<strong>"Glad to hear it,"</strong>he says, but it's dry and wry and not entirely convincing.<strong>"And I'm half-Egyptian.  Mom was from Flyover Country.  I think her family was Norwegian.  Or maybe Danish.  Possibly Swedish.  I can't tell them apart, honestly.  It's my...uhm, my wife you might be thinking about.  She's the half-Hawaiian, half-Japanese pantheon confounding one."</strong><br/><br/>He's standing in the middle of the room, glaring out at the cityscape, one of the bottles of stout in his hand.<br/><br/><strong>"I'm glad you're coming up to speed.  I will have to go away soon.  I have a promise to keep, if I can get past a certain mad Irishman and Suki's cousins.  And if I can't..."</strong>