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

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An old letter from Shrewd to Desire regarding the Fool precedes “Silver Ships and Dragons,” which opens with Fitz ruminating on the comparison between meetings of his family and the assemblage of the intertwined Vestrits and rulers of the Pirate Isles. Fitz assesses and describes those present at the meeting, and conversation about events and the coming changes to the liveships ensues. The looming end of Brashen and Althea’s mercantile careers is also reported.

Conversation is interrupted by the arrival aboard the Paragon, not entirely welcome, of Paragon Kennitsson. The brash heir to the Pirate Isles is described as he arrives, and after a tense exchange, the young man is summoned by the ship to the figurehead. Althea and Brashen confer over her difficulty with Kennitsson, due to Kennit’s mistreatment of her, and the whole group moves to the prow of the ship. There, they find Kennitsson and the ship plotting for the former to sail with the latter, and Wintrow argues against it, joined by Sorcor.

Kennitsson takes his leave, and the others confer about him, noting their failures with the young man. Fitz observes and ruminates on the difficulty and undesirability of having so much companionship on his errand of destruction. Conference continues until interrupted by the arrival of Etta, herself, in a royal dudgeon. It is quickly clear that she is aware of the current situation surrounding the Paragon and her son, and she voices her displeasure with how events are unfolding. Brashen pleads for assistance in sending along what can be sent of the goods they had carried in trade to their originally intended destinations, to which Wintrow agrees, but the notion of sailing without Kennitsson provokes anger from the Paragon; the threat to Althea and Wintrow provokes the Vivacia to anger.

In the ensuing tumult, Fitz offers to find another way for he and the Fool to proceed, but he is rebuffed, the Fool citing aspects of his prognostication in support of his assertions. This occasions upset among Fitz’s party, and Fitz voices his anger, but the Fool persists nonetheless. Fitz absents himself from the ongoing discussion between the liveships, considering Silver and trying to sort out more of his understanding of the Skill. Implications of using such of the substance as he carries occur to him, although his reverie is disturbed first by Lant, then by the need for his labor, and finally a sending from Tintaglia, whose approach is imminent.

As often, I find my attention taken by the prefatory materials of the chapter. For one thing, the revelation of an aspect of Shrewd’s character is a welcome thing. When he appears directly in the Farseer novels, he is a necessarily remote figure; it makes sense that a child and youth of disfavored parentage would not be terribly close to a ruling king of a grandfather, and even in closer relationships along family lines, there is often a distance between children and adults that is not easily bridged. To get a glimpse into Shrewd, then, is informative. It is also revealing, showing how besotted the man was with Desire–and it speaks again to the delight of emblematic naming in the Realm of the Elderlings, here making the clear point that desire can overwhelm even a shrewd mind, ultimately to bad ends.

The prefatory materials also connect back to the very beginnings of the Realm of the Elderlings novels, with the Fool’s first recorded words to Shrewd being a maxim Regal complains to Verity of him repeating upon his first meeting Fitz–to paraphrase, don’t do what you can’t undo without knowing what you can’t do after doing it. There are some minor variations in phrasing between what Shrewd gives in his letter and what Regal quotes his father as saying, differences between contractions and not, so nothing that much alters the meaning of the quip…which is, itself, very much in keeping with the Fool’s prognostications and recognition of the butterfly effect in enacting and avoiding them. To my rereading, it comes off as a nice bit of binding-up, a back-threading that makes a more cohesive narrative whole, and it’s something I appreciate seeing.

On the topic of prognostication, I note the Fool’s insistence that he cannot guide Fitz, that Fitz’s foreknowledge would taint his actions and skew the Fool’s visions. Here, again, the resonance with Asimovian psychohistory comes out for me, an older correspondence. While it’s been a while since I reread the sequence of the Robot, Empire, and Foundation novels, it used to be the case that I would reread them (and The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) annually, doing so starting at age ten or so; they’re in me pretty deeply, even now, and so they do inflect my readings of other works. That’s to be expected, however; we all exist in a multilayered environment, and any interactions with any part of that environment will necessarily be influenced by the other parts of it–including the legacies of environments that were but no longer are. That I see a thing is a result not only of something being present to be seen, but also my predilection to look for that kind of thing; that I understand a thing in a given way means not only that the thing is available for that understanding, but also that I am apt to apply such an understanding. It does not mean other things are not present and other ways cannot be followed, which is something that I think many people run into, but I am digressing more than I ought to at this point.

There will be other days.

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