Six of Us
Jenarian Station
In which Claidyne and Rys are brought up to speed.
We’ve encountered Lucks and Rememberers before, but I think this is the first mention of Finders and of Hearth-Warmers.
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In which Mar Tyn wishes to help his friends.
I like Serana’s “we will treat it as it deserves”. Such a polite and gracious way to say they intend to have nothing to do with it.
Serana and Don Eyr have experienced the dangers of a bad “protector”, and the limitations of even a good one, and it’s understandable that they prefer to rely on their own resources.
That little discourse on the nature of Luck is interesting. I wonder if Seignur Veeoni has ever had an opportunity to speak to the Lucks about their work.
In which Mar Tyn asks an unaccustomed question.
It seems a bit late in proceedings to be introducing a whole new category of probability-workers, but I suppose that if there are only a few of them and they keep to themselves, and their gifts only affect their immediate vicinity — and the Healers and dramliz choose to have nothing to do with them — one can understand why we haven’t heard of them or seen them at work before now.
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In which the luck moves roughly around Mar Tyn eys’Ornstahl.
We have seen one of the gambling Hells of Solcintra Low Port, and a luck-for-hire, before, in “The Beggar King”.
The detail about the Luck being provided with “as much cold tea as you can stomach” is specific enough that it has to mean something. I presume that the idea is camoflage; unless closely inspected, a glass of cold tea would look much like the glasses everyone else is carrying, while being less likely to impair the drinker’s wits at a time when he needs them to stay sharp.
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In which Daav yos’Phelium and Clarence O’Berin do not become friends.
This story follows close on the heels of “A Choice of Weapons”, with Daav still on the same leave of absence from the Scouts and still not convinced that he will have it in him to sit on Liad and be suitably delm-like when the time comes.
The legitimate front for the Juntavas on Liad is a company called Triplanetary Freight Forwarding; if the name is to be taken literally, I wonder which the other two planets are. (Come to think of it, I wonder if it’s a shout-out to “Doc” Smith.)
Something that struck me on this re-read, with this story coming so soon after several others relating one way and another to the Liaden rules about face-touching: at one point, the luck-for-hire at the casino places her hand on Daav’s face, and he thinks nothing of it except to observe the callouses on her hand. This seems a remarkably cool response after how firm Samay pin’Aker was on the subject of hand-to-face contact in Trade Secret. (This story was, of course, written some considerable time before that one; perhaps the full details of what Liadens could and could not do with their faces were yet unclear.)
Those callouses, though, are said to be the same as the callouses on Daav’s own hands, which suggests that Zara Chance is herself a Scout, or more likely a former Scout. I wonder if she’s working for the same people as that other seductive former Scout we encountered not so long ago.
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Tomorrow: Local Custom