Tag Archives: Combine

Trade Secret – Chapter 13

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Keravath, on Port, Balfour

In which Jethri and ter’Astin finish their business on Balfour and move on to their next destination.

Trouble indeed: somebody has been aboard the ship. Somebody who had a key, which they ought not to have had, and by the signs is a Scout. (Or an ex-Scout? I continue to cast suspicious looks in a very particular direction.)

Jethri’s meeting with the memorable Mr Dorster has turned up more of Iza’s neglect: basic documents and proofs of identity never completed or filed.

The Scout is also interested in the mysterious manifesto, “Arin’s Envidaria of the Seventeen Worlds”. As it is now too late to ask Freza more about it, Jethri merely tells him, truthfully but incompletely, that he never heard of it before today. The Seventeen Worlds are apparently a cluster of planets along the galatic arm where travel is unusually restricted by cosmic phenomena that are expected to last for the next few centuries; if Arin was taking the long view – and considering how old he probably was, it might not have seemed as long as all that – the Envidaria may involve a plan for how things will shift when the cosmic phenomena get out of the way. (And although “the next few centuries” is a pretty vague timespan, I can’t help noting that one plausible interpretation of a few centuries on from this novel puts us right about the time the next Liaden novel is due to be set…)

And now they are off to Vincza, where the Scout has hope for finding something and Jethri has been invited to a regional trade meeting (run by the Carresens Coordinating Committee, a name which rings a distinct bell: the Carresens are still trading in one of the later novels, and I seem to remember one of them mentioning Arin in a historical context, though I don’t recall what is said).

I wonder if Freza’s ship will also be attending the trade meeting. Not just because of the several reasons Jethri has for wanting to see her again, but also because the meeting’s being held in the system where they had their last, ill-fated meeting, and it would be kind of appropriate for it also to be the location of their next meeting, where hopefully they will fare better.

Trade Secret – Chapter 9

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Flight Deck, Gobelyn’s Market, Raising Serconia Three

In which the First Mate and the Senior Trader talk about the future and the past.

So Iza’s always known Jethri wasn’t hers – Arin showed up with the infant Jethri one day, at the end of a long trip away, and talked Iza into accepting him as a Gobelyn. (That’s a clarification I’m right glad to have, considering where my train of thought was ending up on the back of the information we’d previously had.) So then she had to work with the apparent implication of Arin acquiring a son somewhere without her involvement, and then the less apparent but more unsettling creeping realisation that Jethri was all Arin’s, all the more unsettling set aside the growing realisation that she knew much less about Arin than she’d thought she did.

Paitor mentions that they found out Arin had had other children before he met Iza. I wonder if we’re going to meet any of them this trip – and I wonder if any of them have the same “family resemblance” as Jethri.

Speaking of family resemblances, Paitor says that there was a family resemblance between Arin and the Uncle, though he stops short of “twin”, which is what he says about Arin and Jethri, so I don’t know if he’s implying that he thinks that the Uncle is to Arin what Arin is to Jethri.

(I’ve actually been thinking that might be the case myself for a few weeks now, since the “Arin’s youngest brother” chapter of Balance of Trade, because it reminded me of the scene in Crystal Dragon where Cantra earns a sharp look from the Uncle by suggesting that Arin looks enough like him to be his brother. And it’s prompted me to finally get around to comparing the physical descriptions of Arin and his Uncle, which I hadn’t done before because they’re in separate books of the duology; I suspect now that that was deliberate, to avoid making it too obvious that Arin and his Uncle are both tall, lean, dark-haired and grey-eyed.)

(But here’s an odd thing: Grig’s Uncle Yuri is tall and lean, but contrariwise is grey-haired and dark-eyed.)

(And while we’re at it: Jethri’s father Arin, in the photocube from Balance of Trade, has hair described similarly to the earlier Arin’s but his eyes, like Jethri’s, are brown.)

In Paitor’s stories about the doing of the Tomas family, I see the seeds of several things that crop up in the novels featuring Theo. (And given the bit about the Uncle’s secret shipyard, I’m wondering if Bechimo is one of them.)

Trade Secret – Prologue

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Stateroom Number Two
Liaden Tradeship Wynhael, Outbound from Banth, a Backworld

In which Jethri’s story is by no means over.

A new novel!

The prologue gives us Bar Jan chel’Gaibin nursing his grievances, some hints about what’s up on Banth, and Jethri continuing his career but discovering that Old Tech is still going to be a part of his life. The chel’Gaibin seems to have decided to take particular offence against Khat, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more of the crew of the Market along the way. That’s all the major dangling threads from Balance of Trade picked up already – all I ask now is a throwaway line about how Jethri’s moustache management is getting on, and I’ll be happy.

We get quite a detailed portrait of Bar Jan chel’Gaibin in the first part of the prologue. Not a nice fellow, the chel’Gaibin. The description of his debt book is revealing, and so is the bit about the rigged dueling pistols – that latter also saying something about the family he comes from, given that they’re the house’s pistols and not his personally. (I wonder if we’ll be seeing those pistols in action, later.)

We also learn some things about Jethri. The bit about him feeling as if fractins are aware of him is new, though it fits in with what we already had about his knack for salvage items.

Jethri is currently working on a world where they go in for elaborate ceremony, which gives us some interesting new flourishes on the bows. I particularly like the revelation that the language of bows includes a construction for “I realise my sleeves aren’t long enough to do this bow justice”.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 32

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Day 165
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which Jethri and, for a change, Miandra and Grig each have a long and incident-packed day.

Boy, and I thought last chapter was long.

This chapter opens with the first scene in which we’ve seen one of the twins without the other, and it apparently presages that their paths are going to be more distinct from here on in.

As part of that, we get an elaboration of the subtext about Healers and dramliz from Jethri’s first day here. Meicha is a Healer, and a good one, with the rare gift of being able to heal the body as well as the mind. Miandra is a dramliza, which puts her in an uncomfortable position since the people of Irikwae are prepared to accept Healers but abominate the dramliz; Miandra’s grandmother wants her to be safe but thinks the problem can be solved by Miandra restricting herself to being a Healer, a course of action which Miandra is finding increasingly untenable.

(I don’t remember now which comment thread it was, or in what context, that someone mentioned the anecdote about Korval Herself arguing for the survival of the dramliz on Liad, but anyhow this is the chapter where that appears.)

I find myself wondering whether the Healer who gave it as her professional opinion that Miandra couldn’t have held back the storm really believes that, or if she deliberately steered away from officially marking Miandra as a dramliza. (And if so, for whose comfort she did so.)

I like the bit comparing how Jethri expresses himself in Liaden and Terran, now that he’s fluent in both.

Over in Grig’s half of the chapter, he’s having a philosophical disagreement with his family. I wonder whether it’s Grig, or anyhow people who thought like him, whom Val Con and his contemporaries have to thank for their autodocs and suchlike.

Also, there is an unusual and interesting application of the word “brother”. If the byplay about “Arin’s youngest brother”, added to Iza’s insistence on Jethri being Arin’s son alone, means what I think it means, I’m not at all surprised that Iza’s still hacked off about it eighteen years after the event. (It also raises the question of what other ‘brothers’ Arin might have.) Grig’s thought about family resemblances in the elevator seems to suggest that the non-standard definition of “brother” might extend to him and Raisy as well.

(Reading that back, I realise I’ve done that thing again where I leave something out because it seems obvious to me. So, to be clear, the word I’m hearing in this conversation even though nobody says it is “clone”. The implication, as I read it, is that Jethri Gobelyn is a clone of Arin Gobelyn, and that Arin used Iza as a surrogate without her knowledge or consent. I also get the feeling, partly from the word “youngest”, that Arin Gobelyn was himself a clone, and that when his family talk about Arin in this chapter it’s not always Arin Gobelyn they’re referring to.)

I remember wondering, the first time I read this chapter, whether Grig’s Uncle was the same person as Dulsey’s Uncle, seeing as they had certain similarities in personality and interest, and then getting to the bit where Grig’s Uncle has a name, and thinking maybe they weren’t, at least until Dragon Ship came out. (By the time I got here, I’d forgotten that one of Dulsey’s associates was named Arin, or I’d have wondered about that, too.)

Right now, I’m not sure whether Uncle Yuri is the same man as The Uncle, though it seems he’s pursuing the same line of work. Perhaps he is The Uncle’s younger brother…

(I’ve compared the physical descriptions of the two Uncles, which was unhelpful to a point that seems almost suspicious. They have very little overlap in which details they focus on: only one mentions an eye color, only one says anything useful about hair color, and so on. The only details that coincide are that both are tall and lean, and many men are both of those. Grig, for one, as we were reminded a few pages earlier – and that makes me wonder, for the first time, whose younger brother he might be.)

Balance of Trade – Chapter 31

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Day 161
Standard Year 1118

Irikwae

In which Jethri and Khat each have a long and incident-packed day.

Well now, this is a long chapter.

Khat’s day brings her to Banth, an inhospitable planet which a surprising number of Liadens seem to want to visit. And among them, the chel’Gaibin and her son, who reacts badly to encountering one of Jethri’s kin. I really like the sequence with Khat’s friend Keeson and his sister, which probably wasn’t strictly needful to the plot but adds a lot of texture to the story.

Jethri’s day, in between encounters with tailors and dancing instructors, takes him out to the vines, teaches him a few things about the local fauna, and leads to a possibly unwise bright idea involving the device Grig called a “weather maker”.

It’s been alluded to previously, but this is the first time the Code of Proper Conduct has been mentioned by its full title. Also mentioned is that it’s currently three volumes long, a state of affairs that I seem to recall does not maintain itself indefinitely.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 25

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Day 140
Standard Year 1118

Tarnia’s Clanhouse
Irikwae

In which Lady Maarilex gets to know Jethri Gobelyn.

Jethri’s account confirms that Arin changed his name to Gobelyn when he married (from Tomas, which means Grig was a relative on top of being a trusted colleague). This sets me wondering again about the monogrammed box; if it’s his monogram, it must have been done after he married, but a velvet-lined jewel box doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a crewman on a ship like Gobelyn’s Market would go in for. Maybe it was a wedding present.

We see, again, that Jethri’s upbringing has taught him not to expect others to exert themselves on his account.

I am not, myself, surprised that Lady Maarilex wanted to hear Jethri’s account of how he met Master ven’Deelin. Certainly she has had Master ven’Deelin’s account, but Jethri’s telling is sure to differ in details, in what is emphasized, included, or left out, and from the differences she can learn more not only about the event but about the teller.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 20

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Day 116
Standard Year 1118

Elthoria

In which Jethri opens his crate from home.

The dent in the B-crate has all kinds of interesting potential stories behind it, depending on just when it happened. If it happened on the way from Khat to Jethri, that’s one thing. If Khat just added her own few items to the crate Iza was already storing Jethri’s stuff in, and Iza put the dent in it herself at some point since Arin’s death, that’s another thing. If Iza was making use of one of Arin’s old crates, and it was already dented when he got it, that’s another thing again (and at this point a small voice in my head is muttering, speculatively, “Wildetoad Wildetoad Wildetoad…”). But no, it says some of the fastenings jammed when the crate was deformed, so it most likely happened since Khat packed it up.

There’s a paragraph in this chapter that speaks to some of the conversation that’s been going on in the comment threads: “Say what you would about Iza Gobelyn’s temper, and no question she was cold. Say it all – and when it was said, the fact remained that she was a canny and resourceful captain, who held the best good of the ship in her heart.” Gotta admit, though, we haven’t actually seen much of that side of her so far.

Jethri interprets the monogram on the signet ring box as “Arin Jethri Gobelyn”. If he’s correct to do so, does that mean that Arin was already a Gobelyn when he was still a commissioner, before he married Iza?

Another little puzzle: at the bottom of the fractin collection, a rack made of an unfamiliar metal; with Crystal Dragon fresh in memory, I wonder if it’s a data-case to go with the data-tiles. (Or perhaps just an attempt at re-creating a data-case, the way Nelirikk’s shibjela is not a real shib.)

All the focus on the fractin collection leads me to realise that Jethri’s lucky fractin hasn’t been making many appearances lately, and his old habit of playing with it when he was nervous has completely disappeared since he started protocol lessons.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 6

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Day 42
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Departing

In which there are secrets in all families.

With Paitor and Grig wanting to let Jethri know a few things, there’s a lot of background filled in here, not all of which ends up being noticeably relevant in the rest of this novel.

Allowing for a bit of linguistic drift, it seems likely that the blusharie the three of them share is the same kind of drink as the blusherrie Niku and Friar Julian drink in celebration at the end of “Eleutherios”.

Speaking of things returning under new names, the fractins – the Fractional Mosaic Memory Modules – seem likely to be the same as the data-tiles that were all over the place in Crystal Dragon. (Interesting that we get more description of what they look like and what they’re made of in this book than we ever did in the one where they were all over the place. I suppose when they were all over the place, none of the viewpoint characters paid them much attention.) And the suggestion that within a few years something is going to start happening to them is one of those bits that isn’t picked up in this novel, but might be in the sequel.

I’m not sure what to make of the business about there possibly having been more than one Terra.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 2

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Day 32
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Jethri’s Quarters

In which Jethri gets the bad news.

The downside of this being a re-read is that I’m mostly inspired to talk about the things that strike me new or different, so I don’t really have anything to say about the conversation between Jethri and his uncle, which hasn’t changed notably since last time I read it.

The sequence of Jethri and the calendar is a nice bit of characterization, both of Jethri the teenaged boy and Jethri the spacer who’s spent most of his life in a tin can and feels uncomfortable without a ceiling close over his head.

The calendar also offers a worldbuilding hook in itself, or perhaps I should say a worldbuilding bridge; the reader who is familiar with 21st-century Terran garage calendars will find things to recognise in certain aspects of it.

Speaking of which: The Gobelyn family are Terrans, a word which appears here for the first time this re-read.