Musk's dagger?

I must be getting senile, because I just re-read the LS series this autumn and completely missed those two "facts". Could you tell me where in the texts they might be found? I wonder why, when Marble was murdering Musk, Silk noted: "The perverse self-forged discipline of the Orilla broke at last; Musk screamed and continued to scream, each pause and gasp followed by a scream weaker and more terrible." LS3:3 Is there an Orilla in Trivigaunte?

I missed that fact, too. Source? Let me see if I have this straight: Musk, nee Civet, was born and raised in Trivigaunte. He came to Viron as a spy and struck up a homosexual relationship with Blood. He brought with him from Trivigaunte a dagger having the image of an untinted cat with a mouse in its jaws on the handle, said image representing his name. (I must be lacking in imagination; I would never have associated the image of the cat-with-mouse on the handle with the south end of a civet. <g>) He had been with Blood for at least three years. (LS1:7, last page) After all that time Musk decided that the knife might give him away as a spy, so he and Crane put their heads together and decided that the best way to get rid of it was to tint the cat red and give it to a whore who used rust and worked in Blood's whorehouse. Rust makes people violent and rash, but what the hell, that would be the last they would ever see of it; good riddance. And the fact that tinting the cat red, fire-tipped tail and all, made such a better pictograph of Chenille's name than Musk's was just an amazing stroke of good fortune. The Outsider must have been at work. It was a clever enough piece of work to fool Silk in his Father Brown mode; Silk never suspected. Ah, but wait! Both Silk and Musk agreed that the knife was "nearly new". Does that mean that Musk had the tell-tale knife made for himself after he came to Viron? What was he thinking? Let's see now; how many Trivigaunti spies were in Blood's employ? Crane, Musk, Willet (aka Hossaan), Poppy . . . but, wait, let's just count the ones who actually came from Trivigaunte. Crane, Musk, and Hossaan by your count, so far as I can tell. Why do you suppose this exchange took place between Silk and Hossaan, after Crane, Musk and Blood were all dead? "'From your name--Maytera Marble told me that--you're a Trivigaunti. Is that right? Doctor Crane said once that you were his second in command. Most of the spies he employed seem to have been Vironese, but it would be natural for him to have a few from his own city, people he could trust completely.' "'Only me, Calde. You're right though. More of us would have made us a lot more effective.'" (LS4, 51) The spy game was effectively over at that point; Willet had revealed his citizenship, the fact that he was a spy, and had come to tell Silk that the Trivigaunti army was on its way to Viron. There is no question about Crane having been the leader of the Trivigaunti spies; it was his death which triggered the arrival of the airship. There was no reason for Willet to conceal Musk's nativity at that point, had there ever been a reason. -Roy

Roy sneered: I must be getting senile, because I just re-read the LS series this autumn and completely missed those two "facts". Could you tell me where in the texts they might be found? Crush responds: I'm not sure to which "facts" you are referring? That "civet" is synonymous with Musk? That it is an Arabic word? That Musk was the original owner of Chenille's knife? That Poppy lied to help cover it up? You're making this difficult for me since I do not feel free to use intellectual hand-waving to clear-up tricky portions in the narrative by saying, "that fact is irrelevant" or "Silk wasn't thinking clearly." In the posting http://urth.net/urth/archives/v0210/1933.txt.shtml I detailed fairly extensively why I believe Musk is the "cat" on the dagger. "That's irrelevant" was your only response. I'll offer another. After Musk strikes Silk with a velveted paw, the very next time Silk lays eyes on him, he is standing side-by-side with Chenille. Musk has returned to continue his cat and mouse game. The first thing he does according to the text is: "Catlike, he stalked across the sellaria to seat himself in Silk's reading chair." (LS2:3) IMO Musk might as well be wearing a costume pilfered from an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Roy continues: I wonder why, when Marble was murdering Musk, Silk noted: "The perverse self-forged discipline of the Orilla broke at last; Musk screamed and continued to scream, each pause and gasp followed by a scream weaker and more terrible." LS3:3 Is there an Orilla in Trivigaunte? Crush ponders: Don't forget that Silk doesn't note this, Horn does. Is there an Orilla in Viron? On my reading I only noticed this one reference to it, but I probably I missed or forgot about the others. The word "orilla" means literally "border". If I read the narrative the way you claim to, I would speculate that this reference means Musk came from the border of Viron and someplace else. Hmmm. I can't imagine where. But I don't read it that way. I'm aware that "orilla" is a word for a working-class district in Buenos Aires. "Orilla" could be merely Horn's word for people from the lower class. Or perhaps I'm wrong that Musk came from Trivigaunte. If Musk is not a Trivigaunte spy, in that case unique among Blood's employ, and who despite his apparent sadism, inexplicably stops Blood from killing Silk at his house... "Blood took Hyacinth's little needler from his waistband, thumbed off its safety catch, and aimed it carefully at Silk's chest. Musk frowned and touched Blood's arm." (LS 1:7) ...and if Musk is not from Trivigaunte despite his name associations, and his ignorance of the workings of monitors after (surely) a good deal more than 3 years at Blood's house (note that Auk does not suffer from this ignorance)... ...That doesn't affect the very reasonable conclusion that the knife was Musk's originally and that Poppy lied to help cover it up. Musk = Civet = Cat. Poppy's lie is not "irrelevant" whatever conclusion one comes to. Speaking of irrelevant, I seem to recall that my original point was that Musk and Chenille had a connection and so perhaps Musk was Chenille's "friend". As you have shown, that friend was Auk - and exposed peculiar narrative complexities in the bargain. -- Crush

The two "facts" were the two you alleged and which I quoted. These two: "The fact that Poppy lied about knowing him shows that she, like Musk, is a Trivigaunte spy." and ""Civet" is Musk's real name. The fact that Musk changed it suggests he had something to hide (since the name could be Vironese as well)."

Hardly. What I actually said was: "The guy named Cat is irrelevant. It was Orchid who jumped to the conclusion that the dagger belonged to a man named Cat--because of the cat image on the hilt." My "Chenille's dagger" post laid out the textual evidence to support Silk's deduction that the knife belonged to her. Silk's reasoning is what led him to the (correct) conclusion that Chenille had killed Orpine with it. If you disagree, then your argument is not with me, but with the text.

I don't need to speculate. There are many references to the Orilla in the text; here are two from chapter three of LS1: "As reported by Maytera Marble, Maytera Mint had named half a dozen places in which he might come across Auk; all were in the Orilla, the worst section of the quarter." and "Lamp Street brought him to the Orilla, where the lake waters had begun when Viron was young." (pp. 70, 72, paper) The Orilla is where the tavern named the Cock was located. As for Horn being the author of the notation; well, yes, he was, in a sense, and of every other line in the text.

The Orilla is a lawless, run-down section of Viron, in walking distance from the Sun Street manteion. The Chapter had closed its manteion there. It is also where Auk maintained his room, the one with the working glass, in an empty shop.

What ignorance? Silk's first sight of Musk was through Auk's glass. Musk knew to snap his fingers to break the connection. If you mean that he was unaware of a monitor's literal-minded answers to direct questions, hence ineffective when questioning one while looking for an intruder, that just indicates to me that he wasn't as clever as Silk. -Roy