In which Rys Lin pen’Chala goes home.
What Syl Vor is missing, I think, when he says that he is only a boy, is that after his experiences at the Rock he wasn’t only a boy.
Third iteration of the question of a missing ship, and on carefully re-reading it I realise that when Val Con says he’s heard from his sister he’s probably talking about Anthora, after she went through Rys’s mind checking for traces of the Department, and not that Nova brought him in on the earlier discussion. So, if this is a separate discussion, the subject of the earlier query probably was the Bedel ship after all.
(One of the free perks of reading this blog is, and will probably remain till the end, that you get to see me prove myself wrong in real time, sometimes more than once on the same issue.)
The status report on Momma Liberty (out of Waymart, I notice) contains a couple of interesting hints. Apart from establishing that Jasin is not only alive but flourishing, it’s notable for the absence of her brother in his former position of authority or in any other. Normal attrition, or did he get busted by his family over what he did to Rys? Or did he meet, in some dark alley, an agent of the Department tasked with tying off loose ends?
Coming up: “Skyblaze”, “Roving Gambler” and “The Rifle’s First Wife”, and then Dragon Ship.
Good point about Jasin’s brother. One other possibility: He became an agent of change for DoI.
Jasin and family read to me as Terrans, so I wouldn’t put much on that possibility myself.
Yes. I forgot that point.
It says Rys has an empty sleeve, with the sleeve pinned up. Do you think he lost his whole arm? In subsequent book Dragon in Exile, it seems he only has a golden hand, but maybe it’s the whole arm, too.
Yes, the impression I get is that he lost the whole arm.
It’s true that I only recall mentions of the hand being golden in Dragon in Exile, but I also don’t recall any occasions where he bares his arm, so it could just be that the hand is the only part that’s visible.
I had to laugh at myself when I got to this chapter. This was the last of the Liaden Universe books I read, and so there should have been no suspense about the ending for Rys, but…my memory is so bad, that I did not place him until this chapter. (*feeling rueful, here*)
I pictured not an empty sleeve, but only a sleeve empty from the elbow down, so that half of it would be pinned up to the shoulder.
I forgot to mention . . . it might be just me, but the report of the crew for the Momma Liberty made me wonder whether Rys might have left Jasin pregnant with a daughter he never knew about. I can only assume that we would have been told if Rys had himself thought to wonder. I admit to being too lazy to go back and try to work out the timing, but maybe Paul can speak to that for me.