July 6, 2012

To clarify something that's getting a lot of speculation in the comments: while there was some play in how mildly or terribly Lena would be punished for her infraction -- by the unwritten, hand-wavy, they're-more-guidelines-really laws of the street, Darwin could have demanded she be handed over to him, Rafe could have chosen to beat her badly, or other, less harmless methods of pushishment could have come into play -- there was no chance that she would escape punishment entirely. Given the scale I keep this focused on it's easy to forget that the tetes are essentially foot soldiers. They have a ton of leeway, yes, but they're very low-level operatives who can only count on maintaining that leeway (as well as other things, like their heartbeat) if they follow Tom Thorn's rules. And primary among Tom Thorn's rules is: no one interferes with the business. Allowing petty concerns like a local rivalry to supercede that rule is a good way to get the attention of your superiors, and as far as most tetes are concerned, any attention from superiors is bad attention.

So, uh, yeah. Thought I'd clarify that now that I've, ah, changed the game entirely. *wry grin*