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I Dare – Chapter 19

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s House

In which Erob’s house has many visitors.

This is one of those chapters where there’s potentially a lot to talk about, but I’ve read it so often nothing really stands out to me.

Well, there is one thing: I don’t know if it’s me being really unobservant or just having a bad memory, but I don’t remember having understood before that Hazenthull Explorer might have only been intending to stick around long enough to get her senior patched up. (I notice, by the way, that her senior finally gets a name in this chapter.) How she planned to get around having sworn an oath of loyalty to get that far, I don’t see; perhaps, as Daav says, she hadn’t planned that far ahead.

Another point of connection between the two separate plot strands of the novel is that they’re now both concerned with issues of appropriate behaviour between oath-holder and oath-sworn.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 26

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In which Aelliana attends her first gather, and sweeps all before her.

The guest list at yo’Lanna’s gather has a nice sense of history, being a mix of new people, people who were at Korval’s gather in chapter 26 of Scout’s Progress, and people who were at Etgora’s gather in “Choice of Weapons”. In the last category is Etgora Himself, the father of the young man whose enthusiasm Daav was obliged to dampen. (There’s also a reference to that event when Daav and the hostess are exchanging greetings.)

Less charmingly, there are also echoes of the other story set around that time: “The Beggar King”, in which pilots were mysteriously going missing, and Daav was not able to find those responsible, only oblige them to suspend their activities for a time. That time, it appears, has now passed, and pilots are going missing again.

The bond between Daav and Aelliana is developing, however slowly; Daav now possesses the ability to know without looking when Aelliana enters the room, the inverse of which Aelliana has had since the beginning of the novel.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 9

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In which Mr dea’Gauss has news.

Servant to lord? Mr dea’Gauss is being very serious about Daav’s wish that Aelliana be honored as fully as possible. (And not just in the sense that Mr dea’Gauss is serious about everything he does.)

I do hope, if Daav is going to tell people that he hopes Aelliana will be his lifemate, that sooner rather than later one of the people he tells is Aelliana. He’s already had one dramatic lesson about the risks of withholding important information from her because he doesn’t think she can handle it, and it would be a terrible habit to get into if they’re going to be lifemates. (At least he’s only telling people who really need to know; he’s not handling it nearly as badly as, say, Miles Vorkosigan… though “not handling it as badly as Miles Vorkosigan” is so far from a ringing endorsement as to be practically a warning sign in itself. Still, Aelliana definitely falls in the category of people who really need to know.)

…it’s just occurred to me that Daav’s instructions to Mr dea’Gauss were ambiguous enough in their wording that Mr dea’Gauss might have come away with the impression that Aelliana is already aware of the situation. I hope that’s not going to cause trouble.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 16

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In which Daav offers Aelliana more than one kind of life support.

Although Delm Bindan says she’ll remember the lesson about sending word ahead, I’m not sure she’s learned the right lesson. I get the feeling that she thinks Daav deliberately kept her waiting to (the phrase is inevitable) teach her a lesson, and hasn’t realised that he genuinely wasn’t in a fit state to receive visitors. One wonders how restricted her life is, if she never relaxes at home at any time when visitors might come by.

This being a prequel, and a genre novel, we know that Daav would have made his immediate future much easier if he’d succumbed to the temptation to break off the contract with Bindan, but he hasn’t realised yet where his future lies. Nor should he have, at this point; his relationship with Aelliana is still at an early stage where it would be presumptuous for him to be making plans in that direction.

Though, speaking of the development of their relationship, the gift he gives her in this chapter is freighted with all kinds of significance, for all that it’s just a hair-tie. (And apart from the fact that he offers her, along with it, the determination to keep fighting past the first fall.) A few days ago, she probably wouldn’t have accepted it from him, a near-stranger — and not so long before that, she, the woman whose habit had been to hide from the world behind her hair, would have had no use for it.