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An excerpt from Bee’s journals about reading Fitz’s writings and him destroying many of them precedes “Up the River.” Bee and her companions depart Bingtown in haste aboard the Vivacia, exploiting a loophole in Trader laws to allow themselves cover for executing their intentions. Joined by the Kendry, the Vivacia proceeds to and up the Rain Wild, Bee glossing the transit and the sights she notes along the way, as well as relating in summary the reports of events she makes to those who ask about how she has fared. Beloved attempts again to reconcile with her, to less effect than he might have hoped.

The Vivacia reaches Trehaug and ties up alongside Tarman for a hurried transfer of supplies and crew. Bee is welcomed aboard the old barge and watches events. The Kendry joins the other two liveships, and both are stripped of as much as the Tarman could take on while the ships’ captains confer. All watch as the Vivacia imbibed shipped Silver and begins to transform; the Kendry does, as well, even as a delegation from the Rain Wild Traders approaches and attempts to interdict the ships’ transformation into dragons, finding no success.

Later, Leftrin notes changes in the Tarman as Bee laments the barge’s slow up-river progress. Beloved lays out some of his understanding to Bee as they proceed, and they arrive at length in Kelsingra. There, they are met by Skill-users from Buckkeep, one of whom doses Bee against the Skill at work in the city. Skill-work that had been going on is related, and it is determined over Beloved’s objections that a Skill-pillar trip is in order to get Bee back to Buckkeep.

As often, the prefatory comments attract attention. In the present case, Bee’s assertion that she means to collect and write down Fitz’s accounts helps to address a question I noted earlier that the texts present: who is the author (within the milieu; outside it, of course, the answer is obvious)? It’s not a total answer, however. While it can be posited that Bee herself does a lot of the writing that constitutes the Farseer, Tawny Man, and Fitz and the Fool novels, and no few components of the prefatory materials are themselves cited as deriving from elsewhere (about which some previous comments are here), not all of them seem accessible. And there are some other factors at work, I think, but that is something only clear from the vantage of rereading; I think I’ll address those factors as they come up. For now, it will be enough to say that a partial answer is posited, but a full one to the question of “Who is doing the writing, really?” is not in evidence…at least not yet.

In the chapter itself, I think there is more for me to say about how the Traders mimic or emerge from the experience of the early United States. Some geographical cues are present, although they are only a few and serve primarily to reinforce ideas already present rather than to introduce new ones–fittingly enough, given how late in the novel the present chapter is. Legalistic notes are more evident, I think, with the reference to fines and the peculiar loophole at work in Trader law reported as being at work. In the chapter, the comment is made that, if a ship is underway when the local legislature passes a law, that ship cannot be held in violation of that law; this would seem to be a somewhat merciful thing, an acknowledgment that promulgation of a law has to be part of a law’s enactment and enforcement. This brings to mind the idea of “free, prior, and informed consent,” one applied in international law and by treaty especially to indigenous peoples and groups…something with which the United States has had some decided difficulty but which, as with so much else, is held out as an aspirational best practice. As in other chapters, then, the Traders are held out as something like a refinement of the early United States, albeit not with one-to-one correspondences in place, in the present chapter.

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
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Testimony from a Skilled apprentice written at Nettle‘s direction prefaces “Bingtown.” As the chapter begins, Bee wakes, assessing herself and the injuries she has sustained. She also nurses her dislike of Beloved, Amber, and the Fool, regarding each as a distinct person and not wanting much to do with any of them. Perseverance tends to her, urging her to make use of the limited time to experience liveships, since they will all transform. He also urges her to use the Skill to heal her own body: “You can’t make it unhappen, but you don’t have to carry around what they did to you. Don’t give them that power over you” (748). Bee reluctantly agrees and slowly begins to restore her body, working a little at a time to minimize others’ comments.

As the Vivacia continues away from Clerres, Bee finds herself more attuned to the liveship and the family that strides her decks. The liveship refuses to return to Divvytown in her haste to transform, and those who wish to make the return are allowed to do so, though they must bear the news of Kennitsson’s death. Bee undergoes a change, her skin darkening somewhat, as the voyage continues.

Bee finds herself obliged to address ennui and listlessness as she is, in effect, a passenger on the liveship. Beloved attempts to connect to her, and Bee rebuffs the efforts.

At length, the Vivacia arrives in Bingtown, where there is much upset. The pending end of the liveships has thrown the Traders into something like panic, but Bee, Perseverance, and Spark are delighted to find Lant awaiting them. He relates how he had escaped Clerres and arrived in Bingtown. Soon after, Althea conducts the group to the Vestrit home, where Ronica welcomes them. The older woman relates such tidings as she has, noting the brewing political difficulty among the Traders and having a small meal served to her guests. Bee is taken by the service, and she is gratified by the gift of clothing made to her. When her identity as a Farseer and the child of FitzChivalry is noted, Ronica exults, reporting developments in Kelsingra, to which Bee and her party will travel and from which they will return to the Six Duchies…by Skill-pillar, with which Bee is uncomfortably familiar.

The present chapter is not the first portion of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus to be titled “Bingtown”; there are three chapters in the Liveship Traders series with the title (here, here, and here), and there are many others in it and the Rain Wilds Chronicles that have the town in their title along with some other words. There is a small project, I think, in reading the chapters against one another; I recall making similar claims about other sets of chapters sharing titles. Contrasting length, reading level, characters present, rhetorical devices at work, and the like could prove interesting; for those involved in teaching literature, it might also well serve as a useful and possibly manageable student exercise. If I pretend for a moment that I’m going to be back at the front of a classroom, obliged to come up with some assignment for my students in a class on Hobb (single-author seminars happen!), it’s something I might well do. Even if it is not the case that I will be so, perhaps someone reading this is; I commend the exercise to you (but I would like citation for it, please).

As often, the prefatory materials compel some attention from me. This time, the notion of following what amount to being road-signs making things easier…it’s obvious, really, in retrospect, but it only can be so if the signs can be read. Use of the Skill-pillars has been…challenging throughout the Realm of the Elderlings corpus; much of that use has been unknowing or in desperation. That there were runes and sigils on the Skill-pillars was only revealed later in the novels, and even then, the focus of the narrative has been on characters not fully trained in the use of the Skill; indeed, Fitz was born into and raised up in a time when knowledge of the magic was waning, and his training (by Galen, at least) was conducted only with great reluctance. It is not to be wondered at that he and others like him would use the Skill poorly, nor is it to be wondered at that a campaign to divest of Skill knowledge would leave gaps into which many might fall. What is obvious to those accustomed to a thing is hardly so to those not taught; the prefatory materials on the present chapter serve as a reminder of it, of the need to check assumptions made.

In the chapter, proper, I find Perseverance’s comments to Bee about healing of interest. (Clearly, since I quote him.) It is tempting to read the comment as somewhat naïve, to think only a child could assert that the removal of a physical mark is enough to reject the power of whoever made it. In context, however, it reads differently; the quote from Perseverance comes as he has discussed his own Skilled healing and the erasure of an injury done him in Bee’s defense. He speaks from experience; while he has not endured what Bee has endured, he is far from sheltered and untouched, so that it is not in ignorance that he comments as he does. And he does not say it is an easy thing to do, either; his commentary explicitly cites the help he has had in arriving where he is, and the very fact that he thinks to make the comparison to Bee bespeaks the degree to which the injury, while not even showing a scar from the Skill of the healing, remains with him. Moving forward from what has been done is a process, and it is one that few can do alone, but it can be done with time and care and aid…perhaps a bit cliché, but not untrue.

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