Dutiful Passage
In which Padi makes connections and Shan receives news from home.
The looper families Shan mentions are among those who have appeared or been mentioned in the Jethri-era stories: the Smiths were the first family to have norbears travelling with them, the Tragers were friendly with Jethri’s family, and the Wildes did that ill-fated bit of experimenting with Old Tech.
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Jelaza Kazone
In which Rys is on his way home.
The scare quotes in the sentence about Emissary Twelve and Scout yo’Bingim each taking a packet of cookies to share with their comrades suggests that the narrator expects them to account for their own packet without any assistance. If that’s the case, I assume it was Scout yo’Bingim who came up with the story about comrades; bending the truth in such a way seems more in character for a Scout than for a Clutch Turtle, and she at least can point to comrades on-world, which Emissary Twelve can’t (unless one counts the Bedel, I suppose).
Scout Commander Val Con yos’Phelium thinks that the consequences of the election are likely to be fascinating. And I still recall what Miri said a few chapters ago about what it means when Val Con judges something to be fascinating.
Jelaza Kazone
In which the house is quiet.
A little demonstration of melant’i in Val Con’s conversation with the Healers: the person enquiring after the health of Anthora and Ren Zel is Lord yos’Phelium, their thodelm, but the person who would like to hear from Anthora when she has a moment is Val Con, her brother.
Jelaza Kazone
In which Miri gives thought to the future.
It is a failure of imagination on my part that it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what might happen to the Tree if Boss Surebleak succeeded in getting the mobile members of Clan Korval thrown off the planet. Or perhaps it’s just a sign of how confident I am that that’s an outcome so unlikely as to not be worth spending imagination on.
Miri might be onto something with the idea that the Department of the Interior is planning on taking Surebleak for itself. (Indeed, we’ve already seen hints in that direction, such as the plot in “Shout of Honor”.) Which would make Boss Surebleak accusing Korval of a hostile takeover another example of someone accusing another of the thing they’d do themselves given half a chance.
Jelaza Kazone
In which Val Con receives a letter from an old family friend.
Timeline sorting: The last two Surebleak chapters of Neogenesis each focus, as this chapter does, on half the delm starting the morning’s work. This one appears to fit between those two; it’s the morning after the first of them, in which Val Con receives the news from Tinsori Light. The second, in which Miri receives an unexpected visitor, appears to yet be in the future.
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Surebleak
In which it’s a new day.
It looks like we’re done with dramatic confrontations for now, and are into the part of the book where things are wound down and tied off. There were a couple more dramatic confrontations I was expecting, but maybe they’re being saved for next time.
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In which Val Con and Miri gather information about their visitors.
This is the first mention I can recall of there now being two separate branches of the Scouts, but it doesn’t surprise me. I presume the schism is a consequence of the events surrounding Korval’s big play and subsequent exile, and the subsequent removal of a chunk of Liaden society to Surebleak. Liaden society as a whole was divided over how to view Korval’s actions, and although many Scouts had a sympathy for Korval it is not to be supposed that they were unanimous in their approval.
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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which the carpet shop has a visitor who wants Pat Rin to pay.
The discussion of how the dream adapts itself to the dreamer (and is not, for one thing, just restricted to “do you kill this person who is important to you?”) is reassuring in regard to the question of whether every one of the captured agents will be able to be offered a choice. But now I have another concern: The fact that many of the Department’s agents were bound unwillingly to a course and a goal they wouldn’t have chosen in their right minds doesn’t necessarily imply that there are no agents who would support the Department’s aims if given a free choice.
Quin’s story is a reminder of how long we’ve been following Korval’s recent history; “great-grandmother” sounds like such a long time ago, and I thought at first of some unknown ancestor, but count it back and it’s Chi yos’Phelium, whom we already know. (And that’s the second mention of her in two chapters. I don’t know if that’s going to be significant, or is just a coincidence.)
A garnet trade ring is pretty good; not the Master Trader’s amethyst, but only a few rungs below it.
Beslin vin’Tenzing’s attack would be a useful illustration in a discussion about why “revenge” is not always an appropriate synonym for “Balance”. It’s not a well-considered Balancing, even if one accepts that Pat Rin bears full responsibility for the people killed when he fired on Solcintra (and I think a full account of the responsibility there would need to consider the role of the Department, who chose to use those people as a human shield). If nothing else, it’s an attempt to redress vin’Tenzing’s losses that leaves out all the other people who sustained losses in the attack. There is more than one family that lost a child, and there’s only one Quin; they can’t all settle it by shooting him.
…though that doesn’t mean vin’Tenzing is going to be the only one to give it a try.