Tag Archives: Solcintra Mid-Port

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 38

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.

Skyblaze

In which Vertu dea’San decides that somebody ought to do something.

This story is, among other things, a valuable reminder that while Korval were happy enough to be thrown off Liad for their part in the Battle of Solcintra, there are others served similarly for whom it might not be so pleasant.

Reading a story featuring “galan’ranubiet” (Treasure of the House) and “galandaria” (compatriot), I find myself wondering after the meaning of “yos’Galan”.

I said a few days ago I was going to have something more to say about taxis. The bulk of this story takes place at a time when there’s only one licensed taxi driver in Surebleak Port City, and even at the end of the story the number has only grown to three, with some consideration being given to a fourth. That sets it before the climactic sequence of Necessity’s Child, which contains at least three active taxis and likely more.

(So why have I scheduled it after? We’ll come back to that.)

Now let us consider the other major indicator of when it’s set: the passing of the seasons. The main section of the story takes place in local winter, at some point after Korval came to settle on Surebleak, with the last section taking place early in the following spring. That’s straightforward enough.

Now we have two choices:

Ghost Ship tells us that Korval settled on Surebleak before winter turned to spring, that Theo’s visit occurred during late spring (this point is made on multiple occasions), and that the event which kicks off the plot of Necessity’s Child occurred a few weeks before the onset of summer. This seems to fit: Vertu arrives during Korval’s first winter, joins Jemie in the taxi business, and they spend the spring building up the business to a point that will account for the flock of taxis bringing people to the new school when it opens in early summer. The bit near the end of this story, with Vertu and Jemie in early spring considering diversifying into the ground-courier business, meshes nicely with Jemie’s cameo in Ghost Ship, in late spring, delivering a courier message.

However. Necessity’s Child itself claims to begin in late winter, which would put the school opening in early spring, and allow little if any time for the building of the taxi fleet.

After due consideration, I have decided I prefer the timeline suggested by Ghost Ship, and not just because it’s more insistent about it. (Ghost Ship, as I said, mentions the season repeatedly, while the beginning of Necessity’s Child does so only once – and, for that matter, the school opening scene has a mention of how warm the day is, which might be taken to mean that even the end of Necessity’s Child disagrees with the beginning about what time of year it is.)

There are still a couple of more short stories and a novel set on Surebleak which I haven’t read yet because they all came out after I began the re-read; I’ll be interested to see when they claim to be set.

(When I was scheduling the re-read, the one detail I remembered from all this confusion was that Ghost Ship was set in spring, but I forgot that it said Korval had been there since winter, so I thought Vertu’s first winter on Surebleak must be after both Ghost Ship and Necessity’s Child, and scheduled “Skyblaze” accordingly. If I were doing it now, I would definitely put “Skyblaze” before Necessity’s Child.)


Tomorrow: “Roving Gambler”, one of those stories set on Surebleak that I haven’t read yet.

I Dare – Chapter 55

Solcintra
Liad

In which the Captain acts for the safety of the passengers.

The mode of Ultimate Authority, which is referred to twice in this chapter, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, not come up much before: three times in the series up to this point. Priscilla adopts it briefly when putting Sav Rid Olanek in his place at the end of Conflict of Honors; Commander of Agents is said in Carpe Diem to use it when dealing with his underlings; and Val Con, greeting the Tree in Plan B, places the Tree in the position of ultimate authority.

The fact that it’s used twice in this chapter, and by whom, is the central conflict in a nutshell: the first is Commander of Agents again, and the second is Miri when she takes on the melant’i of Liad’s Captain. And I think it says something that, whereas Miri adopts the mode temporarily and in a situation where she is in fact the duly-appointed ultimate authority until the emergency is resolved, the Commander is not only self-appointed but apparently expects to be regarded as the ultimate authority all the time.

There’s a leap near the end of the chapter that I’ve never been able to follow. After the doomsday weapons are activated, ter’Fendil says he can deactivate them if Val Con gives him the control device, and Val Con does. Then it cuts to another scene, and when it cuts back everybody’s running for their lives and talking about the urgent need to do something before the weapons break out and start killing everybody. Is there something missing, or is it just me missing something?

I Dare – Chapter 54

Day 54
Standard Year 1393

Solcintra
Liad

In which the counter-attack on the Department begins.

Dramatic revelation: Commander of Agents has a name! Presumably it was Val Con who provided that detail; I wonder if that means he had a habit of sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted even as a loyal Agent of the Department, because somehow I can’t imagine the Commander making a habit of introducing himself to his subordinates.

And now that name has been broadcast over Solcintra on an open wavelength, along with the information that his Department exists and claims to speak for Liad. Likely the attitude that this is an absurdity produced by an addled Terran will be a common one, but even so it’s a crack in the Department’s veil of secrecy. And it serves notice to the Department, because they’ll know who must have put Higdon’s Howlers up to this. (Even more so, if I’m right about the Commander’s name being a secret kept even from his own agents.)

Once again, the day matches the chapter number. I don’t expect that to continue any further, though; things have started moving fast, and I doubt events are going to wait a whole day to find out what happens next.

Certain Symmetry

In which Pat Rin executes the will of Fal Den ter’Antod.

The other reason I placed “Shadow Partner” before “A Day in the Races” was that I knew this was up next, and it follows on from the end of “A Day at the Races” in a way that I felt would go better without another story intervening.

This is one of my favourite Liaden short stories. It has several shining personalities in it, not least of them Pat Rin himself. I also admit a certain fondness for the sense of humour evinced by the man in the back room, though I’m not keen on the nature of his work.

(A couple of side notes about Pat Rin: First, his field as a gamer is again cards and not dice. Second, there’s a nice though not surprising bit of continuity in the names that appear in Pat Rin’s social circle; in particular, the names of yo’Lanna and bel’Urik, which also appeared in yos’Phelium’s social calendar in the days when Daav was delm.)

This story also has a special place in my regard for another reason: it is the story which brought me to a conscious understanding that Liadens have a number of cultural hang-ups regarding the face, which brought together and shone new light on all the moments in other stories where Liadens were careful not to look another person too long full in the face, or felt distress at meeting someone whose face was distinctly marked (whether by dirt, injury, or deliberate decoration), or sought privacy before wiping a sweaty brow or rubbing a sore nose.

And I recall the sense of epiphany when I realised that this is not just an arbitrary bit of alien culture, but is complemented by the other famous marker of Liaden culture, the use of modes and bows to express thoughts and emotions — or, to put it another way, the fact that in Liaden speech all the messages that a Terran might convey through facial expression are transferred to other parts of the body. Terrans in conversation have to pay close attention to each other’s faces or they’ll miss part of what’s going on; in Liaden culture it’s impolite to pay close attention to another person’s face — and communication has been arranged so that it’s possible to carry out a conversation without doing so.


Tomorrow: “This House”

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 37

In which Daav and Aelliana go to the theatre, and Aelliana chooses to be late.

We’ve reached the moment which, this being a prequel, most of the readers knew was lurking in Aelliana and Daav’s future.

The authors might have avoided it by ending the book a couple of chapters ago, but I think they knew that if they were ever going to tell the story of this day there would never be a better place to tell it than here. It might have been told as a short story, an isolated event between novels like the one we had yesterday and the others we’ll have next week, but I don’t think that would have served it well: this is not an isolated event, and telling it here, at the end of the novel, allows one to look back and see all the things that have been leading up to it.

It’s also, in a sense, the capstone of this duology. I said a few chapters ago that we’d reached the destination of the duology when Daav stood beside his lifemate holding his son – but that was Daav’s destination, not Aelliana’s. For Aelliana, the journey is about taking control of her life, and I’ve pointed out several times that each of the major turns in Aelliana’s life during the duology came of Aelliana’s choice. Here again is a major turn in Aelliana’s life, and shape it takes is determined by the choice Aelliana makes to protect Daav.

Mouse and Dragon – Chapter 33

In which Daav decides to go into a possibly-hostile port without accepting backup.

Had this book been other than it is, the previous chapter might easily have been the last, perhaps with an epilogue in which Daav finally gets to hold his son in his arms. It is, after all, what the main plot line was building up to for the last two volumes.

But this is a prequel, which knows if any form of literature does that Peter Beagle was right about endings, and getting married isn’t the end of the story; it just means that Daav and Aelliana now have attention to spare for what else is going on in their lives.

I see a parallel between Daav’s decision to go to the Low Port alone, declining backup, and Aelliana’s decision last novel to go to the house of Mizel alone, declining backup, though in this case I’m not sure the decision is wrong; Daav does have a point about the advantages of working alone and under the radar. Still, one can wish he could have gone better protected. (Perhaps another Scout might have worked, if there were another Scout he could trust with this business. It’s a pity that Clonak is not available to be suggested as a possibility.)

Daav’s deliberately exaggerated worst-case hypothesis of “ghosts who lure the unsuspecting into the mists and steal their self-will” is not, after all, so far from the truth as one might prefer.

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 21

In which desperate pirates are no match for Aelliana and her co-pilot.

Aelliana’s self-confidence is coming along in leaps and bounds; here she’s making significant decisions on a moment’s notice, without hesitation or apology. And she’s spent the whole evening tracking around in public without her “armor”, apparently without missing it except that it would have kept her warm.

It’s interesting that we’ve had two chapters in a row featuring people making desperately unwise decisions out of owing amounts of money they can’t scrape together honestly. Sed Ric and Yolan are in rather more desperate straits than Ran Eld (at least for now), a fact underscored by the tiny amount of money their future depends on. The dex, according to the handy table in Balance of Trade, is the smallest unit of Liaden currency, and the cantra is the largest. The four cantra Ran Eld borrowed, probably to pay for things he could well have lived without, is worth more than a one and half thousand times the four dex Yolan and Sed Ric need. The twenty cantra he now owes is equivalent to nearly thirty-five thousand dex.

(It’s a handy reminder, too, when the cantra is the unit most often mentioned, and the children of Korval are rich enough to carry cantra coins like loose change, that one cantra is actually a quite substantial amount of money.)

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.

Local Custom – Chapter 37

In which Anne’s troubles are eased, but Er Thom’s may be just beginning.

I don’t recall what I thought the first time I read this and Daav showed up at the end of the chapter. Probably I had a fairly good idea of what the outcome would be, if not how it would be achieved, if only because this is a prequel. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that despite the suggestion offered in the epigraph, I never suspected Daav for a moment of planning to require a balance-price from Anne for depriving the clan of its son Er Thom. (If nothing else, that would be thoroughly unjust, since it was Er Thom’s own decision, with perhaps some assistance from his mother; Anne, as Daav knows full well, never asked or expected any such thing.)