Random questions about Liveships (spoilers Farseer, LST and TM)

[Valarya]

* Ownership details of the Kendry so I can confirm or deny once and for all if his owners are actually mentioned (which I and others don't think they are, as we have outlined in a discussion with others a while back in this thread!).

I just finished LST and don't remember a single mention of the Kendry owners. Althea speaks to the figurehead once on the piers of Bingtown. Reyn/Grag travel on Kendry from Trehaug to Bingtown and not one mention is made of the Captain or its family. During that trip Reyn can't stand to go anywhere near the figurehead for fear it would know what it is.
There's a part when Tintaglia lands on the docks outside of Trehaug and Kendry is docked up there, but once again no mention of the family. The only place I can think of it might mention it is during a Trader's Counsel meeting where perhaps someone stands up and our POV character recognizes the person as owner/family of Kendry. My recollection says no, though.

* Until I came across the first conversation that Jani had with Ronica and Keffria regarding courtship between Reyn and Malta, I had not taken in the fact that Reyn's father was still alive at any time during the three books. I had always believed that he had died next to his blocks of memory stone prior to the beginning of SOM but it says that Jani talks of her husband as still being alive at the time she visited the Vestrits in Bingtown. I will watching very closely for details of him/his death.

Someone already corrected this issue. Reyn's father did die long ago next to blocks of memory stone. Jani Khupris re-married, though - and her husband is Reyn's step-father (Jani and the step-father also had a child. A girl.).

* Hints and tips on Ephron and his reasons for not continuing his trading up the Rain River. I know he was concerned about the magic, and the changes/harm coming into contact with it would bring etc, but I get the feeling that there's something else there. If it were only about the objects themselves or the magic, Ephron would never have brought Ronica her earrings from there, and Ronica and Keffria would have been far more cautious with regard to the gifts Reyn gave to Malta, I'd have thought...gifts all with origins in the Rain Wilds and some of Elderling make eg flame jewels.

He was the only liveship owner who refused to trade there. Whatever reason it was, it was significant. Significant enough to make Ronica choose slavery over trade with their Rain Wilder kin, despite knowing the side-effects that would be brought about by slave-trading eg what having slaves on board would do to Vivacia, their reputation etc

Ah, since I just finished LST, this is fresh on my brain. I want to find the EXACT chapter where Ronica says it, though, because she definitely explains why Ephron quit his RW trading.

*runs over to bookshelf*

Ah, here it is.. about 3/4th of the way through SoM:
"If Papa had continued in the Rain Wild trade, the Vivacia would most likely be paid off by now," Keffria pointed out.

"Most likely. But at what cost?"

"So Papa always said," Keffria said slowly. "But I never understood it. Papa never explained it or talked about it in front of us girls. The only time I ever asked him about it, he just told me he thought it was an unlucky path to choose. Yet all the other families who have liveships trade with the Rain Wild families. As the Vestrits own a liveship, we have the right to do so, too. Yet Papa refused it." She spoke very carefully as she continued, "Perhaps it is a decision we should reconsider. Kyle would be willing. He made that clear when he asked about charts of the Rain Wild River. Before that day, we had not discussed it. I thought that perhaps Papa had already explained to him. Before that day, he had never asked me why we stopped trading up the River. It just never came up."

"And if you manage things cleverly, it never will again," Ronica said shortly. "Kyle up the Rain Wild River would be a disaster."

And here was another uncomfortable topic. Kyle. Keffria sighed. "I remember that when Grandfather was alive, he took the Vivacia upriver. I remember the gifts he used to bring us. A music box that twinkled as it played." She shook her head. "I don't even know what became of that." More quietly she added, "And I never truly understood why Papa wouldn't trade up the river."

Ronica stared into the fire as if she were telling an old tale. "Your father . . . resented the contract with the Festrews. Oh, he loved the ship, and would not have traded her for the world. But much as he loved the Vivacia, he loved you girls more. And like you, he saw the contract as a threat to his children. He disliked being bound by an agreement he'd had no say in." Ronica lowered her voice. "In some ways, he thought ill of the Festrews, that they would hold him bound by such a cruel bargain. Perhaps they saw things differently in those days. Perhaps . . ." Her words faltered for a time. Then, "I suppose I lied to you just now. I speak the way I know I should think: that a bargain is a bargain, and a contract is a contract. But that contract was made in older, harder times. Still, it binds us."

"But father resented it," Keffria said, to draw her mind back to that.

"He despised the terms. He often pointed out that no one ever completely discharged a debt to the Rain Wilds. New debts were always stacked upon the old ones, so that the chains binding the contracting families together only got stronger and stronger as the years passed. He hated that idea. He wanted there to come a time when the ship would be ours, free and clear, and if we chose to pack up and leave Bingtown, we could do so."

The very idea shook Keffria to the foundations of her life. Leave Bingtown? Her father had actually thought of taking the family away from Bingtown?

Her mother spoke on. "And though his father and grandmother had traded in Rain Wild goods, he always felt they were tainted. That was how he put it. Tainted. Too much magic. He always felt that sooner or later, such magic would have to be paid for. And he did not think it was . . . honorable, in a way, for him to bring back to our world the magic of another place and time, a magic that had, perhaps, been the downfall of another folk. Perhaps the downfall of the entire Cursed Shores. Sometimes he spoke of it, late at night, saying he feared we would destroy ourselves and our world, just as the Elder folk did."

Ronica fell silent. Both women were still, thinking. These things were so
seldom spoken aloud. Just as the charts of difficult channels represented a major trading advantage, so did the hard-won knowledge shared by Bingtown and Rain Wild Traders. The secrets they shared were as great a basis for their wealth as the goods they bartered.

Ronica cleared her throat. "So he did a thing both brave and hard. He stopped trading up the river. It meant he had to work twice as hard and be gone three times as much to turn the same profit. Instead of the Rain Wilds, he sought out the odd little places in the inland channels, to the south of Jamaillia. He traded with the native folk there, for goods that were exotic and rare. But not magical. He swore that would make our fortune. And if he had lived, it probably would have."

And as to Ronica's feelings on Slavery, here is what she said to Keffria earlier in SoM:
"...As for his idea of using her as a slaver ... it makes me ill. Simply ill." She lifted her head and her gaze pinned Keffria in her place. "It shames me that you can allow your son to endure all he must see if he travels aboard a slaveship. How can you allow him to see that, let alone be a part of it? What do you think he must become to survive it?"

* Carrion. He reminds me of Fool not only in colour but the way he speaks mockingly to the other serpents, and seems to know things...in a different way to the 'knowing' that Maulkin and She Who Remembers have.

Carrion says that he found SWR once, many cycles ago.. so that's how he remembers more (or differently) than Maulkin or the stunted SWR does. I'm guessing by the time he found a SWR the world was also mostly changed and no one could find their way to the Serpent River. In time he probably just made his way back south to the feeding grounds.