened to you?” They needed to wash her hair in henpepper again; faint hints of gold were showing at the roots of those black tresses. It had to be done every few days.

“Cerandin hit me when I wasn’t looking,” Nynaeve muttered. The remembered taste of boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf made her tongue curl. That was not why she had let Elayne go to the last meeting in Tel’aran’rhiod, too. She was not avoiding Egwene. It was just that she made most of the journeys into the World of Dreams between meetings, and it was only fair to give Elayne her chances to go. That was it.

Carefully she put the box of firesticks into one of the cabinets, next to two more. The one that had actually caught fire was long since discarded.

She did not know why she was hiding the truth. Elayne had obviously not been outside the wagon, or she would know already. She and Juilin were probably the only people in camp who did not know, now that Thom had surely revealed every disgusting detail to Luca.

Taking a deep breath, she sat down on the other bed and made herself meet Elayne’s eyes. Something in the quiet of the other woman said she knew that more was coming.

“I . . . asked Cerandin about damane and sul’dam. I am certain she knows more than she lets on.” She paused for Elayne to voice doubts that she had asked rather than demanded, to say that the Seanchan woman had already told them all she knew, that she had not had much contact with damane or sul’dam. But Elayne kept silent, and Nynaeve realized that she was only hoping to postpone the moment with an argument. “She got quite heated about not knowing any more, so I shook her. You’ve really gone too far with her. She waggled her finger under my nose!” Still Elayne only watched her, those cool blue eyes barely blinking. It was all Nynaeve could do not to look away as she went on. “She . . . threw me, somehow, over her shoulder. I got up and slapped her, and she knocked me down with her fist. That is how I got the eye.” She might as well tell the rest; Elayne would hear soon enough; better it came from her. She would rather have pulled out her tongue. “I wasn’t about to put up with that, certainly. We scuffled a little more.” Not much of a scuffle on her part, for all that she had refused to quit. The bitterest truth was that Cerandin had only stopped flipping her about and tripping her in sneaky ways because it had been like manhandling a child. Nynaeve had had as much chance as that child. If only no one had been watching, so she could have channeled; she had certainly been angry enough. If only no one had been watching, period. She wished Cerandin had pounded her with her fists until she bled. “Then Latelle gave her a stick. You know how that woman wants to get back at me.” There was certainly no need to say that Cerandin had been holding her head down over a wagon tongue at the time. No one had manhandled her like that since she threw a pitcher of water at Neysa Ayellin when she was sixteen. “Anyway, Petra broke it up.” Just in time, too. The huge man had taken the pair of them by the scruff of the neck like kittens. “Cerandin apologized, and that was that.” Petra had made the Seanchan woman apologize, true, but he had made Nynaeve do so as well, refusing to loose that gentle yet iron-hard grip on her neck until she did. She had hit him as hard as she could, right in the stomach, and he had not even blinked. Her hand felt as if it might swell, too. “Nothing much to it, really. I suppose Latelle will try to spread some story of her own making about it. That is the woman I ought to shake. I didn’t hit her half hard enough.”

She felt better for telling the truth, but Elayne had doubt on her face that made her want to change the subject. “What is that you’re hiding?” She reached over and pulled the blanket back, revealing the silvery length of the a’dam they had gotten from Cerandin. “Why under the Light do you want to look at that? And if you do, why hide it? It is a filthy thing, and I cannot understand how you can touch it, but if you want to, that is entirely up to you.”

“Don’t sound so prim,” Elayne told her. A slow smile broke across her face, a flush of excitement. “I think I could make one.”

“Make one!” Nynaeve lowered her voice, hoping no one came running to see who was killing whom, but she did not soften it any. “Light, why? Make an open cesspit first. A midden heap. At least there’s some decent use for those.”

“I do not mean to actually make an a’dam.” Elayne held herself erect, chin tilted in that cool way of hers. She sounded offended, and icily calm. “But it is a ter’angreal, and I have puzzled out how it works. I saw you attend at least one lecture on linking. The a’dam links the two women; that is why the sul’dam must be a woman who can channel, too.” She frowned slightly. “It is a strange link, though. Different. Instead of two or more sharing, with one guiding, it is one taking full control, really. I think that is the reason a damane cannot do anything the sul’dam doesn’t want her to. I don’t really believe there is any need for the leash. The collar and bracelet would work as well without it, and in just the same ways.”

“Work as well,” Nynaeve said dryly. “You’ve studied the matter a great deal for someone who has no intention of making one.” The woman did not even have the grace to blush. “What use would you put it to? I cannot say I would take it amiss if you put one around Elaida’s neck, but that doesn’t make it any less disgus—”

“Don’t you understand?” Elayne broke in, haughtiness all gone in excitement and fervor. She leaned forward to put a hand on Nynaeve’s knee, and her eyes shone, she was so delighted with herself. “It is a ter’angreal, Nynaeve. And I think I can make one.” She said each word slowly and deliberately, then laughed and rushed on. “If I can make this one, I can make others. Maybe I can even make angreal and sa’angreal. No one in the Tower has been able to do that in thousands of years!” Straightening, she shivered, and laid fingers across her mouth. “I never really thought of making anything myself before. Not anything useful. I remember seeing a craftsman once, a man who had made some chairs for the palace. They were not gilded, or elaborately carved—they were meant for the servants’ hall—but I could see the pride in his eyes. Pride in what he had made, a thing well crafted. I would love to feel that, I think. Oh, if we only knew a fraction of what the Forsaken do. The knowledge of the Age of Legends inside their heads, and they use it to serve the Shadow. Think what we could do with it. Think what we could make.” She took a deep brea

th, dropping her hands in her lap, her enthusiasm barely diminished. “Well, be that as it may, I’ll wager I could puzzle out how Whitebridge was made, too. Buildings like spun glass, but stronger than steel. And cuendillar, and—”

“Slow down,” Nynaeve said. “Whitebridge is five or six hundred miles from here at least, and if you think you’re going to go channeling at the seal, you can think again. Who knows what could happen? It stays in its pouch, in the stove, until we find somewhere safe for it.”

Elayne’s eagerness was very odd. Nynaeve would not have minded a little of the Forsaken’s knowledge herself—far from it—but if she wanted a chair, she paid a carpenter. She had never wanted to make anything, aside from poultices and salves. When she was twelve, her mother had stopped going through the motions of teaching her to sew, after it became apparent that she did not care whether she sewed a straight seam and could not be made to care. As for cooking . . . She thought she was a good cook, actually, but the point was that she knew what was significant. Healing was important. Any man could build a bridge, and leave him to it was what she said.

“With you and your a’dam,” she went on, “I nearly forgot to tell you. Juilin saw Galad on the other side of the river.”

“Blood and bloody ashes,” Elayne muttered, and when Nynaeve raised her eyebrows, she added very firmly, “I will not listen to a lecture on my language, Nynaeve. What are we going to do?”

“As I see it, we can remain on this side of the river and have Whitecloaks looking us over, wondering why we left the menagerie, or we can cross the bridge and hope the Prophet doesn’t spark a riot and Galad doesn’t denounce us, or we can try to buy a rowboat and flee downriver. Not very good choices. And Luca will want his hundred marks. Gold.” She tried not to scowl, but that still rankled. “You promised it to him, and I suppose it would not be honest to sneak away without paying him.” She would have done it in a minute if there was anywhere to go.

“It certainly would not be,” Elayne said, sounding shocked. “But we do not have to worry about Galad, at least not as long as we stay close to the menagerie. Galad won’t go near one. He thinks putting animals in cages is cruel. He doesn’t mind hunting them, mind, or eating them, only caging them.”

Nynaeve shook her head. The truth was that Elayne would have found some way to delay, if only for one day, had there been any way to leave. The woman really wanted to highwalk in front of people other than the rest of the performers. And she herself was probably going to have to let Thom throw knives at her again. I am not wearing that bloody dress, though!

“The first boat that comes large enough to take four people,” she said. “We are hiring it. Trade on the river can’t have stopped altogether.”

“It would help if we knew where we were going.” The other woman’s tone was much too gentle. “We could simply head for Tear, you know. We do not have to stay fixed to this just because you . . .” She trailed off, but Nynaeve knew what she had been going to say. Just because she was stubborn. Just because she was so furious that she could not remember a simple name that she intended to remember it and go there if it killed her. Well, none of that was true. She intended to find these Aes Sedai who might just support Rand and bring them to him, not trail into Tear like a pitiful refugee fleeing for safety.

“I will remember,” she said in a level tone. It ended with “bar.” Or was it “dar”? “Lar”? “Before you are tired of flaunting yourself highwalking, I will.” I will not wear that dress!

CHAPTER

Tags: Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time Fantasy
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