In Vertu’s taxicab
Enter Yulie, Mary, Anna, Rascal
In which everyone is going to the same place.
Apparently the hill at the end of the Port Road is now named Undertree Hill — or perhaps that’s just what the Bedel call it and Yulie has picked it up from them.
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In the house of the taxi driver
Enter Vertu and Cheever
In which Vertu Dysan greets the new day.
The story is subtitled “A Minor Melant’i Play for Snow Season”, which offers a hint at what it’s likely to be about. Melant’i plays involve dramatic consquences revolving around points of correct behaviour; the examples we’ve had described seem to generally end with dead bodies, and sometimes with buildings burning to the ground.
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Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which Miri’s day suddenly gets more interesting.
So, Pat Rin did send the alert to both Val Con and Miri, regardless, which makes perfect sense and is what I would have assumed in the first place if the narrative hadn’t implied otherwise.
It annoys me that this is what I’m thinking about when there’s a dramatic climax going on.
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On the Road
In which Emissary Twelve appreciates flowers.
Even while Boss Surebleak stirs up trouble, life goes on. Somebody said, earlier in the book: that’s the only way to do it. You have to keeping planning for life After.
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Jelaza Kazone
In which we cannot know whether Cheever would like to be Road Boss until we ask.
All these chapters where the delm and the Road Boss are getting ready to start the day provide some structure and sense of time passing, but it makes it hard to keep coming up with new chapter descriptions.
I was still a bit worried about the scene in Flourpower, because it felt a bit more significant than the scene itself warranted — I don’t know if that makes sense — as if in addition to the actual events it was also setting up for something. But if what it was setting up for was a Turtle visiting Flourpower and meeting the Hooper, I’m less worried.
FlourPower Bakery
In which the snow removal team has more than snow on their minds.
We haven’t had a scene set in FlourPower since back when it featured in “Skyblaze”.
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Jelaza Kazone
In which Korval catches up on the morning news.
There seems to me to be a lot of book left for where we’re at.
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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.