Nev’lorn Headquarters

In which Shadia is all joy to see Clonak.

I’ve been puzzling over the sequence of events leading up to this, because the main thing I remembered about Nev’lorn from earlier readings of this chapter was the Department trying to get hold of Shadia, which had left me with the impression that the Department had somehow decided to siphon her off to Nev’lorn and recruit her even before she crossed Val Con’s trail. I think I’ve got it straight now, though: Her transfer to Nev’lorn was authentic Scout business, possibly due to Clonak wanting to keep her away from the Department or perhaps to recruit her in the Scouts’ resistance against it, and it was only after she filed her report from Vandar that the Department decided to take an interest in her.

(Another trick my memory played on me was that I remembered Shadia’s reunion with Clonak playing out in a corridor. I suppose I must have been confusing it with Val Con’s account of how the Department got hold of him.)

According to a series of blog posts Sharon Lee did back in 2009 about the authors’ collaboration process, the closest they ever got to a major deadlock was on the question of whether Shadia and Clonak survived the end of this chapter. (Neither of them actually wanted Shadia and Clonak to die, but one of them was convinced it was the inevitable consequence of events up to this point.) The blog posts, which all make fascinating reading, are here: Part 0, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The story about this chapter is in the last part (but do be aware, if you’re in a position where it matters, that it does give away what decision they eventually reached).