Walking along, she studied him in amazement. She had not seen him in nearly a year, had never spoken more than two words together to him, and yet he . . . Why did men always think a woman needed a man to look after her? Men could not lace up their own shirts without a woman to help! “We are doing quite well as we are, thank you. Unless you know when a river trader will dock on his way downriver.”

“We? Is the blue woman with you, or the brown?” That had to be Moiraine and Verin. He was certainly being cautious.

“No. Do you remember Elayne?” He gave a blunt nod, and a mischievous impulse seized her; nothing seemed to faze the man, and he obviously expected to just take charge of her welfare. “You saw her again just now. You said she had a”—she made her voice gruff in imitation of his—“face like a bloody queen.”

He stumbled in a quite satisfactory way, and glared around him so fiercely that even two Whitecloaks riding by skirted wide around him, though they tried to pretend he had nothing to do with it, of course. “Her?” he growled incredulously. “But her bloody hair was black as a raven’s. . . .” He glanced at her, and the next minute he was pacing up the cart path again, muttering half to himself, “The flaming woman is daughter to a queen. A bloody queen! Showing her bloody legs that way.” Nynaeve nodded in agreement. Until he added, “You bloody southlanders are bloody strange! No flaming decency at all!” He had fine room to talk. Shienarans might dress properly, but she still blushed to remember that in Shienar men and women bathed together as often as not, and thought no more of it than of eating together.

“Did your mother never teach you to talk decently, man?” His real eye frowned at her almost as darkly as the painted one, and he rolled his shoulders. In Fal Dara he and everyone else had treated her as nobly born, or the next thing to. Of course, it was hard to pass herself off as a lady in that dress, and with her hair a shade that nature never made. She arranged her shawl more snugly and folded her arms to hold it in place. The gray wool was terribly uncomfortable in that dry heat, and she herself was not feeling very dry at all; she had never heard of anyone who died of sweating, but she thought she might well be the first. “What are you doing here, Uno?”