Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following an exceptionally brief entry in Detozi’s log, “Kidnapped” begins with Malta and Reyn conferring about Leftrin and the Tarman and the message Malta had received. Reyn departs to confer with the captain, leaving Malta to pick her way back to their home with some difficulty. After he does, and as a storm builds, Malta begins to experience contractions and calls out for help.

Reyn hustles towards the Tarman in the growing storm, worried about Malta but pressing on from the urgency of his errand. He is able to find Leftrin, and the two confer aboard the liveship. Noting Leftrin’s maneuvering with his crew, Reyn recalls a kinship bond between himself and Leftrin, and the two reminisce briefly before Reyn presses for news of the dragons and their keepers. Leftrin attempts to defer a visit to the Khuprus holdings, and Reyn reflects on his wife’s insights. Leftrin’s niece inserts herself into the discussion, and Leftrin reluctantly accedes to her request and Reyn’s.

Malta continues to struggle to shelter, trying to comfort herself amid the storm as her incipient labor reminds her of the changes to her physiology occasioned by becoming an Elderling. She calls for help again and is answered by a man with a Chalcedean accent who hustles her along to a shelter of which she disapproves.

Reyn chafes at Leftrin’s delays and makes arrangements to hasten their travel to his lodgings. When they arrive thereat, they mark Malta’s absence, and the search for her begins.

In her “rescuer’s” room, Malta continues to undergo labor, and that “rescuer” ducks out. When he returns, he is accompanied, and the two men–Begatsi Cored and Sinad Arich–confer about her as her labor pains continue. Their plan–to harvest Malta and her child and present them as if parts of dragons–is laid out as Malta delivers and attempts to conceal her child. Arich departs, and Begatsi makes to slaughter Malta and her newborn; she takes the chance of attacking him as soon as she can, stabbing him in the throat. At length, she is able to regard her newborn son, and she sorrows at his appearance. Bundling him up, she flees back into the stormy night.

This is not, of course, the first time that Malta has been captured by Chalcedeans; she spends a fair bit of Ship of Destiny in such circumstances, beginning here. It is therefore not a surprise to me, not only because I have read the book before (even if it was a while back), but because I have much more recently reread the earlier-published novel, that Malta has the reactions she does. That Chalced is openly, belligerently misogynist is long-established, not least by Malta’s experience; that it has no real regard for human life, engaging in chattel slavery as it does, is similarly long-established (that part goes back to Assassin’s Apprentice, in fact, if obliquely; it is clearer at the beginning of Assassin’s Quest). The level of depravity involved is not quite as clear–or as deep–in the earlier works, however, and I wonder as I reread the text if Hobb is not reaching for some new sensationalistic overture here or if this is not how Chalced has “always” been.

(Yes, I am aware that I am writing about a fictional place as if it is a real one. Yes, I know it is affective at best, and that things are not at their best. I have been many times accused of not knowing what “the real world” is like–but then, I never have gotten a straight answer from those I’ve asked what “the real world” is.)

(Yes, that is distinct from the MTV reality series. Quotes and no capitals rather than italics and title case.)

If I wanted to read the chapter as a commentary on current concerns–which reading would be doable, certainly; looking at how works speak to times that follow their release is a commonplace, after all–I might note that the presence of a brothel in the Rain Wilds (and presumably more than one, though only one appears in the present chapter) and its easy acceptance or of failure to see the depravity looming in its own chambers can be interpreted as a natural outgrowth of the mercantilist tendencies at work not only in the primary milieu, but also in the real-world (that term again) societies of which that milieu is analogue. While there are certainly many who control wealth in the Rain Wilds, most of that wealth derives from the exploitation of graveyards and the slaughter of nascent children–something that might well be read as mimetic of abortions. (It’s not much of a stretch, really, from a society that quietly but unashamedly practices eugenicist infanticide.)

The question always does arise, of course, when reading fictional analogues of real-world groups of how much is commentary on the source and how much is differentiation from it. Are the practices depicted rebukes of the society upon which the primary milieu is based, or are they deliberate insertions that proceed, perhaps, from necessity within the milieu and which serve to frustrate the one-to-one correspondence between “real” and “fictional” cultures that overly-simplistic readings (and writings!) would suggest?

Such answers exceed the confines of a single blog post, necessarily. The medium does not invite the kind of reflection and interpretation such answers require for their derivation. Length alone becomes an issue; this post is approaching 1,000 words at this point and already seems to drag on, while fuller investigation gets verbose. This paper is a short example at around 2,200 words. But that the answers need to be elsewhere and that they need to have time and space to grow do not mean they do not need to be given.

Maybe, someday, I’ll work on them.

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