Tag Archives: Audrey’s House of Joy

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 2

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Audrey’s House of Joy
Blair Road
Surebleak

In which Audrey and Luken discuss carpets.

What with Luken’s speech here, and Val Con’s reflections last chapter, we’re getting what might be the beginning of a theme: things change, and having changed can’t be made back into what they were before.

This is the first time we’ve heard the name of Luken’s daughter Danise. It doesn’t escape my attention that we don’t get her full name, and I suspect it may be relevant that just a chapter ago we were reminded that a Liaden daughter might not be in the same clan as her father. What with all the scattered parts of Korval wondering about what each other were up to while Plan B was in effect, not to mention the scene in Ghost Ship in which all the members of the clan were at last reunited again under one roof, it’s been pretty firmly established that the members of the clan don’t currently include anybody named Danise.

It might be that she went to her mother’s family instead of her father’s at the outset, like Theo did. Or it might be that she started out in Korval – there’s a mention of Luken having a child in Local Custom, and Liaden custom would have required him to have at least one child for Korval – and ended up in another clan later, like Aelliana did only in the other direction. I expect, given that this is a point being introduced in the early chapters of a novel, that we’ll be getting more details later.

(Another detail that doesn’t escape my attention is that Danise’s younger sister is not said at any point to also be Luken’s daughter. “Sister” encompasses many possibilities in Liaden custom, many of which don’t require that Danise’s sister be kin to Danise’s father, and some of which don’t even require that Danise’s sister be kin to Danise.)

We’ve been told before that Luken, for all that he’s a friendly fellow, is somebody you don’t want to be on the wrong side of when there’s a Balance to be arranged; I think this is the first time we’ve gotten to see it for ourselves.

The Rifle’s First Wife

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In which Diglon Rifle does what he may to help a teammate.

Poker was one of the first new things Diglon was taught after he came under the dragon’s wing, and he showed an immediate aptitude for it, so it’s good to see he’s continuing to develop it. In general, it’s pleasing to see that Diglon is thriving in his new environment – and a bit worrying that Hazenthull apparently isn’t, even now.

I say “even now” because the internal evidence suggests that it’s been over a year since the two of them came to stand with Korval: baby Lizzie, who was not yet born then, has progressed to standing up under her own power.

Lizzie’s development also means that although it’s early spring – “winter having been gone some weeks now” – it’s the spring after the one in which Lizzie was born, and so doesn’t tell us anything useful about that contested spring I’ve been worried about lately.

(It also means that I’ve scheduled this story too early, which is an acknowledged hazard of scheduling a story without reading it first. The actual position would be some time after Dragon Ship – and possibly one or two more novels as well, but since I haven’t read those yet either I’m not going to attempt a definite pronouncement.)

It’s nice that Alara has found a chance to make an alliance with somebody whose company she enjoys and who she has an attraction to, but I do wonder how she’s planning to explain her choice to her delm. It’s all very well saying that Diglon isn’t an Yxtrang any more, but is she going to be able to get away with not mentioning that he was? The delm did specify a “long lineage” as one of the criteria to look for, which means he’s going to want to know about Diglon’s antecedents.

One thing that might help is that, Clan Silari having made the decision to leave Liad, Alara and her clan are themselves, in a sense, no longer what they were either.

Incidentally, I notice that Diam, one of the two people who entertained Diglon on his evening off, is another of those for whom the authors have chosen not to constrain the reader’s imagination by specifying pronouns.

Next: Dragon Ship

Roving Gambler

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In which Quin yos’Phelium finds occupation.

Oh, so that’s what a nerligig does.

It strikes me that “Roving Gambler” is very much about what the Code calls “proper conduct”. It’s full of people facing the question of what would be the correct thing to do in the circumstance, and as like as not finding that it’s not an easy question on a world like Surebleak, which is continually being challenged on what answers it did have. The kinds range from small domestic questions involving a father and his son to big policy issues involving the Boss of Bosses (and in classic melant’i fashion, the extreme ends of the spectrum involve the same people wearing different hats).

Korval has it particularly bad, as Pat Rin points out at the end, because they’re used to living on Liad and having the Code to consult on questions like this, but now they’re on Surebleak and the answers are different. (Something that’s foreshadowed all the way through the story, as Quin keeps finding moments where proper Liaden behaviour doesn’t quite fit the circumstance.) I’m not surprised that it was Kareen who’s been given the job of figuring out their situation; if anybody knows about proper conduct, it’s her. It’s interesting, though, that she’s specifically stated to have been ordered by the Delms to study the question: Is that just them putting an official stamp on the enterprise, or did they find that she was unwilling to get started?

I suppose if there’s any course of study that might help prepare one for running a planet, Generalist might be it. It’s been a while since we’ve encountered a professional Generalist; I’m pretty sure the last one was Quin’s many-times-grandfather Jela.

On the question of Surebleak’s seasons, I find this story inconclusive; all we hear about the weather is that it’s recently turned good after a long bad stretch, which doesn’t say much on a planet with weather like Surebleak’s, and anyway it’s not clear precisely how long after Ghost Ship it takes place, so there’d be no way of comparing.

Tomorrow: “The Rifle’s First Wife”

Skyblaze

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In which Vertu dea’San decides that somebody ought to do something.

This story is, among other things, a valuable reminder that while Korval were happy enough to be thrown off Liad for their part in the Battle of Solcintra, there are others served similarly for whom it might not be so pleasant.

Reading a story featuring “galan’ranubiet” (Treasure of the House) and “galandaria” (compatriot), I find myself wondering after the meaning of “yos’Galan”.

I said a few days ago I was going to have something more to say about taxis. The bulk of this story takes place at a time when there’s only one licensed taxi driver in Surebleak Port City, and even at the end of the story the number has only grown to three, with some consideration being given to a fourth. That sets it before the climactic sequence of Necessity’s Child, which contains at least three active taxis and likely more.

(So why have I scheduled it after? We’ll come back to that.)

Now let us consider the other major indicator of when it’s set: the passing of the seasons. The main section of the story takes place in local winter, at some point after Korval came to settle on Surebleak, with the last section taking place early in the following spring. That’s straightforward enough.

Now we have two choices:

Ghost Ship tells us that Korval settled on Surebleak before winter turned to spring, that Theo’s visit occurred during late spring (this point is made on multiple occasions), and that the event which kicks off the plot of Necessity’s Child occurred a few weeks before the onset of summer. This seems to fit: Vertu arrives during Korval’s first winter, joins Jemie in the taxi business, and they spend the spring building up the business to a point that will account for the flock of taxis bringing people to the new school when it opens in early summer. The bit near the end of this story, with Vertu and Jemie in early spring considering diversifying into the ground-courier business, meshes nicely with Jemie’s cameo in Ghost Ship, in late spring, delivering a courier message.

However. Necessity’s Child itself claims to begin in late winter, which would put the school opening in early spring, and allow little if any time for the building of the taxi fleet.

After due consideration, I have decided I prefer the timeline suggested by Ghost Ship, and not just because it’s more insistent about it. (Ghost Ship, as I said, mentions the season repeatedly, while the beginning of Necessity’s Child does so only once – and, for that matter, the school opening scene has a mention of how warm the day is, which might be taken to mean that even the end of Necessity’s Child disagrees with the beginning about what time of year it is.)

There are still a couple of more short stories and a novel set on Surebleak which I haven’t read yet because they all came out after I began the re-read; I’ll be interested to see when they claim to be set.

(When I was scheduling the re-read, the one detail I remembered from all this confusion was that Ghost Ship was set in spring, but I forgot that it said Korval had been there since winter, so I thought Vertu’s first winter on Surebleak must be after both Ghost Ship and Necessity’s Child, and scheduled “Skyblaze” accordingly. If I were doing it now, I would definitely put “Skyblaze” before Necessity’s Child.)

Tomorrow: “Roving Gambler”, one of those stories set on Surebleak that I haven’t read yet.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 29

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In which it is sometimes necessary to attend to one repair at a time.

The two plot strands in this chapter are connected by the issue of rushing things: Udari, inspired by having something to work with, attempts to rush Rys’s recovery, with no good result; Pat Rin finds that circumstances are forcing them to rush the opening of the new consolidated school.

(If it can be said that the opening is rushed when the school building is so far behind schedule, thanks to the people Rys used to work for. And that reminds me that one of those people is still on the loose, so the fact that there has been no further sabotage on the school might just mean that they’re having another go at lulling the Dragon into a false sense of security.)

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 28

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In which Syl Vor and Kezzi are early to school.

And this, of course, is exactly the kind of thing one might expect to happen when a child of Korval promises to be no more trouble than necessary.

We’re getting a lot more Surebleak street names in this book than we have before. I wonder if the authors had their own map, and played their own version of the school route-learning game.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 19

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In which first impressions are subject to revision.

On the other hand, the location of the school, and considering that the bookkeeper is apparently on first-name terms with her, suggests another possible answer to the question of where Ms Taylor came from.

One of the things about all these geography lessons is that we’re getting a lot of names of Bosses and their turfs. So far it’s been a mix of new and old; as a case in point, in this chapter there’s Boss Cruthers, who appeared in I Dare, Boss Wentworth, whom we were introduced to at Syl Vor’s first geography lesson, and Boss Marriot, who’s entirely new (by the sound of it, his or her turf is some distance off from the area around the Road where the action has mainly been focussed).

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 18

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In which Kezzi goes to school.

We learn quite a bit about Pulka in this chapter, without him ever appearing, from Kezzi comparing Rys to him and Udari, and Rys comparing Pulka to himself.

I don’t think the flash of memory Rys has is really him, even though it uses his name: as he says, it’s from the still-unremembered latter portion of his life – the portion when he was in the grip of the Department and even his thoughts were not his own.

It occurs to me to wonder where Boss Conrad found Ms Taylor. She seems to have a local’s knowledge of Surebleak, but she also seems to be an experienced teacher, of a kind that I wouldn’t have expected Surebleak to be able to produce. Maybe there was one turf somewhere that did manage to keep proper schools going, and now it’s sharing its pool of experience.

Code of Honor

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In which Tommy Lee goes home.

It can be tricky placing a story in chronological order without reading it first, as we’ve seen already in this project, but I think I did all right with this one. It’s definitely set somewhere during Ghost Ship; a bit further on than where I’ve put it, I suspect, but we were already stopping here to read two other short stories, so doing “Code of Honor” as well means that after this we can finish off Ghost Ship without any further interruptions.

Putting it next to “Kin Ties” also produces a nice bit of synchronicity, since this story, too, turns out to be concerned with the question of bad delms and where duty lies for those burdened with them.

I have my doubts that it’s within any clan’s reach to take Korval’s proverbially unique place aside-but-not-among the Fifty High Houses; surely the fact that Korval is in a class by itself is the very point of the proverb. (For that matter, I would think that no clan would want that place, if they’d really thought about what it meant to be aside but not among the High Houses.) But I suppose that when ambition talks there’s always somebody willing to listen.

I appreciate the detail that Tommy needs his aunt to point out a flaw in his plans for his future. He’s clever enough to think his way out of a very difficult situation, but he doesn’t think of everything.

Tomorrow: We resume Ghost Ship at Chapter 24.

Moon on the Hills

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Surebleak

In which Korval acquires a new neighbour.

It’s an evocative name, “World’s End”. There’s the obvious sense in which the place is named, referring to a physical boundary, a place where the world comes to an end, but there are other things it could mean, such as a temporal boundary, a time when a world comes to an end. Sometimes a person’s world can come to an end even though the planet continues untouched. Yulie’s world might have ended when he lost the last of his kin. It might have ended today, if Boss Conrad had been someone other than the person he is.

(And isn’t it interesting how, when he’s talking to Yulie, he’s mostly Pat Rin but sometimes he’s Boss Conrad for a moment or two?)

It’s also interesting to speculate how things might have gone differently if Yulie’s brother hadn’t got himself killed before Boss Conrad showed up, and had been the one handling the negotiation for road access.