Liad
Envolima City

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

There’s a notable omission from Tyl Von sig’Alda’s analysis of Val Con and Miri’s motives for joining forces: no mention of Miri’s trouble with the Juntavas which was, at least initially, the actual reason they stuck together.

One apparent possibility is that Agent sig’Alda doesn’t have knowledge of the Juntavas’ doings; they seem to be a Terran-only organisation, and they’re no doubt pretty short with strangers found sticking their nose into their business. But that doesn’t hold up; we’ve seen that the Department have ways of getting information they shouldn’t have access to, and in particular we’ve seen sig’Alda himself obtain information on this subject from a Juntava. It’s highly unlikely that Jefferson spent all that time talking about how they captured and stranded Miri and Val Con without ever mentioning why.

So the explanation seems to be that sig’Alda does have access to the information about the Juntavas’ interest in Miri, but has dismissed it as an insignificant Terran squabble irrelevant to the doings of Liadens.

(The other reason Val Con and Miri stuck together seems to be so far off sig’Alda’s radar as to not even occur to him as a possibility. Which is perhaps a bit shortsighted, given that there’s the example of Val Con’s uncle and aunt to show that it is possible that such a thing might befall one of Korval. But then, short-sightedness has ever been one of the characteristics of bigotry.)

I wonder how much of sig’Alda’s disdain for Terrans is original to him, and how much is a result of his Department training.