In which Tommy Lee goes home.
It can be tricky placing a story in chronological order without reading it first, as we’ve seen already in this project, but I think I did all right with this one. It’s definitely set somewhere during Ghost Ship; a bit further on than where I’ve put it, I suspect, but we were already stopping here to read two other short stories, so doing “Code of Honor” as well means that after this we can finish off Ghost Ship without any further interruptions.
Putting it next to “Kin Ties” also produces a nice bit of synchronicity, since this story, too, turns out to be concerned with the question of bad delms and where duty lies for those burdened with them.
I have my doubts that it’s within any clan’s reach to take Korval’s proverbially unique place aside-but-not-among the Fifty High Houses; surely the fact that Korval is in a class by itself is the very point of the proverb. (For that matter, I would think that no clan would want that place, if they’d really thought about what it meant to be aside but not among the High Houses.) But I suppose that when ambition talks there’s always somebody willing to listen.
I appreciate the detail that Tommy needs his aunt to point out a flaw in his plans for his future. He’s clever enough to think his way out of a very difficult situation, but he doesn’t think of everything.
Tomorrow: We resume Ghost Ship at Chapter 24.
Yes. Tom Lei says it’s only days till Korval’s departure to Surebleak, so this one begins right before Ghost Ship, but ends during Ghost Ship.
I liked the contrast between this story and Ren Zel’s for the balance between one who is drummed out of his clan and declared dead through no choice of his own and one who chose death to the clan for himself as a strategy to be free for what he wanted to do.
Returning to this story, I was noticing 3 things that it accomplishes:
1) First, of course it gives us personal background on one more of the people surrounding Korval now on Surebleak
2) it fills out part of the aftermath of Korval’s action for the mercs who “invaded” Liad. Not everything went smoothly, and here is something that could have ended much worse
3) we see one more way a person may separate himself from his clan: by acting in way that gives his delm—in cooperation with him—an excuse by the Code to declare him dead