Ydwyr: "'...you should find life tolerable in my service." (p. 283)
Flandry: "If you find my service worthwhile..." (ibid.)
Each sounds the other out. Ydwyr knows that Flandry hopes to escape. Flandry adroitly gives Ydwyr sound advice that does not betray any of his own loyalties and indeed manages to further his own aims at the same time. Two sharp operators but in a very unstable relationship..
It would be interesting to read an account of someone like Flandry who is obliged to spend a longer period of time in the service of a datholch like Ydwyr whose Racial frontier is knowledge rather than territory.
In any case, we read about non-conflictive relationships between human beings and beings of Merseian dsecent in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. As in real history, who is the enemy is a matter of historical context.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, here Flandry was making the best use he could of a bad hand of cards, as he matched wits with Ydwyr in this chess game they were playing.
I'm also reminded of "Day of Burning," because we get some hints in that story of the ideology of racial supremacism driving the Roidhunate in later centuries. E.g., the warlike aggressiveness of the Wilwidh Ocean vachs united with the xenophobia of the Demonists contributed to the rise of that ideology.
"Day" also shows us more positive possibilities, such as the Star Believers, Merseians open to friendly relations with other races. Some Star Believers might have been among those Merseians who settled on Dennitza. Others might have come from the losers in the struggles for power on Merseia between the vachs, rival Merseian nations, and the Gethfennu.
Ad astra! Sean
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