--- FelixEisen at aol.com wrote: > davids at kithrup.com writes: >> The more I think about it, the more it seems to me >> that Vlad's interrogation under the Orb was probably >> scripted such as to let him walk. > [...] Vlad is clearly a successful player of the > verbal game that Steve Perry calls 'fugue' -- the > art of saying something, but having something else > understood. It is in such doublespeak that 'truth' > gets twisted, bent, but never quite mutilated or > broken. The Iorich, I expect, are not the experts > that the Issola are in doublespeak, and they clearly > underestimated a lowly Easterner Jhereg Baronet in > regards to that game. I agree with most of Felix's reasoning, but with David's conclusion. Vlad is definitely good at playing with words; look at his report to Kiera of his next-to-last conversation with Timmer in _Orca_. ("I mean, you speak Jhereg -- You know what we were talking about, or, rather, _not_ talking about. . . .") (p. 268). It's also true, as Felix comments in a section I've omitted, that under modern trial procedure or anything like it it's easy to get away with evasive answers or those that are merely literally true. And I think that Dragaera probably has something like modern trial procedure, because Vlad comments in _Jhereg_ that the Empire foregoes the niceties when someone is killed with a Morganti weapon -- which implies that there are niceties in other cases. Vlad, however, isn't a lawyer (Brust uses "advocate"). Furthermore, he tells Teldra in _Issola_ that he didn't have an advocate with him when he was questioned under the Orb in connection with his former employers. Here's where my disagreement with Felix comes in. A good trial lawyer can deal with evasive answers and half-truths. (In the example of Tajichatn's "committing suicide" or "killing himself," one follow-up is to ask why Vlad thinks that -- what he observed that led him to that conclusion -- and then to follow up on the response, and so on. It's easy to answer questions evasively taken one at a time; it's hard to do it when the questioner is actively probing for weaknesses and contradictions.) The reason a witness can sometimes get away with evasion on the stand is that there's usually another good trial lawyer trying to protect him. So why *did* Vlad get away with it? It's possible that SKZB just thinks a smart, glib layperson can generally outsmart a good lawyer on the witness stand. If so, I disagree. It can happen once in a while, and it's possible that Vlad was just lucky; but, if so, he doesn't know how lucky he was. It's also possible that, whatever SKZB may think of real lawyers, the Iorich just aren't that good at crossexamination. I think that's unlikely. Each House is very good at the specific thing it does. The Dragons are good warriors; the Jhereg are good criminals; the Issola are good diplomats. Why would the Iorich be bad lawyers? I prefer the explanation that the Empire just wasn't looking very hard for the killer. Sure, the Jhereg was a Duke; when a Duke dies, the Empire looks into it. But, then, the Duke was a Jhereg, and the Empire really doesn't care about the Jhereg killing each other. So long as Vlad danced reasonably well and kept up appearances, they were willing to let him go. "Scripted," as David puts it, might be a little strong. But it may well have been perfectly obvious to everyone involved that a little more questioning would have pinned Vlad down. It was certainly obvious to the Empress that he was being evasive, as she commented in _Phoenix_. -- Greg __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/