> A possibility that occurs to me is that S------ 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 S-----'s
> friendship with Aliera, since it would *amount* to S------
> borrowing the stone and "giving" it to Kiera to use.
>
Shaky ground here. Consider that Vlad suspects that Kiera was the one who
stole the book from Morrolan's library that in turn helped catalyze the
events of Jhereg. We don't know for certain that she did it, but we can
trust his instincts in these things normally.
Assuming Vlad is correct, then it means that nobody is safe from Kiera
simply by virtue of being S-----'s friend. If picking Aliera's pocket is a
"Kiera thing to do" then Kiera will do it. You only have to sit around any
RPG table listening to players describe their characters doing things they
would never consider doing "because that's what my character would do" to
see this in action. S------ is the penultimate roleplayer though she lets
her guard down around around Vlad along with hanging out around him a bit
too long and he figures it out.
All of which is to say that I think we can take Kiera at her word. When she
says she stole it, she means that she stole it, not that she rigged up a
complicated moral justification that would make it "not really stealing".
S------- wouldn't pussyfoot around morally like that in any case. She'd just
make a decision and then live with the consequences, IMO.