Warning: Orca Spoiler. On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, wamydia wrote: > >As for Aliera giving Sethra the gem and then Kiera using it, I am >entirely in agreement that it would be cheating and is therefore >unlikely. > Kiera says that when she's Kiera, she only does Kiera things. I don't think that necessarily prevents her from "getting" stuff from Sethra; as we see when she provides Vlad with the gem to help support his Jhereg war in Yendi. However, if she had done that, I don't think she would have phrased it as "picked from the pocket of Vlad's friend Aliera" (note, by the way, that she says "Vlad's friend", not "my friend", strongly indicating a lack of closeness between them). A possibility that occurs to me is that Sethra asked Aliera at some point if she could borrow a blue stone at some point in the future, and Aliera said yes. That might give Kiera the permission she needs to pick Aliera's pocket (which is indeed a Kiera thing to do) of a blue stone ("Hey, I'm just borrowing it"), while at the same time not betraying Sethra's friendship with Aliera, since it would *amount* to Sethra borrowing the stone and "giving" it to Kiera to use.