Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Theo makes use of her research.

So that wasn’t actually the first time Kamele mentioned the upcoming research trip to Theo. With regard to the concerns I mentioned last time, I actually find this the opposite of reassuring, because it means that the trip has been a topic of conversation for several days without Kamele ever once thinking to mention that Theo would be going too.

There’s an interesting narrative subtlety in this chapter: at the moment the intruder is detected, Professor Kiladi disappears from the narrative. Theo’s father exists, and takes appropriate actions, but the narrator declines to attribute those actions to the person named Jen Sar Kiladi. What with the middle section being narrated from the viewpoint of Theo, who regards him simply as “Father”, Jen Sar’s name doesn’t reappear until nearly the end of the chapter. (Readers familiar with the wider Liaden universe — a phrase I will need to find a good shorthand for if I keep using it — will know what name the narrator is not saying. Although I’m pretty sure that the person who provides the answer to Theo’s question about the ring is Aelliana again.)

In the course of writing out the previous paragraph, I’ve belatedly recognised a similar subtlety back in Chapter Twelve. In between Theo meeting up with her father and the conclusion of their conversation about what name she ought to be calling him by, the narrator avoids calling him by any name at all. (Indeed, the moment she decides to continue addressing him as “Father” is visible even before she gives voice to it, because the narrator resumes doing the same.)

Somehow, knowing the history of the Gallowglass Chair and of this particular incumbent, it did not surprise me that the staff of office is a sword cane. I wonder if that’s standard for every Chair endowed by the Gallowglass Foundation, or an individual improvisation. (I don’t for a moment consider the possibility that it might be a custom of this University: this is Delgado, after all. I expect Admin would be horrified if they had the slightest idea one of their professors was walking around with a bladed weapon.)