An observation on Cawti, Vlad and the movement: In TECKLA (which is placed only briefly after JHEREG), Cawti is full wrapped up in the movement. This always seemed odd to me (and Vlad), as he has no idea how she got from being the apparently apolitical woman we see in JHEREG to what she is in TECKLA. But there's a clue back further. Shortly after Vlad and Cawti meet in YENDI, Cawti refers to 'our people.' She and Vlad have a very brief discussion of it, and then the plot moves on. I came away from that scene with the impression that Vlad didn't care much for Cawtis way of thinking on the topic and that Cawti detected that. It's not much of a reed to build on . . . but here's what I think happend both on paper and off-scene. A couple, hot in the flush of first passion, is not going to focus on things they deeply disagree with. Cawti mentions 'our people' to Vlad a couple of times, gets a negative response, and sets the topic aside for a while. Vlad, the observant fellow that he is, lets it pass completely out of his mind. But Cawti silently continues with the movement in her spare time, from YENDI through JHEREG. She becomes more and more deeply convinced the movement is correct, and knowing the difficulty of the gap between she and Vlad, does not bring it up. Finally, the first murder in TECKLA radicalizes her enough that she commits fully to the movement. But now she's stuck. She despises what she was before, and what Vlad still is. She *knows* she's right, with the full arrogance of the newly converted, and has forgotten that it was a long journey from what she was to what she believes now. So whenever she talks to Vlad about it, that arrogance is in full view. She knows she's right, it's perfectly obvious she right, why can't he see it? Her opinion of her former occupation is not far from the surface, either. It further antagonizes the discussions. Ultimately it ends where we see it several books later. Separation, anger, and non-communication to a degree that I consider . . . well, not criminal (which I originally wrote) but far beyond the bounds of what's right. I'm avoiding spoilers for ORCA and later here, but you probably know what I mean. * * * All I'd intended to write initially was the above. But looking it over, it makes me hungry for the rest of Cawti's story. There is the mystery of her patronymic, which she says in YENDI maybe she'll tell Vlad about some day. And there's the mystery of how she can be out and about so (apparently) freely as Keiri implies in ORCA. Cawti made a long journey in her life to get to what she is in YENDI. Vlads presentation of it probably gives us an unfair view, and certianly an incomplete one. It appears her journey has continued to someplace else by ORCA, but we get no view of it. We know Sethras opinion of the movement: that it might be the right answer, but it's definately the wrong time. Did Cawti come to that opinion? Did Sethra (and others) influence her? Was there a minor but failed revolution that Cawti somehow came thru relatively unscathed? I don't know. But it's a story I'd like to read. And Steven, given your skill, politics and experience, I suspect it's one you could tell very well. Just one more for your groaning plate. :-) Of course, maybe you could pass it to Emma Bull. Seriously. Steve