Day 286
Standard Year 1392
Teriste MidPort
Panake House, Field of Fire, Speculator’s Trust
In which Pat Rin meets she who is called, among other things, Natesa the Assassin.
We’ve heard the name of Natesa the Assassin quite recently: she was mentioned in “Quiet Knives” as one of the Juntavas judges who had made herself scarce to avoid the disfavor of the late Chairman Krogar. And there was another Natesa way back in “Veil of the Dancer”, which may be part of the reason why I often have trouble remembering which of those two stories is which.
LaDemeter is another name we’ve encountered before: the handgun Theo won by right of conquest shortly before being thrown off Eylot was also a LaDemeter design. To some readers, the name also rings a different bell: it’s a shout-out to the classic Lensmen space opera series, in which the hero’s ray gun of choice was the DeLameter. (It is thus an amusing twist that Cheever’s LaDemeters, rather than being futuristic ray guns, are powered by the classic process of combustible powder.)
Just to be sure: you are aware that Natesa from I Dare is the same as the one in both Quiet Knives and Veil of the Dancer? I’m pretty sure you know that, but the wording does leave it a little unclear.
When I say there’s another Natesa in “Veil of the Dancer”, I mean the original Natesa that Natesa the Assassin named herself after.
You’re right that I could have worded it more clearly.
I’m curious. Do you recall the textev that there ARE two? Natesa in Veil had learned explosives, and went away with an offworlder.
I Dare’s Natesa has a personal name of Inas Bhar. Which may be the textev.
Although, I Dare chapter Day 310 of 1392, its last page (pg 553 in omnibus), has Natesa thinking “she might well have cast herself to her knees and set up a wail to the heedless gods, which was how one grieved for the dead and the demented on the distant, unlimited world of her birth.” This sounds a lot like the society in Veil.
In I Dare, chapter beginning pg 659 in omnibus, in which Greenshaw Porter of the Juntavas inquires after a missing Sector Judge, Miri and Val Con see in her records an explosives expertise.
I haven’t been able to re-locate the spot, but I believe I read that it was Natesa’s expertise that dropped former Boss Deacon’s house so neatly into its cellar.
Apparently my clarification was itself insufficiently clear. I’ll try again:
Inas Bhar, the protagonist of “Veil of the Dancer”, definitely grows up into Inas Bhar, the Juntavas Sector Judge whose street name is Natesa the Assassin. It was never my intention to suggest otherwise.
“Veil of the Dancer” has an additional Natesa, mentioned when Inas is learning about her mother’s homeland, and it’s implied that that’s who she took her street name from.
(The confusing wording the post above was an attempt to be playful about the fact that “Veil of the Dancer” is set before Inas adopted the street name, so that in a sense there is only one character named Natesa in “Veil of the Dancer” and the first time we hear of Natesa the Assassin is in “Quiet Knives”.)
On another subject: I had noted, when I was working through the prequels, that when Liaden meals were described I didn’t notice any that included meat. So it may be worth noting that in this chapter the Terran meal served to Pat Rin and Cheever includes meat and there’s no indication that he doesn’t eat it.