Raellew at aol.com wrote: > I'm thinking of the interview in FYA, the new Vlad book > Brust says he's considering: "Yes. In this one, he is paid > an immense amount of money to kill an annoying, stuffy, > pretentious historical novelist, but ends up doing the job > for free, and, in the course of the book, he discovers he > enjoys torture, and-" > > I'm picturing Vlad's face as he realizes.... > > I love it. I don't believe it, but I love it. Wow - that makes the theory even better - after all, the quote is ambiguous enough that it could mean that Vlad discovers he likes being tortured, as well as torturing others, or both. So, Mario (Paarfi) kills his victims by reading some of his more convoluted passages to them [1] - Vlad discovers he likes it, which also explains why he's gone in for narrating his story to others. [1] - Presumably, listening to Dragaeran bureaucrats report on the Imperial finances can be as boring as listening to RL ones. It follows that the Orb doesn't protect the Emperor from being bored - otherwise he couldn't do his job. So, Mario figured out that boring an Emperor to death was the one way to assassinate an Emperor that the Orb wouldn't protect against. QED.