“Another five bloody minutes, and Masema would have bloody well laid hands on you. Or rather, he’d have said that someone should, and then someone flaming well would have! When he says something should be done, there are always fifty flaming hands, or a hundred, or a flaming thousand if need be, to do it!” He stalked off down the street, Ragan at his side, and she had to go with them or be left. Uno paced on as if he knew she would trail after. She almost went the other way just to prove him wrong. Following had nothing to do with fear of getting lost in that rabbit warren of streets. She could have found her way out. Eventually. “He had a flaming Lord of the Crown High Council flogged—flogged!—for half the heat in his voice that you had,” the one-eyed man growled. “Contempt for the word of the Lord Dragon, he called it. Peace! Demanding what bloody right he had to comment on your flaming clothes! For a few minutes you did well enough, but I saw your face there at the end. You were ready to flaming lace into him again. The only thing worse you could have done would be to bloody name the Lord Dragon. He calls that blasphemy. As well name the flaming Dark One.”

Ragan’s topknot bobbed as he nodded. “Remember the Lady Baelome, Uno? Right after the first rumors came from Tear naming the Lord Dragon, Nynaeve, she said something about ‘this Rand al’Thor’ in Masema’s hearing, and he called for an axe and a chopping block without pause for breath.”

“He had someone beheaded for that?” she said incredulously.

“No,” Uno muttered in disgust. “But only because she bloody well groveled when she realized he flaming meant it. She was dragged out and hung up by her flaming wrists from the back of her own coach, then strapped the bloody length of whatever village it was we were in then. Her own flaming retainers stood like a bunch of sheep-gutted farmers and watched it.”

“When it was done,” Ragan added, “she thanked Masema for his mercy, the same as Lord Aleshin did.” His tone had too much pointedness to suit her; he was delivering a moral, and intended her to take it in. “They had reason, Nynaeve. Theirs would not have been the first heads he has put on a stake. Yours could have been the latest. And ours with it, if we tried to give aid. Masema plays no favorites.”