Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Delm Korval receives a letter.

It feels a bit weird, having spent the last while reading short stories, to come back to a chapter that’s only six pages long and doesn’t have a proper beginning or ending. Which is, no doubt, one of the reasons that sensible people don’t take breaks in the middle of novels to read short stories.

I find myself sidetracked by the mention of Kareen moving back into the rooms she once occupied, which apparently haven’t been put to any new purpose since. The same was said about Daav’s rooms a few chapters back, but it’s actually more impressive in Kareen’s case; she left Jelaza Kazone years before Daav did, even if she didn’t go so far as to leave Liad entirely. (Come to think of it, the fact that a yos’Phelium made her home away from Jelaza Kazone says something in itself about Kareen’s relationship with the clan.) I suppose that the house has enough rooms, and few enough occupants, that it’s possible for rooms to be kept as Father’s Room and Great-Aunt’s Room and so on, until every room is occupied by either a warm body or a memory, by which time some of the memories might be faded enough to be displaced by the next warm body to come along.