Dutiful Passage
Approaching Jump

In which the Master Trader and his apprentice return to work.

According to my notes, this is the first substantial mention of Gordy — not counting a couple of times when people have mentioned him while running through the members of Clan Korval — since I Dare. I hadn’t realised it was that long.

We don’t get a lot of detail about the problem he’s writing to Master Trader yos’Galan about, but it’s significant that he’s writing the Master Trader about it at all. Protocol is presumably for the junior trader on a ship to look first to the ship’s senior trader, and for the senior trader to be the one to notify the master trader of any issues, so the fact that Gordy is going over Trader per’Cadmie’s head suggests that per’Cadmie is part of the problem. Whether as an active and direct part or perhaps just refusing to acknowledge the size and shape of some external problem, we don’t have the information to say.

Hugglelans, we have heard a fair bit about in connection with Theo’s interactions with it, and the things we have heard have not always been to its credit. The discreditable things have tended to be associated with a particular group of people within the organisation, whose intentions Theo has crossed more than once. I wouldn’t rule out them holding a grudge against Theo, but I don’t think they’d retaliate against Korval solely on that account. (For that matter, as far as I recall they’re not yet aware of Korval’s connection to Theo.)

I’m intrigued by Shan’s summary of Millsap Healer Hall’s record, particularly the part about Terrans not understanding that a Healing could not be reversed. I grasp the general concept of wanting the process reversed if the outcome isn’t what you thought you’d asked for, but I’m not sure I can think of any examples of what a person could be Healed of where they’d want their previous condition back. (Maybe it’s a local custom issue, where the Liaden Healer sees something as a problem that for the Terran patient is just part of the way things are?)

I also feel like something in the Hall’s record is laying groundwork for later. The obvious possibility is that Shan and Padi will have some kind of trouble at the Hall, perhaps because their situation is not something the Hall’s Healers are used to, but it might not be about the Hall at all; it might instead be introducing a general concept that will lurk and become relevant in some other context later in the plot.