Osabei Tower
Landomist
In which you may call a scholar anything you like so long as you don’t call her late for dinner.
There’s a lot going on in this chapter.
We’re reminded a couple of times in this chapter that Scholar tay’Nordif, unlike Cantra, lacks a dancer’s or a pilot’s grace. There’s her wobble when she’s turning on her heel to look at the entrance hall — by the way, I would not handle ascending a stairway like that with anything approaching calm — and there’s the bit where she fumbles her data-case.
The scene where she accidentally assembles a jamming device and, in general, the whole business of her unconsciously acting in Cantra’s interests for reasons which she insists make perfect sense to herself, is one of the things that really stuck with me from the first time I read this.
(I was reminded, the first time I read it, of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, in which being possessed by a disembodied spirit is similar: one finds oneself doing unexpected things, and unconsciously inventing explanations for why one did them. There’s also something similar in A Fire Upon the Deep, though I don’t remember whether I’d read that yet. And there are also cases in real life, although not — as far as we know — with another consciousness directing them: some psychologists reckon that our motivations are, to a greater or lesser extent, a story we tell ourselves after doing what our instincts and unconscious urges prompt us to do.)
(Superficial aside: Scholar tay’Nordif talking about her patron from the house of the horticulturists reminds me of Mr Collins talking about Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Carnivorous Rosings?)
Meanwhile, it begins to become really apparent that in the Tower the cut-and-thrust of academic debate is taken rather more literally than we’re used to. And I’ve got to say that I’m detecting an undercurrent to Scholar tay’Welford’s expressions of concern about his boss’s health.
Speaking of health, the news that Liad dea’Syl’s students have been dying untimely is unreassuring (although not, by this point, very surprising). I wonder if that includes Jela’s instructors?
Did Cantra pre-wire in that fumble with the data-case that led to the building of the jamming device? Jela didn’t seem to know how she would get to building it in advance (though he admired the process).
I love the connection to Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. There is certainly something smarmy about the over-the-top sentiments we get to see between Scholar tay’Nordif and her patron.
I find it hard to believe that Jela makes a convincing kobold, though it seems to be convincing people. How can he maintain it?
The data-tile computing system seems to be very plug-and-play, and from the bit where Jela’s carefully separating the components of the jammer afterward I get the impression that all the assembly required was to place the existing bits in proximity to each other. So it’s not like she needed to build the thing from scratch, but I can see how Jela might have doubts about how it would get assembled when Maelyn tay’Nordif has no reason to want a jammer, or even to be aware that some of the tiles in her possession can be assembled into one.
Jela’s deception is aided by the fact that these people don’t pay a lot of attention to servant constructs; at the dinner, our viewpoint character doesn’t bother to note anything about the servitor carrying the drinks, even whether it’s male or female. As long as Jela doesn’t draw attention to himself, they’re happy to ignore him.
Jela thinks back on the conversation with Cantra in which she explains what an aelantaza does, can do: an aelantaza who had prepared mentally, but had the drug withheld—that aelantaza had a better—-I’m saying, Pilot, a much better—chance of completing her mission successfully . . .
So that’s what she says *to him*.
However, she thinks to herself (back in chpt 3): Well, she’d never heard other than the drug was needed and necessary for that [the second, resurrection] part of it. Not to say the company of a taler, which she didn’t have either.
I included those two parts in order to loop back to this chapter. During this read through, I suddenly made all the connections: What they call it, that mental preparation…they call it the Little Death… and then later: Hear me out, she said, and he could’ve thought that the shine in her eyes was tears.
This time through, I realized that Cantra had decided to die for Jela, for the mission they’d been given. She had no real hope for the “resurrection” part of the process; she was, as far as she knew, giving her life so that he could complete his missions—the one given him by Commander Ro Gayda and the one given by Rool and his Lady—successfully.
Yes, she expected to die. It was sacrificial, and quite poignant, given her strong survival instinct. She didn’t expect Tree to intervene. It also shows that she took the decrystallization threat seriously — enough to give her life on this last gamble.
I have often wondered if Daav inherited some of her aelantaza abilities, that he could so thoroughly assume the personality of scholar Jen Sar Kiladi. I cannot cite where I read it, but he does say that he engaged to forget his previous life, as Daav yos’Phelium
Yes, Tree intervened to save her life and the life she unknowingly already carried. Of course, it was pretty much saving its own life in the process.
That was a connection perhaps the authors hoped astute readers of their entire series would make. The similarities are too close not to be intentional.
She accepted the Tree’s “gift” as she went to begin her trance without any inkling that it contained the “drug” she needed to successfully carry out the persona of Scholar tay’Nordif. It is not until much later that she and Jela realize the part the Tree played in their arrangements.