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Following a passage from the Servants’ histories that articulates a change in terminologies, “The Shaysim” returns to Bee as she recounts the party, led by Dwalia, making off with her and Shun, tracking their progress away from Withywoods to the extent she is able. Bee notes her situation and Shun’s, remarking on the depressed state of the latter, and she notes particular unease with one of the members of the group: Odessa. Regular patterns of her moving captivity are related, as well.

At one point along the journey, Shun breaks her silence to Bee, cautioning her to conceal her physicality from their captors. She relates her suffering and rebukes Bee sharply for her interference, and she notes that they are both being drugged by their captors. Bee accedes to Shun’s directions about deception, and the captivity presses ahead.

Dwalia makes to tend Bee, and Bee reflects on her apprehensions regarding the woman. She also further considers Shun and her situation, finding some sympathy for the woman and attempting to identify avenues through which she can act against her captors. The ensorcellment maintained by those captors continues to work on Bee, however, and something of their rhetoric receives attention, reinforcing to Bee the peril Dwalia represents. When Bee asks about that rhetoric, she is reminded of some of her earlier visions and how she acted upon them, and she considers further her own place in the world. The revelations dizzy her to the point of illness, and Dwalia’s companions find themselves stymied.

As is often the case, I find the chapter-prefatory materials of interest. As I believe I have noted and as I know at least two other scholars have mentioned, the inclusion of such materials works in part to present the narrative as existing within a larger world, something that allows it to deploy a Tolkienian “inner consistency of reality” and facilitate a Coleridgean “willing suspension of disbelief.” That is, having excerpts, often from “outside” sources, at the heads of chapters helps to create the impression that the world in which the Realm of the Elderlings corpus occurs is a “real” one. In the present chapter, the “historian voice” at work comes across, at least to my reading, as a particularly pointed example of doing that; there’s something about it that seems authentically academic as I reread it. The snarky comment in the second paragraph, for example, brings to mind the kind of sniping I have seen–and, if I am honest, participated in–in conference papers and the occasional journal article. The plea to recognize agency also brings to mind a lot of academic discourse with which I am familiar. While Hobb is, avowedly, not an academic, she manages to get right enough of it that the present chapter’s preface “rings true.” It’s not the first time, of course, but it does stand out for me, reading from where I do.

Another note of interest, if a little thing: I’ve commented on several occasions about the use of emblematic names in Hobb’s work, usually but not always among the nobility of the Six Duchies. I find the focus on Odessa in the present chapter to be of interest in that light. The name is one linked to two cities, one in Ukraine and one in Texas. Not being Ukrainian, I am not entirely up on what associates with that city; being Texan, I can note that Odessa, Texas, does loom large in the area’s consciousness. I find, too, that there is an Odessa, Washington, that might well be of interest to the Pacific Northwesterner Hobb. Whether or not there is something being said about any or all of them, I am not sure, but I think it might well be worth looking at. Sometime.

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After a letter to Fitz from Civil Bresinga, “Withywoods” begins with Fitz hastening to his home, using the Witness Stones to do so, despite the peril and cost. Fitz finds himself praying as he proceeds in as much haste as he can reasonably make, and he rehearses nightmarish scenarios as he does so. He also notes feeling more and more reluctant to go forward as he does proceed, and when he arrives at Withywoods and begins Skilling to Chade and others to report, he finds his magics stymied. Encountering other residents, he asks after Bee and those to whom he has entrusted her care, receiving disjointed and confused answers. The lack of clarity frustrates and confuses Fitz, and those he questions begin to suffer under his questioning.

Fitz happens to notice Perseverance, who pleads with him for recognition. Dismissing the others, Fitz confers with the boy, learning what has befallen his family and its estate. Lant brings medicine and, when he challenges Fitz about his regard for Perseverance, Fitz upbraids him, revealing his true identity, at which Perseverance is reverent. Under further questioning, Perseverance unfolds information about the raiders on Withywoods to Fitz, who arrives at ideas for the raiders’ motivations.

Fitz then turns his attention to Lant, puzzling out from what he learns from the man that some kind of ensorcellment is at work. The arrival of a royal messenger known to Fitz, Slidwell, confirms as much, as well as establishing the physical limits of the ensorcellment and its effects. Slidwell notes, too, that Chade and Thick are on their way, but Nettle is not because of potential harm to the child she carries. FItz dismisses Lant, who leaves in anger, as well as Slidwell, who takes brandy with him.

So much done, Fitz walks the halls and searches the rooms for clues. Few present themselves until he encounters the cat with whom Bee had conferred. From the cat, Fitz learns more of the raid, that Bee and Shun had been taken and that some of the raiders had no smell of their own–something that puts Fitz in mind of the Fool. Fitz considers matters in sorrow.

The present chapter is not the first in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus to carry the title “Withywoods.” Indeed, the first chapter of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy does so, so the present chapter is necessarily calling back to that beginning in some way. As in that chapter, the present chapter happens amid winter with people making their way towards the estate bequeathed upon Molly Chandler, enwrapped in concerns of the Wit and of the maintenance of that household, so there are some textual resonances, although I readily admit they are not exact correspondences or parallels. The present chapter is much heavier and darker in tone than the first one in the present series–although it is to be expected of the second book in a trilogy that it will be in such a place, the typical sequence for such things being introduction, complication, and resolution.

I note that the present chapter touches on Fitz’s religiosity. I’ve written on the matter of religion in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, although I do not make much in that paper of Fitz’s own practice. Rereading the present chapter, I remember why: “I had never had a deep faith” (199) does not suggest that there is much depth to that well. I do have an opinion about such things, as might be expected; there’s a little about it here, and it may be that I revisit that project as one of my many scholarly somedays. For the moment, the note that there is a note to add is worth making.

Affectively, I found the present chapter somewhat hard to read. I followed the action easily enough, unlike some parts of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus; despite the depiction of being fogged at work in the present chapter, the plot was plain enough. (So much has not been the case for all such parts of the corpus, as a recent comment reminded me.) For me, the difficulty was in the text awakening fears that already slumber uneasily in me. I’ve mentioned–once or twice–that I am a father of a daughter whom I love very much. While I know that much is sensationalized and overblown, I know there are risks to her, even absent bad actors in the world, and I do not think I am wrong to act with some eye toward them. As I write this, my daughter is well cared for and safe, but it does not take much for me to imagine that she might not be so, and the present chapter does some prompting that way. I find no fault with the writing that it does so, but it does so so.

Then again, maybe the fact that the book does command emotional responses from me is part of why I keep reading, that I have done so for some years, now, and that I am like to keep doing so for more years yet.

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Following what appears to be a report from Ash to Rosemary about approaching the Fool, “Tidings” opens with Fitz returning to his rooms to sleep and rising to uncertainty about his new role in the Six Duchies. He and Nettle confer through the Skill, with Nettle discussing a number of things with Fitz that had occurred in a meeting where he had not been present, and some matters between them are eased.

Afterwards, Fitz confers with Chade through the Skill, discussing their respective re-emergences into public life. Chade reminds Fitz that he has a role to play in his public persona and must act to suit it, noting that the same is true for private life. Fitz retreats to Chade’s hidden chamber to confer with the Fool–and with Ash, who is present–about how to put on his role. The pair delight in outfitting Fitz, who finds himself appreciative of their efforts and the results, and Ash asks Fitz about the truth of some of the Fool’s claims to him. Fitz speaks well of the Fool and invites him to dinner, but is refused, the reasons cited. At the urgings of Chade and others, Fitz makes to descend to dinner, and Ash reports to him of the Fool’s status.

Fitz is brought in by Riddle, who now sports the title Kesir in acknowledgement of his receipt of a Chyurda holding from Kettricken. The two talk together as Riddle ensures Fitz’s swift arrival with the royal party, along with whom he enters to dine. The events of the evening are glossed, among which Fitz is crowned again and publicly, and among which he is pressed socially in ways to which he is entirely unaccustomed.

Following the dinner, Fitz is again part of the royal party as it adjourns to Dutiful’s chambers. There, the group confers about next steps to take regarding Fitz and Bee, and Chade finds himself stymied at not being able to reach an agent he had dispatched to Withywoods, Slidwell. Nettle notes some annoyance at Chade’s use of Slidwell, noting “There were a number of reasons I chose to discontinue his Skill-training” (191), but she reaches out to him through the Skill, aided by Dutiful and Fitz. They find something fogging the magic, and Fitz and Chade both purpose to make for Withywoods in haste. Discussion of the fogging and its possible sources follows, and Chade briefs and equips Fitz for his journey, on which he departs in haste.

The discussion in the present chapter about the performativity of public personae–with public including any association with other people–attracts some attention. If memory serves, inhabiting a public role for any length of time, especially one seemingly at odds with his inclinations, is a strain for Fitz; his sojourn as Lord Golden’s servingman stands out as an example of his difficulties. If memory serves, the Fool is perhaps the best person to consult about the overt performativity of dealing with other people; having lived as other people than himself, as several people other than himself, across many years, affords him substantial experience with and a detailed perspective on the matter. (Yes, I know that the Fool’s presentation varies. He does seem to be presenting as masculine in the present text.) There is a temptation to read the exchange between the two–assisted by Ash, who receives some interesting comment from the Fool–as another metaphor for some issue or another, or as some level of gloss on Judith Butler’s rhetoric, but I’ll acknowledge that might just be my graduate schooling talking.

I have my role to play, as well.

Part of that role, at least as has regarded my rereading Hobb, has been that I read affectively more than is perhaps good for me. In keeping with that, I will note that my daughter, Ms. 8, has long been engaged as a performer; she has, in fact, just started rehearsals for her next show as I write this. As part of that performance practice, she has had to inhabit other personae than her “real” one (and she is branching out into costume design as part of that work, as well, which seems relevant to the present chapter); I have had some success in explaining things to her as being parts of a role she has to adopt for specific audiences she encounters. (There’s something to be said about meeting people where they are, even when they are people well known already.) My own role-playing, in an overt sense, has gotten going again, as I’ve noted recently, and I always have some concerns about what I am doing as a husband and a father. As such, playing roles, fulfilling perceivedly expected functions for other people, has been much on my mind recently. It is perhaps coincidental that the present chapter focuses so much on such things; were I more Jungian in my approach, I might be inclined to consider the synchronicity of it. But I never have been as much embedded in psychoanalytic criticism as others have been, even others under whom I did some study in years long gone away now. At this point, I’m not sure what theoretical stance I take, really, if I do take one consistently (which is another question, and an open one).

Perhaps that is also part of my role.

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