Tag Archives: Dagmar Collier

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 14

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Arsdred Port Magistrate’s Chamber
Local Year 728
Evening Bazaar

In which Priscilla sees the legal system of Arsdred from the inside.

One of the ways in which Shan is a better trader than Sav Rid Olanek, as demonstrated here, is his ability to find the smooth path leading to a conclusion satisfactory to himself and to the person he’s dealing with. Trader Olanek seems to be of the opinion that getting his own way is all that matters, without even the awareness that he might get his own way more easily if he paid some attention to what others wanted.

I like the slight hesitation before Trader Olanek says he’s willing to speak for Dagmar Collier. That’s a nice detail.

Another nice detail is that we have a Liaden expressing dislike of the fact that Shan is willing to acknowledge Gordy as kin, just a chapter after Gordy mentioned a Terran expressing dislike of the fact that Gordy is willing to acknowledge Shan as kin. (And Gordy’s explanation to Priscilla last chapter served a useful setting-up purpose, such that we now know what Trader Olanek is talking about without having to hold up the action here for an explanation.)

I also like the bit about the insult that can’t be understood by a person who merely knows what the words mean. A feature common to many of my favourite science fiction stories is cultures that have been sufficiently developed as to have figures of speech that don’t translate cleanly. (Two other examples that come to mind are Janet Kagan’s Hellspark and Cherry Wilder’s Torin series. You can tell a culture has some depth to it when it has its own puns.)

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 13

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Arsdred Port City
Local Year 728
Midday Bazaar

In which Priscilla encounters Dagmar Collier again.

The opening paragraphs of this chapter do an impressively colourful bit of scene-setting. Though I feel obliged to note that the depiction of the “dark-skinned, doe-eyed, hook-nosed” Arsdredi merchants rubs against the part of me that gets annoyed by unthoughtful recycling of cultural stereotypes. Particularly since the police at the end of the chapter, who are presumably also Arsdredi, partake of a completely different cultural sterotype.

This chapter contains a rare mention of Ken Rik the cargo master’s surname, which for the record is yo’Lanna.

“Moonphase” doesn’t say there was a sculpture of a triglant among the things Priscilla took with her from the Temple. Then again, it doesn’t say there wasn’t.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 12

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 139
Third Shift
16.00 hours

In which Kayzin Ne’Zame’s suspicion of Priscilla comes to a head.

They’re nearly at Arsdred, and Priscilla hasn’t yet decided whether she intends to remain with the Passage after that. She was being swayed toward staying before she got the sharp reminder that the first mate doesn’t welcome her, and she doesn’t know yet that the captain has required the first mate to mend her ways.

I like the wrinkliness of Kayzin Ne’Zame’s relationship with Shan. She questions his decisions, but it’s because she feels it’s her duty and responsibility to make sure he’s thought them through properly, and when he puts her in her place, she’s mortified for herself but also proud of him for the demonstration of the quality of his melant’i.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t very attached to the hypothesis of 5-hour shifts, because this chapter’s dateline breaks it, too. I think the model of 6-hour shifts best fits the data so far, with the previously-mentioned fudge for the tenth chapter. On that model, Third Shift would run from Twelfth Hour to Eighteenth Hour, with Priscilla’s dinner date at Seventeenth Hour being accommodated by the policy Shan mentions of allowing an hour off to eat.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 11

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 137
First Shift
1.30 hours

In which troubled days make for restless nights.

Priscilla has a nightmare, possibly brought on by Kayzin Ne’Zame’s hostility. (On the other hand, there are indications that nightmares were Priscilla’s default sleep pattern before she came on board the Passage, and this is just a restoration of the status quo.) Lina attempts to comfort her, both by the usual means and with her Healer abilities, but hits an obstacle in the fact that the method of achieving tranquility Priscilla learned in Temple includes a shield to keep out outside influences — which is fine if it’s an outside influence disturbing one’s tranquility, but not so good if the problem is inside the shield with you.

(Incidentally, we get at least part of an answer to what happened after Priscilla kissed Lina a couple of chapters ago. I didn’t comment on that last chapter, because I figured that if they didn’t want to go into details, it wasn’t really any of my business.)

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 6

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Shipyear 65
Tripday 130
Fourth Shift
18.00 hours

In which Priscilla meets Shan yos’Galan.

Contrary to what I said last week, this must be where I first learned about Liadens and faces. It must be. Conflict of Honors was the first Liaden story I ever read, and certainly Gordy’s recital is the most detailed and explicit statement of the case to be found anywhere in the series. I don’t remember it, though. There is a difference, perhaps, between being told about a thing in the abstract and coming to comprehend it through being shown examples of it in action.

The dateline on this chapter is not consistent with a 28-hour day divided into four 7-hour shifts, in which 18.00 hours would be deep in Third Shift. It would, on the other hand, fit a 24-hour day divided into four shifts.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 5

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Jankalim Spaceport
Local Year 209

In which Priscilla discovers the depth of her predicament.

Again, I’m having trouble coming up with anything to say about the present chapter without getting tangled up in anticipation of chapters to come.

Since I have in the past called out the authors for what I felt was a particularly blatant use of the old heroine-looks-in-a-mirror routine, it’s only fair that I credit this chapter with a much smoother implementation. If you must do it at all, this is the way to do it, with the plot seamlessly giving rise to a reason for the heroine to be looking in the mirror and paying close attention to her appearance.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 4

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Shipyear 32
Tripday 152
Third Shift
19.45 hours

In which there is an unexpected change of schedule.

This is one of those chapters that I’d probably have things to say if I were reading it for the first time, but since I’m re-reading my reaction is mainly “Yep, that’s pretty much how I remember it going”.

It’s a day later and Priscilla still has the odd-numbered off-shift, which is a point against there being an odd number of shifts in the day. Allowing for rounding to the nearest hour, her statement that there’s an hour to the shift change is consistent with a day comprising four seven-hour shifts, the same as Elthoria had. Nice to have that settled, even if it is just in time for it not to matter any more.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 3

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Shipyear 32
Tripday 151
First Shift
1.30 hours

In which we meet the second mate, who is a rounder.

A “rounder”, according to the dictionary I consulted, is a “person who makes the rounds of bars, saloons, and similar establishments; figuratively, a debaucher or roué”, which seems like a pretty apt description of Dagmar Collier. (Who, incidentally, also wears too many rings.)

Second Mate Collier adds sexual harrassment to the list of things Priscilla has to put up with on Daxflan. Not only is she not put off by the fact that her advances are unwelcome, that explicitly adds to her enjoyment. It’s worth noting that Collier is depicted as a sexual predator who happens to be of a particular orientation, with the presentation balanced by other characters later in the novel who share the orientation but not the unfriendliness or the disdain for consent. I can think of other works I’ve read which have lacked that diversity of representation, so it’s good to see here.

It’s three days since the previous chapter, and Priscilla’s off-shift has moved from Second Shift to First. If the ship day is a strict rotation of work-rest-work-rest, as implied by Shelly’s rant, that argues for an odd number of shifts in the day. On the other hand, maybe there are an even number of shifts per day and Priscilla had to work a double shift in there somewhere — perhaps while they were in dock at Alcyone, where they’d need the cargo master to remain available. (I dismiss out of hand the possibility that she might have been given a double rest period.) For what it’s worth, the single data point we have on shift numbers in Liaden trade ships, Jethri’s Elthoria, had four shifts per day.