It occurs to me that the Organization could back off on Vlad if they wanted to now. Why did the Organization have to shine Mellar? Because if they didn't, every street punk for the next 10,000 years would think he had a chance of ripping off the Organization (9 million gold!), and if enough people thought like that, eventually someone would succeed. Death for the Jhereg. Why do they have to waste Imperial informants (Raiet)? Same reason, on a somewhat smaller scale. However... Vlad's situation has become somewhat different. If they back off on him, they're sending the message, "Don't turn on the Jhereg Council unless you have a Great Weapon to back you up," which they could probably manage to live with if they had a reason. They might still want him dead anyway for their individual, personal reasons, and they can't possibly let him back into the Organization, but there's room now to negotiate if they want to. Max Wilson -- something funny