Peace Talks - Illogical Svartalves?

[Addicted To Stories]

I don't understand how the behavior of the Svartalves was in keeping with the Accords.

Dresden specifically said that many nations in the Accords would consider the way Thomas was restrained (beaten until he couldn't move) to be practically gentle.  But I thought the entire point of keeping Thomas imprisoned was to let the matter be settled by a 3rd party arbiter.  And the Svartalves had to know that by beating Thomas to that degree, the White Court Hunger within Thomas would kill him while trying to heal his body.  Didn't they?

So weren't the Svartalves - in effect - slowly murdering Thomas in such a way that he would have no chance of living long enough to see an Arbitration?  How is this any different than holding a human prisoner for 6 weeks with no food and then saying - ooops?  We didn't know a human would die with no food for 6 weeks?  No one would believe that... The Svartalves are too intelligent to make that mistake as an honest mistake.  Which makes their actions to me seem like deliberate murder against both the letter and spirit of the Accords (I know, only the letter matters). 

How is what the Svartalves did not murder?

[vultur]

Yeah - I wondered about this too.

I figured they probably didn't know, the White Court probably isn't the most forthcoming about their weaknesses.

But frankly the whole thing seems a bit off to me... Frankly it kind of seems like he ought to have been able to heal from that. White Court healing is fairly good.

Sure he'd probably be starving afterwards but... why didn't the healing happen first, and then the - out of energy - Hunger first take over and then start consuming him?

But Thomas is still too beat up to talk. Not just unconscious/crazy because the Hunger has overwhelmed his conscious mind, but actually still physically damaged, it doesn't seem like he's healed hardly at all.

Something is wrong here. Either he had basically zero "power stored up" beforehand, his healing was nullified somehow, or that's not really Thomas. Harry's glamour-double in PT might be a hint toward the latter.

[Logistics515]

One of the big themes in Peace Talks is misdirection or misunderstandings.

Harry makes the assumption that Thomas's condition is because the Svartalves beat him up. What if that's not actually the case? What if Thomas was beaten prior to the attack?

Now this sounds like an odd thought, but we have confirmation from River Shoulders that the Genoskwa Blood on His Soul is still around, and gunning for Harry. In the last book, Skin Game, we are shown a being capable of mimicking another down to almost the smallest detail. Vadderung mentions that there are 3 other beings capable of that in the world - one of which is presumably the Naagloshii from Turn Coat. We've got many call backs to prior novels, and this would be yet another one.

So my tinfoil theory is that Thomas was taken and beaten right after he left Harry's apartment. Harry leaves to visit Murphy. A shapeshifter takes Thomas's form, with the Genoskwa carrying in the beaten Thomas under a veil. It makes the (deliberately failed) attack, and drops the beaten Thomas in one of the many Svartalf traps as the patsy, and escapes in the chaos with the Genoskwa under a world-class veil.

[Mira]

So my tinfoil theory is that Thomas was taken and beaten right after he left Harry's apartment. Harry leaves to visit Murphy. A shapeshifter takes Thomas's form, with the Genoskwa carrying in the beaten Thomas under a veil. It makes the (deliberately failed) attack, and drops the beaten Thomas in one of the many Svartalf traps as the patsy, and escapes in the chaos with the Genoskwa under a world-class veil.

Actually that makes a lot of sense, the key is to beat Thomas up so badly he cannot communicate with anyone.  It goes along with the idea that the real motive is to be a distraction to keep the star child, Harry diverted from what is really going on.

[vultur]

One of the big themes in Peace Talks is misdirection or misunderstandings.

I agree with this, and there's definitely something iffy here.

But I don't think having someone else beat up Thomas solves the problem. He ought to have healed from a beating by a Genoskwa or Naagloshii, too (sure, those beings could kill him, but short of death his healing powers should still work barring a token of True Love, and those creatures won't have that).

The more I think about this, the more I lean toward the idea that "Thomas" isn't actually Thomas, and he's conveniently too beat up to talk so Harry and Lara can't tell that he doesn't have Thomas's personality or knowledge.

But I'm not sure that works, because he was able to take energy from Lara, and Alfred ought to have known what he was imprisoning.

...Though that makes a lot of assumptions. There are lots of things that feed on energy. Alfred might not care, and all he really says is that 'Thomas' isn't really powerful enough to deserve minimum security.

[ClintACK]

Alternate theory:
- Someone (Genoskwa or Naagloshi) beat up Thomas, and kept beating him until his Hunger could no longer spare the energy to heal him.
- Thomas's Hunger goes mad with the starvation and need to feed.
- Someone drops Hunger-mad-Thomas off outside Etri's office.
- Hunger-mad-Thomas attacks everyone, until his Hunger is so starved it goes into cannibalistic-starvation-mode.

But there does seem to be something off about the Svartalves. Look at the scene when Harry arrives to the first night of the Talks -- Evanna and the five guards give Harry the stinkeye. Etri doesn't. Then Etri asks Harry for his opinion of Lara, and takes his opinion seriously.

It's hard to know whether it's Etri's behavior that's off or Evanna's, or maybe neither. (If they were human, fore example, I'd say he was more forgiving of an attack on his own person than she was of an attack on the man she loves, which feels right, but I'm not sure Svartalves have "love" in that sense.)