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Ghost Ship – Chapter 42

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Pod 78
Moonstruck

In which Pod 78 draws blood.

I don’t think I’ve observed before, and given the events of this chapter there’s not going to be another chance, that Daav flies Ride the Luck from the co-pilot’s chair. There’s probably more to that than simple force of habit.

There have been a number of moments over the past few books when Daav has felt Aelliana’s presence and forced himself not to look because he knows he won’t see her, and they pay off in the moment at the end of this chapter. Which is a neat trick, really, considering that when the authors started including those moments they had no idea this scene was in their future.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 41

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Crown City, Theopholis
Hour of Knaves

In which Dagmar Collier encounters the Tree and the Dragon.

This confrontation between Priscilla and Collier goes very differently from the one on Arsdred. Priscilla is a lot more self-confident now, and has access to abilities she didn’t know she had then. She’s got… call it room to maneuvre: on Arsdred, she was fighting from moment to moment to keep on top of the situation, but here she has the opportunity to consider what approach to take. I think it’s worthy of note that her first choice is to offer Collier a way out, and hold the Dragon in check as long as they can; there are people who, if they had a Dragon, would use it first chance they got. (I don’t know, mind you, whether such people would be able to achieve the study and discipline required to achieve such a Dragon as Priscilla has.) In a way, it brings Priscilla’s story back around to the incident on Sintia that got her into trouble in the first place.

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 14

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Arsdred Port Magistrate’s Chamber
Local Year 728
Evening Bazaar

In which Priscilla sees the legal system of Arsdred from the inside.

One of the ways in which Shan is a better trader than Sav Rid Olanek, as demonstrated here, is his ability to find the smooth path leading to a conclusion satisfactory to himself and to the person he’s dealing with. Trader Olanek seems to be of the opinion that getting his own way is all that matters, without even the awareness that he might get his own way more easily if he paid some attention to what others wanted.

I like the slight hesitation before Trader Olanek says he’s willing to speak for Dagmar Collier. That’s a nice detail.

Another nice detail is that we have a Liaden expressing dislike of the fact that Shan is willing to acknowledge Gordy as kin, just a chapter after Gordy mentioned a Terran expressing dislike of the fact that Gordy is willing to acknowledge Shan as kin. (And Gordy’s explanation to Priscilla last chapter served a useful setting-up purpose, such that we now know what Trader Olanek is talking about without having to hold up the action here for an explanation.)

I also like the bit about the insult that can’t be understood by a person who merely knows what the words mean. A feature common to many of my favourite science fiction stories is cultures that have been sufficiently developed as to have figures of speech that don’t translate cleanly. (Two other examples that come to mind are Janet Kagan’s Hellspark and Cherry Wilder’s Torin series. You can tell a culture has some depth to it when it has its own puns.)

Conflict of Honors – Chapter 13

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Arsdred Port City
Local Year 728
Midday Bazaar

In which Priscilla encounters Dagmar Collier again.

The opening paragraphs of this chapter do an impressively colourful bit of scene-setting. Though I feel obliged to note that the depiction of the “dark-skinned, doe-eyed, hook-nosed” Arsdredi merchants rubs against the part of me that gets annoyed by unthoughtful recycling of cultural stereotypes. Particularly since the police at the end of the chapter, who are presumably also Arsdredi, partake of a completely different cultural sterotype.

This chapter contains a rare mention of Ken Rik the cargo master’s surname, which for the record is yo’Lanna.

“Moonphase” doesn’t say there was a sculpture of a triglant among the things Priscilla took with her from the Temple. Then again, it doesn’t say there wasn’t.

Guaranteed Delivery

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In which Dollance-Marie Chimra finds something with a price above rubies.

I didn’t like this story much the first time I read it. I found the plot utterly predictable, and none of the new characters particularly engaging. In the intersection of those two things, I didn’t care at all for Dollance-Marie Chimra, whose troubles are at the centre of the plot, since her troubles were by and large of her own making and I had less sympathy for her than for the various people whom she was putting to unnecessary trouble.

I enjoyed it more on this re-read. The plot wasn’t such a liability, because knowing what will happen next is what one expects on re-reading a story. And I find that I have more sympathy for Dollance-Marie on second acquaintance; this time through I got a better grasp of how her upbringing has produced the blind spots that result in the poor decisions she makes, and also I noticed more the indications that she does care about the people she’s caused trouble for — even if she doesn’t always understand the nature or extent of the trouble, when it comes to people outside the societal structure she’s grown up in.

That societal structure, where the intrusive-media side of celebrity has become a formal part of the life of the upper classes, was something I found some entertainment in even the first time I read the story. There’s aspects of modern social media, with trend-setters’ worth being judged by the number of their Followers, and echoes of the more old-fashioned paparazzi. And I noticed on this re-read that some of the names have a particularly English cast to them, which makes me think of the way the British Royal Family is arguably more important nowadays for giving the media something to pay attention to than for anything involving actually ruling the nation.

(The other thing some of the names remind me of is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, but I haven’t visited that charming place in so long that I’m not sure if I’m just imagining things.)

Tomorrow, Mouse and Dragon chapter 37. Which brings to mind the thought that another thing this story has to offer, in the confrontation outside the Port, is a certain amount of foreshadowing.

The Beggar King

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In which Daav yos’Phelium and Clarence O’Berin do not become friends.

This story follows close on the heels of “A Choice of Weapons”, with Daav still on the same leave of absence from the Scouts and still not convinced that he will have it in him to sit on Liad and be suitably delm-like when the time comes.

The legitimate front for the Juntavas on Liad is a company called Triplanetary Freight Forwarding; if the name is to be taken literally, I wonder which the other two planets are. (Come to think of it, I wonder if it’s a shout-out to “Doc” Smith.)

Something that struck me on this re-read, with this story coming so soon after several others relating one way and another to the Liaden rules about face-touching: at one point, the luck-for-hire at the casino places her hand on Daav’s face, and he thinks nothing of it except to observe the callouses on her hand. This seems a remarkably cool response after how firm Samay pin’Aker was on the subject of hand-to-face contact in Trade Secret. (This story was, of course, written some considerable time before that one; perhaps the full details of what Liadens could and could not do with their faces were yet unclear.)

Those callouses, though, are said to be the same as the callouses on Daav’s own hands, which suggests that Zara Chance is herself a Scout, or more likely a former Scout. I wonder if she’s working for the same people as that other seductive former Scout we encountered not so long ago.

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Tomorrow: Local Custom