Tag Archives: currency

Local Custom – Chapter 35

In which several people have urgent business at the Port this morning.

And Er Thom finds himself capable of setting out, without hesitation, on a course of action that would have been literally unthinkable a twelveday ago.

I notice that, just as when Er Thom took Shan, on the day Anne came home and found them gone, the authors are deliberately casting shadow on just what Er Thom intends to when he finds Anne — a last play of the shadow-Er Thom constructed on the model of Shan el’Thrassin. I think I understand why, but I wonder if there was ever a reader who knew Er Thom so poorly by this point as to be taken in by the deception.

Local Custom – Chapter 31

Phoenix

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In which Bell the painter and Cyra the jeweler rise together from the wreckage.

This story is set in Standard Year 1293, a bit over a century since “Sweet Waters”, and nearing two centuries since Trade Secret. Things have moved on since Jethri’s time to the point that there are now Terrans living, and even legally owning property, on Liad, in Solcintra itself, though only in the Low Port and not with any entree into polite society. (And interacting with Liadens in ways other than owning property, by the evidence of the half-Terran Debbie.)

It is also far enough on that we’re beginning to approach the next clump of novels. This story introduces a character we will see again in a novel, as does each of remaining the stories between now and when we hit the beginning of Local Custom.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Cyra’s Delm and his idea of appropriate punishment. It’s difficult to be certain when there’s only one viewpoint available; there may be mitigating circumstances available. Cyra does say that the clan is not rich, but that may be an attempt to give the benefit of the doubt, since she also comes about as close as a polite young lady might to outright accusing her Delm of being a penny-pincher. And while he clearly has concern about ensuring the continuance of the clan into a new generation of clanmembers, that’s not enough in itself to explain his treatment of Cyra; a clan that needs every child does not, if it’s being rational, wilfully deprive itself of one of the children it already has.

(And here is the kind of thing a person can find himself thinking about when contemplating information that appears in other stories than this: in another century, Liaden medical technology will include a method to easily erase facial scarring. I wonder if that technology already exists at the time of this story, which would offer the possibility that the delm intended Cyra’s disfigurement to last only as long as her exile. But if that was the delm’s thinking, does that actually make it any better?)

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 3

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Day 33
Standard Year 1118

Ynsolt’i Port
Textile Hall

In which Jethri passes his first day of unsupervised trade.

Jethri makes three bargains this chapter, some to better effect than others.

I have read enough about the art of the con that I think the conversation with Sirge Milton would be setting off alarm bells even if I didn’t already know how it turns out. (Also, I reckon the flattering bartender is either a carefully selected prop or a confederate; she has a knack for saying just the right thing to keep the wheel turning.)

I do wonder a bit that an apprentice trader hasn’t been taught more about how to tell when somebody’s trying to fleece you, but perhaps that’s one of the things that’s slipped through the cracks with him being the youngest that people don’t always bother telling things to.

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.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 7

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Osabei Tower
Landomist

In which Scholar tay’Nordif acquires a robe, an account, a grad student, and a cat.

Scholar tay’Nordif seems to have a fondness for quoting the philosopher bin’Arli, to the disconcertion of those around her.

Twenty-four qwint make one flan. I very much doubt that this is a piece of information that will prove useful in future, but it’s there, so I figured I might as well make a note of it.

There’s something oddly familiar about the business of ser’Dinther’s cat, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

(I remember thinking the first time I read this that whereas ser’Dinther’s experiment was based on the assumption that he was located in the line of causality the cat would escape from, the grudent’s account of the cat’s progress sounds very much like what one would expect to see from the viewpoint of the line of causality the cat was escaping to.)

(What I’m thinking this time around is that the description of the what the cat is supposedly able to do by instinct reminds me of what Rool Tiazan is able to do deliberately, and in particular that the description of a creature in peril for its life shifting to a situation in which the peril is non-existent is, on a different scale, pretty much what the Great Migration will turn out to be like.)

(Also that the casual way these people discount their servitors is really unpleasant.)

Crystal Soldier – Chapter 15

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Spiral Dance
Taliofi

In which several people are not what they appear to be.

There are, of course, no Liadens in this setting, but there are people who possess attributes that will come to be considered Liaden. A few chapters ago, it was mentioned in passing that a golden-tan skin tone is a high class marker, and here we learn likewise about the very Liaden-like manners of a person with that skin tone. The word used is “Inside”, which I suspect refers to the inner reaches of the galaxy, placing high society socially and geographically at the opposite pole from the Rim.

And Rint dea’Sord, the first person we’ve yet encountered who combines a Liaden-like skin tone with Liaden-like manners and a Liaden-like name, is a fraud. The skin tone is make-up, the manners are self-taught and wouldn’t stand up in the actual Inside, his pretty Inside accent disappears in emotional extremity, and all things considered I wouldn’t lay money on the name being authentic either. He’s putting on high-society manners for the advantage it gives him against his fellow low-lifes.

Meanwhile Cantra, it seems, is doing the inverse. She was brought up with high-class manners, which she doesn’t use, preferring to present herself as a Rimmer like Garen. In retrospect, there were several moments foreshadowing this, including the moment a few chapters ago where Dulsey bows to her and she almost replies with the corresponding bow instead of a Rimmer’s nod, and the way her reminisces of Garen have always mentioned Rimmers in a way that leaves it ambiguous about whether she counts herself as one. And the fact that she was the subject of the previous mention of golden-tan skin tone as a high class marker.

Also, she’s an aelantaza — whatever that is, the few details we’ve got so far sound worrying — and her “first aid kit” is, judging by Jela’s reaction, sheriekas tech.

Crystal Soldier – Chapter 11

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On the ground
Faldaiza Port

In which Cantra acquires a co-pilot, a mechanic, and a damn’ vegetable.

There are, at various points in the series, mentions of the Tree’s leaves rustling in a way that has nothing to do with any wind that might be blowing. In this chapter, there’s the inverse: at a moment when rustling leaves would be an unhelpful distraction, the Tree’s leaves stay still despite the wind.

What with Cantra complaining about Jela not knowing who’s after him, it occurs to me that I don’t know who’s after him either. What are the options? Agents of the Enemy disguised as humans? Actual humans who have some reason to want Jela’s efforts to fail?

As Dulsey shows hidden depths and a desire to seek an independent destiny, we get some more backstory about the way things are for Batchers. The observation that the only sure way to be rid of Batch tattoos is to amputate and regrow both arms is striking, not only for what it says about Batch tattoos but also for what it says about the present state of medicine.

Crystal Soldier – Chapter 10

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On the ground
Faldaiza Port

In which you gotta know when to walk away, know when to run.

Well. This is getting quite exciting, isn’t it?

The name of Dulsey crops up for the first and not the last time.

I’m trying to remember if we see the gambler again; I have a kind of feeling we do, but it’s hard to be sure without a name to latch onto, and the situation in which we last see her in this chapter could go either way. I don’t have the same kind of feeling about the two cops, so it’s nice that they got to have so much personality in such a small appearance.

Reading Liad

from Dragon Tide to Dragon Ship, and beyond