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Conflict of Honors – Chapter 1

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Maidenstairs Plaza
Local Year 1002
Standard 1375

In which Moonhawk is dead, and has to find a new way to make a living.

Read immediately after “Moonphase”, this is pretty much just a coda, and there’s not a lot to add.

(Unless one starts in on the apparent inconsistencies between the timelines of the two accounts, which I’m trying not to.)

On reflection, I think it would probably work better, if one was prepared to bend one’s definition of chronological order a bit, to not read this immediately after “Moonphase”, and instead read it as a refresher of the lady’s situation immediately before embarking on the rest of Conflict of Honors.

…which of course means that I’ve worked myself around, by slow and careful stages, to the belief that the best way to read it is the way the authors presented it in the first place. How about that?

This chapter does add one important thing to the story: that, rather than hanging around in this city, or cloistering herself with the Silent Sisters (who reside at Caleitha, a town which was mentioned in passing in “Where the Goddess Sends”), the one who was called Moonhawk chooses to head off for the uncertain opportunities represented by a glow on the horizon. The cause of the glow is not named here, but subsequent chapters will show that her decision was to make for the spaceport and thence offworld.

(We still don’t know which city this is that the spaceport is attached to, by the way, unless this Maidenstairs is the same Maidenstairs as in “Moon’s Honor”, in which case this is Dyan City again. I’m not sure that’s a solid clue — for all we know, every Temple might have an area in front of it called Maidenstairs — but it seems plausible, since the two earlier Moonhawks were both from Dyan City as well.)

Tomorrow: “Fighting Chance”

Moonphase

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In which Priscilla Mendoza is cast out.

There’s a lot more in this story than I noticed the first time I read it, and much of it I’m not sure I have a solid grip on yet.

One thing I do feel confident saying is that the arc of the Moonhawk and Lute stories, from “Where the Goddess Sends” to here (and beyond, to the extent that Moonhawk and the Goddess continue to be mentioned) is a lot clearer to me after this re-read, and particularly with the addition of “Moon’s Honor”, which did a lot to clarify which details are recurring themes.

The tendency Moonhawk talks to Priscilla about in this story, of the Circle’s purpose being waylaid by the greed of power and personal importance, is one of those recurring themes. The impression I get is that Lute and Moonhawk have been acting as a counter to that tendency; one thing Moonhawk’s travels with Lute achieve, in both versions we’ve seen, is to remind her to think about the Temple’s role and its effects on the other people of the world (with the result, not shown but implied by Moonhawk’s nature, that having realised the Temple is out of line she’ll do what she can to put things right).

So it’s worrying that Moonhawk says here that the Circle having been keeping her apart from Lute, and keeping her in check by limiting the tools she has to work with. That means the power-hungry have had centuries to get hungrier and less thoughtful, and to bend the workings of the Temple toward their purposes. (I wonder who first starting restricting Moonhawk’s actions, and how much they understood of what they were doing.)

(A second thing I wonder about is the Names. It’s mentioned that there are fourteen living Names, which is the same number of Names who bound themselves to the Goddess’ path in Crystal Dragon — except that one of those was Lute, so they can’t be exactly the same fourteen. And the two Names Priscilla calls out during the climactic confrontation are modern-sounding names, not like “Moonhawk” or “Oatflower”. Added to something that was mentioned in “A Matter of Dreams”, the impression I get is that these days there are more than fourteen Names being reincarnated in the service of the Goddess, with perhaps a restriction that only fourteen may be incarnated at any one time. And that makes me wonder if there’s any deck-stacking going on, so that the Names who might want to resist the Temple’s slide from grace are being edged out by Names who support it.)

One of the later novels indicates that there is a Lute to go with this Moonhawk, who would be at this time still a halfling boy only a couple of years older than Priscilla. No wonder Moonhawk warns Priscilla that he can’t yet stand against the Circle directly. (A third thing I wonder is whether that means he will stand against the Circle some day. I can’t imagine Moonhawk and Lute letting them go on getting away with this forever.)

Tomorrow, we round off the tale of Priscilla’s departure with the Prologue to Conflict of Honors. If you’re not wanting to split things up, you can skip it until next week when we return and do the rest of Conflict of Honors, and we’ll see you in a couple of days.