The Wheel of Time, page 456
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 overcareful 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.
Halfway across, Juilin stopped, swaying awkwardly, and peered back, his eyes latching onto the mug he had left on the ground. Plainly he was considering how to get back to it. Slowly, with exceeding care, he stood, facing the way he had come and wavering from side to side. A gasp rose from the crowd as his foot slipped and he fell, somehow catching himself with one hand and a knee hooked around the rope. Luca caught the Taraboner hat as it fell, shouting to everyone that the man was mad, and whatever happened was no responsibility of his. Nynaeve pressed both hands tight against her middle; she could imagine being up there, and even that was enough to make her feel ill. The man was a fool. A pure bull-goose fool!
With an obvious effort, Juilin managed to catch the rope with his other hand, and pulled himself along it hand-over-hand. To the far platform. Swaying from side to side, he brushed his coat, tried to pull it straight and succeeded only in changing which shoulder hung down—and spotted his mug at the floor of the other pole. Pointing to it gleefully, he stepped out onto the rope again.
This time at least half the onlookers shouted for him to go back, shouted that there was a ladder behind him; the others only laughed uproariously, no doubt waiting for him to break his neck. He walked across smoothly, slid down the rope ladder with his hands and feet on the outside, and snatched up the wooden mug to take a deep drink. Not until Luca clapped the red hat on Juilin’s head and they both bowed—Luca flourishing his cloak in such a way that Juilin was behind it half the time—did the watchers realize that it had all been part of the show. A moment of silence, and then they exploded with applause and cheers and laughter. Nynaeve had half-thought they might turn ugly after being duped. The fellow with the topknot looked villainous even while laughing.
Leaving Juilin standing beside the ladder, Luca came back to stand between Nynaeve and the man with the topknot. “I thought that would go well.” He sounded incredibly self-satisfied, and he made little bows to the crowd as if he had been the one up on the rope.
Giving him a sour frown, she had no time to speak the acid comment on her tongue, because Elayne came bounding through the crowd to stand beside Juilin with her arms upraised and one knee bent.
Nynaeve’s mouth tightened, and she shifted her shawl irritably. Whatever she thought of the red dress that she had found herself wearing without really knowing how, she was not sure that Elayne’s costume was not worse. The Daughter-Heir of Andor was all in snow white, with a scattering of white sequins sparkling on her short coat and snug breeches. Nynaeve had not really believed that Elayne would actually appear in the clothes in public, but she had been too concerned over her own attire to give her opinion. The coat and breeches made her think of Min. She had never approved of Min wearing boy’s clothes, but the color and spangles made these even more—flagrant.
Juilin held the rope ladder for Elayne to climb, though there was no need. She went up as adeptly as he could have. He vanished into the crowd as soon as she reached the top, where she posed again, beaming at the thunderous applause as if at the adulation of her subjects. As she stepped out onto the rope—somehow it seemed even thinner than when Juilin had been on it—Nynaeve all but ceased breathing, and she stopped thinking of Elayne’s clothes, or her own, at all.
Elayne made her way out onto the rope, arms outstretched to either side, and she was not channeling a platform of Air. Slowly she stepped her way across, one foot in front of the other, never wavering, supported only by the rope. Channeling would be far too dangerous if Moghedien had even a clue to where they were; the Forsaken or Black sisters could be in Samara, and they would be able to feel the weave. And if they were not in Samara now, they might be soon. On the far platform, Elayne paused to considerably more applause than Juilin had received—Nynaeve could not understand that—and started back. Almost to the end, she pivoted smoothly, walked back halfway, pivoted again. And wobbled, just catching herself. Nynaeve felt as though a hand had her by the throat. At a slow steady pace, Elayne highwalked to the platform, once more posing to thunderous shouts and clapping.
Nynaeve swallowed her heart and breathed again, raggedly, but she knew it was not over.
Raising her hands above her head, Elayne suddenly cartwheeled herself along the rope, black tresses whipping, white-sheathed legs flashing in the sun. Nynaeve yelped and clutched Luca’s arm as the girl reached the far platform, stumbled in landing and caught herself just short of going over the edge.
“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.
CHAPTER
38
An Old Acquaintance
With 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.
