[Dragaera] alternative solutions to Jhereg?

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Jon Lincicum <lincicum at comcast.net>
>> Anyway, I wanted to mention two possible alternative solutions to
>> _Jhereg_, without, admittedly, having searched the Text for counters.
>> First, boringly, the Jhereg treasury is 9M gold; they don't use 10% of
>> that on a regular basis, surely, and I have to think the Dragon
>> treasury,
>> or Sethra's sub-basement if you think Aliera wouldn't loan a copper to
>> the council to save dozens of lives, could cover the deficit for 17
>> days. Then it's just a question of squelching any remaining leaks or
>> speculations.
>I think a big point missing from the discussion thus far is one of perception, and the Demon's motives for hiring Vlad in the first place.

I nearly think I posted about little else.

>The point isn't that Mellar becomes dead, or that the money be replaced. The point is that it needs to be known in Dragaeran society that anyone who steals from the Jhereg is killed quickly, and permanently, /by a Jhereg/, in retribution. Replacing the money that was stolen with other funds, or even recovering the same money that was stolen is not sufficient. The security of The Organization has been put into question. It cannot stand. Else, The Organization itself is finished. Having a Dzur Hero kill Mellar while at Castle Black is insufficient. While that would avoid the Dragon-Jhereg War that Mellar wanted to see, it does still leave Mellar escaping the justice of The Organization. (And is the very reason Mellar hired bodyguards to protect him from any non-Jhereg assassins while at Castle Black--something Vlad exploits later.

Mellar's reason is that if the Dragons don't believe he was killed by a Jhereg, there will be no Dragon-Jhereg War.

> No. A Jhereg must kill Mellar.

It seems to me that somebody says that explicitly, but I can't find it.

> And the money is largely irrelevant. While replacing the money for long enough to hide the theft of the original funds buys you time,

Which is /extremely/ important.  I'd think finding the money would have been the Demon's and Vlad's top priority once they found out Mellar didn't have it with him.


> it's clear that The Demon did not believe this was a viable solution for very long. Even if you had the full 9 Million restored, rumors would begin to swirl about the circumstances that had already occurred.

But what causes the rumors?  What the Demon is worried about is that "someone who notices that the council is having financial trouble will start counting the eggs" (Chapter 2).  Retrieve the stolen money, and there's no cause for rumors, and any previous rumors get much less credible.  They'll also damage the reputation of the organization much less, since no one will have gotten away with stealing from it.  In fact, the Demon's best plan might be to keep letting people think that Mellar's death was a personal matter.


It seems to me that if the Council gets the stolen money back, the Demon should be perfectly satisfied to wait till the end of the seventeen days.  That's really not a lot of time--we short-lived people feel that justice is being done if an arrest is made after a longer time than that.  And it's not like Mellar would be laughing at the Council.  He wouldn't have the money, and he'd know he's doomed.

He would be doomed, too.  Morrolan would kick out the bodyguards, since they're crashers, and allow in some Jhereg fighters and sorceresses to keep an eye on Mellar and then escort him out, or kill him on the spot.  Mellar's best hope would be to interest some Dzur in how outnumbered he is.  I can imagine a Dzur being contrarian enough to approve of Mellar's insult to his House.  That would be an interesting problem for Vlad to deal with.  Then there's also the problem of whether Morrolan or some Jhereg gets to kill Mellar.


> (In fact, the Demon mentions at one point that some people have already had to be killed in order to keep the 

secret, iirc).

I can't find that, but Vlad has somebody killed for that reason.

Jerry Friedman