Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Dutiful Passage
Lytaxin Orbit

In which Nova greets her sister.

Ren Zel’s impressions of Nova as she entered the ship reminded me of Liz’s first impressions of Nova when she entered her house, not because they are similar but because they aren’t: a reminder that the same person can be quite different things in the eyes of different people. Shifting between tall and short without any physical change is perhaps only the most obvious. A more subtle one is Ren Zel noticing that she speaks with “the accent of fabled Solcintra”; apart from the obvious point that Liz’s familiarity with spoken Liaden doesn’t extend to recognising such details, it’s a reminder that Ren Zel himself, though Liaden, is not from Liad.

This chapter has another case of one person being quite different things, this time depending on which hat she wears. Shan’s sister Nova yos’Galan is glad that he and Priscilla have declared lifemates, even though Shan’s First Speaker Nova yos’Galan has her doubts about the timing and is not impressed about not being consulted first.

For a moment, both of the novel’s plot strands revolve around the concern of Korval being left without a pilot to be Delm, which does go some way to weaving them together despite their large separation in space and time.