Spiral Dance
Ardega
In which the Enemy makes an example.
More about the aelantaza, and about Dulsey’s background, and Cantra’s. That’s an interesting insight about why Cantra’s so cantankerous.
Cantra’s been thinking to herself lately that it’s not safe to find Jela as attractive as she does, and now it appears that Jela has been thinking to himself similar things about Cantra. It’s pretty clear where that’s headed, even if I didn’t already know.
On the ground
Faldaiza Port
In which you gotta know when to walk away, know when to run.
Well. This is getting quite exciting, isn’t it?
The name of Dulsey crops up for the first and not the last time.
I’m trying to remember if we see the gambler again; I have a kind of feeling we do, but it’s hard to be sure without a name to latch onto, and the situation in which we last see her in this chapter could go either way. I don’t have the same kind of feeling about the two cops, so it’s nice that they got to have so much personality in such a small appearance.
On board Spiral Dance
Faldaiza Port
In which Cantra yos’Phelium goes for a meal and some company, and gets more than she expected.
Enter a new point-of-view character: Cantra yos’Phelium, independent cargo pilot running solo.
With the new point of view, we get an outside description of Jela. He has eyes as black as the space between the stars, and, yes, brown skin. He’s shorter than the breadth of his shoulders would suggest — and shorter than Cantra, though that’s not so indicative since her height is “not inconsiderable”.
We learn about Cantra’s height from her own point of view, as well as the fact that she’s not as young as she was. From Jela’s point of view, we learn that Cantra has green eyes.
Quite a bit of backstory threaded through this chapter: about Batchers; about world-eaters; about the Rim, its people in general and Cantra and Garen in particular. Also about the navigation beacons, which caught my attention when first I read this, because they don’t have (or apparently need) those in later novels. Other things they don’t have in later novels include the smart clothing on display here, that can scan rooms for danger, send messages, display images in the air.
And another thing that caught my attention the first time, as someone who’d only read the later novels, is the mention and description of Solcintra, that fabled origin planet, which apparently is rather less illustrious in its own time than it appears through the filter of nostalgia.