Elayne did not think that would make any difference. Remembering that commanding blue gaze, she suspected Nynaeve would earn a fine lot of bruises in the unlikely event that she ever got her wish. “But what are we going to do about it? The Ajahs have eyes-and-ears everywhere, it seems. And the Amyrlin herself. We could have women trying to slip things into our food all the way to Tar Valon.”

“Not if we do not look like what they expect.” Lifting a yellow jug out of the cupboard, Nynaeve set it on the table beside the teapot. “This is white henpepper. It will soothe a toothache, but it will also turn your hair black as night.” Elayne put a hand to her red-gold tresses—her hair, not Nynaeve’s, she would wager!—but as much as she hated the idea, it was a good one. “A little needle-work on some of those dresses in the front, and we are not merchants anymore, but two ladies traveling with their servants.”

“Riding on a wagonload of dye?” Juilin said.

Her level look said gratitude for saving her extended only so far. “There is a coach in a stableyard on the other side of the bridge. I think the owner will sell it. If you go back to the wagon before somebody steals it—I do not know what got into you two, just leaving it for whoever came along!—if it is still there, you can take one of the purses. . . .”

A few people goggled when Noy Torvald’s coach pulled up in front of Ronde Macura’s shop, drawn by a team of four, with chests strapped to the roof and a saddled horse tied on behind. Noy had lost everything when the trade with Tarabon collapsed; he was scraping a living doing odd jobs for Widow Teran, now. No one in the street had ever seen the coachman before, a tall leathery fellow with long white mustaches and cold, imperious eyes, or the dark, hard-faced footman in a Taraboner hat who jumped down nimbly to open the coach door. The goggling turned to murmurs when two women swept out of the shop with bundles in their arms; one wore a green silk gown, the other plain blue wool, but each had a scarf wrapped around her head so that not so much as a hint of her hair was visible. They all but leaped into the coach.

Two of the Children began sauntering over to inquire who the strangers were, but while the footman was still scrambling up to the driver’s seat, the coachman cracked his long whip, shouting something about making way for a lady. Her name was lost as the Children threw themselves out of the way, tumbling in the dusty street, and the coach rumbled away at a gallop toward the Amador Road.