Tag Archives: Jon dea’Cort’s tea

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 32

In which Nadelm Mizel demands to see Master Binjali.

I had not noticed on earlier readings how much Ran Eld was bothered by Clonak’s facial hair. (Nor, consequently, that when Clonak strokes his mustache he’s probably deliberately playing up to see how much more bothered he can make him.)

Frad’s remark that Ran Eld doesn’t appear to appreciate Aelliana’s flight points out another aspect of Ran Eld’s blinkered view that I hadn’t considered previously. It’s not so much that he doesn’t know how impressive the piloting was, since I can see where a non-pilot might not grasp that — but there’s no indication, in the last chapter or this, that Ran Eld has even noticed that Aelliana helped save somebody’s life. As far as Ran Eld is concerned, this is apparently an entirely irrelevant detail.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 23

In which Aelliana receives the fruits of her previous day’s work.

A relatively quiet chapter, after all the excitement, though perhaps the calm before a storm. It worries me that I can’t remember what it portends that Aelliana has been left undisturbed, nor why the house is so quiet.

“She thought the tables had been revised fifty or sixty years ago!” I suppose when eight years is half one’s lifetime, the difference between eight years and fifty is not so significant as all that.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 16

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.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 15

In which one might expect tea to be drunk.

In the Binjali crew, Aelliana has found not only comrades but family. What Jon offers is, as Aelliana identifies, a paraphrase of what a clan is expected to offer its members according to the Code (as was quoted at the head of Chapter 4). Her description of what is asked of her in return is likewise, if memory serves, a paraphrase from the Code, and appears somewhere else in the series (though I don’t at the moment recall precisely where) explicitly identified as the duty one owes to one’s clan.

It almost goes without saying that Aelliana’s actual family is not a good model of either end of that set of duties.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 13

In which Clonak ter’Meulen is in love.

Though why he picks that precise moment, of all the moments in the conversation, to decide this, I am not sure.

The Binjali crew seems to have adopted Aelliana as a comrade. Jon says it clearest, when she tries to thank him and he says that it’s the same as they’d do for any of their own, no gratitude demanded.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 12

In which Aelliana lifts as planned.

Another of Cantra’s log entries that doesn’t entirely accord with her history as revealed in the prequels. In particular, her claim to be “a sport, child of a long line of random elements”, considered from an in-universe perspective, can not be anything other than a deliberate lie.

Yardkeeper Gat’s declaration — “I don’t care what her name is or how good she can add” — is interesting. Even as he declares that Aelliana’s reputation cuts no ice in the present context (which is very likely true) he’s taking the time to show that he recognises the name and the reputation. Daav didn’t tell him she was a mathematician.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 11

In which Daav and Aelliana meet for the first time.

Daav has part of his wish now: someone who knows him only as himself, without any idea of his rank and status.

Which is probably the only way they could have made a connection; if Aelliana had known he was Delm Korval, it would likely have been a disaster, though for the opposite reason from most of the women he’s had to deal with. She’s not the type to play up to him because of his wealth or rank, but she’d have been even more terrified of him than Syntebra el’Kemin was of Er Thom. And as Delm Korval speaking with one not of his clan, he would have limits on his conversation options that would prevent him from soothing her the way he is able to as just-Daav in the place where everyone speaks Comrade.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 6

In which Daav and Aelliana each turn their steps toward Binjali Repair Shop.

The game of pikit or piket was mentioned in Balance of Trade, where the twins taught Jethri to play it. I said then that the name was reminiscent of the Regency game of piquet, but what little we were told of the gameplay wasn’t. We see more of the gameplay here, and it reminds me rather of poker. (Though it must be said that my experience of card games is not broad, so many games remind me of poker.)

Var Mon denies having set Aelliana on Vin Sin chel’Mara, and it’s true that she chose to challenge the chel’Mara on her own initiative; but it’s also true that the opportunity and the impulse wouldn’t have arisen had not Var Mon invited her to tour the casino in search of practical applications of her mathematics, so Rema’s accusation may be basically correct.

Master dea’Cort was mentioned in “Pilot of Korval” as one of Daav’s instructors at the Scout Academy. There’s also a Scout named Jon dea’Cort back in “Phoenix”; if this Jon is the same man, he must be well into a hale old age by now — that was nearly seventy years ago, and he was already a full Scout then.