On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Jose Marquez wrote: >What makes Vlad's trial get the Imperial attention it does is that >he allegedly killed a Duke of the Jhereg, and when peers get >murdered, the Orb and trials get involved. I think he mentions it >at some point, although I searched for every instance of the word >Duke in the book search and can't seem to locate the right >(Vladiad) book. /Phoenix/ isn't indexed in the booksearch yet. However, the bit about Tashishtan having "bought himself a Dukedom in the House and then proceeded to get himself killed", and "when a Duke is murdered, the Empire investigates" appear on pages 152 and 153 respectively in the Ace PB edition. It's right before the paragraphs quoted upthread about Vlad's interrogation, so if you have /The Book of Taltos/, you can easily find it by checking those pages.