Tag Archives: Chonselta Healer Hall

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 30

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In which Aelliana proposes a solution.

Once again it’s Aelliana who gets to make the decisive move instead of Daav swooping in and rescuing her. (I may be labouring this point a bit. But seriously, how many novels are there where that happens?)

I am particularly interested by the part of Aelliana’s proposal which has her paying the blood-price for Ran Eld’s death when Sinit becomes Delm. There are several things going on here. For one, it gives Mizel an inducement to accept Sinit as nadelm, where her mother’s actions have cast doubt on the hope that she might accept as much simply because it’s the sensible course. It also serves a practical purpose in ensuring that when Sinit becomes delm there will be an amount of money she can rely on, no matter how the clan’s fortunes may have suffered in the mean time. There’s also some shifty work going on with the melant’i of the situation. I still don’t think that Aelliana truly owes Mizel anything for Ran Eld’s death, but by accepting the blood-price as her debt she’s making sure Mizel can’t try to stick it to anybody else (such as Daav); and by specifying that the payment will be made to Birin Caylon’s successor, the result will be that Birin Caylon gets the promise of an apology but never the apology itself.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 29

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In which Daav keeps himself busy with a day of consultations.

I’m not sure Daav’s explanation isn’t partly backward; he says that Mizel wouldn’t want to make an alliance with someone she blames for her son’s death, but I suspect on some level she’s chosen to forego an alliance with Korval so that she can blame Daav. There are other people who might be more fairly considered responsible for Ran Eld’s death, starting with Ran Eld himself, but they all have the disadvantage that Birin Caylon has to live with them every day; much more comforting to be able to blame someone who will shortly return to a distant orbit and remain out of sight and out of mind.

(“He was not the disrupter of the dance, but he was the only one of those new and uneasy things that they could dispose of without tearing still further the already riven fabric of their lives.”)

Incidentally, if Daav’s estimate of Mr dea’Gauss’s age is accurate, Mr dea’Gauss is about the same age as Lady Kareen and Luken bel’Tarda.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 28

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In which there is a Mouse in Aelliana’s new lodgings.

This is in some ways a chapter of pausing and taking stock of where things stand, with Master Kestra delivering her assessment of how far Aelliana has developed since they last met, and Aelliana telling Mouse the cat what she has learned about being a mouse.

I like the description of Mouse’s attitude when he first appears, which, speaking as one whose family has always had cats, strikes a very familiar chord: “There was something about the long muzzle that suggested at least temporary resignation; the very tippiest tip of the scruffy tail was twitching. Slowly.”

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 27

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In which Mizel makes a counteroffer.

Chonselta Healer Hall seems to me a good choice for Aelliana to stay while the negotiations are settled. It’s definitely neutral territory, leaving Mizel no grounds to suggest that Aelliana would remain under Korval’s influence as would be the case with Trealla Fantrol or Glavda Empri. (Personally, I doubt that Lady yo’Lanna would allow anybody to exert undue influence on a guest, ally or no, but that wouldn’t stop Mizel making the suggestion.) In addition, it’s in Chonselta, so Mizel can’t argue that Aelliana is being kept away from her family. (Not that I expect Mizel to make any attempt to visit Aelliana even if she does move back to Chonselta, but again it’s a strategic thing to argue.) Conversely, it’s a place where Daav can be assured that Aelliana won’t come under undue pressure from Mizel, particularly since specifying Master Kestra’s involvement means that there will someone involved who knows what Aelliana has already been through.

(And on that note, I admire the wording of Daav’s response to Mizel’s demand, which acknowledges the desirability of ensuring that Aelliana not be coerced without expressing or acceding to any specific suggestion about who might be doing the coercing.)

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 10

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In which a walk in the garden has a distressing outcome.

I worry that Daav might be reacting inappropriately to the situation with Aelliana. I don’t say over-reacting; a strong reaction is appropriate. But the possible direction is a concern; he appears to be taking the view that it’s up to him to find a solution by himself, without Aelliana, which is precisely the wrong thing to do in this situation. If you can’t rely on a magical link that communicates thought directly, that’s when it becomes even more important to make use of the traditional and often underappreciated communication methods known as “talking” and “listening”.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 9

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In which Mr dea’Gauss has news.

Servant to lord? Mr dea’Gauss is being very serious about Daav’s wish that Aelliana be honored as fully as possible. (And not just in the sense that Mr dea’Gauss is serious about everything he does.)

I do hope, if Daav is going to tell people that he hopes Aelliana will be his lifemate, that sooner rather than later one of the people he tells is Aelliana. He’s already had one dramatic lesson about the risks of withholding important information from her because he doesn’t think she can handle it, and it would be a terrible habit to get into if they’re going to be lifemates. (At least he’s only telling people who really need to know; he’s not handling it nearly as badly as, say, Miles Vorkosigan… though “not handling it as badly as Miles Vorkosigan” is so far from a ringing endorsement as to be practically a warning sign in itself. Still, Aelliana definitely falls in the category of people who really need to know.)

…it’s just occurred to me that Daav’s instructions to Mr dea’Gauss were ambiguous enough in their wording that Mr dea’Gauss might have come away with the impression that Aelliana is already aware of the situation. I hope that’s not going to cause trouble.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 5

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In which Aelliana does not feel safe under Mizel’s roof.

The heading quote is being pointed again, but in a slightly more underhanded way. Some of the people who constitute Aelliana’s clan do indeed frown on her conduct, but I am confident that this is a deficiency in them, not in Aelliana. (It makes a pair with the last time this heading quote appeared, which was the chapter in Scout’s Progress that revealed how much the clan’s beloved son Ran Eld was undermining the clan for his individual gain.)

The part where Delm Mizel accuses Korval of attempting to coerce Aelliana and valuing her only for her exploitable resources strikes me as one of those occasions where the guilt a person sees most readily in others is the guilt they would find if they looked straight into themselves.

And she does rather undo any mollifying effect she might have achieved (perhaps she was still counting on Aelliana to be obedient to the delm regardless) when she admits that regardless of Aelliana’s achievements she would rather have had anybody else if there had been anybody else to have.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 4

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In which Aelliana has breakfast and messages.

The chapter heading quote is particularly pointed today. In theory, Aelliana is not without kin, and Daav is overreaching himself by offering her aid. In fact, though, none of Aelliana’s kin are willing and able to give her the care she ought to be able to expect from them (Sinit is willing, but not able), and if Daav had not offered his assistance she would have gone without. It ought not to have been only Daav who made sure she was clothed and fed, nor only Daav who came to see how she was doing. Even if other business prevented a visit, they might have sent a message; it says something that the messages from her colleagues outnumber those from her kin threefold, and that one of her students, a person who is not even so close to her as to be permitted the Low Tongue, sent a message when her own mother still has not. It says something that the one message from her kin is more than Aelliana expected.

It says something, too, that Aelliana herself compares the Mizel clanhouse, which ought to be her home and refuge, to a hostile port where she would be unwise to set foot without backup — and presents this as an obvious truth which she counts herself foolish not to have seen sooner.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 3

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In which Daav and Aelliana are reunited.

It occurs to me that, even had nobody noticed the Jump ring on Ran Eld’s finger during the confrontation, it would have been surrendered to Mizel along with the rest of his finery when he died, so it would not have been necessary to pursue him to Low Port to get it back. I can understand that chain of thought not coming to Aelliana’s mind, though.

It appears that Daav and Aelliana do possess the lifemate bond to some degree, but that it only works at full strength when they’re in close physical proximity, as they are here, or as when they were dancing at the celebration.

This chapter includes the final four sentences of Scout’s Progress, all that was left from last chapter, with a few tweaks to punctuation and word choice but no substantive changes.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 2

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In which Daav returns to Chonselta.

I wonder about Aelliana’s grandmother sometimes. She usually comes up when Aelliana is reminded of happier times, before Ran Eld was nadelm, and it’s clear that under the old delm’s eye he’d never have gotten away with behaving the way he has done. And yet… the situation which allowed him to get away with it once the old delm was gone did develop under the old delm’s eye; he was already showing the kind of man he’d grow into before she died, and some of how he turned out must be due to how he was raised by his mother — and thus in some measure to how she was raised by her mother.

The half of this chapter with Daav in it is a reprint from the final chapter of Scout’s Progress, give or take a few punctuation tweaks and altered choices of wording. Most of the latter are in the narration; the only ones that result in an actual change of event, if you’re interested in comparing them, are a couple of refinements in the paragraph where Master Kestra describes the treatment Aelliana has been given for her various injuries.