Tag Archives: vya

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”.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 22

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Day 125
Standard Year 1118

Modrid

In which Jethri and the master of Modrid Trade Hall make their opinions of each other very clear.

Jethri shows a couple of times in this chapter that he doesn’t expect the regard of others. As Master ven’Deelin notes, when the Hall Master refuses to accept him as Master ven’Deelin’s apprentice he’s more upset about the insult to her than the corresponding slighting of himself. And then he admits that it hadn’t occurred to him that his uncle might have genuinely considered that he had properly earned the right to hold the ten-year Combine key. Perhaps it comes of being the baby of a large family, with or without the addition of a parent who wants nothing to do with him. It’s something he’s going to have to work on; humility is well and good, but a trader is not going to get very far without a sense of his own consequence.

The historic tapestry of surpassing ugliness is an amusing detail.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 10

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Day 65
Standard Year 1118

Kinaveral

In which Mr Rumor has been doing the rounds.

I like “at sevens and eights”, which is presumably the same as “at sixes and sevens” only worse.

Mac Gold seems like an unpleasant fellow, and I wonder how much of the rumor he recounts is what Mr Rumor is actually saying and how much is him putting his own spin on it for his own purposes. (I mean, people do talk, and people who talk don’t always need encouragement to assume the worst, but based on what we’ve seen of him so far I wouldn’t put it past him.)

Balance of Trade – Chapter 6

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Day 42
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Departing

In which there are secrets in all families.

With Paitor and Grig wanting to let Jethri know a few things, there’s a lot of background filled in here, not all of which ends up being noticeably relevant in the rest of this novel.

Allowing for a bit of linguistic drift, it seems likely that the blusharie the three of them share is the same kind of drink as the blusherrie Niku and Friar Julian drink in celebration at the end of “Eleutherios”.

Speaking of things returning under new names, the fractins – the Fractional Mosaic Memory Modules – seem likely to be the same as the data-tiles that were all over the place in Crystal Dragon. (Interesting that we get more description of what they look like and what they’re made of in this book than we ever did in the one where they were all over the place. I suppose when they were all over the place, none of the viewpoint characters paid them much attention.) And the suggestion that within a few years something is going to start happening to them is one of those bits that isn’t picked up in this novel, but might be in the sequel.

I’m not sure what to make of the business about there possibly having been more than one Terra.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 3

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Day 33
Standard Year 1118

Ynsolt’i Port
Textile Hall

In which Jethri passes his first day of unsupervised trade.

Jethri makes three bargains this chapter, some to better effect than others.

I have read enough about the art of the con that I think the conversation with Sirge Milton would be setting off alarm bells even if I didn’t already know how it turns out. (Also, I reckon the flattering bartender is either a carefully selected prop or a confederate; she has a knack for saying just the right thing to keep the wheel turning.)

I do wonder a bit that an apprentice trader hasn’t been taught more about how to tell when somebody’s trying to fleece you, but perhaps that’s one of the things that’s slipped through the cracks with him being the youngest that people don’t always bother telling things to.

Balance of Trade – Chapter 2

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Day 32
Standard Year 1118

Gobelyn’s Market
Jethri’s Quarters

In which Jethri gets the bad news.

The downside of this being a re-read is that I’m mostly inspired to talk about the things that strike me new or different, so I don’t really have anything to say about the conversation between Jethri and his uncle, which hasn’t changed notably since last time I read it.

The sequence of Jethri and the calendar is a nice bit of characterization, both of Jethri the teenaged boy and Jethri the spacer who’s spent most of his life in a tin can and feels uncomfortable without a ceiling close over his head.

The calendar also offers a worldbuilding hook in itself, or perhaps I should say a worldbuilding bridge; the reader who is familiar with 21st-century Terran garage calendars will find things to recognise in certain aspects of it.

Speaking of which: The Gobelyn family are Terrans, a word which appears here for the first time this re-read.