Liad
Solcintra Port

In which Cheever McFarland has a delivery for the First Speaker of Clan Korval.

I have a feeling I’m going to be spending a lot of this tetralogy marking off occasions where something appeared for the first time in the Liaden Universe. Here’s one: first published appearance of the Tree.

Among several other firsts, of course, including the first appearance (in order of publication or of internal chronology) of Cheever McFarland.

If Shan says that Nova is in a meeting with Mr dea’Gauss then I’m sure it’s true, but I wonder if they wouldn’t have arranged some such thing in any case, so that Shan might have an excuse to talk to Cheever first. He’s definitely taking the opportunity to try and get an idea of who Cheever McFarland is and how he came to be involved in the present situation.

Cheever is undeniably very struck by Nova’s appearance, but it’s difficult to say whether that’s significant. Maybe he’s in a particularly susceptible frame of mind because he’s so tired. Maybe she just has that effect on everybody. (We already know that she’s accounted a beauty among Liadens. What impression she usually makes on Terrans, we don’t have enough data to say.)