Bethau ag nwerth

[Rance]

The note was delivered to the Meetinghouse, addressed to Marshall Emory from the Inquisitory; it was not business of the Inquisitory, but couriered by one of its regular boys.

I will not apologise to you. Know this.

In Jernoah there is this time; it is every six circles years, and when this Festival comes to be those men who have led our cities and our country for the previous six years are braught before the people. Sisters and Brothers in pointed hats give the children crystal sweets to eat and there is music, the most wonderful music worked out of voorbear hairstrings stretched across blown glass bottels. we dance and there are boiled humours to drink and there are roots to smoke and you have your merriment, you see. and as the Glass Sun falls to the horizon and the whole city is blind of it and your head is so full of melody and you see the naked children having play fights in the avanues,

one by one they give the glass to the governing men; they give them the Nameless' last rites and they rake red smiles on their necks until they are just breathing out bubbles of their own blood. i was twelve, I had just gotten my ragsack hat, my very first hat, and one very thin governing man, we call them stahls, one very thin governing man fell from the platform and his throat was open like a smooth backbent bit of fabric and you could not even see the blood before it turned into clots in the sand

and when they are all dead the cities become very chaotic until new men rise to the occasion to swear lives and years to stahlhood, and there is pease for six years until they are called to die, Ariane, and it is brutal and it is not gentle and it is very firm but it is amoung all things RELIABLE and

The second page was scrawled on the back of an announcement of DISSOLUTION.

and I miss it somtimes with my Glass heart, the not-Myrken part, because this place, this place is not reliable, this place always changes, you were a firm implantasion, a thing that felt like home in my very stupid brain--

Never, when you are but weeks out of your slippers and perrasoles, speak to me like I am a fool, I have done far too many foolish things, yes, but I am no fool for wanting pease and sense and someone, someone who has not had their Hour lost to please tell me something that comforts and garinteas. When you were lost, who else but to rely on other than myself? and now when men hang, should I be patient?

Read this. I am not seid ced sedishis, I am scared for me, for Cherny, for Msa. Catch, for you, for everything. But once you told me that I may be things here I would never be there in Jernoah, in [a scrambling patch of words in foreign script] and I have only tried to do as you bid.

I wish to trust you. But we are all sick, she took our brains with her when she died.

What the Marshall was asked to read was attached with a dollop of wax to the last page: Coriolanus Helstone's response to a young woman's letter. This -- with the currency of many hours over many months -- was transparency and truths Ariane had rightfully bought.

[Carnath-Emory]

Glour'eya

Here is a thing which is true, that I am not good with words. I do not speak well. I write far worse. To this end I haf two almost three secritaries and all of them are very good, but none of them are good for this, which is words written to a girl of partiklar importance to me, it is a personul thing you see. Did you know of this, that there are some lands which hold their monachs sakred, as a thing given them from gods. Even their voices are considred too sakred to be spent upon common ears, to which end they haf men who will speak their words for them, men who know their mind and inteprut their will into spoken word, but imagin this, that their command is a moot, stil perhaps I would do better in conversing if

I am hesitant to write and to speak. It seems to me thus ----

You cannot trust the things which I do or the words which I speak.

I understand this, I haf been this. I would not haf it otherwise, that is I will not urhj you to be otherwise, that choice must be uterly and only your own, un influnced by my appeal.

What am I to say to you if any thing which I might say must thus be deemed suspect? A kind word might seem as a cuning ruse, brief advise might drive you by diforlt in the oposing direction. I might expres my simputhy for your circumstance and find you consider this an atempt to sway you from your convictions. Do you see?

I am wary of this, that by speaking in earnest I may, due to this do you harm. You, Myrken, the people placed under my care.

I would like very much to include a second page with this one in which was written the things which I would haf you know, the things which I would haf said. I would mark it To be read only if you judge my intentions sound. But were I in your place, reckoning me a dire influence I would read whether I judged it so or not and consider doing so to be just --- correct ---- esential.




Instead consider this, with my thanks for what you haf described for me of Jernoah -----

I might put an end to those hangings tomorrow. It would not be dificult to do this. I need only ask certin questions until I haf determind who the angriest amungst us most fault for their sufering.
I take this person or perhaps these people to the Square. Before the eyes of Myrkentown I haf their heads removed from their shoulders. In the eyes of some it would be justice publicly served.
The hangings would cease. Within the month I would retir from the Council, a bloodstaind tyrant who was no longer necesary for the good of Myrken.

Peace can be won through encuraging the public to choose a scapegoat and then suport its murder.

The alternatif is more difficult by far.

It is also what I choose.



I wish to thank you for ser Helstone's letter. I was not angred by what you haf done in conslting him, not in any real sense but shocked. As I haf writen above it is best I do not explain why or write more of this matter at all. But this is preshous to me for many reasons, some of them simply personal. Of far more importance I am sorry, most of all, that you were left so alone during that time. There is little crueller than this I think, to be alone to be abandond, to be turned upon by those you haf come to trust. I know this well. There is little I would not haf done to spare you this.

- Ariane