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

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Following a brief commentary on instructional practices, “Things to Keep” begins with Fitz musing on his errors with Bee as she fumes at him silently. He takes her to a chamber that has been recently cleaned, marking the changes to it as she arrives therein and is taken aback at them. At her request, he returns to her those of her effects he had preserved, even as the loss of others is marked. Fitz also turns over Molly’s belt-knife to Bee, and she explains why she wants it from him, which explanation takes him aback. Recognizing belatedly the situation in which they both find themselves, Fitz begins teaching her the use of the knife as a weapon, and he is somewhat shocked at how well she takes to the lessons.

Bee and Fitz also confer about his having opened reading lessons to all of the children of Withywoods, with her noting public rumor about his motives and him asserting his actual intentions with it. Bee begrudgingly accepts his explanation and removes her things to her room, leaving Fitz to be harangued by Shun. When she insinuates Molly’s infidelity, Fitz grows coldly angry, and Riddle, who happens by, recognizes the danger in which Shun has placed herself, escorting her off before matters can sour further.

Later, in private, Fitz fumes about the insult offered him, and he recognizes that Bee is in position to observe him. He mulls over her investigations as he assesses whether or not they have continued recently, which musing is interrupted by the arrival of Riddle in his study. Riddle notes increasing entanglements with Shun and well-meaning servants in the household, and he reports receipt of a message from Chade. Part of its contents speak to Lant’s maternity, Fitz puzzling out dates and setting aside theories based upon his calculations. Those theories and calculations become the topic of discussion between the two men, and the death of Laurel, who had aided with the Piebald troubles, is reported; she had departed Buckkeep and vanished, with the next word of her being news of her passing. Riddle presses Fitz to make space for Lant in his home, and Fitz reluctantly agrees.

That afternoon, Fitz makes overtures toward Lant, calling on him in his chambers. Assessing his situation, he asks him to begin joining the family at dinner, and Lant reluctantly agrees.

I cannot help but wonder if Hobb is making some jab in the prefatory material to the present chapter. In it, the in-milieu comment (from Fedwren, no less, after whom my Project is named) remarks with some aspersion on a “Scribe Martin.” I note that Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings corpus and George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire began at roughly the same time–but that in the time that the latter has extended to five volumes in the time that the former had stretched into its eleventh (with the present volume being the fourteenth), and none of the novels in the Realm of the Elderlings series are short. While it might simply be the case that Hobb favors using bird-names for her Six Duchies scribes (and I’d need to look through the corpus for a few more examples to bear out that idea–another scholarly someday), it does not exceed belief that there might well be some poking at a contemporary working in the same field–and who is, in some senses, competition.

I have to wonder, too, about what seems to me to be gender essentialism at work in the current chapter. Bee makes a comment to the effect of “girls don’t have to hit you to hurt you,” and Fitz reflects upon the comment amid and after his encounter with Shun. While it is certainly the case that Shun is acting the antagonist–evoking Regal in some ways, and not pleasantly–it is also the case that a number of male–and decidedly masculine–characters in the Realm of the Elderlings novels have acted thusly, even among the protagonists. Fitz has done his share of social sniping, for one, and both Chade and Dutiful have shown themselves remarkably adept at such maneuvers more than once in the novels. Too, it is not as if Shun has not shown herself to be competent at assassin’s tasks–and all that leaves aside the Liveship Traders novels, which seem to me to be in large part commentaries on the need for gender equity, as well as the example of Kettricken–and the more complex one of the Fool, already attested to good effect by several scholars. Is the present chapter something of a back-slide for Hobb? Is it a recognition and presentation of the non-uniformity of opinion within a region? Perhaps some comment on the urban / rural divide? As I think on it amid the rereading, I am uncertain–just as I am uncertain how many scholarly somedays I ought to note relating to a single chapter.

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