The Golden Queen - Chapter 9
Jan. 6th, 2023 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalinara posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
i_read_whatUgh. Okay. Last time, Gallen got an infodump of interesting information shoved into his head, thereby negating any potential interesting character element of being from a medieval-esque world. Maggie got the same thing, only traumatic and rapey. The only characters with an interesting plot were here and gone again.
Bleh.
We rejoin Gallen as he watches Everynne and Veriasse drive off in their magcar. And I'm realizing it would have been an interesting character beat to see him try to figure out/explain a magcar from a medieval bounty hunter perspective. But nope. Sorry.
He and Orick are trying to figure out how to rescue Maggie. They know they can't let her in on it, and Gallen doesn't think there's a way to trick the Guide. He does have a thought that he can lure Maggie out of the city, at Karthenor's request, so the other Guides can't hear her at least.
Unless Guides can communicate at a distance, of course. But would Gallen be allowed to be incorrect about something?
Orick thinks that's a terrible plan.
So Gallen thinks they need to find a Guide-maker to disable the Guide. Orick rightly asks how THAT's going to work, and Gallen's approach is...interesting?
"So, what are you going to do," Orick asked, "walk right into a shop and ask the fellow, 'By the way, how can I break one of those things?' and then hope he answers you square?"
"No," Gallen said. He knew the means had to be close by. He thought, If you were the most creative bodyguard in the world, Gallen O'Day, what would you do? He waited for a moment, and a familiar thrill coursed through him. He knew the answer. "I'm going to go speak to a past employee of the company that makes the Guides. A dead employee, to be precise."
"What?" Orick shouted.
"When we first went into town, and I was wandering around on my own, I met a merchant who sells a machine that lets you talk to the dead, so long as they're properly embalmed and haven't rotted too much."
"And what if you can't find a dead employee handy?" Orick said. "What then?"
"Well, then I'd stick a knife in an employee and make him dead!" Gallen shouted, furious at Orick's exasperating mood.
Okay, you know what, I actually do like this. It's the first time that I've felt like Gallen has actually shown (or been written to show) some real emotion about the whole situation. I don't remember the talking to the dead machine, but okay, sure.
Hell, I feel like this entire scenario could have been plausibly figured out by Gallen without the infodump. It might have even been more emotionally interesting as he might have to wrestle his own superstition to do something so likely satanic as necromancy.
I like seeing Gallen and Orick snap at each other because it's clearly out of character for both. But their friend is in serious danger.
So Gallen decides to go ask about the machine. Orick doesn't want to be left alone, but Gallen can't take him with him, so he appoints Orick to take charge of finding food, shelter, clothing and weapons for them and setting up a camp.
It's a decent enough challenge, but it makes me wonder what the fuck these idiots had been doing while Gallen was getting infodumped.
Though Gallen's finally showing some strain in all this:
Gallen hunched his shoulders. His muscles were tight from the tension, and suddenly he longed to be back home in Tihrglas, guarding some merchant's wagon. Hell, on any day of the week, he'd rather take on ten highwaymen single-handed. Ah, for the good old days.
It still bugs me that Wolverton won't use Maggie's name in these moments. I'm finally seeing Gallen show some tension/worry/fright, which is good, but it would work better if he thought about Maggie as a person as opposed to it being general.
So Gallen's got a plan and...
Then he went to the merchant who sold "Bereavement Hoods," and began to haggle. Gallen didn't have enough money to buy the thing. The hoods were designed for those who wanted to "Share those last precious thoughts with the recently departed." Gallen cried and put on a show, talking about his dear sister who had died, until he finally convinced the merchant to rent him a hood.
"Now you understand," the merchant warned, "that your sister is dead. She'll know who you are, and she'll be able to talk through the speaker in the hood, but she won't gain any new memories. If you visit her once, she'll forget all about it, even if you return five minutes later."
Gallen nodded, but the merchant drove the point home until Gallen finally asked, "What are you really telling me?"
"Well," the merchant finally admitted, "it's just that the dead are always surprised and happy to be visited, and they'll tell you about the same fond memories time and again. They tend to get . . . repetitive."
"So they get boring," Gallen accused.
"Most of them, yes," the merchant admitted reluctantly.
I like the little bit of world building here. Wolverton's good at that. It's a cool idea and a practical pitfall.
I also like seeing Gallen be clever. I wish though that we actually got to SEE the cleverness in action. How DOES he convince the man to rent it out? Does the man usually rent things out? Is renting a thing in this planet normally? Is renting a thing on Tihrglas for that matter?
It's not like Wolverton to pass an opportunity up to shill Gallen's wit and ability to us, so why not let us see the man in action?
We do get to see more paragraph-summary research, and I might be at a "this bitch is eating crackers" stage right now. Because this is probably fine, but I wish the search had a little more oomph to it. He finds out, through public records at the pidc, that a Lord Pallatine oversees the creation of guides and a fellow named Brevin Mackalrey died about three months ago in his service, and he's down in the crypts. Woo.
The crypts at least are pretty neat: dark, desolute, near freezing and full of glass coffins, where people are stored for a year before final internment. He tracks down Mackalrey by searching alphabetically. I suppose that the Mantle was good for learning that part of things. But hey, let's meet a corpse:
The glass coffin was fogged; icy crystals shaped like fern leaves had built up under the glass lid. Gallen opened the lid. Mr. Mackalrey did not look so good. His face was purple and swollen. He wore only a pair of white shorts. He had dark hair, a scraggly beard, and legs that were knobby and bowed. Gallen decided that this particular fellow probably hadn't looked so good even when he was alive.
Gallen pulled up the fellow's near-frozen head and placed the hood on. The hood was made of some metallic cloth, and electromagnetic waves from the hood stimulated the brain cells of the dead. As the dead man tried to speak, the cloth registered the attempted stimulation of the cerebral cortex and translated the dead man's thoughts into words. The words were then spoken in a dull monotone from a small speaker.
We can't all have flowing blond locks, Gallen. And this would be so much cooler if Gallen didn't really understand the technology he was using. Honestly, imagine the young man who was so worried about contact with the Satanic Sidhe trying to use this dark magic, while having no idea how it worked, but doing it anyway because Maggie needs him.
On the plus side, Gallen's now got an actual problem. Brevin is not inclined to tell him how to get the Guide off. He's quite whiny and obstinant about it. Even when Gallen starts attempting force:
Gallen took the dead man's pinky finger and bent it back at an excruciating angle until he feared it might snap. "There now," Gallen said. "How does that feel?"
...dude is dead, dumbass. And indeed, Brevin doesn't know what's happening. But Gallen's got a new angle:
Gallen saw that torture was no use. The dead man couldn't feel a thing. Gallen scratched his head, decided on another tact. "All right, you've pushed me too far. I didn't want to have to tell you this, but the reason you're so damned cold is because you're lying in this coffin naked. Did you know that?"
"Naked?" Brevin asked, dismayed.
"Yes," Gallen assured him. "You're bare-assed naked. At this very moment, I'm looking at your penis, and I've got to tell you that it's not a pretty sight. You were never well-endowed in the first place, but now you're all shriveled down to the size of a pinhead. Did you know that?"
Brevin emitted a low moan, and Gallen continued. "Now, not only are you bare-assed naked," Gallen said, "but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to drag your naked carcass upstairs and leave you in a hallway tonight, and every person who walks by is going to see what a shamefully inadequate organ you have. It will be an embarrassment to your whole family, I'm telling you. Everyone in Toohkansay will see your shrunken pud, and when they do, they'll look at your wife and smile in a knowing way, and wonder, 'How could she have stayed with that fellow all those years, what with him being so sorrowfully lacking?' So tell me, my friend, what do you think of that?"
...okay, that's pretty good. And I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but it would be much cooler coming from a man from a medieval-esque culture with strict modesty standards.
So Brevin cracks: there's a universal Guide extractor. Pallatine has a few in his vault. Unfortunately, there's an electronic key and an AI. Sadly, Gallen gets that there really isn't time for this book to have a heist adventure, so he asks about a quick and dirty solution:
Brevin's stomach muscles twitched, and for a moment Gallen feared that he would sit up, even though he was stiff as a twig. But the dead man said quickly, "First, you will need to catch her unawares. You should take her when she's asleep. If you can't take her in her sleep, you need to immobilize her so the Guide can't fight you. It will take control of her body at the first sign of danger. If you can, perform the abduction in a room that has metal walls to block any transmissions the Guide might send. Then insert a knife at the back of the Guide near the base of the skull. You will have to cut through two small wires. This will sever the Guide's neural connection to the victim. When you're done, destroy the Guide."
"What do you mean destroy it?"
"Put it in acid, or crush it, or burn it. It must be thoroughly pulverized on the atomic level."
I wonder if Brevin has figured out that Gallen is lying about his situation, because the kidnapping part makes less sense given that Gallen said his sister accidently got bonded with a slave-Guide. His warnings about the guide identifying them make it sound that he realizes there's a master involved.
Gallen thanks Brevin, tells him his pants are back on, and starts making plans.
--
We switch scenes now to Everynne, who is heading to the gate. There are vanquishers in the area, but fortunately, Veriasse is watchful - figuring that if Maggie was captured three days ago, then the authorities may be expecting them. We also learn, through Everynne, that'd been her mother's protector for six thousand years. I think we might have heard that before, but I'd forgotten.
Anyway, they're barred from the Gate for now. Their next option is the city of Guianne, far to the south east. It's where Everynne's mother was murdered, and maybe they can find allies. Everynne points out that she knows where three potential allies are right now, and they need their help.
Veriasse sighs but agrees, with a caveat. He'll help them. Everynne can't put herself in jeopardy and must promise to go on if Veriasse fails. Everynne enthusiastically agrees, since she never felt right leaving Maggie in danger. I'm boggled that Everynne gets to think about Maggie by name and Gallen doesn't. Maybe that'll turn out to be some kind of legitimate character beat, like how he reacts to trauma?
I'm skeptical, but open to the possibility.
So anyway, Veriasse stealth-ninja's his way into Gallen's camp. We're told that he's wearing a specifically designed scent "from the planet Joylaith" that neutralized his odor, so that he can ambush a praying Orick. Though Orick's prayer is either self-blame or an inaccurate retcon, as he claims he brought them there by accident to save their lives, and no actually, that was Maggie. But okay.
Veriasse interrupts his prayer to reassure him, and to tell him that since the gate is guarded, they've come back to help. I appreciate that he pretty clearly indicates that if the gate WEREN'T guarded they'd be long gone. He's an ass, but he's a straightforward one and I appreciate that.
Orick now gets to be the irrational one though, claiming they don't need Veriasse's help. Gallen will handle things. I know Orick loves Gallen, but given all his doubts earlier, this seems sudden and much. But anyway, Veriasse leaves Everynne in Orick's care, and then heads off to help. He is already dressed as a lord of Fale (with false credentials as a "Lord of Information Managers") and puts on a mantle as a disguise. It's not clear if it's real or false.
Heck, even VERIASSE gets a moment to think of Maggie by name:
Veriasse went to the northwest quadrant of the city where the aberlains worked. He found the place to be heavily guarded. Green-skinned vanquishers on roving patrols were a sure sign that dronon guards resided within. In some places, he found that the living walls of the city were blackened by fire. Obviously, resistance bombers had been at work here within the past few weeks, and Veriasse suddenly became very concerned about Maggie.
He had worried before about her treatment by the dronon and her lord, but he had not considered the very real possibility that her greatest threat came not from her captors but from the local freedom fighters. Before, when he'd heard that Maggie was captured, he'd wondered why Karthenor had made such a poor choice of worker, but now he saw that indeed Maggie might have been exactly what the lord needed—someone who was alone in the city, someone who would not be missed. By taking slaves who were well tied to the community, Karthenor would only have earned further resentment.
So maybe the fact that Gallen seems to refuse to IS a character beat?
He scouts Karthenor's compound, and then goes to the pidc so that he can look at all the information that Gallen accessed and be suitably impressed that "some rustic" could negotiate through the city's information system so smoothly. I'm rolling my eyes, but Wolverton does pay some lip service to the idea that Gallen has gaps in his education:
For one thing, the boy didn't know that he'd left a data trail that would indict him. Veriasse asked the computer to run a credit check on Gallen, found that the boy was attempting to purchase clothing, ropes, and air exchangers—items he would need for his rescue attempt. Yet Gallen was broke. Veriasse used his credentials as a Lord of Information Managers to have the computer transfer credits from his personal account into Gallen's account, then he ran a security—delete on most files that mentioned Gallen's name.
He also decides to build a jammer that can neutralize motion detectors if/when Gallen climbs through the compound window.
Back to Maggie, who's awake. We're told that near Dawn, her Guide finally quits "stimulating her sexual appetites". Ew. She dreams of the dronon queen:
[S]he dreamed of Tlitkani, of the dronon, and in her dream Maggie's heart stirred with passion. The queen walked across a plaza of white stone, and her chitin flashed gold in the sunlight. She was perfect in every respect-without a flaw or blemish, not so much as a nick in her exoskeleton, and all around her was a great celebration. Dronon warriors with their heavy front battle arms knelt at her feet, battle arms crossed and extended in a sign of reverence. Tan dronon technicians with thin little segmented hands stood by to adore her, too, along with the small white workers. But among the insect hordes were many humans in all manner of clothing and attire, worlds of them, dancing and capering about, gazing at with adoration shining from their eyes. Little human children had made garlands of flowers and strewn them at her feet, and a song rose up from humans and dronons alike, their voices raspy with fervor, praising the Golden Queen.
In her dream, Maggie felt such a profound respect for the golden one that tears streamed from her eyes. To simply gaze upon her caused a height of religious feeling unparalleled in all Maggie's life.
Maggie woke, eyes still streaming with tears, and her Guide whispered to her, "This is a vision I have given you of the future you shall help bring to pass. When a dronon looks upon its Golden Queen, it feels the ineffable sense of awe and wonder I have shared with you. We shall insert the genes that cause this condition into the fetuses of your children, so that they will no longer view the dronon as aliens, but will see them as brothers. Today you begin laboring within the inner sanctum of our compound, and you will help in the great work of bringing to pass the Adoration."
Yep, that's fucking creepy.
So more genetic work today, this time on Dronons. Probably an excuse for Wolverton to share more world/species building, but whatever. The more significant information is that Maggie's weakening. She's been fighting the Guide for so long, but now she's exhausted, and the Guide is basically just carrying her through everything and manipulating her emotions.
But hey, at least we get a threat of sexual violence, woo.
In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide's commands anymore.
She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.
She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.
Maggie's only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.
Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.
Nope! Fake out! It's Gallen! Maggie is free. She's too exhausted to really know what's happening, but quickly warns him that Avik's coming. She just answers that he's a rapist, when Gallen asks, and...credit where it's due, Gallen doesn't hesitate to completely murder that dude.
Good show.
Maggie, however, is not doing so well, as she's finally free to emotionally react to the horror that she was involved in. And to her credit, a lot of what horrifies her is that she was basically dissecting dronons. I like when characters realize non-human characters still count as y'know. Alive.
So anyway, it's a suitably heroic rescue. Gallen scoops her up and pushes her out the window. They fall into the river, and this happens, just to annoy me:
He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. "Help! I can't swim!"
"Can't swim?" Gallen asked. "Your father and brothers all drowned. I'd think you'd learn to swim."
a) why is this the first time we get ANY backstory on Maggie beside "inn girl"?
and b) fuck off Gallen, where the fuck is she supposed to have gotten swimming lessons?
He gives her a convenient "oxygen exchanger" and explains how it works. They swim away. There's some talking. Maggie's still pretty distraught. And well, hell, this happens:
Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.
She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he'd planned the escape in every detail: two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He'd planned to share this moment with her.
The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she'd staved off Avik's advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.
Ugh. Wolverton, really? Can you let the girl recover a bit? I mean, yes, okay, hypersexuality can be a response to trauma, but it's also awfully convenient that this means more adoration for his lead character. Who gets yet another opportunity to turn Maggie down for being too young.
Maggie defends herself against that allegation:
She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. "We don't all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time," she said. "Watching your family die, that ages you! Working-working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide—hell, Gallen, I, I can't even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It's like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes—and if it didn't play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!"
I mean, it's a valid emotional reaction. But there are two things that annoy me about this:
a) it is very uncomfortable, when this kind of age difference comes up...specifically when dealing with underage people, when authors have the underage person be the one to passionately argue in favor of it. There's truth in television...young people don't always appreciate the difference in maturity, but it also feels like the author trying to make it "okay" by having the victim justify it.
b) It also bugs me because I think we're supposed to agree with Maggie, and ignore that Gallen's got every right to not want to romantically pursue someone as young as Maggie. He's got every right to not be attracted to her at all, if that's what's going on here.
But Maggie gets distracted at the feeling of the incendiary rod that Gallen had brought with him during the escape. She realizes that she wants revenge, and she wants to join Everynne to get that. We get a cliffhanger of someone demanding that they lift their hands up.
At least we're FINALLY away from the gross Guide plot. So I'm slightly more interested in seeing where we go from here.
Bleh.
We rejoin Gallen as he watches Everynne and Veriasse drive off in their magcar. And I'm realizing it would have been an interesting character beat to see him try to figure out/explain a magcar from a medieval bounty hunter perspective. But nope. Sorry.
He and Orick are trying to figure out how to rescue Maggie. They know they can't let her in on it, and Gallen doesn't think there's a way to trick the Guide. He does have a thought that he can lure Maggie out of the city, at Karthenor's request, so the other Guides can't hear her at least.
Unless Guides can communicate at a distance, of course. But would Gallen be allowed to be incorrect about something?
Orick thinks that's a terrible plan.
So Gallen thinks they need to find a Guide-maker to disable the Guide. Orick rightly asks how THAT's going to work, and Gallen's approach is...interesting?
"So, what are you going to do," Orick asked, "walk right into a shop and ask the fellow, 'By the way, how can I break one of those things?' and then hope he answers you square?"
"No," Gallen said. He knew the means had to be close by. He thought, If you were the most creative bodyguard in the world, Gallen O'Day, what would you do? He waited for a moment, and a familiar thrill coursed through him. He knew the answer. "I'm going to go speak to a past employee of the company that makes the Guides. A dead employee, to be precise."
"What?" Orick shouted.
"When we first went into town, and I was wandering around on my own, I met a merchant who sells a machine that lets you talk to the dead, so long as they're properly embalmed and haven't rotted too much."
"And what if you can't find a dead employee handy?" Orick said. "What then?"
"Well, then I'd stick a knife in an employee and make him dead!" Gallen shouted, furious at Orick's exasperating mood.
Okay, you know what, I actually do like this. It's the first time that I've felt like Gallen has actually shown (or been written to show) some real emotion about the whole situation. I don't remember the talking to the dead machine, but okay, sure.
Hell, I feel like this entire scenario could have been plausibly figured out by Gallen without the infodump. It might have even been more emotionally interesting as he might have to wrestle his own superstition to do something so likely satanic as necromancy.
I like seeing Gallen and Orick snap at each other because it's clearly out of character for both. But their friend is in serious danger.
So Gallen decides to go ask about the machine. Orick doesn't want to be left alone, but Gallen can't take him with him, so he appoints Orick to take charge of finding food, shelter, clothing and weapons for them and setting up a camp.
It's a decent enough challenge, but it makes me wonder what the fuck these idiots had been doing while Gallen was getting infodumped.
Though Gallen's finally showing some strain in all this:
Gallen hunched his shoulders. His muscles were tight from the tension, and suddenly he longed to be back home in Tihrglas, guarding some merchant's wagon. Hell, on any day of the week, he'd rather take on ten highwaymen single-handed. Ah, for the good old days.
It still bugs me that Wolverton won't use Maggie's name in these moments. I'm finally seeing Gallen show some tension/worry/fright, which is good, but it would work better if he thought about Maggie as a person as opposed to it being general.
So Gallen's got a plan and...
Then he went to the merchant who sold "Bereavement Hoods," and began to haggle. Gallen didn't have enough money to buy the thing. The hoods were designed for those who wanted to "Share those last precious thoughts with the recently departed." Gallen cried and put on a show, talking about his dear sister who had died, until he finally convinced the merchant to rent him a hood.
"Now you understand," the merchant warned, "that your sister is dead. She'll know who you are, and she'll be able to talk through the speaker in the hood, but she won't gain any new memories. If you visit her once, she'll forget all about it, even if you return five minutes later."
Gallen nodded, but the merchant drove the point home until Gallen finally asked, "What are you really telling me?"
"Well," the merchant finally admitted, "it's just that the dead are always surprised and happy to be visited, and they'll tell you about the same fond memories time and again. They tend to get . . . repetitive."
"So they get boring," Gallen accused.
"Most of them, yes," the merchant admitted reluctantly.
I like the little bit of world building here. Wolverton's good at that. It's a cool idea and a practical pitfall.
I also like seeing Gallen be clever. I wish though that we actually got to SEE the cleverness in action. How DOES he convince the man to rent it out? Does the man usually rent things out? Is renting a thing in this planet normally? Is renting a thing on Tihrglas for that matter?
It's not like Wolverton to pass an opportunity up to shill Gallen's wit and ability to us, so why not let us see the man in action?
We do get to see more paragraph-summary research, and I might be at a "this bitch is eating crackers" stage right now. Because this is probably fine, but I wish the search had a little more oomph to it. He finds out, through public records at the pidc, that a Lord Pallatine oversees the creation of guides and a fellow named Brevin Mackalrey died about three months ago in his service, and he's down in the crypts. Woo.
The crypts at least are pretty neat: dark, desolute, near freezing and full of glass coffins, where people are stored for a year before final internment. He tracks down Mackalrey by searching alphabetically. I suppose that the Mantle was good for learning that part of things. But hey, let's meet a corpse:
The glass coffin was fogged; icy crystals shaped like fern leaves had built up under the glass lid. Gallen opened the lid. Mr. Mackalrey did not look so good. His face was purple and swollen. He wore only a pair of white shorts. He had dark hair, a scraggly beard, and legs that were knobby and bowed. Gallen decided that this particular fellow probably hadn't looked so good even when he was alive.
Gallen pulled up the fellow's near-frozen head and placed the hood on. The hood was made of some metallic cloth, and electromagnetic waves from the hood stimulated the brain cells of the dead. As the dead man tried to speak, the cloth registered the attempted stimulation of the cerebral cortex and translated the dead man's thoughts into words. The words were then spoken in a dull monotone from a small speaker.
We can't all have flowing blond locks, Gallen. And this would be so much cooler if Gallen didn't really understand the technology he was using. Honestly, imagine the young man who was so worried about contact with the Satanic Sidhe trying to use this dark magic, while having no idea how it worked, but doing it anyway because Maggie needs him.
On the plus side, Gallen's now got an actual problem. Brevin is not inclined to tell him how to get the Guide off. He's quite whiny and obstinant about it. Even when Gallen starts attempting force:
Gallen took the dead man's pinky finger and bent it back at an excruciating angle until he feared it might snap. "There now," Gallen said. "How does that feel?"
...dude is dead, dumbass. And indeed, Brevin doesn't know what's happening. But Gallen's got a new angle:
Gallen saw that torture was no use. The dead man couldn't feel a thing. Gallen scratched his head, decided on another tact. "All right, you've pushed me too far. I didn't want to have to tell you this, but the reason you're so damned cold is because you're lying in this coffin naked. Did you know that?"
"Naked?" Brevin asked, dismayed.
"Yes," Gallen assured him. "You're bare-assed naked. At this very moment, I'm looking at your penis, and I've got to tell you that it's not a pretty sight. You were never well-endowed in the first place, but now you're all shriveled down to the size of a pinhead. Did you know that?"
Brevin emitted a low moan, and Gallen continued. "Now, not only are you bare-assed naked," Gallen said, "but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to drag your naked carcass upstairs and leave you in a hallway tonight, and every person who walks by is going to see what a shamefully inadequate organ you have. It will be an embarrassment to your whole family, I'm telling you. Everyone in Toohkansay will see your shrunken pud, and when they do, they'll look at your wife and smile in a knowing way, and wonder, 'How could she have stayed with that fellow all those years, what with him being so sorrowfully lacking?' So tell me, my friend, what do you think of that?"
...okay, that's pretty good. And I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but it would be much cooler coming from a man from a medieval-esque culture with strict modesty standards.
So Brevin cracks: there's a universal Guide extractor. Pallatine has a few in his vault. Unfortunately, there's an electronic key and an AI. Sadly, Gallen gets that there really isn't time for this book to have a heist adventure, so he asks about a quick and dirty solution:
Brevin's stomach muscles twitched, and for a moment Gallen feared that he would sit up, even though he was stiff as a twig. But the dead man said quickly, "First, you will need to catch her unawares. You should take her when she's asleep. If you can't take her in her sleep, you need to immobilize her so the Guide can't fight you. It will take control of her body at the first sign of danger. If you can, perform the abduction in a room that has metal walls to block any transmissions the Guide might send. Then insert a knife at the back of the Guide near the base of the skull. You will have to cut through two small wires. This will sever the Guide's neural connection to the victim. When you're done, destroy the Guide."
"What do you mean destroy it?"
"Put it in acid, or crush it, or burn it. It must be thoroughly pulverized on the atomic level."
I wonder if Brevin has figured out that Gallen is lying about his situation, because the kidnapping part makes less sense given that Gallen said his sister accidently got bonded with a slave-Guide. His warnings about the guide identifying them make it sound that he realizes there's a master involved.
Gallen thanks Brevin, tells him his pants are back on, and starts making plans.
--
We switch scenes now to Everynne, who is heading to the gate. There are vanquishers in the area, but fortunately, Veriasse is watchful - figuring that if Maggie was captured three days ago, then the authorities may be expecting them. We also learn, through Everynne, that'd been her mother's protector for six thousand years. I think we might have heard that before, but I'd forgotten.
Anyway, they're barred from the Gate for now. Their next option is the city of Guianne, far to the south east. It's where Everynne's mother was murdered, and maybe they can find allies. Everynne points out that she knows where three potential allies are right now, and they need their help.
Veriasse sighs but agrees, with a caveat. He'll help them. Everynne can't put herself in jeopardy and must promise to go on if Veriasse fails. Everynne enthusiastically agrees, since she never felt right leaving Maggie in danger. I'm boggled that Everynne gets to think about Maggie by name and Gallen doesn't. Maybe that'll turn out to be some kind of legitimate character beat, like how he reacts to trauma?
I'm skeptical, but open to the possibility.
So anyway, Veriasse stealth-ninja's his way into Gallen's camp. We're told that he's wearing a specifically designed scent "from the planet Joylaith" that neutralized his odor, so that he can ambush a praying Orick. Though Orick's prayer is either self-blame or an inaccurate retcon, as he claims he brought them there by accident to save their lives, and no actually, that was Maggie. But okay.
Veriasse interrupts his prayer to reassure him, and to tell him that since the gate is guarded, they've come back to help. I appreciate that he pretty clearly indicates that if the gate WEREN'T guarded they'd be long gone. He's an ass, but he's a straightforward one and I appreciate that.
Orick now gets to be the irrational one though, claiming they don't need Veriasse's help. Gallen will handle things. I know Orick loves Gallen, but given all his doubts earlier, this seems sudden and much. But anyway, Veriasse leaves Everynne in Orick's care, and then heads off to help. He is already dressed as a lord of Fale (with false credentials as a "Lord of Information Managers") and puts on a mantle as a disguise. It's not clear if it's real or false.
Heck, even VERIASSE gets a moment to think of Maggie by name:
Veriasse went to the northwest quadrant of the city where the aberlains worked. He found the place to be heavily guarded. Green-skinned vanquishers on roving patrols were a sure sign that dronon guards resided within. In some places, he found that the living walls of the city were blackened by fire. Obviously, resistance bombers had been at work here within the past few weeks, and Veriasse suddenly became very concerned about Maggie.
He had worried before about her treatment by the dronon and her lord, but he had not considered the very real possibility that her greatest threat came not from her captors but from the local freedom fighters. Before, when he'd heard that Maggie was captured, he'd wondered why Karthenor had made such a poor choice of worker, but now he saw that indeed Maggie might have been exactly what the lord needed—someone who was alone in the city, someone who would not be missed. By taking slaves who were well tied to the community, Karthenor would only have earned further resentment.
So maybe the fact that Gallen seems to refuse to IS a character beat?
He scouts Karthenor's compound, and then goes to the pidc so that he can look at all the information that Gallen accessed and be suitably impressed that "some rustic" could negotiate through the city's information system so smoothly. I'm rolling my eyes, but Wolverton does pay some lip service to the idea that Gallen has gaps in his education:
For one thing, the boy didn't know that he'd left a data trail that would indict him. Veriasse asked the computer to run a credit check on Gallen, found that the boy was attempting to purchase clothing, ropes, and air exchangers—items he would need for his rescue attempt. Yet Gallen was broke. Veriasse used his credentials as a Lord of Information Managers to have the computer transfer credits from his personal account into Gallen's account, then he ran a security—delete on most files that mentioned Gallen's name.
He also decides to build a jammer that can neutralize motion detectors if/when Gallen climbs through the compound window.
Back to Maggie, who's awake. We're told that near Dawn, her Guide finally quits "stimulating her sexual appetites". Ew. She dreams of the dronon queen:
[S]he dreamed of Tlitkani, of the dronon, and in her dream Maggie's heart stirred with passion. The queen walked across a plaza of white stone, and her chitin flashed gold in the sunlight. She was perfect in every respect-without a flaw or blemish, not so much as a nick in her exoskeleton, and all around her was a great celebration. Dronon warriors with their heavy front battle arms knelt at her feet, battle arms crossed and extended in a sign of reverence. Tan dronon technicians with thin little segmented hands stood by to adore her, too, along with the small white workers. But among the insect hordes were many humans in all manner of clothing and attire, worlds of them, dancing and capering about, gazing at with adoration shining from their eyes. Little human children had made garlands of flowers and strewn them at her feet, and a song rose up from humans and dronons alike, their voices raspy with fervor, praising the Golden Queen.
In her dream, Maggie felt such a profound respect for the golden one that tears streamed from her eyes. To simply gaze upon her caused a height of religious feeling unparalleled in all Maggie's life.
Maggie woke, eyes still streaming with tears, and her Guide whispered to her, "This is a vision I have given you of the future you shall help bring to pass. When a dronon looks upon its Golden Queen, it feels the ineffable sense of awe and wonder I have shared with you. We shall insert the genes that cause this condition into the fetuses of your children, so that they will no longer view the dronon as aliens, but will see them as brothers. Today you begin laboring within the inner sanctum of our compound, and you will help in the great work of bringing to pass the Adoration."
Yep, that's fucking creepy.
So more genetic work today, this time on Dronons. Probably an excuse for Wolverton to share more world/species building, but whatever. The more significant information is that Maggie's weakening. She's been fighting the Guide for so long, but now she's exhausted, and the Guide is basically just carrying her through everything and manipulating her emotions.
But hey, at least we get a threat of sexual violence, woo.
In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide's commands anymore.
She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.
She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.
Maggie's only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.
Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.
Nope! Fake out! It's Gallen! Maggie is free. She's too exhausted to really know what's happening, but quickly warns him that Avik's coming. She just answers that he's a rapist, when Gallen asks, and...credit where it's due, Gallen doesn't hesitate to completely murder that dude.
Good show.
Maggie, however, is not doing so well, as she's finally free to emotionally react to the horror that she was involved in. And to her credit, a lot of what horrifies her is that she was basically dissecting dronons. I like when characters realize non-human characters still count as y'know. Alive.
So anyway, it's a suitably heroic rescue. Gallen scoops her up and pushes her out the window. They fall into the river, and this happens, just to annoy me:
He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. "Help! I can't swim!"
"Can't swim?" Gallen asked. "Your father and brothers all drowned. I'd think you'd learn to swim."
a) why is this the first time we get ANY backstory on Maggie beside "inn girl"?
and b) fuck off Gallen, where the fuck is she supposed to have gotten swimming lessons?
He gives her a convenient "oxygen exchanger" and explains how it works. They swim away. There's some talking. Maggie's still pretty distraught. And well, hell, this happens:
Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.
She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he'd planned the escape in every detail: two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He'd planned to share this moment with her.
The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she'd staved off Avik's advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.
Ugh. Wolverton, really? Can you let the girl recover a bit? I mean, yes, okay, hypersexuality can be a response to trauma, but it's also awfully convenient that this means more adoration for his lead character. Who gets yet another opportunity to turn Maggie down for being too young.
Maggie defends herself against that allegation:
She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. "We don't all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time," she said. "Watching your family die, that ages you! Working-working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide—hell, Gallen, I, I can't even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It's like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes—and if it didn't play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!"
I mean, it's a valid emotional reaction. But there are two things that annoy me about this:
a) it is very uncomfortable, when this kind of age difference comes up...specifically when dealing with underage people, when authors have the underage person be the one to passionately argue in favor of it. There's truth in television...young people don't always appreciate the difference in maturity, but it also feels like the author trying to make it "okay" by having the victim justify it.
b) It also bugs me because I think we're supposed to agree with Maggie, and ignore that Gallen's got every right to not want to romantically pursue someone as young as Maggie. He's got every right to not be attracted to her at all, if that's what's going on here.
But Maggie gets distracted at the feeling of the incendiary rod that Gallen had brought with him during the escape. She realizes that she wants revenge, and she wants to join Everynne to get that. We get a cliffhanger of someone demanding that they lift their hands up.
At least we're FINALLY away from the gross Guide plot. So I'm slightly more interested in seeing where we go from here.
Sorry for missing so much!
Date: 2023-01-11 02:16 pm (UTC)Ugh. Okay. Last time, Gallen got an infodump of interesting information shoved into his head, thereby negating any potential interesting character element of being from a medieval-esque world. Maggie got the same thing, only traumatic and rapey. The only characters with an interesting plot were here and gone again.
Alix: What's up with the gratuitous rape?
"So, what are you going to do," Orick asked, "walk right into a shop and ask the fellow, 'By the way, how can I break one of those things?' and then hope he answers you square?"
"No," Gallen said. He knew the means had to be close by. He thought, If you were the most creative bodyguard in the world, Gallen O'Day, what would you do? He waited for a moment, and a familiar thrill coursed through him. He knew the answer. "I'm going to go speak to a past employee of the company that makes the Guides. A dead employee, to be precise."
Alix: I dunno, zombies are not cooperative.
Gallen took the dead man's pinky finger and bent it back at an excruciating angle until he feared it might snap. "There now," Gallen said. "How does that feel?"
...dude is dead, dumbass. And indeed, Brevin doesn't know what's happening. But Gallen's got a new angle:
Gallen saw that torture was no use. The dead man couldn't feel a thing. Gallen scratched his head, decided on another tact. "All right, you've pushed me too far. I didn't want to have to tell you this, but the reason you're so damned cold is because you're lying in this coffin naked. Did you know that?"
Pan: Is Gallen supposed to be the hero? Because this isn't heroic.
Alix: Well, at least the story acknowledges that torturing a dead person is useless.
Brevin's stomach muscles twitched, and for a moment Gallen feared that he would sit up, even though he was stiff as a twig. But the dead man said quickly, "First, you will need to catch her unawares. You should take her when she's asleep. If you can't take her in her sleep, you need to immobilize her so the Guide can't fight you. It will take control of her body at the first sign of danger. If you can, perform the abduction in a room that has metal walls to block any transmissions the Guide might send. Then insert a knife at the back of the Guide near the base of the skull. You will have to cut through two small wires. This will sever the Guide's neural connection to the victim. When you're done, destroy the Guide."
"What do you mean destroy it?"
"Put it in acid, or crush it, or burn it. It must be thoroughly pulverized on the atomic level."
Pan: At least these things are destructible.
Maggie, however, is not doing so well, as she's finally free to emotionally react to the horror that she was involved in. And to her credit, a lot of what horrifies her is that she was basically dissecting dronons. I like when characters realize non-human characters still count as y'know. Alive.
Pan: Agree.
Re: Sorry for missing so much!
Date: 2023-01-13 06:17 am (UTC)Yeah, it's weird how much gratuitous rape that isn't QUITE rape there is in this book.