Subject: (urth) Musk's dagger?

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 07:27:30 +0000

>Crush perseveres:
>The guy named "Cat" is anything but irrelevant. The fact that Poppy lied
>about knowing him shows that she, like Musk, is a Trivigaunte spy. The word
>"civet" is *Arabic* for "perfume". "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). If the ownership of the knife came to light,
>Blood ("a loyal son of Viron") could conceivably have pieced together
Musk's
>true heritage. Certainly Spider would have.

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?

>Crane *gave* Chenille the knife. But Crane *got* it from Musk. He *said* he
>went to Musk for advice, but in fact he took the knife Musk already owned
>and had the tail of the "cat" tinted red. Then he gave it to Chenille.
>Voila! Crane and Musk "launder" a potentially incriminating piece of
>evidence. I guess he *could* have thrown it away, or buried it, or
destroyed
>it - but I suppose it was nice enough that he couldn't bear to do that.

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

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 16:38:43 +0000

Roy sneered:

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:

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

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 20:41:33 +0000

>irrelevant" or "Silk wasn't thinking clearly."

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)."

>irrelevant" was your only response.

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.

>else. Hmmm. I can't imagine where.

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.

>for people from the lower class. Or perhaps I'm wrong that Musk came from

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.

>than 3 years at Blood's house (note that Auk does not suffer from this

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

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