Fridge / The Long Price Quartet

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Poets don't actually write poetry, they're just called that because the mechanics of binding an andat require a combination of linguistic precision and whimsical free-association that brings poetry to mind. Or to put it another way, calling them poets is a poetic metaphor.

• Fridge Logic:
  • Since killing a poet is enough to make his andat escape, why did Seedless and the Galts bother with their convoluted plot in A Shadow in Summer instead of just hiring someone to kill Heshai when he was passed out drunk? It's just barely possible that the Galts were worried about reprisals if their involvement was suspected, but still - how hard would it have been to just hand Seedless a purse of gold and the name of a decent assassin, leaving no one the wiser? In fact, why couldn't Seedless, who is The Ace and perfect in every way because that's how Heshai imagined him, manage to get hold of those things on his own?
    • My guess would be that Seedless (who is defined and held in existence by his loathing of Heshai) wanted to do it this way because he cared more about ruining Heshai's life than he did about being freed. As for why the Galts went along with this, perhaps Seedless lied to them and told them it was necessary to prevent Seedless being re-bound (the Galts know very little about the details of binding at this point, so they wouldn't know any better).
  • And more generally, why do the Khaiate let andat-binding poets - you know, the people who they are utterly dependent on for everything and who, if they die suddenly and unexpectedly, cause the permanent loss of critical infrastructure - just run around town unescorted and engage in high-risk lifestyles like Heshai's? It all borders on a whole civilisation being Too Dumb to Live...