“We do not need anyone to hold our hands,” Nynaeve told her stiffly. Well set up? That painted eyepatch flashed queasily across her mind, and the scars. The woman had the strangest taste in men. “We can handle anything that comes our way. I’d think we’ve already proved that, if it needed proof.”

“I know we can, Nynaeve, but we’ll draw trouble like flies to a midden. Altara’s at a slow boil. Every day brings another tale of Dragonsworn, and I’ll wager my best silk dress against one of your old shifts that half of them are really just brigands who’ll see four women alone as easy meat. We will have to prove we’re not every second day. Murandy’s worse, I hear, full of Dragonsworn and bandits and refugees from Cairhien, afraid the Dragon Reborn will fall on them any day. I assume you don’t mean to cross over into Amadicia. I assume it’s Caemlyn.” Her intricate braid swung slightly as she tilted her head and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Does Elayne agree with you about Uno?”

“She will,” Nynaeve muttered.

“I see. Well, when she does, I will procure as many horses as we need. But I want her to tell me why we should not take Uno.”

The unyielding finality of her tone heated Nynaeve’s face angrily. If she did ask Elayne ever so sweetly to tell Birgitte that Uno was to stay here, they might well find him waiting down the road, and Birgitte all amazement over how he knew they were going and which way. The woman might be Elayne’s Warder, but sometimes Nynaeve wondered which of them was really in charge. When she found Lan—when, not if!—she intended to make him swear oaths fit to curl his hair that he would abide by her decisions.

She drew deep calming breaths. No point arguing with a stone wall. She might as well get on to the reason she had hunted up Birgitte in the first place.

Casually she took a step deeper into the narrow alley, making the other woman follow. Brown stubble remained underfoot from the brush that had been cleared out of it. Trying to appear offhanded, she studied the press in the street. Still no one giving them more than a glance. She lowered her voice anyway. “We need to know what Tarna is telling the Hall, and what they’re telling her. Elayne and I have tried to find out, but they ward the meetings against eavesdropping. Only with the Power, though. They’re so caught up that someone can listen in that way, they seem to have forgotten about pressing an ear to a door. If someone were to—”

Birgitte cut her off in a flat voice. “No.”