Tag Archives: Maysl pen’Chala

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 21

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Riley’s Back Room
Fortunato’s Turf

In which Miri talks about the past, and Droi thinks about the future.

And one way in which things immediately become more interesting is that Rys’s role as leader of the freed Agents, with all its responsibilities and risks, has ceased to be merely hypothetical now that there is at least one freed Agent to lead.

It’s an interesting point about Droi perhaps not having a place on the ship of the Bedel when it returns. This chapter seems to be gesturing toward the possibility that she might by then discover that she has a place on Surebleak with Rys, which would not be quite the same as being left alone among gadje. The problem I see with this as a solution is that it revives the issue of the kompani needing to have a particular number of members at the end of chafurma, which was the necessity that drove Droi to start interacting with Rys in the first place: if both Rys and Droi leave, the kompani will be short, even if the kompani keeps their daughter, which I could see being a Balance demanded of them.

(Unless, it occurred to me as I composed the previous sentence, the newly freed Agents follow Rys’s path, and enough of them join the kompani to balance the loss. I’m suspicious of this idea, though: it seems a bit too neat, the kind of prediction that I’ve usually been wrong about before with Liaden novels.)

I was right about the nosy crews being connected; good to know my intuitions aren’t entirely off. Having some kind of underground-space-detecting technology explains how they knew where to look without necessarily knowing what was in the spaces they were looking for. The mention of an Insurance Committee suggests they might also be connected to the shakedowns Pat Rin has been dealing with. It says something about their ideas of neighbourliness (or at least of the behaviour of Bosses) that they assume they can nobble the Road Boss’s nearest neighbour without anybody noticing or caring.

It occurs to me that the kompani, who have been on Surebleak many generations “to learn what there was to know”, might well have learned things that would be relevant and useful to Kareen’s project, even if they weren’t interested in the social constructs of gadje particularly. Whether anybody in the story is likely to have this occur to them, and whether the Bedel would agree to share such knowledge, who knows?

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 12

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Tantara Floor Coverings
Surebleak port

In which Quin has a date.

The shop’s name, “Tantara”, is a variety of rare and valuable carpet – specifically, the variety of which the bel’Tarda heirloom carpet, bestowed on Pat Rin by Luken in “Heirloom”, is an example.

I still consider Beslin vin’Tenzing’s idea of Balance unreasonable, but on reflection I think I see where a Liaden would say I went wrong. Proper behaviour for a Liaden is to look out for oneself, one’s kin and dependents, to lend a hand to an ally if asked, and otherwise to pay every other person in the universe the compliment of assuming them capable of taking care of themselves. The desire to find a solution that serves everybody harmed in the attack on Solcintra would not be admirable to a Liaden, but instead an unconscionable failure to mind one’s own business. vin’Tenzing’s duty is to do no more than find a solution that serves vin’Tenzing, and if in the process somebody else’s solution gets stepped on it’s up the other person to take it up with vin’Tenzing as a fresh matter requiring Balance.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 37

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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 15

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In which Rys cannot remember.

Or rather, Rys can remember quite a bit, just not anything recent or useful in figuring out how he got here. And so he’s stuck with a terror of dragons with nothing to attach it to except an old memory of something that, whatever it was, wasn’t a Dragon – and a hope that arises from happy memories that are themselves older than he realises.

I notice that where Kezzi referred to Rys’s destination if he hadn’t been rescued as “the World Unseen”, Udari speaks of “the World Beyond”. Too soon to say, of course, whether that’s a difference with any particular significance to it.

Necessity’s Child – Chapter 12

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In which Rys awakens.

It seems that Silain’s guest is Rys Lin pen’Chala, agent of the Department of the Interior last seen heading for the warehouse district, where he apparently found something other than the safe hidey-hole he was looking for. He’s lost enough of his memory to be unsure where he is or how he got here, enough apparently to have lost the memory of working for the Department, but doesn’t seem to have lost all of his Department indoctrination with it – at least, assuming that his terror of Korval is an artifact of the Department and not part of either of the more peaceful-seeming life times he remembered as he woke. (And the irony is, it wasn’t Korval who left him broken-bodied on the doorstep of the Bedel; Korval would have tried to prevent it.)

Miri does Delm Korval really well for someone who’s come to it so recently and had little chance to practice. (Or is that true? It’s been nearly a year now since she and Val Con became delm, and they probably had to work it quite a bit during the Korval’s last few months on Liad.) In any case, we’ve seen people who’ve been delm longer than she’s been alive who don’t do it nearly so well.

I wonder what it says about me that I listen the story of Riva and what I think is: Okay, so horse twelve lost very thoroughly – but, just out of interest, how did horse seven do?