Dutiful Passage
Rostermin Breakout
In which Shan yos’Galan reads his mail.
Shan’s statement about “our time in this space” implies that he thinks Lute can’t manifest on the ship while it’s in Jump. I can’t think of anything specific to give him that idea, and he may just be fishing, but on the other hand I don’t at the moment recall any specific event that contradicts it.
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Volmer
In which yos’Galan and Carresens begin an exchange.
The other thought I’d had about the people on the cover — in fact, the first thought I had on seeing it, and the only possibility I’d seriously entertained before Mar Tyn and Dyoli showed up — was that it was Padi accompanied by a new character we hadn’t met yet. I’d been becoming less confident about that possibility recently, as we got so far into the book without encountering any new character who fit the bill. I believe we have him now.
(I’ve commented before that I seem to have a tendency to ask questions and make guesses one chapter before the answer shows up. I consider that this says good things about how well paced the books are.)
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Dutiful Passage
Millsap Orbit
In which Padi has a long day.
Shan has a plan: to visit the Redlands, which it turns out is not one country, or even one planet, but a system with three inhabited planets.
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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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Tarona Rusk
Langlast Departure
In which Tarona Rusk takes stock of herself.
I think that when Tarona Rusk assumes that Shan intentionally set her up as a weapon against the Department, she’s making the usual mistake of the Department-trained of projecting their own methods and motives onto Korval. As accounted in Alliance of Equals, the two motivations for his actions that she dismisses out of hand are the two that were most on his mind at the time, and far from expecting her to take on the Department he expected her to want help staying away from them.
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Dutiful Passage
Langlast Departure
In which Shan and Padi get some rest.
Now we have some familiar faces, and a sense of where this story fits in the series. It’s only a day or two since the end of Alliance of Equals, so this is taking place around the same time as Neogenesis. (At least to start with.)
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Admiral Bunter
In which Padi accepts her nature.
And so Aunt Anthora’s gift does come back into relevance – and now, considering also how interested she was to learn Padi had opened it, and what the occasion of that was, I’m wondering if Anthora somehow intended it to assist in Padi’s transition.
Healspace
In which yos’Galan does what needs to be done.
Noting that this chapter is all about Langlast, with nothing about Tolly and Admiral Bunter, I wonder if next chapter is going to be the inverse, and leave us waiting to find out what became of Padi.
I don’t quite understand what Padi’s disappearance signifies, but I don’t for a moment believe that she’s dead.
(I wonder where Lute has got to…)
Admiral Bunter
In which things are concealed.
Padi has finally had an opportunity to do the thing she was too-ready to do at the beginning of the novel, and found that she doesn’t like it.
As I follow Tolly’s reasoning, the problem is that there’s no certainty about what Admiral Bunter will do once the core mandate is removed. The Admiral says, now, that he trusts Tolly, and he might even mean it, now – but once Tolly has restored his freedom, he’ll be faced with the immediate situation of another person in a position to do him over the way Inki did, or worse, which is a definite problem. And, as Tolly says, the Admiral’s toolset for dealing with definite problems has historically tended toward immediate lethality as the best and only solution.
I’m a bit bemused that Tarona Rusk fell for Shan’s false compliance so easily. Partly, I suppose, it’s that she sees what she wants and expects to see; and also that what she sees of Shan is only what he wants her to see. I get the feeling that, for all she mocked him for being only a Healer, it’s his Healer training that’s giving him the advantage here.
The Garden of Gems
Langlastport
In which there are attacks from multiple sides.
It’s still not clear whether this is one set of co-ordinated attacks, or separate attacks in space and on land that happen to coincide. Once Tarona Rusk declared herself an agent of the Department, and the people seeking Padi likewise, I was prepared to conclude that the attack on the Passage was also the work of the Department; after all, as we’ve been reminded, attacks under cover of rightful customs activity are a thing they’ve done before. But then there’s Priscilla’s Seeing that one or more of the attacks is motivated by “some local chief’s bid for celebrity” – presumably Plishet. Perhaps Plishet is working with the Department because they’ve persuaded him they can give him something he wants?
I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve heard of a dramliz working for the Department voluntarily. It’s a fairly horrifying prospect.
The implication that Shan could have been a full dramliz if he had wanted to be is interesting, both in connection with the unfolding pattern of Lute’s lives and in light of his statement to Padi that it’s not possible to choose not to be dramliz.