Tag Archives: Scout’s eyes

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 22

In which Aelliana is introduced to Jen Sar Kiladi.

Like many long-term Liaden fans, Mouse and Dragon was not my first introduction to Professor Kiladi; I already knew him from many chronologically-later events described in earlier-published stories. That inevitably affected my response to meeting him here, and I wonder how it reads to someone who didn’t have that background. (I’d ask if there was anyone in the audience whose first introduction to Professor Kiladi was Mouse and Dragon, if this blog had an audience.)

Somehow, I’m not surprised a yos’Phelium would make and win a bet like that. Though I do wonder who the other party in the bet was.

Speaking of yos’Pheliums, I detect the legacy of Cantra’s aelantaza heritage in Daav’s ability to immerse himself in character to the point of Kiladi seeming like a different person.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 20

In which Aelliana is having a much better day than Ran Eld.

Ran Eld is not just personally unpleasant, he’s taking advantage of his status to embezzle money from the clan to fund his lifestyle. When he’s not funding his lifestyle by borrowing money at ruinously high rates of interest, with the result that he now owes to one creditor more money than Aelliana earns in a year. Not only is he a crook, he’s not a very smart crook. (I suppose he might not have needed to be, as long as his mother’s regard tended to shield him from the consequences his actions might otherwise have had.)

Meanwhile, Daav is introducing Aelliana to a Terran dish called ”pecha” (sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on why…) and telling her stories about his days in the Scouts. Here we get the story of the planet where he gained his earring, which sounds a lot like the planet Tol Ven yo’Endoth visited in “Sweet Waters”, though the Mun are not one of the tribes he encountered and their traditions are not exactly like the traditions of the Sanilithe.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 15

In which one might expect tea to be drunk.

In the Binjali crew, Aelliana has found not only comrades but family. What Jon offers is, as Aelliana identifies, a paraphrase of what a clan is expected to offer its members according to the Code (as was quoted at the head of Chapter 4). Her description of what is asked of her in return is likewise, if memory serves, a paraphrase from the Code, and appears somewhere else in the series (though I don’t at the moment recall precisely where) explicitly identified as the duty one owes to one’s clan.

It almost goes without saying that Aelliana’s actual family is not a good model of either end of that set of duties.