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Dragon in Exile – Chapter 9

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Blair Road
Surebleak

In which Val Con reflects on his dream.

Though I chose other things to talk about last chapter, I was a bit surprised that Miri’s experience of the dream was of being sliced up and reshaped, when the dream is of being an established agent of the Department and doesn’t include the training that shapes a person into a living weapon. I think I get it, now, though: the Department’s training isn’t just about forcing a person into a new shape, it’s also about instilling processes that keep them in that shape, against whatever tendencies and defences might try to return them to themselves after the training is concluded. The trimming and burning and twisting is going on under the surface of every agent of the Department all the time.

On this chapter’s other plot strand, the thought suddenly strikes me: what if Mr Kipler is smart enough to conceal how smart he is, and getting arrested and hauled in front of the Bosses is part of the plan?

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 5

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In which Pat Rin is up early, and Syl Vor is late for his tutor.

Something odd’s happened to the timeline again. During Ghost Ship, we were informed – several times – that it was spring, approaching the onset of what passes on Surebleak for summer. Now, in this chapter, it is suddenly “very nearly spring”.

That said, the apparent fact of it being winter, and the subsequent discussion of Surebleak’s climate, constitute a nice bit of incluing that sets up Nova’s later remark that it will be a warm day on Surebleak before a particular unlikely thing occurs. (Also a nice bit of incluing is the passing mention of the child-on-the-street policy, which we’ll be hearing of again in a chapter or two.)

Being aware of the fact that many of the Department’s agents are on some level innocent victims, and thus being wishful to rescue them if possible, is something of a tactical handicap for Korval, but I can’t say I’d prefer Korval to not want to help them. I wonder if that was a factor in the Department’s choice of recruiting techniques, the possibility of producing that handicap in any opponent the Department might acquire. The Commanders and analysts of the Deparment we’ve seen, who regard agents as expendable and don’t seem to grasp that Korval doesn’t think the same way they do, probably wouldn’t be able to come up with such a strategy, but then the Commanders and the analysts are products of the system; whoever set up the system in the first place might have had a broader range of thought.