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

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A missive from Nettle to Withywoods indicating her desires for the property precedes “The Butterfly Man.” The chapter, proper, begins with Capra leaving Bee in her cell once again. Bee and Prilkop confer about her prophetic visions, and Prilkop sorrows over her relative lack of tutelage before informing her about the Catalyst each Prophet has. To Bee’s dismay, Prilkop posits that Dwalia was her Catalyst; he also remarks on his own work as a Prophet and his interactions with Ilistore. Prilkop further urges Bee not to destroy Clerres as she well might, citing its historical archive as a treasure worth preserving and noting the many not directly concerned with the Servants who would nonetheless suffer for her ending the Servants’ reign.

As discussion between Bee and Prilkop continues, Bee inveighs against the Servants and their depredations upon her and her people. Prilkop urges her towards the greater good even so, and further conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Beloved, clad in the butterfly cloak and so largely hidden from sight. Capra soon arrives in search of Beloved, and he is captured. As he is exposed to view, Bee recognizes Beloved, and she watches as he stabs Capra twice before being beaten again. Capra issues orders regarding Beloved and Prilkop before losing consciousness, and the surrounding guards depart to enact them.

In the guards’ absence, Prilkop and Bee confer again. They are soon interrupted again, this time by Motley, who claims to have been sent by Perseverance. Wolf-Father urges Bee from within to give a message to the bird–“A way out is a way in”–which she does with uncertain hope.

The present chapter is another short one, some thirteen pages in the printing I’m rereading; the last was a scant nine. Narrative pacing appears to be accelerating, which is not unexpected (even without the advantage of rereading the text); the end of the novel and the series of which the novel is the last entry (at this time; there has been some mention that more may be coming, but the other extant Realm of the Elderlings material of which I’m aware seems all to be in the past from this point in milieu) approaches, so it makes sense that things would pick up speed. Rushing downhill, as Freytag’s model is often presented, does usually see faster movement near the end.

The present chapter also brings up the idea of the butterfly effect once again. One of the major themes that emerges from the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is that small actions matter. Little things matter, both in themselves and because they add up over time. Hobb expresses as much many ways across the novels, ways that can be traced and explicated (although I have yet to do so, another scholarly someday I hope I might be able to address at some point), and I find myself thinking that her doing so is another way in which she signals her alignment with the Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature (despite her many divergences from it). The Professor makes much of the importance of little people doing little things to big effect, and while he’s hardly alone in doing so, his influence remains clear–although, again, Hobb ranges far afield from Middle-earth in the Realm of the Elderlings.

I’ll note, too, that Prilkop does make some valid points in his conversation with Bee. There is value in having access to a large historical archive, and there are people who would be affected by things happening to Clerres who have nothing directly to do with the evils Clerres has perpetrated. But it is also the case that the historical archive is not a neutral thing; its recorders have their biases and impose them, knowingly and not, into the records, and access to that archive is far from even. And it is also the case that those who have nothing directly to do with the evils of Clerres nonetheless benefit from them and do, if at some remove, contribute to them. There are degrees of culpability, of course, and there are legitimate questions to ask about how much must be removed to ensure the eradication of evil…but that the eradication is needed should not be one of them.

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