Surebleak
In which it’s a new day.
It looks like we’re done with dramatic confrontations for now, and are into the part of the book where things are wound down and tied off. There were a couple more dramatic confrontations I was expecting, but maybe they’re being saved for next time.
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In which a ship arrives at Surebleak.
Well, that’s a good start. I was pretty convinced that Surebleak was going to be put aside for another book, and that all the people who have been travelling toward it would continue doing so until it was time for the big finale. Maybe we’re getting out of the setting-up stage, and all the different threads are starting to weave together.
Although it seems there’s still some more setting up to do (well, fair enough, it’s the beginning of the novel), as two characters we don’t recognise arrive in Surebleak orbit.
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Sherman’s Shootout
Expert Round
In which the people make their feelings known.
Nelirikk has a new surname: nor’Phelium. I wonder whose idea that was, and what it signifies. I tried to see what could be gleaned from seeing who else has had a surname with the nor’ prefix, but there hasn’t been anyone – which might be significant in itself.
I like the bit about Nelirikk feeling under-equipped with only four handguns, six knives, explosives, arm-chains, and zhang-wire. (We’ve seen zhang-wire before, only romanised slightly differently: “jang-wire” was the name of the weapon Sed Ric the pirate carried for self-defence in Scout’s Progress.)
I was surprised to see Yulie. Makes sense a man with his shooting ability might want to come along to an event like this – but this is Yulie, who doesn’t do well with strangers and has been actively avoiding the city for as long as we’ve known him and longer. That he’s in the city now, having trusted somebody else to watch his farm and his cats (a Scout, he says, perhaps Tan Ort?) says a lot about how much he’s benefited from the changes on Surebleak.
For the final chapter of the book, we return to the main theme. Pat Rin’s making a deliberate point by standing unarmed in the middle of the argument: he could have shot quite a few people if he’d wanted to, but he wants people to understand that his leadership isn’t just about who can shoot who the fastest.
I may have got a bit sniffly at the bit about the people opening the road that they own.
Sherman’s Shootout
Novice Round
In which there’s shooting at the shootout.
I still want to know who thought it would be a good idea to attack a group of people who have specifically gathered to demonstrate their skill with firearms.
On the journey by which Pat Rin first came to Surebleak, he met a young woman who believed that the universe was formed by the interplay between the forces of Ignorance and Persistence, and was worried that Ignorance seemed to be winning. It looks like this round is going to be a win for Persistence.
Kamele’s changed quite a bit since she came to Surebleak; I think both Daav and Theo are going to be surprised when they see her again. (Although not, perhaps, by precisely the same things.) And at one point she refers to Surebleak as “home”; I think in context she means that it’s Theo’s home now, not that she’s accepted it as her own, but even that’s a significant development.
Boss Conrad’s House
Blair Road
In which Penn Kalhoon has something to say.
I was wrong about the meeting Pat Rin sent Quin to, which I might have known if I’d thought; on further consideration, if it had been something other than an ordinary sort of meeting Pat Rin would have said so. This is not the first time I’ve been wrong in this novel about an upcoming meeting going to be the occasion for excitement; my persistent mistake has been to misunderstand what kind of story this is. I kept assuming that if a meeting got mentioned it was probably going to be important to the plot, and that if trouble was brewing it would come to a head quickly, but this is a more slow-burn story than that, and meetings of the Council of Bosses are important to the plot even if nothing dramatic happens at them simply because it matters to the characters that there is a Council of Bosses and that it’s holding regular meetings.
And that brings us around to what Pat Rin tells Penn, which is another thread of the ongoing thing about how the new ways are going to survive: if Pat Rin and Val Con and Miri get killed, that isn’t the end of the new Surebleak. Korval might have shown the way, but they couldn’t have made it happen without Surebleakeans, and now the way has been shown the Surebleakeans can make it happen without Korval if they have to.
I suspect it speaks to how much Surebleak has improved already that Pat Rin is able to compare its port to Solcintra’s Mid Port instead of its Low Port. For that matter, the state Surebleak Port was in when Pat Rin arrived was so run-down and uninhabited it might not even have stood a comparison to the Low Port, which whatever it may not be at least has an active population.
It hadn’t occurred to me how useful a scholar of the history of education might be in a city trying to develop a proper education system. I wonder how long the authors have been planning that one.
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.
Corner of Dudley Avenue and Farley Lane
In which Kamele reflects on her week, and Val Con recounts his day.
Dudley Avenue, the location of Kareen’s new establishment, was mentioned in Necessity’s Child; it intersects Blair Road, which by now should need no introduction.
I’ve been waiting for Sherman’s to put in an appearance; I had a feeling that the shooting competition would turn out to be the point where “Chimera” overlapped this novel. (I’m still shaking my head at the idea it would be a good move to start trouble at an event where the Bosses were demonstrating their shooting skills.) With that in mind, I feel safe in having another shot at predicting trouble at a forthcoming Bosses’ meeting.
Given the people involved, I also feel safe in predicting that Kamele’s determination not to shoot at the competition isn’t going to make the distance. And given those two predictions, I’m willing to hazard another, that competition targets are not going to be the only thing Kamele will find herself having to shoot at.
I hadn’t quite got what was going on with Miri’s startle last chapter, because I couldn’t quite figure out if it was in reaction to what her visitor was saying, but I decided not to say anything because I had a feeling there was something I was missing and hoped it would come clear if I waited. Which, of course, it has. (The trouble with so much happening at once is that it’s easy to lose little insignificant details like Miri and Val Con being inside each others’ heads.)
In which things are changing on Surebleak.
Even granting that a public gathering of all the Bosses seems like a good opportunity to make a statement, it strikes me as particularly lacking in foresight for the disgruntled pack to try and start something at, of all things, a shooting competition. That’s right up there with the legendary criminal who tried to knock over the local precinct’s favourite coffee shop during the cops’ lunch break.
The old argument about the new consolidated school suggests this is set shortly after Necessity’s Child, though how much after would depend on the balance between the newness of the school and the oldness of the argument. Actually, it might even be during the late stages of Necessity’s Child, if the argument is “what to do when the new school opens” rather than “what to do now the new school has opened”.
(It might turn out that I’d have had more to say about this story if I’d read it after Dragon in Exile, the way Trade Secret turned out to contain details that clarified the situation in “Out of True”, but I had important pragmatic reasons for putting Dragon in Exile last in the schedule, namely that that meant I could schedule everything without needing to know exactly how many chapters there are in Dragon in Exile.)