In which Rys goes for a mug.
There are several things to be suspicious of in this chapter, but I don’t know if I’m suspicious of them only because I know where the story’s going; I can’t remember what I thought of them the first time I read the novel.
Droi’s anger, “anger that was more than half vey“, is interesting, both for the half that is vey (that is, inspired by the gift by which she sees things that others don’t see), and for the half that isn’t.
In which Kezzi’s mother meets Kezzi’s grandmother.
And now I’m thinking I may have been over-hasty in concluding that my younger self was wrong about which ship Kezzi was interested in; Silain’s reaction suggests that she, at least, is thinking of the Bedel ship. Of course, since Kezzi never actually said anything specific to identify the ship, everybody in the story as well as out is left to make their own conclusions. Perhaps Kezzi was thinking about the Bedel ship, but the Bedel subsequently put their heads together and find a less hazardous ship to be interested in.
It is interesting that the woman who is no friend of Rys was already settled in the bakery before the Bedel arrived: that suggests that she wasn’t merely following them hoping for a chance to speak to Udari, but somehow knew they would be there at that time. (I’m inclined to consider it unlikely that she just happened to be stopping for a bite to eat at that particular moment.) I’m also inclined to consider it unlikely that she has a source of information among the Bedel, or that she learned anything from Nova or from Mike Golden. Recalling who else knew about the meeting in time to be settled beforehand, I could believe that she has some way of finding out what the Patrol is up to, and learned of the meeting courtesy of Mike’s request for backup, but as far as I recall Mike didn’t tell the Patrol who the meeting would be with.
In which a packed day draws to a close.
Silain has a good point, which I hadn’t considered when I was reading this novel for the first time and expecting Rys to wind up being accepted into the kompani. He fits in well enough now, but as he himself said earlier they can’t make a definite decision until they know how he might be changed by regaining his lost memories.
Another thing I hadn’t properly considered when I was reading this novel for the first time is that when Kezzi asked if it might be possible to find a ship that had been lost, I thought she was thinking of the ship that the headman and the luthia were discussing a while ago, the overdue ship that was to have come for the kompani at the end of their chafurma. Of course it isn’t; even if the headman and the luthia hadn’t decided on a wait-and-see course about that, I don’t think any child of the Bedel would tell gadje about their ship, let alone invite gadje to track it down. (In fairness to my younger self, I don’t think we’ve actually been shown Kezzi learning about the ship that she is asking about, which may have thrown me off.)
I think giving Peter and Luce another chance to find their place at school is the right decision. Maybe they’ll take it, and everybody will be happy, and if they don’t at least they’ll be somewhere someone’s got an eye on them. Between those two possibilities, isn’t that pretty much the point of the child-off-the-street policy?
In which it is sometimes necessary to attend to one repair at a time.
The two plot strands in this chapter are connected by the issue of rushing things: Udari, inspired by having something to work with, attempts to rush Rys’s recovery, with no good result; Pat Rin finds that circumstances are forcing them to rush the opening of the new consolidated school.
(If it can be said that the opening is rushed when the school building is so far behind schedule, thanks to the people Rys used to work for. And that reminds me that one of those people is still on the loose, so the fact that there has been no further sabotage on the school might just mean that they’re having another go at lulling the Dragon into a false sense of security.)
In which Syl Vor and Kezzi are early to school.
And this, of course, is exactly the kind of thing one might expect to happen when a child of Korval promises to be no more trouble than necessary.
We’re getting a lot more Surebleak street names in this book than we have before. I wonder if the authors had their own map, and played their own version of the school route-learning game.
In which there’s a new boy in the class.
Score one for Ms Taylor, declining to invite trouble by letting Pete and Luce sit close together.
There’s a large chunk of the middle of the novel that I don’t remember from the first time I read it, so I know only as much about Pete and Luce as Syl Vor does at this point, but I don’t like it any more than he does.
In which Rys’s brothers give him a hand.
We continue to get to know Syl Vor’s classmates as he does. Kaleb’s family seem to know a thing or two about medicine, though whether it’s professional interest or just practical experience isn’t clear yet. Several of them have grandmothers, which is reassuring considering some of the stories we’ve heard about life expectancy on Surebleak, or cats, or both. I like the way Syl Vor disarms Rudy’s attack.
Rys is worrying again about the missing part of his memory, and how the person he is without it might differ from the person he would be with it. He may be right to do so, considering that even when he thinks he’s got all his memories of yesterday back he’s still missing any memory of his conversation with the lady who recognised him. (And is that his memory sequestering the conversation because it relates to other stuff he’s not ready to face, or did she do it somehow?)
In which first impressions are subject to revision.
On the other hand, the location of the school, and considering that the bookkeeper is apparently on first-name terms with her, suggests another possible answer to the question of where Ms Taylor came from.
One of the things about all these geography lessons is that we’re getting a lot of names of Bosses and their turfs. So far it’s been a mix of new and old; as a case in point, in this chapter there’s Boss Cruthers, who appeared in I Dare, Boss Wentworth, whom we were introduced to at Syl Vor’s first geography lesson, and Boss Marriot, who’s entirely new (by the sound of it, his or her turf is some distance off from the area around the Road where the action has mainly been focussed).
In which Kezzi goes to school.
We learn quite a bit about Pulka in this chapter, without him ever appearing, from Kezzi comparing Rys to him and Udari, and Rys comparing Pulka to himself.
I don’t think the flash of memory Rys has is really him, even though it uses his name: as he says, it’s from the still-unremembered latter portion of his life – the portion when he was in the grip of the Department and even his thoughts were not his own.
It occurs to me to wonder where Boss Conrad found Ms Taylor. She seems to have a local’s knowledge of Surebleak, but she also seems to be an experienced teacher, of a kind that I wouldn’t have expected Surebleak to be able to produce. Maybe there was one turf somewhere that did manage to keep proper schools going, and now it’s sharing its pool of experience.
In which Syl Vor and his mother discuss his first day at school.
It’s probably one of those things where, once you start noticing them, they’re all over the place: Pounce the house medic shares his name with a member of the Trealla Fantrol crew back on Liad. Definitely not the same person, though, because in addition to being male he isn’t a cat.
Back on the Rock, Syl Vor was held to a very high level of responsibility (higher than would be normal for a boy his age), because it was just a small group of them in a tight circumstance, and everybody’s actions counted. It wouldn’t be appropriate to hold him to the same standard on Surebleak, where there’s more people to spread the responsibility around and where he’s not familiar with the territory and can’t always know what effect any given action will have, and it’s clear that his mother isn’t holding him to that standard – but also that he’s holding himself to it still.
On the Rock, he was also held to a very high standard of behaviour, but that was just because the standard was being set by Kareen, who’s used to the company of well-trained adults and probably doesn’t know how to make allowances for children who are still learning (the more so since she got past that phase so quickly herself). It’s good to see that Nova is establishing a more forgiving standard in this area too.