In which Kezzi goes to school.

We learn quite a bit about Pulka in this chapter, without him ever appearing, from Kezzi comparing Rys to him and Udari, and Rys comparing Pulka to himself.

I don’t think the flash of memory Rys has is really him, even though it uses his name: as he says, it’s from the still-unremembered latter portion of his life – the portion when he was in the grip of the Department and even his thoughts were not his own.

It occurs to me to wonder where Boss Conrad found Ms Taylor. She seems to have a local’s knowledge of Surebleak, but she also seems to be an experienced teacher, of a kind that I wouldn’t have expected Surebleak to be able to produce. Maybe there was one turf somewhere that did manage to keep proper schools going, and now it’s sharing its pool of experience.