Bechimo
Aubernet System
In which Bechimo arrives in a new place.
Lots of technical details in this chapter, which is impresive but not the kind of thing I personally find most entertaining to read or talk about.
Continue reading
Vivulonj Prosperu
In which there is a recruiting of copilots and seconds.
The first mate is another Tiazan, this time not one we’ve met before. I think she may well be right about a bit of real flight being what Padi needs to sharpen her piloting; I also think that, the situation being what it is and the rules of drama being what they are, any actual attempt at flying away from the ship is likely to result in More Plot.
The Master Trader, meanwhile, seems to have decided that Padi also needs some real flight to sharpen her trading. I wonder if that’s a consequence of what happened at Chessel’s World, somehow, or if it was something he’d have started her on anyway at this point in her apprenticeship.
Dutiful Passage
In which experts consider possible alliances.
The mention of the captain, the first mate, and the trader reminds me that I don’t think we know who is the first mate of the Passage at the moment. Ren Zel was appointed to the position when Priscilla moved up to captain in I Dare, but as we were reminded last chapter Ren Zel is currently situated on Surebleak with Anthora, serving the clan in another capacity.
Tolly’s mission continues to be apparently continuing smoothly, which just means I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. One potential obstacle that occurs to me is that Tolly has determined that Admiral Bunter needs to be transferred onto a platform large enough to hold all of him at once, but hasn’t mentioned whether such a platform happens to be available. I suspect not; it isn’t the kind of thing likely to be just lying around, and even if Jeeves and Tocohl had foreseen the need they might well have decided it would be better to order one in after examining the Admiral on the spot than to try and guess in advance what specs would suit. Which means they’re going to have to keep the Admiral occupied until the thing arrives.
(Idle speculation: Perhaps circumstances will line up such that the easiest way for it to get to Jemiatha Station is for Dutiful Passage to bring it. That seems too tidy, but it would at least provide a connection between the two plot lines.)
Chessel’s World
In which the authorities act against an ongoing criminal enterprise.
Okay, so it’s “The trade goes wrong, launching more plot”, then. I didn’t expect it to go wrong this way, though in retrospect perhaps I should have.
Did the portmaster’s office know, when they invited Shan to a reception later in the day, that he was involved in an ongoing criminal enterprise? As Shan says, the specification that he should come alone isn’t necessarily sinister.
Shan’s reflection on the reception he received in Dayan port keeps another of the story’s balls in the air — Dayan port being where Lomar Fasholt used to live and trade. (And it occurs to me for the first time that it may not be coincidence that the planet Dayan and Sintia’s port city of Dyan have such similar names.)
I like how we have Padi trying to figure out why Shan chose to offer the goods he did, followed later by Shan reflecting on why he did.
We now have the third mate’s name: Dil Nem Tiazan. This is a name we’ve encountered before; he was one of the relatives to whom Miri was introduced at her first dinner under Erob’s roof.
Dutiful Passage
In which Padi has a lesson to learn.
I raise an eyebrow at Padi’s dismissal of things that serve no purpose other than looking pretty. Apart from the error she’s making of assuming that “I see no purpose to this” is the same as “There is no purpose to this”, it seems shortsighted for one who aspires to be a trader: even if a thing’s only value lies in looking pretty, it still has value that may be usefully leveraged or may cause problems if ignored. People value the things they value, for whatever reason.
(That said, being unreasonable isn’t all that unlikely for someone Padi’s age.)
I’m wondering if the Carresens Syndicate is going be part of the “alliance of equals” referred to in the title. When the family (and Pilot Janifer Carresens-DeNobli) was last mentioned, in Dragon in Exile, the delm summed them up by saying they were very like Korval. (I somehow doubt the Uncle is going to be part of it; has he ever recognised an equal?)
Dutiful Passage
In which yos’Galan has reason to contemplate the future.
It looks like this is going to be Padi’s book for dealing with the aftermath of Runig’s Rock, the way Necessity’s Child was Syl Vor’s.
Over on Shan’s side of the chapter, we have reminders of Shan’s encounter with Lute, and of Lomar Fasholt and the disturbances in the political structures of those who follow the Goddess. I’m hoping that’s a sign that there’ll be more Lute and Moonhawk in this book.
Pale Wing is not a ship name we’ve encountered before; from context, it’s clearly a Korval ship, and probably one of yos’Galan’s trading fleet. The ship that Tor An yos’Galan brought away from the death of the Ringstars was named Light Wing; perhaps this ship was named after that one, the way yos’Galan’s flagship is named after Quick Passage.
(It’s not strictly part of the chapter, but I couldn’t help noticing that the Acknowledgments feature a thank-you to Dr Linebarger, otherwise known as the SF author Cordwainer Smith. I look forward to finding out why that’s there.)
In which Captain Rolanni goes to Shaltren sooner than expected.
This is an important story for the Juntavas, laying the groundwork for them to be something a bit more nuanced than The Space Mafia.
The pacing of this story didn’t quite work for me the first time I read it, with all the build-up to Kore’s escape attempt/Rolanni’s rescue attempt, and then it suddenly didn’t matter because Chairman Trogar meets his fate in an unrelated Act of Turtle. (And I got the feeling that the role of the Turtles isn’t sufficiently set up for someone who hasn’t read Carpe Diem first — though I’m in no position to say for sure, since I did read Carpe Diem first.) On this re-read, I got a better feeling of how the two things aren’t entirely unrelated; for one thing, if Sambra Reallen hadn’t called the department heads to a meeting as a distraction from Rolanni’s rescue attempt, they wouldn’t have been on hand to witness the Chairman’s downfall, and Reallen wouldn’t have been there to take hold of the situation before it got out of hand.
(Incidentally, from the mentions of them in this story, the department heads seem to be functionally just such a council of elders as Chairman Trogar boasted to Edger did not exist and had no power over him.)
Also, I’m thinking now, Rolanni’s attempt to rescue Kore is a bit like like Marguerite’s attempt to rescue her husband in The Scarlet Pimpernel, in that whether she will succeed in rescuing him is not the big question of the story; the big question was already answered when she decided she had to make the attempt.
It struck me on this re-read that “Kore” is also the name of a figure in Greek mythology, but I think that’s probably just a coincidence, notwithstanding that this Kore also has what might be understood as a descent into the underworld.
Another more useful thing that struck me on this re-read is that Rolanni’s personal and professional history places her as part of whatever the modern equivalent is of the trading family network that Jethri’s family was part of back in Balance of Trade.
Something I noticed the first time and again on this re-read is that we get very little detail about Kore’s employer, the High Judge, not even a name; I suspect the authors were leaving room to fill in details if he showed up in another story later. The first time I read this story, I wondered if he might be Clarence O’Berin, but that was mainly because I wanted more stories about Clarence; what little we get about the High Judge’s personality doesn’t really fit. It’s definitely not Clarence, anyhow; “Shadow Partner” has him still holding down the position on Liad many years after the High Judge started on the career path that led to him being the High Judge.
Tomorrow: Plan B
Day 166
Standard Year 1118
Elthoria
In which Norn ven’Deelin considers her options.
Master ven’Deelin is decisive in moving to assist her foster son, not that I expected anything different from her by this point.
I am not sure I have correctly untangled that very long sentence which comes third in this chapter. It sounds like it has a story behind it, whatever it means.
Day 161
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which Jethri and Khat each have a long and incident-packed day.
Well now, this is a long chapter.
Khat’s day brings her to Banth, an inhospitable planet which a surprising number of Liadens seem to want to visit. And among them, the chel’Gaibin and her son, who reacts badly to encountering one of Jethri’s kin. I really like the sequence with Khat’s friend Keeson and his sister, which probably wasn’t strictly needful to the plot but adds a lot of texture to the story.
Jethri’s day, in between encounters with tailors and dancing instructors, takes him out to the vines, teaches him a few things about the local fauna, and leads to a possibly unwise bright idea involving the device Grig called a “weather maker”.
It’s been alluded to previously, but this is the first time the Code of Proper Conduct has been mentioned by its full title. Also mentioned is that it’s currently three volumes long, a state of affairs that I seem to recall does not maintain itself indefinitely.
Day 145
Standard Year 1118
Kinaveral
In which the Gobelyn family is not the market for Befores.
More types of Old Tech: “light-wands” and “duplicating units”, neither of which is ringing any particularly loud bells regarding the tech we saw in the prequel duology. Grig says the man looking for them is a fool, but it’s not clear whether he means “because he expects to find any” or “because he expects things to go well once he starts messing with one”. It could be the latter because Grig clearly knows more about Old Tech than he’s letting on. Another example of which is that he calls Jethri’s device a weather maker, which is not a thing Jethri knows about it.
(And if there’s one thing I’m really learning about from this re-read, it’s the authors’ technique of mentioning a thing in passing a chapter or two before it becomes important again.)
Is it just me, or is there something going on between Seeli and Grig?