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 22: Small Sacrifices
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Elayne Trakand
Elayne and Nynaeve are outside The Wandering Woman, preparing to see Mat and apologize. Aviendha and Birgitte are disguised and watching Jaichim Carridin. Nynaeve is sulking and insisting she will not apologize. Elayne gives her apology, then has to flick Nynaeve with saidar to get her to do the same. Mat just shrugs it off, which infuriates Elayne but causes Nynaeve to lunge for Mat, attempting to attack him. Elayne is able to stop Nynaeve but she understands her anger. Elayne is able to swallow her pride and goes on to make a number of promises, including agreeing to bodyguards when they leave the palace. Elayne then explains to Mat that they are looking for the Bowl of the Winds and what they know about where it is.
They ask Mat to move into the palace. He agrees and then mutters that the dice have stopped rolling around in his head. He moans more when he learns that Tylin picked out his room and it is just down the hall from hers. They leave Mat’s room and Nynaeve complains about how much trouble he will be. Setalle Anan meets them and states that they will be more trouble for him. Setalle believes they are pretending to be Aes Sedai and won’t listen to any of their protests. She assumes that since Elayne is too young to be an Aes Sedai, Nynaeve must be pretending also. Elayne believes she once traveled to the tower but that her power was so weak, they turned her out.
Setalle says she knows women who take in strays if they were once in the tower and had run away or were put out, or if they were wilders and had never been to the tower. Nynaeve finally realizes that Setalle might be able to lead them to other women in Ebou Dar that can channel, and that those women might know where the Bowl of the Winds is located. Therefore, she and Elayne agree to Setalle’s terms.
REACTION:
I went over my feelings on Elayne and Nynaeve’s reactions to being confronted by their abhorrent treatment of Mat in Tear, in the previous chapter. I won’t get into that quite as much here. Nynaeve is shamed to her bones, so she’s lashing out in denial. Mat is her internal archetype of a rascal and she’s sunk so low as to owe *him* an apology. It’s not a great look for her, but you can kind of understand it on a human level. Elayne doesn’t care about how she treated Mat in Tear, and isn’t ashamed either, except to the extent that she doesn’t want Avi to think worse of her. As between the two, Elayne comes off far worse for me, but none of this makes either of them likeable. None of it is made better by their fury when Mat brushes off their need to apologize. Nyn lunges at him to attack him and Elayne ponders attacking him with his own bow stave.
In short, they’re both awful.
Why does Mat brush it off? It’s not because he doesn’t care. He obviously does. He’s trying to make them both feel better about it, because the situation is as uncomfortable for him as it is for them. It’s just that by trying to make them feel better, he took even more of the high ground and made them feel worse by making them feel lower. Mat has an internal sense of justice but he doesn’t like feeling as though he’s a crybaby. Justice needed to be met, and then moved on from as quickly as could be managed.
The other truth here is that Mat was in a no-win situation with his reaction. No matter how he reacted, the two women were going to be infuriated. Ironically, the best outcome for them would have been taking Avi’s advice and suggesting to Mat that he should switch them. He would have been incredulous, said no, but the offer + his discomfort would have put them both in the high ground again AND in control of the situation socially.
This is one aspect of ji’e’toh that is hard to understand until put in practice. When practiced, everyone feels as though they’re in the moral high ground. You can’t feel morally better than someone *you* just whipped. You can’t feel morally lower than someone from who you just voluntarily accepted a whipping, to right your wrongs. Therefore you get a best version of everyone in their society.
We never see the best version of Elayne. We’re in her POV and she thinks about just taking Mat’s silver foxhead ter’angreal after walking in on him asleep with the thing exposed on his chest. She considers attacking him. All of her internal thoughts abut him are angry ones, or ones wherein she thinks little of him. And this is based on almost zero personal interaction with him – except interaction wherein *she* was in the wrong. I mean… come on, Robert Jordan. Give me *any* reason to like Elayne. Any reason at all. I just can’t with her.
One of the subtle subtexts of their conversation with Mat happens with the dice in Mat’s head. We view him from the outside, and are only given hints at it, but we realize that when Nyn tells Mat that he has to move into the palace that the dice stopped rolling. So… this is apparently something he has to do, according to fate. At least part of his fate is going to be sleeping in a room “just down the hall” from the Queen herself.
While Elayne is thinking about how Mat can’t paw serving women in the palace, or set a bad example for Beslan, the reality is that the Queen will be pawing at Mat, most likely, and that Beslan will be doing things that get Mat into danger. Again… Elayne and Nyn know much less about everything than they think they do… but that never stopped either of them from being loud and wrong.
“Sacrifices… if I asked you to make the same you’d box every ear in sight and pull the roof down on my head.” – Mat
Does it occur to either of them to seriously inquire about what he means? No. They’re so self-centered, short-sighted, loud, and wrong, that they just move on from that statement. They apologize to him for the Stone (dragged kicking and screaming) and unknowingly bring down an even greater indignity on his head. They both leave furious with him despite the fact he was basically pleasant with them throughout (other than their interpretation of his facial expressions)… and he was pleasant despite their overtly hostile attitudes.
Setalle Anan calling them down immediately after (also loud and wrong) is some consolation in the sense that it feels like justice. We don’t get full confirmation here but it’s pretty obvious that Setalle Anan has some personal ties to the White Tower. Not only does she have too much knowledge not to have those ties, but she sems to be close / comfortable enough with Aes Sedai to threaten to take these two to them and to expect that they’d see her.
As a Reader, this is pretty funny because the two could have easily set her right if they weren’t emotionally immature imbeciles. The things they just got away with, with Mat, are getting them into trouble here. How easy would it have been to shut her up? Just control their emotions and say something like:
Elayne: The Sisters in the Palace, you say? Which ones? Do you mean [starts listing them off by name…]. Let’s go.
And obviously Nyn starts acting the fool, too.
Elayne gathers herself, but not before Setalle moves the plot forward with a plan to help them. Elayne isn’t quick enough to pick up on the implications of what Setalle says, though, but Nyn is. (There are a group of people in Ebou Dar, numbering around 50 people, “The Circle,” who can help White Tower runaways… that’s a pretty significant thing to say.)
Maybe… those type of people might also know where a cache of One Power objects might be hidden?
Who do we think these people are? I think during the trip to Ebou Dar, we read either Vandene or Adeleas mention runaways. I also think we might have seen the Black Ajah torturing members of the Circle while looking for this cache on behalf of Moggy.
So… I feel a plot coming together.
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