Tag Archives: Kayzin Ne’Zame

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 50

Shipyear 65
Tripday 287
Third Shift
16.00 hours

In which Shan and Priscilla consider the future.

I haven’t enjoyed re-reading Conflict of Honors quite so very much as I did some of the earlier novels in the re-read, but I think a large part of that may be that I’ve re-read it so many times already; the pleasure it gives me now comes from familiarity rather than the joy of discovery, which can be a bit of a problem when I’m using discovery to power the blog entries. There’s also the way it’s divided into so many little chapters, which can get a bit wearing at one chapter per day.


Tomorrow is the novella “Changeling”, and then we return to a distant, hitherto briefly-glimpsed part of the universe for the novel Fledgling.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 48

Shipyear 65
Tripday 182
Second Shift
8.30 hours

In which Priscilla is welcomed home.

There’s a moment in “Moonphase” where Priscilla stands in front of the Temple and speaks her name, and the reaction she gets (or doesn’t get) drives home to her the fact that she is no longer Priscilla Mendoza, Maiden of the Circle. The moment in this chapter where she stands in front of the mirror and speaks her name, and adjusts her self-image to accept the person she is now instead of defining herself by the person she was, feels like a bookend, or the far end of a period of transition.

I wonder where Lina did get the clothes she gives Priscilla. If they’re handmade to specification, it’s unlikely that they were ordered and made in the time Priscilla’s been asleep. It was mentioned earlier that she was head of her Line, so she’d have clothes of that kind for her own use, but would they fit Priscilla?

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 46

Shipyear 65
Tripday 181
Third Shift
16.00 hours

In which, having seen Priscilla comfortable at Shan’s request, Lina also does the inverse.

Another very short chapter, which I might have done better to have bundled with the previous one.

There’s probably something to be said about how Shan’s understanding of Priscilla’s casting-out is filtered through his own cultural knowledge and assumptions, but it’s not coming to me at the moment.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 36

Shipyear 65
Tripday 171
Fourth Shift
16.00 hours

In which Gordy seeks a dragon to accompany his tree.

I think this chapter heading also has an error in it. Several other chapter headings have said 16.00 hours, and they’ve all said Third Shift.

Shan’s approach to teaching piloting reminds me somewhat of his uncle’s in Scout’s Progress (or vice versa, when I’m reading in publication order).

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 33

Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Second Shift
6.00 hours

In which Priscilla has some new concepts to grapple with.

Priscilla believes Moonhawk is dead. Well, after all, she hasn’t heard from Moonhawk since she left the Temple, and there was that public and official announcement of Moonhawk’s death — and, even after what she’d been through, the long habit of assuming that a public and official announcement from the Temple would contain dependable information must have held weight. But reading in chronological order, and getting to “Moonphase” before this, casts the situation in a different light: No one dares mention to the Inner Circle that Moonhawk still lives… There is also a moment in “Moonphase” where Moonhawk tells Priscilla that she has power of her own, not borrowed from Moonhawk, but Priscilla had quite a bit on her mind at the time and it appears now that bit of information didn’t sink in.

This chapter heading, I am pretty sure, has a typo in it. Tripday 155 was long and incident-packed, but I don’t believe it has a second Second Shift after it had already progressed to Fourth Shift. (I have the Meisha Merlin edition; I wonder if it’s been fixed in the Baen edition.)

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 31

Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Fourth Shift
20.00 hours

In which Priscilla learns a thing or two about Shan.

The detail about Priscilla’s shirt caught my eye on this reading: one of those little things that might escape one’s notice if one hadn’t got the background detail about the way she used to dress back on Sintia.

It appears that there are, after all, creatures other than the norbears in the pet library; though I confess I haven’t the slightest idea what a sylfok might be.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 30

Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Third Shift
14.00 hours

In which Priscilla accepts a promotion.

Priscilla’s grasp of Liaden communication is improving. Not only does she have a repertoire of useful hand gestures for sentiments like Think nothing of it, this time she is able to separate her friend Shan from her boss Captain yos’Galan.

This is the first time Priscilla has thought of Moonhawk, at least where we could hear her, since she witnessed Moonhawk being declared dead, way back in the first chapter.

Is this the only time in the series Priscilla mentions a sibling?

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 29

Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Third Shift
12.30 hours

In which there are consequences of the encounter at the jump point.

When Kayzin Ne’Zame suggests to Shan that Priscilla should be promoted to second mate, I suspect that’s Shan being a trader and allowing himself to be reluctantly persuaded into the course of action he already wanted to take.

This chapter contains a hint that there’s an actual practical reason for Shan to carry that glass of wine with him everywhere. As he told Priscilla, he does drink from it sometimes. The rest of the time is perhaps so that the times when he needs it don’t stand out, to give away something that might produce a disadvantage.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 27

Shipyear 65
Tripday 155
Second Shift
6.00 hours

In which Sav Rid Olanek makes a countermove.

Just one of those details one notices: Near the beginning of the chapter, Priscilla wishes she might be told that she’d done something well, rather than the second mate’s understated “okay”. By the end of her chapter, she’s got her wish, although (as is so often the case with wishes) in circumstances that she might happily have foregone if given the choice.

One wonders precisely what instructions the mercenaries were given that their captain summarized as “he wanted you out of the race real bad”. I’d be inclined to assume that meant shoot-to-kill, but we were told earlier that death is not usually considered an appropriate way to achieve Balance, and I don’t think Sav Rid’s that far gone yet. Is he?

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 25

Shipyear 65
Tripday 148
Fourth Shift
20.00 hours

In which even a Mendoza of Sintia must deal with graceless people at parties.

Though Priscilla welcomes the intercession of Mr dea’Gauss and Judge Zahre as divine intervention, she might reasonably be inclined to doubt that that was what it was after it results in Ambassador Grittle’s outburst. And yet, I wonder; we know from the Moonhawk stories that the Goddess is not averse to steering her children through uncomfortable moments on the path to good outcomes, so it’s possible that there was a divine intervention and that the outburst was as much an intended part of it as the intercession. (Indeed, there are times when I suspect that the entire course of Priscilla’s life from that day in Diablo’s has been part of divine plan that we have yet to see the end of. It’s a hard road she’s been walking, but certain people seem to have spent the last few centuries building roadblocks over all the easy ones.)

Speaking of roadblocks, I take it that Shan’s shadowed expression in the last scene of the chapter is due to the reminder that, for all that they’re able to be comfortable and joke together, Priscilla still thinks of him first of all as Captain yos’Galan, with all the limits that implies on how they might interact. If she’d understood that she had the option of replying to her friend Shan instead of to her captain, and if she’d chosen to exercise that option, the conversation might have proceeded very differently.