Tag Archives: Kezzi

Necessity’s Child – Epilogue

7 Replies

In which Rys Lin pen’Chala goes home.

What Syl Vor is missing, I think, when he says that he is only a boy, is that after his experiences at the Rock he wasn’t only a boy.

Third iteration of the question of a missing ship, and on carefully re-reading it I realise that when Val Con says he’s heard from his sister he’s probably talking about Anthora, after she went through Rys’s mind checking for traces of the Department, and not that Nova brought him in on the earlier discussion. So, if this is a separate discussion, the subject of the earlier query probably was the Bedel ship after all.

(One of the free perks of reading this blog is, and will probably remain till the end, that you get to see me prove myself wrong in real time, sometimes more than once on the same issue.)

The status report on Momma Liberty (out of Waymart, I notice) contains a couple of interesting hints. Apart from establishing that Jasin is not only alive but flourishing, it’s notable for the absence of her brother in his former position of authority or in any other. Normal attrition, or did he get busted by his family over what he did to Rys? Or did he meet, in some dark alley, an agent of the Department tasked with tying off loose ends?

Coming up: “Skyblaze”, “Roving Gambler” and “The Rifle’s First Wife”, and then Dragon Ship.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 37

3 Replies

In which the first day of school is an exciting time for everybody.

Rys says explicitly that he knew when Agent bar’Obin explained the mission that he wasn’t going to survive it, but it’s also implied that Agent bar’Obin, who is inside the building she’s about to blow up, doesn’t expect to survive either. The Department doesn’t care for the lives of its people.

I want to note that there are quite a few taxis in this chapter, with at least three and probably more simultaneously present outside the school at one point. I’ll have more to say on that subject in a couple of days.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 36

1 Reply

In which everybody has plans for the first day of school.

In the author’s note to one of her books, Connie Willis suggests that all the best stories with heartwarming/uplifting endings have a moment not long before the ending where it seems that every chance of a happy ending has been destroyed. Here we are now at that point in Rys’s story.

The horrifyingly plausible thing about Agent bar’Obin’s revelation is that although we know enough about Rys Lin pen’Chala before he fell into the hands of the Department to know he wasn’t the kind of person who would want to destroy a shipload of Terrans (including a friend) because one of them mistreated him, we also know enough about the Department to know that he might have become such a person by the time they were done with him.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 35

2 Replies

In which Rys has a reunion.

But of course it doesn’t occur to Syl Vor that Ms ker’Eklis was asking something of him in advance of his age and ability; he’s used to living under the Plan B conditions which regularly did the same.

At last we have a name for Rys’s former colleague – and it’s one that has appeared before in this novel. Isphet bar’Obin was present, credentialed as a member of the Blair Road Patrol, when Mike Golden interviewed the criminals who mugged Rys. Several details about that scene seem much more significant, reading it again now, starting with the description of her eye colour, moving on to the fact that Mike only assumes she’s a Scout, and finishing up with the bit where Mike delegates to her the task of discovering the owner of a knife found among the muggers’ possessions.

And this naturally explains how she came to be in the bakery during the meeting, in such an artfully covered position that I assumed at first she was one of the Road Patrol assigned to be Nova’s backup: it’s because she was. How very amusing for her.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 34

3 Replies

In which lightning strikes.

I don’t think Ms ker’Eklis’s argument about time pressure really stands up. It’s true that a pilot may need to field an answer to a problem in less than thirty seconds, with lives hanging in the balance – but that’s one of the reasons why children Syl Vor’s age aren’t allowed to be fully-qualified pilots. At Syl Vor’s age, that kind of performance is a goal to work toward, not an ability to be expected.

(I wrote that sentence and then had to stop and think about why it sounded familiar. It’s because it echoes what Silain told Nova about one of the problems Kezzi has as the youngest sister with no near age-mates: people sometimes get impatient with her because they forget she’s not yet capable of whatever they want from her.)

I would also say that her example doesn’t actually fit the case she’s arguing, because when a pilot has to come up with a solution in a hurry, it’s the solution that matters, and Syl Vor got that; it’s not often necessary for a pilot to show his working in an emergency. In fact, it’s been made clear previously that a pilot in charge will generally get, and insist on if it’s not offered, authority to act first and explain later in emergencies, precisely because if you’ve got thirty seconds to implement a solution the last thing you need is to stop and give a detailed explanation.

Regarding the lesson that a person of melant’i responds to provokation by noting the circumstances so they may be Balanced in due time, a Terran might say that Liadens believe in revenge being a dish best served cold, but I think it’s more that for Liadens revenge is a dish best served with precision. If one gets angry and leaps to retaliate immediately, one may make a mess of things, and one may miss out on a better opportunity that would have come if one had waited.

The card Kezzi’s working on resembles the Tower card from the Tarot deck, both in the picture and the story it represents. The story of the card is another thing in this chapter that echoes: it’s the card Rys might have drawn if he’d drawn a card and if the cards really could see the future.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 33

Leave a Reply

In which Rys goes for a mug.

There are several things to be suspicious of in this chapter, but I don’t know if I’m suspicious of them only because I know where the story’s going; I can’t remember what I thought of them the first time I read the novel.

Droi’s anger, “anger that was more than half vey“, is interesting, both for the half that is vey (that is, inspired by the gift by which she sees things that others don’t see), and for the half that isn’t.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 32

1 Reply

In which Kezzi’s mother meets Kezzi’s grandmother.

And now I’m thinking I may have been over-hasty in concluding that my younger self was wrong about which ship Kezzi was interested in; Silain’s reaction suggests that she, at least, is thinking of the Bedel ship. Of course, since Kezzi never actually said anything specific to identify the ship, everybody in the story as well as out is left to make their own conclusions. Perhaps Kezzi was thinking about the Bedel ship, but the Bedel subsequently put their heads together and find a less hazardous ship to be interested in.

It is interesting that the woman who is no friend of Rys was already settled in the bakery before the Bedel arrived: that suggests that she wasn’t merely following them hoping for a chance to speak to Udari, but somehow knew they would be there at that time. (I’m inclined to consider it unlikely that she just happened to be stopping for a bite to eat at that particular moment.) I’m also inclined to consider it unlikely that she has a source of information among the Bedel, or that she learned anything from Nova or from Mike Golden. Recalling who else knew about the meeting in time to be settled beforehand, I could believe that she has some way of finding out what the Patrol is up to, and learned of the meeting courtesy of Mike’s request for backup, but as far as I recall Mike didn’t tell the Patrol who the meeting would be with.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 31

Leave a Reply

In which Dmitri is remembered, and Rys remembers.

Kezzi’s kiss on the cheek is one of those moments that has extra resonance if one knows things from other parts of the series; it’s a gesture that has a particular significance in Liaden culture, which Kezzi probably isn’t aware of. I don’t think it was ill-done, since it’s not inappropriate for a sister to kiss a brother thus, but by that token it underlines, in a way Kezzi perhaps didn’t consciously intend, that Rys and Kezzi are inhabiting the melant’i of brother and sister.

This is the first time Rys has put a name to the great winged shadow which brought down fire and destruction in his memory of the death of his clan. The first time he remembered it, it went nameless, and seemed to fit in with his dread of dragons; that he now recalls its true nature fits in with his progress in coming to understand what’s happened to him and what he truly has to fear.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 30

3 Replies

In which a packed day draws to a close.

Silain has a good point, which I hadn’t considered when I was reading this novel for the first time and expecting Rys to wind up being accepted into the kompani. He fits in well enough now, but as he himself said earlier they can’t make a definite decision until they know how he might be changed by regaining his lost memories.

Another thing I hadn’t properly considered when I was reading this novel for the first time is that when Kezzi asked if it might be possible to find a ship that had been lost, I thought she was thinking of the ship that the headman and the luthia were discussing a while ago, the overdue ship that was to have come for the kompani at the end of their chafurma. Of course it isn’t; even if the headman and the luthia hadn’t decided on a wait-and-see course about that, I don’t think any child of the Bedel would tell gadje about their ship, let alone invite gadje to track it down. (In fairness to my younger self, I don’t think we’ve actually been shown Kezzi learning about the ship that she is asking about, which may have thrown me off.)

I think giving Peter and Luce another chance to find their place at school is the right decision. Maybe they’ll take it, and everybody will be happy, and if they don’t at least they’ll be somewhere someone’s got an eye on them. Between those two possibilities, isn’t that pretty much the point of the child-off-the-street policy?

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 29

Leave a Reply

In which it is sometimes necessary to attend to one repair at a time.

The two plot strands in this chapter are connected by the issue of rushing things: Udari, inspired by having something to work with, attempts to rush Rys’s recovery, with no good result; Pat Rin finds that circumstances are forcing them to rush the opening of the new consolidated school.

(If it can be said that the opening is rushed when the school building is so far behind schedule, thanks to the people Rys used to work for. And that reminds me that one of those people is still on the loose, so the fact that there has been no further sabotage on the school might just mean that they’re having another go at lulling the Dragon into a false sense of security.)