Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 11: The Nine Horse Hitch
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Siuan Sanche
Siuan Sanche, Leane Sharif, Min Farshaw, and Logain Ablar have reached Lugard. They are searching for where the Blue Ajah headed after they broke with the White Tower and Siuan has a contact in the city that might provide information. They arrive at the inn they will be staying at, The Nine Horse Hitch. Siuan arranges for Leane and Min to distract Logain while she heads to a different inn, The Good Night’s Ride, to try to get the information they need. She approaches the tavern owner, Duranda Tharne, and gives the Blue Ajah signal phrase. She is treated very rudely since she arrived during the day instead at the end of the day like she is supposed to.
Mistress Tharne finally takes Siuan to a back room and tells her off before finally giving her the information she seeks. She is told “Sallie Daera” which is enough information for Siuan to know where to go.[1]
Point of view: Min Farshaw
Min is watching Leane flirting with a table full of wagon drivers and merchant guards while Logain fumes from not being the center of her attentions. Min ponders what it would be like if she could use Leane’s tricks on Rand. Siuan enters and tells her they need to go south, right away.
REACTION
We appear to be visiting the red light district of Randland in this chapter.
Not a lot happens in this chapter, other than Siuan being forced to face the reality of her new situation (she’s much younger-looking, she could theoretically take some physical abuse from a larger woman, she has to hear someone refer to her pre-stilled self as an “old buzzard,” Siuan gets publicly humiliated in a bawdy bar, etc.)
I am fascinated by the reality of intelligence gathering that Jordan presents in this chapter. Siuan – in her former iteration – was something like the bureaucrat head of Randland’s CIA and she had never actually seen the sausage was made. She had a head knowledge of it, but had never seen it personally. Now she has. I think there are advantages both to knowing, and not knowing, how the operation actually works out in the field. By all accounts, Mistress Tharne is good at her job. I also think it’s highly unlikely she’d have and keep a job for long if the bureaucrats in Tar Valon ever interacted with her directly very often. They’d simply not like her. On the other end of it, I think having some first-hand knowledge might be good for the person calling the shots in the big city. Maybe the Ajah networks should send Sisters (at least some of them) into the field to learn for a year or two, before their faces become Ageless.
There’s nothing really to conclude here. It’s just interesting. Jordan has now invoked the spy network of the Blues and the Yellows in consecutive chapters. Whether intentional or not (and I think it was intentional) we now have a sense that anyone any character meets could be a spy. We’ve met Darkfriend and Seanchan spies already, too.
Is real life like that? It makes you wonder. For an intel agency to be really good, they’ve have to employ a LOT of people (either directly or through sub-contracting.) The United States has seventeen intel agencies. Is it unreasonable to think that maybe a million Americans have connections to a spy agency?
1,000,000 / 17 agencies = 58,823 per agency.
When you factor in the idea that they sub-contract work out (in the way we see in the books here), and how many agencies there are, a million American spies actually makes sense. A lot of those people wouldn’t even think of themselves as being part of a spy network. You’d need a huge number of informants, though, to be truly informed (and they’d be everywhere – big corporations, universities, infrastructure jobs, gangs and crime syndicates, etc.)
Stay with me here. There are ~335M Americans. If a million people are affiliated in some way with U.S. intel, then it means 1 in 335 people are affiliated with intel. If you’ve got 500 Facebook friends, it’s all but a guarantee that at least one of them works in or with intel. Depending on your background and level of education, it’s probably several people. That’s wild. Then think about the reality that there have to be significant foreign spy networks operating in the United States also.
My advice: Keep your nose clean, obey the law, and be a good citizen.
Anyway. Sally Daera is the code word Siuan picks up and she understands it to refer to the city of Salidar. That is where the rebel Aes Sedai are gathering.
The Min POV doesn’t tell us much other than that she’s thinking about Rand and that Leane is sharpening her Domani seduction wiles. We can strongly infer that Min is someone who will end up “sharing” Rand, and Jordan does a much better job of making her likable in that than Elayne. Min’s approach to her feelings for Rand is reluctant and doomed and also sincere.
“What is a Nine Horse Hitch?” When one is in the Red Light District of Randland, that is probably not a good question for a woman who walks in the Light to be asking.
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