Surebleak Port
Office of the Road Boss
In which Delm Korval has visitors.
Well, there’s an answer to my question about how things would have gone if Emissary Twelve had done this on Liad, anyway.
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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which the Tree reaches out to a visitor, and Quin decides to go for a walk.
kin’Joyt professes to be offended that Korval is (supposedly) charging money for viewing the house, instead of having a free open day like properly civilised people, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her to protest by, say, refusing to buy a ticket. Then again, I get the impression kin’Joyt is willing to embrace an opportunity to be offended by Korval’s behaviour.
The mode of captain-to-passenger is an interesting choice; technically, that’s no longer an option that lies within Korval’s melant’i, since the Contract that made Korval the Liadens’ captain was concluded. It efficiently announces the delm’s identity, though; everybody still remembers, and if it’s no longer within Korval’s melant’i, there is yet nobody else who can lay claim to it.
“Lefty” pen’Erit’s new name follows the existing Surebleak pattern of This Is What Your Name Sounds Like To Me, though I had to go and look his personal name up to be sure because it’s been mentioned less often than the other examples we’ve seen.
Surebleak
In which there are meetings and partings.
I’m still inclined to the idea that Tolly is the specialist Jeeves is sending with Tocohl. Conversely, this implies that Jeeves is the colleague who encouraged Tolly to settle on Surebleak, which raises the interesting question of what enterprise they might have been colleagues in.
I haven’t the faintest idea what High Judge Falish Meron (whose name is given here for the first time) might want with Val Con. Based on past performance, this probably means I haven’t been paying attention and it will be obvious as soon as it’s said.
Smealy’s meeting with Miri is sure to go badly for somebody, but I’m not confident in guessing who. Miri might send him out with his tail between his legs, the way Val Con did, but he’ll be more inclined to fight back this time, because he needs a success to show his colleagues. He might be tempted to do something foolish because Miri is small and female, in which case he’d be making a mistake in underestimating Miri – not just because she’s ex-merc and Korval, but because she grew up on Surebleak, and was pretty tough already before she was either of those other things. I suspect the Syndicate Bosses are similarly underestimating Surebleak’s population in thinking the campaign of examples will make them roll over.
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which Kamele has a matter for the Delm of Korval.
The first meeting between Kamele and the Delm of Korval went rather better than I was expecting, the first time I read this; I particularly admire Val Con’s feat in navigating around the issue of Theo’s father’s name. However, it’s only a temporary measure; I can’t see them getting away with leaving him unnamed all the way until he returns to explain himself. (And likewise, the several complications involved in the situation of “Father’s first alliance”.)
To be fair to him, I don’t think he intends to hide the truth from Kamele; it is only that he’s being selective and giving her first the bits she needs to hear, while leaving the more confusing and worrying details for a moment when they might be explained clearly and received calmly.
And here, in a sense, the Liaden re-read comes to an end, since there’s nothing left to re-read. There are, however, several new things to read that have come out since I began this, and those will carry me through into October. Specifically, it’s the short story “Chimera” tomorrow, and the very-much-not-short Dragon in Exile after that.
In which Diglon Rifle does what he may to help a teammate.
Poker was one of the first new things Diglon was taught after he came under the dragon’s wing, and he showed an immediate aptitude for it, so it’s good to see he’s continuing to develop it. In general, it’s pleasing to see that Diglon is thriving in his new environment – and a bit worrying that Hazenthull apparently isn’t, even now.
I say “even now” because the internal evidence suggests that it’s been over a year since the two of them came to stand with Korval: baby Lizzie, who was not yet born then, has progressed to standing up under her own power.
Lizzie’s development also means that although it’s early spring – “winter having been gone some weeks now” – it’s the spring after the one in which Lizzie was born, and so doesn’t tell us anything useful about that contested spring I’ve been worried about lately.
(It also means that I’ve scheduled this story too early, which is an acknowledged hazard of scheduling a story without reading it first. The actual position would be some time after Dragon Ship – and possibly one or two more novels as well, but since I haven’t read those yet either I’m not going to attempt a definite pronouncement.)
It’s nice that Alara has found a chance to make an alliance with somebody whose company she enjoys and who she has an attraction to, but I do wonder how she’s planning to explain her choice to her delm. It’s all very well saying that Diglon isn’t an Yxtrang any more, but is she going to be able to get away with not mentioning that he was? The delm did specify a “long lineage” as one of the criteria to look for, which means he’s going to want to know about Diglon’s antecedents.
One thing that might help is that, Clan Silari having made the decision to leave Liad, Alara and her clan are themselves, in a sense, no longer what they were either.
Incidentally, I notice that Diam, one of the two people who entertained Diglon on his evening off, is another of those for whom the authors have chosen not to constrain the reader’s imagination by specifying pronouns.
Next: Dragon Ship
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which the party becomes unexpectedly exciting.
More unnamed party guests. I’m particularly interested in the “buxom, jolly lady whose face was older than her hair”, because that amount of description implies that we’re expected to recognise her, but it’s not ringing any bells.
The idea that Theo’s ability to see pilots is her touch of Korval strangeness has been sneaking up gradually since it started in Fledgling. The early examples were often of her identifying pilots in motion, where it was plausible it was just a case of recognising something about how they moved. It’s developed gradually from there, to the point where in this novel she’s capable of not only identifying a pilot on sight but instantly assessing what grade they have attained or could attain, and now the definitely non-straightforward example of identifying a pilot who hasn’t even been born yet. Another thing that camouflaged the nature of the gift, which Theo alludes to, is that it came on her when she was seeing pilots for the first time after living her entire life on a planet with no pilots that she knew of, so it would make sense that she’d be alert to the differences. But another way of looking at that, which I think Daav alludes to, is that it was the period of her life when her half-formed instincts were shaking out and getting into adult shape, the period where one might expect a psychic gift to manifest. (Though without the trip to Melchiza she’d perhaps have been restricted to noticing that certain people were different in some way without being able to name the difference, just as I suspect she wouldn’t have been able to distinguish grades of pilot now without her education at Anlingdin.)
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which preparations are made for dinner.
The scene where Val Con drives Theo to Jelaza Kazone echoes scenes from earlier books, among them Er Thom driving Anne and Daav driving Aelliana. The similarities, of course, highlight the differences – such as the considerably less accommodating road.
(I’m not entirely sure about the idea of building a bridge over the worst stretch of road to save the Bosses risking their cars on it: how if someone were to destroy the bridge and trap everyone at the wrong end of the Road? But then Miri does say someone will be keeping an eye on the bridge; I suppose somebody would be keeping an eye on that stretch of road in any case.)
I’m not sure Val Con isn’t sending Theo into battle insufficiently armed, by telling her the dress code is “informal” and not telling her what that really means. On the other hand, given that there’s not enough space left in the schedule to dig stuff out of house stores, and that therefore Theo is going to have to go in what she’s got anyhow, maybe telling her would only give her an extra half hour of worrying about not measuring up, with nothing useful to be done about it.
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which Clarence has a warning for Daav.
The comment that “the Department is a larger enterprise than even its operatives had guessed” is intriguing. I believe it, especially with the recent reminder that its operatives work in their own little boxes, not knowing or caring about the details of what everyone else in the organisation is doing. But does this mean there’s even more to the Department’s Plan than we’ve been told? (Conversely, if we’ve been told everything, what have the operatives been told?) And if the Department’s own operatives don’t have the whole picture, who does?
I take it that Daav’s anecdote about Andy Mack repurposing old company equipment is meant to convey that the Colonel is not only a practical man, but possesses the kind of practicality Clarence is in need of, that will not pay too much attention to credentials if they’re inconvenient. One suspects that not all, if any, of the equipment he’s been repurposing was, speaking strictly according to the paperwork, his to repurpose.
In which Ichliad Brunner’s family finds him embarrassing.
At no point in the story does anybody get around to correcting Tech Brunner’s mistaken impression of who Miri is and what she’s doing; on the contrary, it’s apparently confirmed when she shows up again speaking Liaden like a native. This is amusing for those of us who have read the novels and know Miri’s story, but I wonder how it would look to a reader who hadn’t and didn’t. Would the lack of any explanation of Miri’s behaviour appear as a gap in the story, like the lack of any explanation of what Korval’s up to?
(I also see that Skel’s fate is not mentioned, but I think in that case a reader familiar with the shapes stories take can probably figure it out.)
Neither of the dates at the beginning and end matches up neatly with the dates given in I Dare. The date given for the attack on Solcintra at the beginning is the day after the date given in the novel (though I suppose the attack might have lasted long enough to carry over into a new date, according to the Standard Calendar, and the novel neglected to mention it in the excitement). The final scene, which clearly takes place after Korval is ordered off Liad and decides to migrate to Surebleak, is given a date two whole days before the date on which those things occur in the novel.
(And now it probably sounds like I don’t like this story. I do, really, I’m just not finding words to talk much about the things I like.)
Tomorrow: We return to Theo Waitley – and, at last, to sensible chapter numbers – with Saltation chapter 33.
Day 50
Standard Year 1393
Lytaxin
Erob’s House
In which Erob’s house has many visitors.
This is one of those chapters where there’s potentially a lot to talk about, but I’ve read it so often nothing really stands out to me.
Well, there is one thing: I don’t know if it’s me being really unobservant or just having a bad memory, but I don’t remember having understood before that Hazenthull Explorer might have only been intending to stick around long enough to get her senior patched up. (I notice, by the way, that her senior finally gets a name in this chapter.) How she planned to get around having sworn an oath of loyalty to get that far, I don’t see; perhaps, as Daav says, she hadn’t planned that far ahead.
Another point of connection between the two separate plot strands of the novel is that they’re now both concerned with issues of appropriate behaviour between oath-holder and oath-sworn.