Monthly Archives: December 2013

Local Custom – Chapter 1

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In which Er Thom yos’Galan says no.

This is the first time we’ve seen the Tree since the end of Crystal Dragon, centuries ago. It appears to be doing well for itself.

Er Thom, on the other hand, is not doing so well, for all that he’s now captain and master trader of the clan’s best ship.

And Daav, who last we saw him was not looking forward to succeeding his mother as Delm, has now done so. It remains to be seen how well he’s doing.

And I’m back in the problem position of not having much to say, since I’ve read this chapter often enough that everything seems too familiar to remark on. (Well, I could mention the way Er Thom has suddenly gained an elder brother to help explain why his mother is disinclined to acquiesce to his request, which is a lot more noticeable reading in chronological order, but I covered that a couple of days ago when Er Thom was introduced, so.)

The Beggar King

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In which Daav yos’Phelium and Clarence O’Berin do not become friends.

This story follows close on the heels of “A Choice of Weapons”, with Daav still on the same leave of absence from the Scouts and still not convinced that he will have it in him to sit on Liad and be suitably delm-like when the time comes.

The legitimate front for the Juntavas on Liad is a company called Triplanetary Freight Forwarding; if the name is to be taken literally, I wonder which the other two planets are. (Come to think of it, I wonder if it’s a shout-out to “Doc” Smith.)

Something that struck me on this re-read, with this story coming so soon after several others relating one way and another to the Liaden rules about face-touching: at one point, the luck-for-hire at the casino places her hand on Daav’s face, and he thinks nothing of it except to observe the callouses on her hand. This seems a remarkably cool response after how firm Samay pin’Aker was on the subject of hand-to-face contact in Trade Secret. (This story was, of course, written some considerable time before that one; perhaps the full details of what Liadens could and could not do with their faces were yet unclear.)

Those callouses, though, are said to be the same as the callouses on Daav’s own hands, which suggests that Zara Chance is herself a Scout, or more likely a former Scout. I wonder if she’s working for the same people as that other seductive former Scout we encountered not so long ago.

—

Tomorrow: Local Custom

A Choice of Weapons

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In which Daav yos’Phelium’s suitability to be Delm is tested.

Daav is having serious doubts about his fitness to be delm. I think, on the one hand, he’s not being fair to himself – he notices all the occasions when he slips, but not the occasions which also occur on which he does well (of which, there are instances where he specifically catches himself slipping and changes to a better course). And on the other hand, I think he’s holding himself up to an impossible standard; as he eventually realises, no Delm ever is always perfect.

I like Kesa del’Fordan. She is clearly a person of good melant’i, to the point that she outshines her brother for all that he’s twice her age.

I also like Daav’s description of Korval’s tendency to tallness: “the pickpocket who wishes to rob Korval must bring his own stepladder.”

Pilot of Korval

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Dutiful Passage en route to Venture
Standard Year 1339

In which Er Thom yos’Galan shows his mettle.

Another jump forward of nearly 50 years, and a significant shift in the focus of the series: we are back with Korval, and there, with only occasional diversions, we shall henceforth remain.

So here is a story that shows us Er Thom and Daav as youngsters, part-formed, but already showing familiar traits. It’s also, if memory serves, the only story with an extensive depiction of Er Thom’s mother in her prime.

I’m never quite sure I’ve correctly untangled the interplay about Er Thom’s status in the family. He’s described as his mother’s heir both by his mother herself and by the narrator, and here he is on her ship, learning her trade; the implication is that when he tells the Juntavas boss that he is of no significance because he has a brother who’s the heir, he’s being flexible with the truth. And yet in Local Custom we hear that he does in fact have an elder brother who’s ahead of him in the line of inheritance.

(One could resolve the puzzle, of course, by guessing that after this story was written the authors found it necessary to discover an elder brother to make the plot of Local Custom work; one might even take a confident guess at which part of the plot was otherwise at risk. But one does prefer, where possible, to believe that the Liaden Universe possesses internal consistency.)

If the Master dea’Cort who is Daav’s instructor at the Academy is the same Scout who came to Bell’s aid in “Phoenix”, he must be getting on in years. (Although not, perhaps, as far on as a Terran of the same age; it’s mentioned in “Sweet Waters” that a Liaden in her fifties would be considered to be in her prime, with many productive years ahead of her.)

Phoenix

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In which Bell the painter and Cyra the jeweler rise together from the wreckage.

This story is set in Standard Year 1293, a bit over a century since “Sweet Waters”, and nearing two centuries since Trade Secret. Things have moved on since Jethri’s time to the point that there are now Terrans living, and even legally owning property, on Liad, in Solcintra itself, though only in the Low Port and not with any entree into polite society. (And interacting with Liadens in ways other than owning property, by the evidence of the half-Terran Debbie.)

It is also far enough on that we’re beginning to approach the next clump of novels. This story introduces a character we will see again in a novel, as does each of remaining the stories between now and when we hit the beginning of Local Custom.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Cyra’s Delm and his idea of appropriate punishment. It’s difficult to be certain when there’s only one viewpoint available; there may be mitigating circumstances available. Cyra does say that the clan is not rich, but that may be an attempt to give the benefit of the doubt, since she also comes about as close as a polite young lady might to outright accusing her Delm of being a penny-pincher. And while he clearly has concern about ensuring the continuance of the clan into a new generation of clanmembers, that’s not enough in itself to explain his treatment of Cyra; a clan that needs every child does not, if it’s being rational, wilfully deprive itself of one of the children it already has.

(And here is the kind of thing a person can find himself thinking about when contemplating information that appears in other stories than this: in another century, Liaden medical technology will include a method to easily erase facial scarring. I wonder if that technology already exists at the time of this story, which would offer the possibility that the delm intended Cyra’s disfigurement to last only as long as her exile. But if that was the delm’s thinking, does that actually make it any better?)

Sweet Waters

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In which Slade leaves his mother’s tent and follows the trail the day brings him.

This is one of my very favourite of the Liaden short stories. It never fails to give me, as the young people say these days, All The Feels.

Unfortunately, as I think we’ve established by now, I am not very eloquent when it comes to The Feels.

Reading a Liaden short story is sometimes like being a courier, the way it’s described in Mouse and Dragon, getting to see a slice of a person’s life and never after learning how things turned out for them. If I were ever to settle on a definitive Top 5 Liaden Universe Characters Whose Fates I Want to Know, several spaces on the list would be filled with names from this story.

Though the story itself does not carry a date, The Updated But Partial Liaden Universe Timeline sets it in SY 1177, around 50 years after “Naratha’s Shadow”, and around 150 years before the birth of Daav yos’Phelium, who will one day walk this world in his turn.

The Space at Tinsori Light

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In which Jen Sin yos’Phelium leaves his ring at Tinsori Light.

This is one of my favourite of the Liaden short stories, but I’m having the problem again of not knowing what to say about it, and not feeling moved to talk about things I might have made more of if it were my first reading.

The story does not give a specific date, though we know it’s before Scout’s Progress and on the other hand the presence of an autodoc on Jen Sin’s ship argues for it being later than Balance of Trade. I stuck it here because there was a gap, and I thought it fitted thematically with the stories we’ve been reading lately, with the concern about Old Technology.

The Old Tech autodoc that repairs Jen Sin is clearly related to the one Cantra had in her ship, complete with the “you’re now in perfect health, but you could be better than perfect” spiel.

The thing I’m wondering is: how did that set of coords find its way into Korval’s set of emergency destinations in the first place? Someone connected with Jela might have known about the Tinsori waystation, but that was in the old universe, and as Lorith points out the Light’s location and coords changed in the transition to the new. The optimistic option is that somebody marked the space down as a quiet, out-of-the way place to hide out for a bit (like Bechimo‘s favourite hiding place in Dragon Ship) without noticing or being noticed by the Light. A less reassuring possibility is that there was someone else in the past, less suspicious than Jen Sin, who had their ship repaired by the Light and then took it back into the wide universe.

Naratha’s Shadow

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In which Naratha’s Discord is brought into balance.

There’s a recognizable similarity between the Voice of Naratha and the song-women Jela recalls seeing in action in chapter 2 of Crystal Soldier. The Voice’s account of Naratha’s victory over the Enemy, though, seems to be a different and more dramatic action than the one Jela witnessed. (The obvious temptation is to assume that the Enemy she speaks of is the same one as Jela fought, which would suggest that her story is an account of Naratha’s part in the Moment of the Question at the end of Crystal Dragon. It is not obvious, however, how the two accounts fit together.)

We never hear much, in these stories, about the Liaden religion, except that in times of emotional stress they speak of “gods”, plural, as the Master Healer does here. (I’m moved to note this by the observation that, by contrast, Montet sig’Norba speaks in terms of a single God when she’s talking to Naratha’s people near the end, presumably because that’s how the figures of speech run in the language she’s speaking at the time.)

Though the story itself does not carry a date, The Updated But Partial Liaden Universe Timeline sets it in SY 1123, a few years after Balance of Trade.

Trade Secret – Epilogue

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Elthoria

In which the young gentleman returns home.

And so Jethri’s story comes to an end, for now. And hasn’t he come a long way from the young fellow we met at the beginning of Balance of Trade?

I’m much happier with Balance of Trade and Trade Secret, taken as a two-part whole, than I was with Balance of Trade by itself. All the major questions raised have been given answers, and we got a suitably dramatic climax. There are still openings for further stories about Jethri, his kin, and his friends, and I’ll be happy to read them if they happen, but if this is all we get of Jethri’s story, I’ll be content.

—

And with the end of Trade Secret, we reach the end of Phase 1. Phase 2 begins tomorrow, with one of Captain ter’Astin’s colleagues and a reminder of why the Scouts don’t like Old Tech at large, in “Naratha’s Shadow”.