The Fires of Heaven (77 page)

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!

E
layne had the cooking that evening, which meant that none of the food was simple, despite the fact that they were eating on stools around a cookfire, with crickets chirping in the surrounding woods, and now and again some night-bird’s thin, sad cry in the deepening darkness. The soup was served cold and jellied, with chopped green ferris sprinkled on top. The Light knew where she had found ferris, or the tiny onions she put in with the peas. The beef was sliced nearly thin enough to see through and wrapped around something made from carrots, sweetbeans, chives and goatcheese, and there was even a small honeycake for dessert.

It was all tasty, though Elayne fretted that nothing was exactly the way it should be, as if she thought she could duplicate the cooks’ work in the Royal Palace in Caemlyn. Nynaeve was fairly sure the girl was not fishing for compliments. Elayne would always brush away compliments and tell you exactly what was not right: Thom and Juilin grumbled about there being so little beef, but Nynaeve noticed that they not only ate every scrap but looked disappointed when the last pea was gone. When she cooked, for some reason they always seemed to eat at one of the other wagons. When one of them made supper, it was always stew or else meat and beans so full of dried peppers that your tongue blistered.

They did not eat alone, of course. Luca saw to that, bringing his own stool and placing it right next to her, his red cloak spread to best effect and
his long legs stretched out so that his calves showed well, above his turned-down boots. He was there almost every night. Oddly, the only nights he missed were when she cooked.

It was interesting, really, having his eyes on her when a woman as pretty as Elayne was there, but he did have his motives. He sat altogether too close—tonight she moved her stool three times, but he followed without missing a word or seeming to notice—and he alternated comparing her with various flowers, to the blossoms’ detriment, ignoring the black eye he could not miss without being blind, and musing over how beautiful she would be in that red dress, with compliments on her courage thrown in. Twice, he slipped in suggestions that they take a stroll by moonlight, hints so veiled that she was not entirely sure that was what they were until she thought about it.

“That gown will frame your unfolding bravery to perfection,” he murmured in her ear, “yet not a quarter so well as you display yourself, for night-blooming dara lilies would weep with envy to see you stroll beside the moonlit water, as I would do, and make myself a bard to sing your praises by this very moon.”

She blinked at him, working that out. Luca seemed to believe she was fluttering her lashes; she accidentally hit him in the ribs with her elbow before he could nibble her ear. At least that seemed to be his intention, even if he was coughing now and claiming he had swallowed a cake crumb the wrong way. The man was certainly handsome—
Stop that!
—and he did have a shapely calf—
What are you doing, looking at his legs?
—but he must think her a brainless ninny. It was all in aid of his bloody show.

She moved her stool again while he was trying to get his breath back; she could not move it far without making it clear that she was running from him, though she held her fork ready in case he followed again. Thom studied his plate as though more than a smear remained on the white glaze. Juilin whistled tunelessly and nearly silently, peering into the dying fire with false intensity. Elayne looked at her and shook her head.

“It was so pleasant of you to join us,” Nynaeve said, and stood up. Luca stood when she did, a hopeful look in his eye along with the shine of the firelight. She set her plate atop the one in his hand. “Thom and Juilin will be grateful for your help with the dishes, I am sure.” Before his mouth finished falling open, she turned to Elayne. “It is late, and I expect we’ll be moving across the river early.”

“Of course,” Elayne murmured, with just the hint of a smile. And she put her plate atop Nynaeve’s before following her into the wagon. Nynaeve
wanted to hug her. Until she said, “Really, you should not encourage him.” Lamps mounted in wall brackets sprang alight.

Nynaeve planted her fists on her hips. “
Encourage
him! The only way I could encourage him less would be to stab him!” Sniffing for emphasis, she frowned at the lamps. “Next time, use one of Aludra’s firesticks. Strikers. You are going to forget one day and channel where you shouldn’t, and then where will we be? Running for our lives with a hundred Whitecloaks after us.”

Stubborn to a fault, the other woman refused to be diverted. “I may be younger than you, but sometimes I think I know more of men than you ever will. For a man like Valan Luca, that coy little flight of yours tonight was only asking him to keep pursuing you. If you would snap his nose off the way you did the first day, he might give up. You don’t tell him to stop, you do not even ask! You kept smiling at him, Nynaeve. What is the man supposed to think? You haven’t smiled at
anyone
in days!”

“I am trying to hold my temper,” Nynaeve muttered. Everybody complained about her temper, and now that she was trying to control it, Elayne complained about that! It was not that she was fool enough to be taken in by his compliments. She certainly was not so big a fool as that. Elayne laughed at her, and she scowled.

“Oh, Nynaeve. ‘You cannot hold the sun down at dawn.’ Lini could have been thinking of you.”

With an effort Nynaeve smoothed her face. She could too hold her temper.
Didn’t I just prove it out there?
She held out her hand. “Let me have the ring. He
will
want to cross the river early tomorrow, and I want at least some real sleep after I’m done.”

“I thought I would go tonight.” Concern touched Elayne’s voice. “Nynaeve, you’ve been entering
Tel’aran’rhiod
practically every night except the meetings with Egwene. That Bair intends to pick a bone with you, by the way. I had to tell them why you weren’t there yet again, and she says you should not need rest however often you enter, unless you are doing something wrong.” Concern became firmness, and the younger woman planted
her
fists on her hips. “I had to listen to a lecture that was meant for you, and it was not pleasant, with Egwene standing there nodding her head to every word. Now, I really think that tonight I should—”

“Please, Elayne.” Nynaeve did not lower her outstretched hand. “I have questions for Birgitte, and her answers might make me think of more.” She did have, sort of; she could always think of questions for Birgitte. It had
nothing to do with avoiding Egwene, and the Wise Ones. If she visited
Tel’aran’rhiod
so often that Elayne always went to the meetings with Egwene, that was simply how it fell out.

Elayne sighed, but fished the twisted stone ring from the neck of her dress. “Ask her again, Nynaeve. It is very difficult facing Egwene. She
saw
Birgitte. She doesn’t say anything, but she looks at me. It is worse when we meet again after the Wise Ones have gone. She
could
ask then, and she still doesn’t, and that makes it far worse.” She frowned as Nynaeve transferred the small
ter’angreal
to the leather cord around her own neck, with Lan’s heavy ring and her Great Serpent. “Why do you suppose none of the Wise Ones ever come with her then? We don’t learn very much in Elaida’s study, but you would think they would at least want to
see
the Tower. Egwene doesn’t even want to talk about it in front of them. If I seem to come close, she gives me such a look that you’d think she meant to hit me.”

“I think they want to avoid the Tower as much as possible.” And wise they were indeed for that. If not for Healing, she would avoid it, and Aes Sedai, too. She was
not
becoming Aes Sedai; she was just hoping to learn more of Healing. And to help Rand, certainly. “They are free women, Elayne. Even if the Tower was not in the mess it is, would they really want Aes Sedai traipsing through the Waste, scooping them up to carry back to Tar Valon?”

“I suppose that is it.” Elayne’s tone said she could not understand it, though.
She
thought the Tower wonderful, and could not see why any woman would want to evade Aes Sedai. Sealed to the White Tower forever, they said when they put that ring on your finger. And they meant it. Yet the fool girl did not see it as onerous at all.

Elayne helped her undress, and she stretched out on her narrow bed in her shift, yawning. It had been a long day, and it was surprising how tiring standing still could be when someone unseen was hurling knives at you. Idle thoughts drifted through her head as she closed her eyes. Elayne had claimed she was practicing when she had acted the fool with Thom. Not that the fond-father-and-favorite-daughter they tried on now was much less foolish to watch. Maybe she could practice herself, just a bit, with Valan. Now, that
was
foolish. Men’s eyes might wander—Lan’s had
better
not!—but she knew how to be constant. She was simply not going to wear that dress. Far too much bosom.