[Dragaera] [Dzur spoiler] Possible crack in the orb & Aliera's personality

[Maximilian Wilson]

On 8/11/06, Jose Marquez <jhereg69 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Philip Hart wrote:
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> Wild speculation: What if Sethra knows about Kragar as a Dragon, and
> after he is expelled and joins the Jhereg (I imagine that sort of thing
> doesn't happen all the time, so it might have some particular resonance
> for her), she keeps tabs on him through her Jhereg sources? Sethra also
> knows Mario, and probably knows about Mario and Aliera, and she might
> just mention to Kiera that Mario could use a contact like Kragar. Kiera
> passes this on to Mario, who checks Kragar out.

I like this line of thought, especially because IIRC it was Kiera who
set Vlad up with Nielar (and thus with Kragar) in the first place.
Problem: Kragar doesn't know anything about in Sethra in /Taltos/
except for her reputation as a vampire. What if the mutual friend is
Kiera?

> Now to poke holes in it: Mutual friend is Sethra? But can Kragar
> honestly describe Aliera as a mutual friend? I doubt that Aliera's
> contempt for Kragar is feigned; I doubt her contempt for Vlad is
> feigned. But she's a Dragon; she's expected to be contemptuous of Jhereg
> and is appropriately so in public. In private, it seems all bets are off.

Well, there's Aliera's superiority complex to consider. She's even
contemptuous of Morrolan. So, is the fact that she bothers to
verbalize her contempt for Kragar a weird sort of back-handed grudging
respect?

> I'm always happy to generalize from one example. Particularly for a
> Dragaeran; it seems Mario moves as fast as Vlad.

To be fair, Ishtvan works equally fast, as do the Sword and the Dagger
of the Jhereg, and Melestav, and pretty much every other assassin
we've seen in the books. Vlad is unusual in the frequency with which
he accepts contracts, but not the speed with which he carries them
out. For a Dragaeran, "working" a couple of times in a decade is
enough to get a reputation, while Vlad's done sixty-odd hits in
between five and ten years.

-Maximilian



-- 
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.