Mat sat Pips’ saddle, idly playing with his reins, and held his peace through all the shouting and arm-waving. The gelding gave a shiver now and then, but he was no longer attempting to bolt. Thorn came striding through the crowd and laid a hand on Pips’ neck. Juilin and Amathera were close behind, she clinging to him and eyeing the show-folk fearfully, and then Noal and Olver. The boy looked as though he would have liked to cling to someone for comfort, to anyone, but he was old enough not to want it seen if he did. Noal appeared troubled, too, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. He kept peering up the road toward the Aes Sedai. Doubtless by that night he would be claiming to have seen something very like this before, only on a much grander scale.

“I think we’ll be going on alone from here,” Thorn said quietly. Juilin nodded grimly.

“If we must,” Mat replied. Small parties would stand out for those who were hunting for Tuon. for the kidnapped heir to the Seanchan Empire, else he would have left the show long since. Making their way to safety without the show to hide in would be much more dangerous, but it could be done. What he could not do was turn these people’s minds. One glance into any of those frightened faces told him he did not have enough gold for that. There might not have been enough gold in the world.

Luca listened in silence, a bright red cloak wrapped around him, until most of the showfolk’s energy was spent. When their shouts began to trickle away, he flung back the cloak and walked among them. There were no grand gestures, now. Here he clapped a man on the shoulder, there peered earnestly into a woman’s eyes. The country roads? They would be half mud, more streams than roads, from the spring rains. It would take twice as long to reach Lugard that way, three times, maybe longer. Mat almost choked to hear Luca invoke speed, but the man was hardly warming up. He talked of the labor of freeing wagons that bogged down, made his listeners all but see themselves straining to help the teams pull them through mud nearly hub-deep on the wagon wheels. Not even a country road would get that bad, but he made them see it. At least, he made Mat see it. Towns of any size would be few and far between along those back roads, the villages tiny for the most part. Few places to perform, and food for so many hard to come by. He said that while smiling sadly at a little girl of six or so who was peering up at him from the shelter of her mother’s skirts, and you just knew he was envisioning her hungry and crying for food. More than one woman pulled her children close around her.

As for Amadicia and Tarabon, and yes. Ghealdan, they would be fine places to perform. Valan Lucas Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders would visit those lands and draw immense crowds. One day. To reach any of them now. they must first return to Ebou Dar, covering the same ground they had crossed these past weeks, passing the same towns, where people were unlikely to lay out coin to see again what they had seen so short a time before. A long way, with everyone’s purses growing lighter and their bellies tighter by the day. Or, they could press on to Lugard.

Here his voice began to take on energy. He gestured, but simply. He still moved among them, but stepping more quickly. Lugard was a grand city. Ebou Dar was a shadow beside Lugard. Lugard truly was one of the great cities, so populous they might perform there all spring and always have new crowds. Mat had never been to Lugard. but he had heard it was half a ruin, with a king who could not afford to keep the streets clean, yet Luca made it sound akin to Caemlyn. Surely some of these people had seen the place, but they listened with rapt faces as he described palaces that made the Tarasin Palace in Ebou Dar seem a hovel, talked of the silk-clad nobles by the score who would come to see them perform or even commission private performances. Surely King Roedran would want such. Had any of them ever performed before a king before? They would. They would. From Lugard, to Caemlyn, a city that made Lugard look an imitation of a city. Caemlyn, one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world, where they might perform the whole summer to never-ending throngs.

“I should like to see these cities,” Tuon said, moving Akein nearer to Pips. “Will you show them to me, Toy?” Selucia kept the dun at Tuon’s hip. The woman looked composed enough, but doubtless she was shaken by what she had seen.

“Lugard, maybe. From there I can find a way to send you back to Ebou Dar.” With a well-guarded merchant’s train and as many reliable bodyguards as he could hire. Tuon might be as capable and dangerous as Egeanin made out, but two women alone would be seen as easy prey by too many, and not just brigands. “Maybe Caemlyn.” He might need more time than from here to Lugard, after all.

“We shall see what we shall see,” Tuon replied cryptically, then began exchanging finger-wriggles with Selucia.

Talking about me behind my back, only doing it right under my nose. He hated it when they did that. “Luca’s as good as a gleeman, Thom. but I don’t think he’s going to sway them.”

Thom snorted derisively and knuckled his long white mustaches. “He’s not bad, I’ll grant him that, but he’s no gleeman. Still, he’s caught them. I’d say. A wager on it. my boy? Say one gold crown?”

Mat surprised himself by laughing. He had been sure he would not be able to laugh again until he could rid his head of the image of that peddler sinking into the road. And the horses. He could almost hear them screaming still, loudly enough that it came near to drowning out the dice. “You want to wager with we? Very well. Done.”

“I wouldn’t play at dice with you,” Thom said dryly, “but I know a man turning a crowd’s head with words when I see it. I’ve done as much myself.”

Finishing with Caemlyn, Luca gathered himself with a spark of his usual grandiosity. The man strutted. “And from there,” he announced. “to Tar Valon itself. I will hire ships to carry us all.” Mat did choke at that. Luca would hire ships} Luca. who was tight enough to render mice for tallow? “Such crowds will come in Tar Valon that we could spend the rest of our lives in that vast city’s splendor, where Ogier-built shops seem like palaces and palaces are beyond description. Rulers seeing Tar Valon for the first time weep that their cities are villages and their own palaces no more than peasant’s huts. The White Tower itself is in Tar Valon, remember, the greatest structure in the world. The Amyrlin Seat herself will ask us to perform before her. We have given shelter to three Aes Sedai in need. Who can believe they will do other than speak for us with the Amyrlin Seat?”

Mat looked over his shoulder, and found the three sisters no longer wandering about the meadow where the village had vanished. Instead, they stood side by side in the road watching him. perfect images of Aes Sedai serenity. No, they were not watching him. he realized. They were studying Tuon. The three had agreed not to bother her anymore, and being Aes Sedai, were bound by that, but how far did an Aes Sedai’s word ever go? They found ways around the Oath against lying all the time. So Tuon would not get to see Caemlyn, and perhaps not Lugard. Chances were, there would be Aes Sedai in both cities. What easier for Joline and the others than to inform those Aes Sedai that Tuon was a Seanchan High Lady? In all likelihood, Tuon would be on her way to Tar Valon before he could blink. As a “guest.” of course, to help stop the fighting. No doubt many would say that would be for the good, that he should hand her over himself and tell them who she really was, but he had given his word. He began to calculate how near to Lugard he dared wait before finding her passage back to Ebou Dar.

Luca had had a difficult time making Tar Valon sound greater than Caemlyn after his spiel on that city, and if they ever reached Tar Valon, some might actually be disappointed comparing his mad descriptions- the White Tower a thousand paces high? Ogier-built palaces the size of small mountains? he claimed there was an Ogier stedding actually inside the city!-but finally he called for a show of hands in favor of pressing on. Every hand shot up, even the children’s hands, and they had no vote.