Dutiful Passage
In which Priscilla receives a history lesson.
Shan’s coaster that was a gift from Ambassador Valeking was introduced in Alliance of Equals and has appeared a couple of times, in that book and then in this one, during scenes where Padi has been meeting her father in his office.
Continue reading
In which we’re leaving together, but still it’s farewell.
This is the only chapter in the duology that doesn’t have a caption saying, however ambiguously, where it takes place.
I think the mention of Dancer, “singing sweet seduction to her makers”, must be where I got the idea that she was sent off to act as a decoy; whether that was Cantra’s intention, it’s what she’s doing. (And I love the image of the seedling adding its own insulting messages.)
Hands up, anyone who thinks the Iloheen’s being honest in its offer to promote Rool Tiazan’s lady if she comes quietly. Nobody? Didn’t think so.
I was right about Rool Tiazan’s bargain with the ambitious dramliza, it looks like. (Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are twelve kinds of twisty.)
The “vast and implacable greenness” is interesting. A last-ditch attempt by the ssussdriad? Or … something else? (Do they have Turtles in this universe?)
Solcintra
In which certain negotiations take place.
The two Solcintran negotiators both have names that recur in the Liaden Universe – which is perhaps only to be expected. Some of Nalli Olanek’s descendants will find themselves in dispute with some of Tor An’s descendants in Conflict of Honors, and Clan Hedrede is mentioned a couple of times in Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon, with a Dath jo’Bern of that clan being an incidental character in the latter. (With thanks to the Liaden Wiki – my memory for obscure details is not that good.)
The Enemy have taken out High Command in its withdrawn and reinforced position, without having to pass through any of the intervening space, which just shows how much good that did.
We see the origin of Cantra’s logbook, which will become a tradition upheld by her successors; that answers something I’d been wondering aloud a while back.
Another thing I’d been wondering, though it never quite got to aloud, was about Moonhawk and Lute’s colleagues in the Great Weaving. It’s pretty obvious that Moonhawk is the same Moonhawk who is Priscilla’s guiding spirit when she’s a priestess of the Goddess, and seems clear therefore that the other guiding spirits from Priscilla’s religion are this Moonhawk’s sisters in the Great Weaving (I don’t recall that any of their names are ever given, in either context). What I’d been wondering was whether, since they’re presumably all a dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute, all the guiding spirits have masculine sidekicks like Lute and it was just that somehow we’d never heard about them. The scene in this chapter where Lute learns that Moonhawk has made an independent space for him in the Weaving suggests that no, it’s just Lute.
(I think where I went wrong was at “dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute”; there’s probably no other dramliza pairing that’s quite like Moonhawk and Lute. One of the other things I’ve been realising on this re-read is that my understanding of the dramliz from the first time through had been weighted too much toward taking Rool Tiazan and Lute as typical of their station, when as two of the few – or even, for all it’s said, the only two – free zaliata to have accepted the yoke, they’re each blazingly unique.)
Solcintra
In which Cantra receives a message from Jela.
I’d wondered how much vel’Anbrek had figured out of what was going on, so it’s good to have that established.
Cantra hadn’t grasped how much Jela regarded her, and perhaps had been resisting letting it count for anything; there’s a bit in one of the earlier chapters where she reflects that he doesn’t really know her, only her Rimmer pilot facade. In that I think she underestimated him: we know he’d seen through the grumpy part of the facade to the motivation underneath; what else might he have seen?
Long Savannahs of the Blue
In which Cantra comes to a decision, and Rool Tiazan’s lady comes to an arrangement.
I get the feeling that the tree is worried about Cantra, and trying to help her, but most of what it knows about getting around Cantra comes from watching Jela doing it, and even aside from the fact that what works for Jela won’t necessarily work for anyone else, imitating Jela is not the most helpful thing to be doing right now.
The tree can, it seems, speak words on occasion, within limits. The words it gives to Cantra in this chapter are all memories of words, its answer to her question a reshuffling of the question itself. I wonder whose memories; the ones I recognise are from occasions when both Cantra and the tree have been present. The images it usually used to communicate with Jela were obviously drawn from its own store of memories, though, and I don’t offhand recall it ever talking to him with his. Perhaps it hasn’t spoken in words before because it doesn’t have very many words to draw on, and wasn’t used to using the ones it had; Jela was the first verbal person it had ever met, and he didn’t talk much, at that.
Meanwhile, Rool Tiazan and his lady (whose current state of existence does remind one of Aelliana’s, later) are making a house call. We see that not all the free dramliz are as altruistic, or as balanced in themselves, as Rool Tiazan and his lady, or Lute and Moonhawk. Which is saddening, but not really surprising, given the way the dramliz are brought up.
It’s indicated that Simbu’s dominant is only one of a group of dramliz plotting to supplant the Iloheen, which – on the one hand, obviously that’s not something it would be remotely reasonable to contemplate attempting on one’s own, but on the other hand, given the kind of person you’d have to be to want to supplant the Iloheen, I suspect that if they actually did succeed they’d be backstabbing each other in less time than it takes to say “Lords of Unmaking”.
Rool Tiazan is the kind of being you find in fairy stories about people who come to grief by not being precise about wording, and I think it’s significant that what he and his lady have agreed to is to lend one third of his strength as measured by the borrower – particularly since he has a track record of making his strength appear less than it is. (See also: not “it cost him an effort”, but “he knew she would see that it cost him an effort”.) Not that I blame him, since honest-and-upfront is clearly the wrong approach to take with an ally like this.