The Fires of Heaven (85 page)

“What’s the matter?” he murmured beneath the gasp rising from the crowd. “You’ve seen her do this every evening since Sienda. And a good many other places, too, I would think.”

“Of course,” she said weakly. Eyes fixed on Elayne, she barely noticed the arm he slipped around her shoulders, certainly not enough to do anything about it. She had tried to talk the girl into feigning a sprained ankle, but Elayne insisted that after all of that practice with the Power, she did not need it now. Maybe Juilin did not—apparently he did not—but Elayne had never gone scrambling over rooftops in the night.

The return cartwheels went perfectly, and the landing, but Nynaeve did not look away, or loose her hold on Luca’s sleeve. After what now seemed the inevitable pause for applause, Elayne returned to the rope for more pivots, one leg raised and whipping down and up so quickly that it seemed she kept it outstretched the whole while, and for a slow handstand that lifted her straight as a dagger, white-slippered toes pointed to the sky. And a backflip that had the crowd gasping and her swaying from side to side, only just catching her balance. Thom Merrilin had taught her that, and the handstand.

From the corner of her eye Nynaeve caught Thom, two places down from her, eyes riveted to Elayne, poised on the balls of his feet. He looked as proud as a peacock. He looked ready to rush forward and catch her if she fell. If she did fall, it would be at least partly his fault. He should never have taught her those things!

One last passage of cartwheels, white legs flashing and glittering in the sun, faster than before. A passage that had never been mentioned to Nynaeve! She would have eviscerated Luca with her tongue had he not muttered angrily that Elayne adding to the act just for applause was a good way to break her neck. One last pause to pose for more of that applause, and Elayne at last climbed down.

Shouting, the crowd rushed in on her. Luca and four horse handlers with cudgels appeared around her as if by the Power, but even so Thom beat them to her, limp and all.

Nynaeve jumped as high as she could, just managing to see over enough heads to make out Elayne. The girl did not seem frightened, or even taken aback, by all the waving hands trying to touch her, stretching between her encircling guards. Head high, face flushed from effort, she
still managed a cool and regal grace as she was escorted away. How she could do that, garbed as she was, Nynaeve simply could not imagine.

“Face like a bloody queen,” the one-eyed man muttered to himself. He had not gone running with the others, but merely let them stream past. Roughly dressed in a plain coat of dark gray wool, he certainly looked solid enough to have no fears of being knocked down and trampled. He appeared as if he could use that sword. “Burn me for a sheep-gutted farmer, but she’s flaming well brave enough for a bloody queen.”

Nynaeve gaped at him as he strode away through the crowd, and it was not his language. Or rather, it was, partly. Now she remembered where she had seen him, a one-eyed man with a topknot who could not say two sentences without the vilest curses.

Forgetting about Elayne—she was certainly safe enough—Nynaeve began pushing her way through the throng after him.

W
ith the crowds, it took Nynaeve some little time to catch up, muttering every time she was jostled by a man gaping at everything in sight or a woman dragging a child with either hand, children usually trying to drag
her
to two different attractions at once. The one-eyed man barely paused to look at anything except the big snake and the lions, until he reached the boar-horses. He had to have seen them earlier, situated as they were near the patrons’ entrance. Every time the
s’redit
stood on their hind legs, as they were doing now, the great tusked heads of the adults could be seen by those outside the canvas fence, and the press to enter intensified a little more.

Beneath a wide red sign that said
VALAN LUCA
in ornate gold script on both sides, two of the horse handlers collected admission from people funneled between two thick ropes, taking the money in clear blown-glass pitchers—both thick and flawed; Luca would never lay out coin for better—so they could see that the coins were right without touching them. They dumped the money straight from the pitchers through a hole in the top of an iron-strapped box so wrapped about with chain that Petra had to have put it in place before the first silver penny went in. Another pair of horse handlers—thick-shouldered, broken-nosed men with the sunken knuckles of brawlers—stood nearby with cudgels to make sure that the crowd remained orderly. And to keep an eye on the men taking the money, Nynaeve
suspected. Luca was not a trusting man, especially when it came to coin. In fact, he was as tight as the skin on an apple. She had never met anyone so stingy.

Slowly she elbowed close to the man with the gray-streaked topknot.
He
had had no trouble reaching the front rank before the
s’redit,
of course; his scar and painted eyepatch would have seen to that, even without the sword on his back. At the moment he was watching the big gray animals with a grin and what she supposed was wonder on that stony face.

“Uno?” She thought that was the right name.

His head turned to stare at her. Once she had the shawl back in place, he raised the stare to her face, but no recognition lit in his dark eye. The other, the painted red glaring one, made her a little queasy.

Cerandin waved her goad, shouting something slurred beyond intelligibility, and the
s’redit
turned; Sanit, the cow, placing her feet on Mer’s broad, rounded back while he remained upright. Nerin, the calf, put her feet low on Sanit’s back.

“I saw you in Fal Dara,” Nynaeve said. “And again on Toman Head, briefly. After Falme. You were with . . .” She did not know how much she could say with people cheek-by-jowl around her; rumors of the Dragon Reborn had circulated all through Amadicia, and some even had his name right. “With Rand.”

Uno’s real eye narrowed—she tried not to see the other—and after a moment he nodded. “I remember the face. I never forget a flaming pretty face. But the hair was bloody well different. Nyna?”

“Nynaeve,” she told him sharply.

He shook his head, eyeing her up and down, and before she could say another word, he had seized her arm and was all but dragging her out through the entrance.

The horse handlers there recognized her, of course, and the broken-nosed fellows started forward hefting their cudgels. She waved them away furiously even as she was yanking her arm free; it took three tries, and still it was more a matter of his letting go. The man had a grip like iron. The men with the clubs hesitated, then drifted back to their places when they saw Uno drop his grip. Apparently they knew what Valan Luca would prefer them to be guarding.

“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, but Uno only motioned her to follow, watching to see that she did so without more than slowing his stride through the crowd waiting to get in. He had slightly bowed legs, and moved like a man more used to the back of a horse than
his own feet. Growling to herself, she picked up her skirts and stalked after him toward the town.

Two other menageries were set up behind brown canvas walls not far off, and beyond them more lay scattered among the crowded shanty villages. None too close to the city walls, though. Apparently the governor, as they called the woman Nynaeve could have named mayor—though she had never heard of a woman mayor—had decreed half a mile as the distance, to protect the town in case any of the animals got loose.

The sign over the entrance to the nearest show said
MAIRIN GOME
in florid green and gold. Two women were clearly visible above the sign, clinging to a rope hanging from a tall framework of poles that had not been there when Luca’s walls went up. Apparently the boar-horses’ rearing high enough to be seen was having an effect. The women contorted themselves into positions that made Nynaeve think uncomfortably of what Moghedien had done, and somehow even managed to hold themselves out in horizontal handstands to either side of the rope. The crowd waiting impatiently in front of Mistress Gome’s sign was almost as large as the one in front of Luca’s. None of the other shows had anything visible that she could see, and their crowds were much smaller.

Uno refused to answer her questions or say a word or do more than give her dire frowns until they were out of the jam of people and onto a cart path of hard-packed dirt. “What I am flaming trying to do,” he growled then, “is to take you where we can flaming well talk without you being torn to flaming bits by flaming folk trying to kiss your flaming hem when they find out you flaming know the Lord Dragon.” There was no one within thirty paces of them, but he still stared around for anyone who might hear. “Blood and bloody ashes, woman! Don’t you know what these flaming goat-heads are like? Half of them think the Creator talks to him over bloody supper every night, and the other half think he
is
the bloody Creator!”

“I will thank you to moderate your language, Master Uno. And I will thank you to slow down, too. We are not running a footrace. Where are you going, and why should I stir another step with you?”

He rolled his eye toward her, chuckling wryly. “Oh, I do remember you. The one with the fla—the mouth. Ragan thought you could skin and butcher a blo—a bull at ten paces with your tongue. Chaena and Nangu thought fifty.” At least he did shorten his stride.

Nynaeve stopped dead. “Where and why?”

“Into the town.” He did not stop. He strode right on, flipping a hand
for her to follow. “I don’t know what you’re flam—what you’re doing here, but I remember you were mixed up with that
blue
woman.”

Snarling under her breath, she gathered her skirts and hurried after him again; it was the only way to hear. He continued as if she had been beside him the whole time. “This is no blood—no place for you to be. I can scrape together enough bio—aagh!—enough coin to get you to Tear, I think. Rumor says that’s where the Lord Dragon is.” Again he looked around warily. “Unless you want to go to the island instead.” He must have meant Tar Valon. “There’s blo—there’s odd rumors floating around about that, too. Peace, if there aren’t!” He came from a land that had not known peace in three thousand years; Shienarans used the word as talisman and oath both. “They say the old Amyrlin’s been deposed. Executed maybe. Some say they fought and burned the whole—” He paused, taking a deep breath and grimacing horribly. “—the whole city.”

Walking along, she studied him in amazement. She had not seen him in nearly a year, had never spoken more than two words together to him, and yet he . . . Why did men always think a woman needed a man to look after her? Men could not lace up their own shirts without a woman to help! “We are doing quite well as we are, thank you. Unless you know when a river trader will dock on his way downriver.”

“We? Is the blue woman with you, or the brown?” That had to be Moiraine and Verin. He was certainly being cautious.

“No. Do you remember Elayne?” He gave a blunt nod, and a mischievous impulse seized her; nothing seemed to faze the man, and he obviously expected to just take charge of her welfare. “You saw her again just now. You said she had a”—she made her voice gruff in imitation of his—“face like a bloody queen.”

He stumbled in a quite satisfactory way, and glared around him so fiercely that even two Whitecloaks riding by skirted wide around him, though they tried to pretend he had nothing to do with it, of course. “Her?” he growled incredulously. “But her bloody hair was black as a raven’s. . . .” He glanced at her, and the next minute he was pacing up the cart path again, muttering half to himself, “The flaming woman is daughter to a queen. A bloody queen! Showing her bloody legs that way.” Nynaeve nodded in agreement. Until he added, “You bloody southlanders are bloody strange! No flaming decency at all!” He had fine room to talk. Shienarans might dress properly, but she still blushed to remember that in Shienar men and women bathed together as often as not, and thought no more of it than of eating together.