> Yeah, I think she would. It might be a bit of a 'I regret the > necessity' speech, but I think Sethra is honorable enough to regret > what she has to do and realistic enough to do it anyway. Neither > precludes an apology, and the former almost demands it. Okay, I can agree with that. She is human, after all. <sly grin> > I also agree with you that Sethra is developing a personal liking > for Vlad. We might disagree as to when it started and how grudging > it is, but I think it's clearly there by Issola. He still pisses > her off on a regular basis, but she seems to respect him more and > more as time goes by. I would hope so. After all the loops she's made Vlad jump through, and after he's jumped through the flaming ones and come out alive, she'd be a fool to not feel some respect for him. And whatever else she is, I'm not going to start thinking of Sethra as a fool. But, then again, I think back to all that Kiera has done for Vlad, and how nice she's been, and even though she's been setting things up for Vlad to do what she'd like, she has always shown affection for him, and I think it's genuine. (Probably held over from the Kieron days:) Of course, I'd really like to believe Sethra has a slight multi-personality disorder or something. Not major or anything, just a little one. One can't live for hundreds of thousands of years without going just a *little* crazy.... > On a semi-related note, I think Sethra might be training Vlad to > be a Lavode. This is a frightening thought, but I don't think so. Vlad is terrible at sorcery, and it seems to be a requirement for a Lavode. Hey, maybe she's setting Vlad up for that Spectacular Death<tm> he's looking forward to. That'd be funny. All this work, just so Vlad can go down in a flurry of flashing blades, flying pointy-things, and Loiosh making one final, saracstic comment. Hmm.... Chris