Vashtara
Mauve Level
Stateroom

In which Kamele didn’t tell Jen Sar who Theo’s father wasn’t.

Here it is, laid out: Theo is the daughter of Kamele and Jen Sar, a choice Kamele made aside from tradition and even though she had no way of knowing, then, how long-standing her relationship with Jen Sar would prove to be. (And despite advice to the contrary from Ella; I wonder if that’s another element in Ella not getting on with Jen Sar.) And so Theo’s inherited from her father’s side, and is now at last properly growing into, the reactions that would make her an excellent pilot if that were a career path common for daughters of Delgado.

(And also, presumably, her ability to visualise numbers and movement, in her case by way of her lacework. I guess that’s a pilot thing, because Jen Sar had reason to think the lacework would be a useful suggestion, and Win Ton understood it when Theo told him about it. But I keep thinking that it reminds me of one particular pilot who had an especial ability to visualise numbers and movement, and wondering what it might mean that in this respect she most resembles Aelliana, who of all the people closely involved in Theo’s upbringing we can be confident didn’t donate any of Theo’s genes.)

Another reason why the idea of rearranging the flashback chapters wouldn’t have worked is this chapter, which is a mixture of present-day and flashback. Getting it into chronological order would have required breaking up individual chapters, an extreme which even at my worst I thought was going too far.