Tag Archives: Vel Ter jo’Bern

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 14

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In which Hedrede calls upon Korval.

I am suspicious of Delm Hedrede’s attempt to discredit Anne’s scholarship. Certainly, prejudice may be found in all walks of life, but the description of Hedrede as a clan that usually keeps to itself and doesn’t start anything in Council makes me wonder if somebody put her up to it. (If it was the same people who were behind Fil Tor Kinrae and the earlier, more direct attack on Anne and Scholar yo’Kera, one would expect them to know that Daav could invoke Scholar yo’Kera to defeat the implication of Terran duplicity. Perhaps they did, but felt it was worth a try anyhow, as long as they had Hedrede to absorb the consequences if it didn’t work out.)

While Daav is busy defusing ticking social bombs of various kinds, Aelliana is having a much better day. Being around people who give her honest respect for her achievements — and are able to bring her to accept the respect she’s earned, which the Scouts are able to do in a way her students have never had the status for, however much they respected her — has been doing her some lasting good.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 28

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Solcintra

In which certain negotiations take place.

The two Solcintran negotiators both have names that recur in the Liaden Universe – which is perhaps only to be expected. Some of Nalli Olanek’s descendants will find themselves in dispute with some of Tor An’s descendants in Conflict of Honors, and Clan Hedrede is mentioned a couple of times in Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon, with a Dath jo’Bern of that clan being an incidental character in the latter. (With thanks to the Liaden Wiki – my memory for obscure details is not that good.)

The Enemy have taken out High Command in its withdrawn and reinforced position, without having to pass through any of the intervening space, which just shows how much good that did.

We see the origin of Cantra’s logbook, which will become a tradition upheld by her successors; that answers something I’d been wondering aloud a while back.

Another thing I’d been wondering, though it never quite got to aloud, was about Moonhawk and Lute’s colleagues in the Great Weaving. It’s pretty obvious that Moonhawk is the same Moonhawk who is Priscilla’s guiding spirit when she’s a priestess of the Goddess, and seems clear therefore that the other guiding spirits from Priscilla’s religion are this Moonhawk’s sisters in the Great Weaving (I don’t recall that any of their names are ever given, in either context). What I’d been wondering was whether, since they’re presumably all a dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute, all the guiding spirits have masculine sidekicks like Lute and it was just that somehow we’d never heard about them. The scene in this chapter where Lute learns that Moonhawk has made an independent space for him in the Weaving suggests that no, it’s just Lute.

(I think where I went wrong was at “dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute”; there’s probably no other dramliza pairing that’s quite like Moonhawk and Lute. One of the other things I’ve been realising on this re-read is that my understanding of the dramliz from the first time through had been weighted too much toward taking Rool Tiazan and Lute as typical of their station, when as two of the few – or even, for all it’s said, the only two – free zaliata to have accepted the yoke, they’re each blazingly unique.)