Spiral Dance
Shift Change
In which the crew give thought to the future.
The tree has a lot to say for itself in this chapter. (I kind of wish I’d thought to tag for the chapters where the tree speaks. Too late to go back and find them all now.)
On Port
Ardega
In which Cantra goes shopping.
Cantra and Jela are getting comfortable working together in their roles as legitimate traders, and both occasionally having trouble remembering that their association is only a temporary arrangement of convenience (or least practicable inconvenience, perhaps, from Cantra’s point of view).
The rug merchant gives Cantra a hand-signal meaning “I’ll be there soon”, which is described the same way pilot hand-talk has been, but I’m not sure if that means the merchant is also a pilot or maybe merchants have their own hand-talk which Cantra, as a trader, also knows.
On port
Barbit
In which Jela and Cantra go for a quiet drink.
This is one of my favourite chapters in the Crystal Duology. Possibly it’s because it’s a very Korval sort of scene in a duology that mostly sets a different tone than the Korval novels. I could see Val Con and Miri, for instance, getting into a situation similar to this one.
Though I realised on this re-read that it’s not just the Korval novels it reminds me of:
As Lobsang followed the ambling Lu-Tze he heard the dojo master, who like all teachers never missed an opportunity to drive home a lesson, say: ‘Dojo! What is Rule One?’
Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus:
‘Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!’