Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Eleven

[epistler]

Chapter Eleven: The Bitch Is Back

Well we’re done with the pseudoscience – time for pseudodrama! Yes, it’s time for Zarq’s long-awaited reunion with her complete bitch of a sister. Excited? I know I’m not.

Zarq goes to – sigh – Jotan’s university (it’s not called that, but it might as well be) disguised as a student, and goes on a study trip, following one of the lecturers around. The lecturer in question happens to be Waivia’s midwife, and after Zarq has to maintain her cover by taking notes on “childbirth research” [will you PLEASE stop it with the anachronisms?], she’s finally led to a big luxurious room where Waivia is hanging out with her baby. She’s still a total babe – a “barbaric beauty”, as Zarq describes her, and yup – she’s a Djimbi all right, disguise-free. In another hilariously stupid touch, there are “fruit ices” in glasses on the table. You know, iced drinks. Where the fuck do they get ice from when there’s no freezers here and it’s too hot for snow? Beats me. It’s just there.

Waivia sends everyone else away, then idly offers her long-lost sister a drink. Yup, she’s still a bitch.

Zarq blubbers that she thought Waivia was dead and tries to express all the painful feelings she has about the whole being-ditched-for-her-sister thing, and so on. Finally she manages to say “I was only nine”, and Waivia hugs her and says it’s not her fault, and apologises.

Wanna bet how long the niceness is going to last?

They hug and cry for a bit, then get down to business as Waivia asks what she’s doing here. Zarq keeps it vague, then asks if Waivia is going to use the haunt to take over Xxamu Zu next. Waivia says no, she doesn’t give a crap about the place and just wants Clutch Cuhan (the one she already took over) so her son can rule it when he grows up. She suckles the kid, and Zarq instantly feels “intense jealousy”, because All Women Want Bebbes.

Waivia tells her she’s arranged for a ship to take her away to a different port town where she can start a new life [oh no, not again!]. Zarq pretends to accept the offer, and Waivia instantly shuts down and sends her off, because as far as she’s concerned she’s done all she needed to – i.e. give a perfunctory apology, shed a few crocodile tears, and then send her away where she can’t be a bother.

Aw, she hasn’t changed a bit – she’s the same selfish, arrogant bitch we knew all those years ago. Pardon me while I wipe away a tear.

Zarq leaves in tears, and boo-hoo, it’s all very sad and stuff.

In the next chapter we find out there’s a “Conservatory of Herpetology” in the city. I’m all out of rage by this point. “Herpetology” in a fucking fantasy novel. This is the sort of literary offense that should earn the author a good old-fashioned Korean caning.

Here we finally get to meet Malaban Bri, who’s got a bit of an Italian Guido thing going on, with gold teeth and stubble. And apparently he’s wearing kohl, which is an ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MAKEUP THEY USED IN ANCIENT EGYPT, YOU FUCKING NIMROD!  

Ahem.

Malaban has just got back from his trip, and meanwhile Jotan is out looking for a whore they can send off in Zarq’s place, so Waivia won’t suspect anything. Malaban, meanwhile, is purchasing a whole lot of kwano snakes, which the dealer assumes are to be used for burnt offerings. We get some blah-blah about how people burn the things as penance for having committed a major sin, such as “forced sodomy” (apparently non-forced sodomy is okay). Malaban is going to take his snakes and a bunch of flying dragons, and a couple of other lords to fly with them to Xxamer Zu.

Jotan returns, saying she’s sent the decoy Zarq on her way. Zarq asks Jotan to come with her rather than stay as Science Guy’s guinea pig, but Jotan says no because she just doesn’t want to give up the sauce. Or the dragon sex.

I guess that means we won’t be seeing her again.

She promises to let them know when the dragonmaster finally kicks the bucket, and Zarq and Malaban leave.

They return to Tansan’s village, and here’s one thing I appreciate about this series: you’re not forced to read entire long boring chapters of the characters travelling to places. As here, it’s generally skipped over in a page or two. Ms Cross has my sincere thanks for not wasting even more of my time with endless camping scenes.

They arrive to find that the rebels are indeed keeping the cocoons hot with bonfires, but they get a hostile reception. One of Tansan’s pals, some guy called Alliak, doesn’t recognise Zarq because she’s dressed up as a man. He must be really bad with faces. When Zarq tells him who she is, he – oh, for fucks’ sake – tells her to get down on all fours. She inexplicably obeys, and he smacks her across the backside with the flat of his sword. Zarq jumps up and he attacks her and “if not for all my training as a dragonmaster’s apprentice”, he would have killed her.

The training that lasted for what, two months? Give me a break.

Shit looks about to get real, when this pointless scene is interrupted by Tansan finally showing up and yelling at them all to knock it the fuck off. Yet again Zarq is impressed with her, but just then she realises that Alliak, the dipshit, took her ear off when he attacked her. She breaks out in a string of swear words, as you would, and asks just what the fuck they all think they’re doing. Tansan explains that the situation between Ghepp and Kratt is very tense right now and Malaban and the others didn’t land in the right place, and blah blah blah.

Zarq is about to pass out from ear loss (how many times has she passed out so far? I’ve lost count), but insists that they need to add the snakes now. Tansan argues, and Zarq is somehow able to persuade her that it’s necessary. But they can handle that while Zarq rests up.

Because, once again, there has to be an excuse for why Zarq isn’t there when any of the potentially exciting stuff happens.

Lo and behold, she spends that night snoring her head off, drunk on “fermented maska milk” (ew), with “Savga curled sweet and small at my side”. Will you please just get over the kid already? Aside from anything else, she’s basically just being treated as an accessory for Zarq by the narrative, and it’s really quite distasteful.

Continuing in the vein of Zarq not getting involved in anything important, she sits out the subsequent rebel meetings and thinks about how she doesn’t want all that noise right now. Instead she wants “simplicity and camaraderie and honest sweat”. Since when has Zarq had camaraderie of any sort? She’s always detached and aloof with every social group she’s ever been a part of, from the nuns to the villagers here. In fact when the villagers were kind and welcoming to her on her first arrival, she was actively pissed off by their offers of friendship.

Shut up, Zarq.

So she stays with the villagers and does boring manual labour, while nothing interesting happens. Finally she gets the news that a neighbouring clutch, known as Ordipti, which hates the Emperor, has been given the secret of breeding bull dragons as discovered by Zarq. She’s “outrage[d]” and “jealous”, but admits that it’s a great way to win more allies. Meanwhile a bunch of Imperial-allied merchant ships have been sunk back in Lireh and a “dry-salter emporium” burned down. As if that wasn’t enough, Chinion and his guys have been over to Clutch Maht, killed a whole lot of guys, and stole Maht the bull dragon himself. The dragon is now being flown to Xxamer Zu.

And we didn’t get to see any of this actually happen. Battles, arson, stealing a damn great bull dragon, ship sabotage on the high seas… at least four different cool exciting things, and all of it happened off-screen with zero involvement from the protagonist.

Again, why the fuck is Zarq the protagonist? This is like re-writing Lord of the Rings and replacing Frodo and Aragorn with Bill the Pony. (No offense, Bill.)

Anyway, everyone’s very excited about this, and they have a big celebration with booze and dancing and music. Not long after this a whole buttload of stolen dragons show up, and Paolini-style they’re described as looking like a “vault of jewels spilled across azure cloth” [snip] “peridot and bloodred garnets, tourmaline and rubies, jade and red zircon, brilliant against the diamond clouds”.

…diamond clouds? As in… sparkly?

Zarq is all worked up and cheers, and finally tells us that “Nashe – the Hatching – had begun”.

Yeah, and it’s only page 273 of the final book with barely a handful of chapters to go. So, you know, no rush or anything.

The next chapter opens with Zarq duelling Alliak, aka the jackass who cut her ear off, in front of a crowd of onlookers. She shows off some fancy move she learned during her very extensive training, and explains that it’s called “zahi hawass merensen: water crashing down the chute”, and is used by apprentices when they pointlessly fight each other in the Arena.

Apparently Zarq is a martial arts sensei now.

Right, whatever.

Zarq takes volunteers from the audience and teaches them the move, then explains how the name is written down. They’re all shocked because OMGs Djimbi aren’t allowed to read, and Zarq gives a speech reminiscent of something out of Battlefield Earth as she explains that Knowledge is Power and the Man can’t keep you down when you, like, know stuff. The poor ignorant peasants crowd around as she starts teaching them some basic writing skills, and Zarq pompously reflects that they’re “realising the full extent of their freedom”. Which she is so nobly handing down to them from on high.

Zarq really is just that arrogant. She comes off as one of those “white saviour” characters you see in a lot of colonial fiction, using her superior education skills and such to help the Poor Ignorant Savages. What’s the term Rudyard Kipling coined? Oh yes – “White man’s burden”. I know Zarq isn’t supposed to be a white person, but in this context she damn well might as well be. And bear in mind that she’s being written in the first person by a white author. Probably not a coincidence. This condescending, superior tone of hers is all through the book and it’s annoying as fuck.

The smugness continues onto the next page as Zarq describes how she taught the People how to read and write and use martial arts, and how the old bag she and Savga roomed with before comes along and teaches people medicine (why was nobody learning that before?). Zarq still craves venom, but she transfers her obsession with that and “dragonsong” into her teaching, and now she’s becoming Special And Important:

People came to see me. They came by the clawfuls. I was a curious mixture of entertainment, propaganda, novelty and erudition. I inspired, I outraged, I educated, I empowered. Me, the asogi-via who wore a bayen man’s jerkin and leather breeches. Me, the One-Eared Radical who preached against the oppression of women and Djimbi and the barbarity shown dragons.

Yes, please pat yourself on the back a little more, Zarq.

Wanker.

Meanwhile the Clutch continues to grow in numbers as former dragonmaster’s apprentices and other rag-tag groups join up. This could be exciting and interesting if I gave a damn about any of it, but as it is I just want the book to be over so I can get on with my life. Zarq informs us that thanks to the seizure of Xxamer Zu, the uprising continues to grow all over the country. Servants poison their lords, pirates attack Imperial ships, Clutch Maht now essentially belongs to Chinion.

Yup. Even more exciting stuff we don’t get to see.

Zarq keeps on with her work, and is eventually drawn to the local pottery clan, where one night she sees what she thinks is her mother. The old woman turns out not to be her, of course, but she looks a lot like her, and there’s a teenager who reminds her of Waivia. She realises she’s found her mother’s family, but they don’t recognise her. Zarq, now addressed as “Teacher”, spends the night, and is woken up the next morning with the news that a bull has hatched. Woohoo!

And that's another potentially cool thing the author did not deign to show us.