In which Sinit safeguards the clan’s treasures.
I’m always pleased to have another opportunity to spend time with Sinit, who’s one of my favourite characters in the series.
It’s also (speaking now as the presumptuous author of a suggested chronological reading order) something of a relief after the last few stories to have one that says up-front exactly where it fits chronologically.
Continue reading
In which two men find new places and new names.
Khana’s question to Joolia about the meaning of “Jeef” turns out to be exactly what Bar Jan needs, exactly when he needs it, but I don’t understand what prompts Khana to ask the question in the first place. Has he just had that much practice at anticipating what Bar Jan will need?
Continue reading
Liad
In which Don Eyr fails to persuade Serana to leave him.
I was actually kind of surprised by how useful Don Eyr and Serana found the melant’i plays as a guide to Liaden behaviour; people who have tried that in other stories have had mixed success due to their source texts being unrealistic, melodramtic, or outright fraudulent.
Continue reading
Dutiful Passage
In Orbit
In which Priscilla learns some history.
The dateline doesn’t say what Dutiful Passage is in orbit around. It might be Krisko, since that’s what they were in orbit around the last time their location was mentioned, and they were loading extra weapons then and they’re loading extra weapons now. There’s been the dramatic business with Shan going to speak to Val Con in between, but there’s no reason that couldn’t have happened in orbit around Krisko too; all things considered, it didn’t actually take very long.
If Shan was seventeen when he recruited Seth, then Seth has been with the ship around twenty years. The story of that recruitment has echoes of Shan’s rescue of Ren Zel dea’Judan (“That’s my man, sir”), and for that matter of his hiring of Priscilla (“Always need a good pilot”, even if there’s no vacancies).
I was going to say that I was surprised Shan didn’t pass his discovery on to Nova and save her some trouble, but then I remembered that Plan B is effect and he doesn’t know where Nova is now.
We don’t, I think, know any of the people involved in the last contract between Korval and Erob, when the child came to yos’Galan. The only yos’Galan child of that generation we know of is Petrella, Shan’s grandmother, but we know both her parents and neither was of Erob, so there must have been another yos’Galan who died untimely.
All this talk about the close ties between Korval and Erob has brought on the realisation that they have similar designs for their clan badges: each has a dangerous winged creature flying over something tall and enduring. I wonder if the founders of Erob did that deliberately.
In which a pilot lives and dies in a family of shopkeepers.
Given the way Liaden clans tend to specialise each in a profession, the question of what happens when a child is born whose aptitudes do not suit the family business is one that appears a few times in the series. Clan Obrelt, it has to be said, handles the arrival of a pilot child with considerable grace (more, for instance, than Clan Korval has sometimes shown when handling the arrival of a non-pilot child, if I’m remembering correctly a particular flashback we won’t be getting to for some time yet).
There is no specific date given in the story itself, but the Partial Time Line places it in Standard Year 1390, a few years after Conflict of Honors. This invites speculation about whether Shan would have so readily come to the aid of a Clanless and cast-out person if he hadn’t already had the experience of getting to know the comparably-situated Priscilla. On the whole, I’m inclined to think he would have; Nova remarks in Conflict of Honors that his championing of Priscilla is only the most recent example of an established tendency to pick up stray puppies, and the fact that he’s immediately aware that Ren Zel’s casting-out was no reflection of Ren Zel himself (“politics, not balance”, as Mr dea’Gauss said of Priscilla) would tend to make his attitude toward it less respectful. (And while there are some Liadens who might comfortably treat with an outcast Terran and still feel obliged to shun an outcast Liaden, I don’t think Shan is one who privileges Liaden custom that way.)
On the other hand, the fact that Shan is carrying a single-button-press “crewmember down” emergency signal just might be a result of how many times Priscilla could have used such a thing during her first tour on the Passage.
I like the detail of the medic’s reaction to Shan finding a way through the Code to allow Ren Zel to be treated. Even though he was being Liaden-stoic about it a moment earlier, it can’t have been easy for him to have a man bleeding to death at his feet and not be able to do anything about it.
It only occurred to me on this most recent re-reading that when Delm Obrelt argues for Ren Zel keeping his license on the grounds that it balances Elsu being permitted to keep hers, he’s not just using a technicality in Ren Zel’s favour: he’s taking a veiled poke at Jabun, by alluding to the fact that Ren Zel faces death only because Jabun shielded his daughter from being convicted of misconduct that would have resulted in her losing her license if she’d lived.
Master’s Tower, Theopholis
Witch’s Hour
In which Balance is achieved.
Not the usual sort of settling of accounts one might expect at the end of an adventure story, but one which suits Priscilla’s character, and also helps demonstrate that “Balance” is not necessarily the same thing as “revenge”.
On which note, Delm Plemia clearly expects Korval and Priscilla to demand more in balance of Sav Rid’s follies than they actually do. It speaks to his melant’i that he doesn’t try to argue his way out of anything; he’s seen the evidence and he knows it’s a fair cop.
In which Mil Ton Intassi tells a story, and it has an effect.
“This House” is one of a very few Liaden stories that have no connection with Korval and their doings, and few indications of where it fits relative to the other stories. (Though, speaking of relatives, Mil Ton Intassi has the same surname as someone who has appeared in connection with Korval, a fact which went right past me when I read the story in isolation but hit me straight between the eyes as soon as I started reading it this time.) The only time cue is that it must be set some time after “A Day at the Races”, since skimmer racing was a new thing then and is an established thing in “This House”. At that, it’s probably set further after “A Day at the Races” than I’ve placed it, but since it doesn’t connect with any other story, I decided that grouping the skimmer stories together would be more appropriate than being strict about chronology in this case.
The story was originally written for an anthology in which each story was inspired by a song, and is itself inspired by the song “This House” from Janis Ian’s album Breaking Silence. The lyrics of the song are on Janis Ian’s web site, if you’re interested in comparing them. (But watch out; that link goes to a page that autoplays music.)
Tomorrow: Conflict of Honors, picking up from the second chapter. (The first chapter/prologue, we did already, last week.)
In which Aelliana proposes a solution.
Once again it’s Aelliana who gets to make the decisive move instead of Daav swooping in and rescuing her. (I may be labouring this point a bit. But seriously, how many novels are there where that happens?)
I am particularly interested by the part of Aelliana’s proposal which has her paying the blood-price for Ran Eld’s death when Sinit becomes Delm. There are several things going on here. For one, it gives Mizel an inducement to accept Sinit as nadelm, where her mother’s actions have cast doubt on the hope that she might accept as much simply because it’s the sensible course. It also serves a practical purpose in ensuring that when Sinit becomes delm there will be an amount of money she can rely on, no matter how the clan’s fortunes may have suffered in the mean time. There’s also some shifty work going on with the melant’i of the situation. I still don’t think that Aelliana truly owes Mizel anything for Ran Eld’s death, but by accepting the blood-price as her debt she’s making sure Mizel can’t try to stick it to anybody else (such as Daav); and by specifying that the payment will be made to Birin Caylon’s successor, the result will be that Birin Caylon gets the promise of an apology but never the apology itself.
In which Mizel makes a counteroffer.
Chonselta Healer Hall seems to me a good choice for Aelliana to stay while the negotiations are settled. It’s definitely neutral territory, leaving Mizel no grounds to suggest that Aelliana would remain under Korval’s influence as would be the case with Trealla Fantrol or Glavda Empri. (Personally, I doubt that Lady yo’Lanna would allow anybody to exert undue influence on a guest, ally or no, but that wouldn’t stop Mizel making the suggestion.) In addition, it’s in Chonselta, so Mizel can’t argue that Aelliana is being kept away from her family. (Not that I expect Mizel to make any attempt to visit Aelliana even if she does move back to Chonselta, but again it’s a strategic thing to argue.) Conversely, it’s a place where Daav can be assured that Aelliana won’t come under undue pressure from Mizel, particularly since specifying Master Kestra’s involvement means that there will someone involved who knows what Aelliana has already been through.
(And on that note, I admire the wording of Daav’s response to Mizel’s demand, which acknowledges the desirability of ensuring that Aelliana not be coerced without expressing or acceding to any specific suggestion about who might be doing the coercing.)
In which Aelliana attends her first gather, and sweeps all before her.
The guest list at yo’Lanna’s gather has a nice sense of history, being a mix of new people, people who were at Korval’s gather in chapter 26 of Scout’s Progress, and people who were at Etgora’s gather in “Choice of Weapons”. In the last category is Etgora Himself, the father of the young man whose enthusiasm Daav was obliged to dampen. (There’s also a reference to that event when Daav and the hostess are exchanging greetings.)
Less charmingly, there are also echoes of the other story set around that time: “The Beggar King”, in which pilots were mysteriously going missing, and Daav was not able to find those responsible, only oblige them to suspend their activities for a time. That time, it appears, has now passed, and pilots are going missing again.
The bond between Daav and Aelliana is developing, however slowly; Daav now possesses the ability to know without looking when Aelliana enters the room, the inverse of which Aelliana has had since the beginning of the novel.