Colemeno Port
Great Hall
In which it may be accounted misfortune to lose one kinsperson, but two looks like carelessness.
Betya seelyFaire’s account of her ancestor’s reasons for coming to the Redlands have a noticeable resonance with Dyoli’s reasons for doing likewise.
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Dutiful Passage
Approaching Jump
In which the Master Trader and his apprentice return to work.
According to my notes, this is the first substantial mention of Gordy — not counting a couple of times when people have mentioned him while running through the members of Clan Korval — since I Dare. I hadn’t realised it was that long.
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Langlastport
In which Broker Plishet is not as clever as he thinks he is.
Here, one of the threads tying the two plot lines together is the consideration of melant’i.
On Padi’s side, there’s her awareness of the fact that her current melant’i is that of a peaceful trader, not of a pilot in a dangerous situation with several youngsters depending on her. (Which itself shows her development beginning from the beginning of the novel, when she was inclined to fall back into that familiar melant’i whenever uncertain.)
I’m not sure how much furtherer Admiral Bunter is going to get in his studies by turning to melant’i plays; I get the impression, from earlier mentions, that they tend toward extreme situations of the kind where a person is so hedged about by necessity that the only way forward is the death of their dearest friend or whatever. (Recall that Anne in Local Custom was guided somewhat in her understanding of Er Thom by the Liaden literature she’d read, and didn’t always find it a useful guide.) I’m also a bit dubious about his choice of illustrious expert, who by his name is Terran rather than Liaden; on top which is the characterisation of melant’i plays as “exotic”. Then again, the Admiral is himself an outsider to Liaden culture, so perhaps an outsider’s description is what he would find useful.
Langlastport
The Torridon Hotel
In which there is conversation after dinner.
I don’t know if it’s significant that Shan describes the Liaden tongue as “the language of home” when speaking to the jeweller, after all the reminders there have been that the children of Korval need to stop thinking of Liad as home. Probably it’s just that that’s a conventional phrase and the situation is not appropriate for a more precise description.
I also don’t know if it’s significant that we’re getting a reminder now of Master Moonel, who appeared in Local Custom. That was back when Shan was a small boy, and Moonel was already the most respected jeweller on Liad, so it is not a surprise to learn now that he has since died. (Shan mentions that his shop stands empty; I wonder if that’s a sign that it happened recently, or perhaps that he was so respected nobody wishes to try taking his place.)
Possibly it is the death that matters — it makes two scenes in a row where the subject of death has come up in proximity with Padi, which helps things remain ominous even as her conversation with her father seems to be going well.
Day 51
Standard Year 1393
Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse
In which the Ring passes.
That makes two people in a short space of time who have spoken to Val Con of Korval’s responsibilities under the Contract, which is a subject that doesn’t often come up in conversation outside of Korval. It might be that, as close allies, they know something most don’t, but I think it’s less that the Contract is some kind of secret as that most people who don’t know Korval well don’t take the idea seriously. (And at that, I’m not entirely sure Emrith Tiazan wasn’t being sarcastic. We might infer that she believes in Korval’s belief in the Contract but doesn’t entirely believe in the Contract herself.)
The exchange when Korval-pernard’i removes the ring from her finger and Delm Korval places the ring on his own finger reminds me of something that I didn’t remark on when it happened: Pat Rin put the false ring the Department gave him on the second finger of his left hand, Korval-in-Trust’s finger, not the third finger, the delm’s finger. The Department was expecting that Pat Rin would happily be delm if there were nobody left to tell him he couldn’t, but what they weren’t considering is that as long as Pat Rin lives, there will always be one person of Korval judging his suitability: Pat Rin himself. Even in the eventuality that he must take up the delm’s ring because there is nobody else left, Pat Rin doesn’t count himself worthy to take up the delm’s melant’i with it, only to hold the ring in trust until Korval is able to produce someone qualified to be delm.
We also get, speaking of that incident, a detailed description of the true ring and thus the signs by which Pat Rin knew the false ring to be false. I wonder what it says about the Department that they didn’t know about the signs of wear. It might just be that they couldn’t find any way of examining the ring closely without arousing suspicion. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it never even occurred to them to look; they might have assumed that a wealthy Liaden family would always get any damage quickly repaired.
Day 50
Standard Year 1393
Lytaxin
Erob’s Clanhouse and Garden
In which kin share news of kin.
The bit about Shan and Nova having different preferred languages for casual speech is a nice reflection of the fact their lives have taken different paths despite them being siblings. Shan was raised as a Terran among Terrans for the first few years of his life, and although he’s embraced his Liaden heritage, he spends much of his time as a Trader out in the wide universe and often surrounded by Terrans again. Nova was born and raised on Liad, and her line of work keeps her there for the most part; she must have left the planet a few times, if only to earn her pilot’s licence, but this here may well be the furthest she’s ever been from home.
I’m not sure I understand how Val Con knew about his mother, but I don’t feel too bad about that because it sounds like Val Con isn’t too sure himself.
Day 50
Standard Year 1393
Lytaxin
Erob’s Medical Centre
Catastrophe Unit
In which healing goes forth.
Erob’s medical technicians think a lot of themselves, don’t they? To be fair, I suppose they have a right to, most of the time; it’s just that this situation is unlike anything they’ve been trained for.
A couple of unexplained visions occur. Shan gets a vision of Moonhawk to match his vision of Lute last week (I really hope those get elaborated on some day), and Miri gets a vision of Val Con in Jelaza Kazone’s garden. Val Con’s easy enough to explain, given the lifemate link, but it seems unlikely, even given the givens, that he and she have literally travelled all the way back to Liad; perhaps it’s Val Con’s metaphor for some safe space within himself that he retreated to for protection from the damage that was unwittingly being done him. It might not be an inappropriate metaphor, at that; the way the Tree meddles with its mobile branches, it might be personally responsible for Val Con’s survival even if it’s not directly present.
I like the moment where Shan thinks of the room he’s in as the “room of catastrophes”, leaving it open whether it’s a room in which catastrophes are dealt with, per the official designation, or a room in which catastrophes are created.
Day 50
Standard Year 1393
Lytaxin
Erob’s House
In which Edger gives a demo.
A nice concise summary from Shan of what a Healer is, and isn’t.
An interesting touch in the med tech’s rant, the complaint that Edger and Sheather are “not of Erob’s house medical staff”. Separately, it’s reasonable to be concerned that they are not certified medical staff, and understandable to be concerned that they are not of Erob’s staff (and therefore are unknowns). But with that wording it isn’t just the sum of those two concerns, but has the flavour of an ingroup-outgroup bias (“Erob’s house medical staff are the best; I am of Erob’s house medical staff and these persons are not; I am obviously right and they are obviously wrong”).
The similarity Shan sees between the Turtles and the Tree is intriguing. It doesn’t mean they’re related, particularly since the similarity seems to be one of kind rather than detail, but more like another facet of their other commonalities, being very old and having more to them than meets the eye.
War Zone
In which there is a battle for Lytaxin.
Of course the Tree is at the centre of the protected area. But I don’t think that means that Erob is not important to Korval, or that its inclusion in the protection is only incidental, only that the Tree is the most valuable of all the valuable things Korval sought to protect. Considered rightly, I think, it says how much honor Korval did Erob by giving them a Tree; it shows that a Tree is no mere ornament, but a thing which Korval is obliged to protect for as long as it stands, and there are many clans that Korval would not choose to allow to benefit from such protection, even incidentally.
This chapter sees the flowering of seeds planted near the beginning of this novel, or even earlier. The development of the Val Con and Miri’s lifemate bond is one of the more obvious. Another is Pod 77’s attack on the Yxtrang battleship, which uses a chain of events Nelirikk tried to point out, and was ignored, back when he was still Nelirikk No-Troop.
Erob’s Boundary
War Zone
In which Val Con has a plan which is too audacious to fail.
Over the course of this book, I’ve been having trouble figuring out what it means for a Liaden to be one of “the line direct”. Earlier, Nova said that Miri’s heirloom showed her grandmother was one of the line direct and that would make her easier to identify, and I thought maybe that meant the line direct was whichever family line a clan’s delm was chosen from: Line Tiazan in Miri’s case, or Line yos’Phelium in Korval. But here is Shan counting himself and Priscilla as members of the line direct, so at least in Korval’s case it’s not just yos’Phelium.
But now that I’m thinking about it, I recall a scene back in Scout’s Progress where the term is used to distinguish between someone who might wear Korval’s crest because they’re actually a member of the clan and someone who might wear Korval’s crest because they’re an employee in one of Korval’s businesses. So, I guess that’s what it means, and that does fit the bit with Miri’s heirloom: knowing that her ancestor was an actual member of Clan Erob and not just someone who happened to work for them at some point would make it easier to narrow down who she is. (I’m not sure I see the usefulness of the concept in general: wouldn’t every person be in the line direct of their own clan? But then again, Liadens don’t really do “in general”; there’s always a context. Whenever a Liaden says “the line direct”, the meaning would always be outlined by who’s speaking, who they’re speaking to, and what hats they’re wearing.)