Vandar
Winterfair

In which Val Con speaks to a compatriot and a brother.

Val Con slipping out of his Department conditioning with the l’apeleka he learned from Edger is interesting in several ways.

One way is that it’s an example of things that go around coming around. If Val Con hadn’t been the kind of person who would and could befriend a Turtle, he’d be in serious trouble now (if he wasn’t already dead, back in any of the several incidents where his friendship with Edger has already helped pull him out of the fire).

It’s also a sign of one of the Department’s blind spots. They must have known Val Con had a history with the Clutch — they have access to Val Con’s service history, and even if they didn’t the fact that Edger lent him a ship would have been a big hint — but they don’t seem to have thought much of it. It’s not so much that I expect them to have had a counter for the l’apeleka specifically — I wouldn’t be surprised if Val Con is the only non-Turtle who knows much about it, and certainly even if an agent of the Department tried to get a Turtle to talk about Turtle things he wouldn’t get far — but even if they didn’t know about l’apeleka specifically, they might have considered the possibility that Val Con had learned something unusual from the Clutch, and they didn’t. All the time we’ve seen the Department spend thinking about what lessons they need to learn from Val Con’s past, and his time with the Clutch never comes up. It’s like they take it as read that no non-Liaden culture could produce anything the Department needs to worry about.