Tag Archives: topaz ring

Trade Secret – Chapter 1

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Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump

In which Jethri reflects on birthrights.

The prologue having hopefully hooked the reader with the promise of mayhem to come, this is a quieter chapter, largely given over to recapping the state of play for anybody who doesn’t happen to have just this week finished reading Balance of Trade.

Things have progressed somewhat since the end of the previous novel: Norn ven’Deelin has agreed to support Jethri in getting Tan Sim out of his difficulty, but there are still details to be worked out. If it were easy, anybody could do it.

We also get another new detail added to what we already knew: apparently Jethri’s space hair, before he became a Liaden fosterling and had to grow it out, wasn’t just trimmed short as a utilitarian thing, but sculpted in a distinctive pattern.

Trade Secret – Prologue

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Stateroom Number Two
Liaden Tradeship Wynhael, Outbound from Banth, a Backworld

In which Jethri’s story is by no means over.

A new novel!

The prologue gives us Bar Jan chel’Gaibin nursing his grievances, some hints about what’s up on Banth, and Jethri continuing his career but discovering that Old Tech is still going to be a part of his life. The chel’Gaibin seems to have decided to take particular offence against Khat, so no doubt we’ll be hearing more of the crew of the Market along the way. That’s all the major dangling threads from Balance of Trade picked up already – all I ask now is a throwaway line about how Jethri’s moustache management is getting on, and I’ll be happy.

We get quite a detailed portrait of Bar Jan chel’Gaibin in the first part of the prologue. Not a nice fellow, the chel’Gaibin. The description of his debt book is revealing, and so is the bit about the rigged dueling pistols – that latter also saying something about the family he comes from, given that they’re the house’s pistols and not his personally. (I wonder if we’ll be seeing those pistols in action, later.)

We also learn some things about Jethri. The bit about him feeling as if fractins are aware of him is new, though it fits in with what we already had about his knack for salvage items.

Jethri is currently working on a world where they go in for elaborate ceremony, which gives us some interesting new flourishes on the bows. I particularly like the revelation that the language of bows includes a construction for “I realise my sleeves aren’t long enough to do this bow justice”.