Read the previous entry in the series here.
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After an excerpt from Patience’s early writings about Fitz, “Time and Again” opens to Bee waking from a night of uneasy and unrestful sleep to the imprecations of her attendant, Careful. Changes to her appearance and presentation are noted, and the approach of Winterfest is marked. Bee reflects on her parents’ joy in the holiday, and she comes down to breakfast as Fitz and Riddle discuss the latter’s departure and travel plans. Shun and Lant join the trio at meal and insinuate themselves into the trip, which Bee dislikes, and Shun tarries long.

The trip to a nearby market town is described, and Bee enjoys her part of it. In the town, Bee finds herself flattered at Fitz’s attentions to her, and she delights in the holiday atmosphere. At length, however, prophecy begins to overtake her, and Fitz begins to grow wary of those around. Amid his growing concerns, he notices Bee attending to dogs bred for sport, and rage begins to overtake him that Riddle cannot stop. Fitz emphatically rebukes the dog-seller and the crowd that had gathered to watch his gory antics, and the surrounding tension only slowly subsides.

As Fitz, Riddle, and Bee head off, Bee again notices a particular beggar. While they eat, Bee pointedly commends Fitz’s actions with the dog-seller, leaving the men somewhat taken aback.

There is, in the prefatory materials, something that provokes what I have found to be dangerous thoughts in me: the might-have-been. While I readily acknowledge the affect and imprecision inherent in such readings, I find myself verging on such considerations, myself, as I read the reported in-milieu words of Patience (implied to have been found by Bee on one of her excursions through Withywoods); while I do not necessarily look on what might have been had I taken a child into my life that I could have but did not–my daughter is my daughter, and I am fortunate to have had her in my life as long as she has had hers–I do find myself, and entirely too often, considering what might have been had I but done some thing differently, had I applied to one more graduate program, had I written one more paper instead of grading one more class’s worth of them, that kind of thing.

Less often, but not more helpfully, I have thought on what might have been had I been a better man than I am, had I gone with my family to do a given thing rather than staying home, sitting hunched over at my desk and working. There has too rarely been a “later” for me to get to it, but the work has always continued. Even now, there is work I could be doing and perhaps should be doing instead of typing out these words, and if I am alone in my home to type them now, how often have I held myself apart from what my wife and daughter were doing, from what those who might have been my friends were doing, in favor of getting some task or another done that somehow never shortened the litany of things I needed to be doing?

But I digress, again as often.

With the book approaching its end–there are only five chapters and an epilogue left in the present volume–it is clear that some massive action is coming. The return of Fitz’s immense capacity for violence is one sign of it. That the present chapter focuses on preparations for Winterfest, with which the main action of the novel begins, is another such sign; by echoing the beginning of the text, the present chapter suggests the end of it, a close of exposition that invites the onset of action. And the attention paid to the one beggar in town indicates that said beggar is (and I do not apologize for the pun in context) a catalyst for that action.

Even without the benefit of rereading, I think a sense of foreboding could be justified. Hobb is writing Fitz, after all, and while he is no Miles O’Brien, Fitz does seem to come in for a lot of suffering along the way.

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
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Following an excerpt from Bee’s records of her dreams, “Lessons” begins with Bee musing bitterly on her first dinner with Lant in attendance, describing in some detail the many vexations she found at the meal and with its other attendees. She notes her infatuation with Lant and his own preoccupation with Shun. Conversation at the table proceeds around her, and she excuses herself to her own rooms once dinner is done.

Bee rehearses her day as she makes for her former chambers, and after some attempt to commune with what might be the messenger’s ghost, she enters the hidden corridors. Within them, she encounters the cat of her acquaintance, with whom she confers about the messenger and her effects. She also enters into an agreement with the cat, although the shadow of Nighteyes within her bristles at it and rebukes her for it.

The next morning, Bee rises and is attended to by a servant whose actions she dislikes. The servant remarks on the manner in which Bee has been kept previously and blushes at Bee’s compliments before sending her on to her day. Bee reports to breakfast, joining Fitz, and the two talk briefly uneasily, considering their respective statuses in the household. Shun enters, offering her jabs, and receives Bee’s rebuke in time for Lant to see it and grow wary of her.

After breakfast, Bee reports to class, startled to find as many students present as she does. She joins the class, and Lant begins to assess his pupils’ knowledge. Bee considers social situations as the assessment proceeds, and she faces close scrutiny when she is assessed. After some rebuke, instruction begins, and Bee finds herself under some onus as the lessons proceed.

After the lesson, Bee changes clothes and returns to the corridors, conferring with the cat therein once again. She reads some of Fitz’s work, puzzling over his annotations on a copy of an older work, and she is somewhat surprised when Fitz greets her at her work. The two confer, and Bee is momentarily worried about being unloved; Fitz is able to set the worry aside, and she reluctantly joins the household for dinner.

The meal passes uncomfortably for Bee, conversation once again flowing around her until Fitz addresses her directly about her readings. Bee shines in the conversation, forcing others to reassess her. Bee belatedly realizes that Fitz has guided conversation to that end, and she realizes to her surprise that the shadow of Nighteyes is in Fitz, as well. She recognizes more of the underlying social structures at work in the growing household, and she considers it through the rest of the evening.

The next day, after breakfast, Bee reports to the schoolroom, where she notes that Perseverance shows signs of having been in a fight. He asks for her help with letters, and she offers it gladly until interrupted by the arrival of Lant in the classroom. Lessons begin, and the absence of one particularly insouciant student is marked. Perseverance’s condition is explained as the result of a disagreement over words said by that student about his sister, and tension builds between teacher and students.

The present chapter is an unusually long one, over thirty pages in the edition I am reading. I make note of the fact because the idea of there being some information to mine out of the chapters’ lengths remains with me, although I have still not been able to conduct the kind of investigation into it that I would need to to find out what that information is. Someday, of course. Someday…

More usually, the present chapter provokes me to read with affect, if with perhaps more of it than is (unfortunately?) common for my reading. Some oblique reference is made to Fitz’s experience as Galen’s student amid the seeming disdain in which Lant holds Bee, which has the effect, I think, of reducing sympathy for Lant in many readers–and I am not immune to that effect, myself. But I do also have some sympathy for him that results from my own experience at the front of the classroom, having had unfortunate introductions to students because I first saw them acting other than at their best or because they saw no point to formalized learning, generally, or to the subject matter I was set to teach, specifically. And I know that I did not always present myself optimally in the classroom, on each first day or afterward, although I think I was better earlier in my teaching career than later; burnout is a thing, of course, and the situation in which I taught and that in which Lant does are dissimilar in ways other than the fiction of the latter makes manifest.

Too, I do find myself in continuing sympathy with Bee. Part of this is expected narrative effect; presentation from a first-person narrative perspective inclines toward the development of readerly sympathy / empathy as a matter of course, and Bee is also clearly the focal figure of the text. (It’s not uncommon in the novels centering on Fitz that the broader narrative is really about someone else. In the Farseer novels, it’s about Verity. In the Tawny Man, it’s about Dutiful. In both, the Fool is likely the real deuteragonist. That Fitz is the narrator complicates the analysis somewhat, but his actions are driven by his relationships to those figures rather than by himself. But to make that argument will require more time than I can currently afford making it, and I add another item to the ever-growing pile of scholarly somedays I will need to address.) Part, though, is my specific readerly situation. I have been the student on the receiving end of…particular expectations (if not those under which Bee initially labors), and, as I consider my own daughter, I know that she has also been that student. So far, my daughter has risen to them (for the most part, but we all have off days now and again), but I also know that awareness of those expectations creates its own burdens and anxieties. I have seen my daughter struggle with them, sometimes with intense feeling, and so to see that kind of struggle presented in the text…resonates with me. I don’t know that it is teaching me anything new, but it is perhaps reminding me of things I need to do better at keeping in mind.

I am proud of my daughter, of course. She gives me ample reason to be, and in a startling variety of ways; she is far from ungifted, academically, and she displays talents in skills in many other areas in addition to being generally of pleasant and engaging disposition. I do expect much from her, but if I do, it is because I believe she can do most anything she decides to do.

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Read the previous 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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