Tarona Rusk
Langlast Departure
In which Tarona Rusk takes stock of herself.
I think that when Tarona Rusk assumes that Shan intentionally set her up as a weapon against the Department, she’s making the usual mistake of the Department-trained of projecting their own methods and motives onto Korval. As accounted in Alliance of Equals, the two motivations for his actions that she dismisses out of hand are the two that were most on his mind at the time, and far from expecting her to take on the Department he expected her to want help staying away from them.
We get a bit of information here about her history and how she fell into the hands of the Department in the first place. Part of it is that she was sent to a Liaden Healers Hall to learn how to use her gift, and they made a mess of the job — which sounds a note of caution about one of the options Padi’s parents are considering. Padi is also the daughter of a house that’s not properly Liaden according to Solcintra’s standards; her father managed all right, but that was when Korval held its peculiarly high position in Liaden society, a distinction that no longer exists to protect Padi and might even be a liability these days.
Excellent observations, as usual! I wish I had understood–as you clearly did–or perhaps trusted better, the character of Shan, and in contrast, the character of the evil that Tarona had been not only subjected to but also subverted to.
At this rate Padi will have formed her own ways to deal with her “gift” before she can ever be brought under the influence of the “professional” healers.