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The knife brushed Nynaeve’s hair as it thunked into the board she was leaning against, and she flinched behind her blindfold She wished she had a decent braid instead of locks hanging loose about her shoulders If that blade had cut even one strand Fool woht bitterly Fool, fool woman With the scarf folded over her eyes she could just see a narrow line of light at the bottoht, froh light yet, even if it was late afternoon Surely the man would not throhen he could not see properly The next blade struck on the other side of her head; she could feel it vibrating She thought it al to kill Thoet her hands on, on sheer principle

"The pears," Luca shouted, as if he were not just thirty paces from her He must think the blindfoldin the pouch at her belt, she brought out a pear and carefully balanced it atop her head She was blind A pure blind fool! Two erly extended her arms to either side between the knives that outlined her, holding one in either hand by the stems There was a pause She opened her mouth to tell Thom Merrilin that if he so much as nicked her, she would --

Tchunktchunktchunk! The blades came so fast she would have yelped if her throat had not contracted like a fist She held only the stem in her left hand, the other pear treh it, and the pear on her head leaked juice into her hair

Snatching the scarf off, she stalked toward Tho likeup in her, Luca said adnificent, but you are more so" He swirled that ridiculous red silk cloak in a bow, one hand over his heart "I shall call this ’Rose Ah truly, you are more beautiful than any mere rose"

"It doesn’t take much bravery to stand like a stump" A rose, was she? She would show him thorns She would show both of thee You never even flinch I tell you, I would not have the sto"

That was the simple truth, she told herself "I am no braver than I have to be," she said in a milder tone It was hard to shout at ayou how brave you were Certainly better to hear than all that blather about roses Tho funny

"The dress," Luca said, showing all of his teeth in a smile "You will look wonderful in --"

"No!" she snapped Whatever he had gained, he had just lost by bringing this up again Clarine had made the dress Luca wanted her to wear, in silk more crimson than his cloak It was her opinion that the color was to hide blood if Thoreat draw" Luca’s voice crooned as if whispering sweetness in her ear "You will have every eye on you, every heart pounding for your beauty and courage"

"If you like it so much," she said firmly, "you wear it" Aside from the color, she was not about to show that ht it was proper She had seen Latelle’s perforh neck to her chin She could wear so? She had no intention of actually going through with this She had only agreed to this practice to stop Luca scratching at the wagon door every night to try convincing her

The e the subject "What happened here?" he asked, suddenly all smooth solicitude

She flinched as he touched her puffy eye It was his bad luck to choose that He would have done better to continue trying to stuff her into that red dress "I did not like the way it looked at , so I bit it"

Her flat tone and bared teeth leaain Tho his mustaches furiously, red in the face fro He knehat had happened, of course He would And as soon as she left, he would no doubt regale Luca with his version of events Men could not avoid gossiping; it was in theot it out of theht The sun sat red on the treetops to the west "If you ever try this again without better light" she growled, shaking a fist at Thom "It’s al, "this means you want to leave out the bit where I a "As you wish, Nana Froht"

It was not until she stalked away, swishing her skirts angrily, that she realized that she had agreed to actually do this fool thing By implication, at least They would try to hold her to it, as surely as the sun would set tonight Fool, fool, fool wo where they -- or Tho stood some little distance from the camp over beside the road north Doubtless Luca had not wanted to upset the anih her heart The man would likely have fed her corpse to the lions The only reason he wanted her to wear that dress was so he could ogle what she had no intention of showing to anyone but Lan, and burn him, too, for a stubborn fool man She wished she had him there so she could tell him so She wished she had hifennel and used its feathery brown length like a whip to snap the heads off weeds that poked through the leaves on the ground

Last night, Elayne had said, Egwene reported fighting in Cairhien, skirands, with Cairhienin who saw any Aiel as an ene to claiase Lan had been involved in theht, he apparently , as if he could sense where it would be Nynaeve had never thought that she would want the Aes Sedai to keep Lan on a short leash at her side

ThisElayne had still been disturbed about herRand’s Aiel, but orried Nynaeve was the brigands According to Egwene, if anyone could identify stolen property in a brigand’s possession, if anyone could swear to seeing hi him He did not put his hands on the rope, but it was the sawene said he watched every execution with a face cold and hard as the entle boy Whatever had happened to him in the Waste had bee