4 Lunai 521
My Dearest Talia,
Being apart from you these seven months is the purest agony I could conceive, but my heart sings like a nightingale knowing that this Goddess-forsaken conscription is nearly over. Your letters have sustained me through the cold, damp nights of the Alésian winter. Soon you will be back in my arms and I will be able to finally hold our daughter for the very first time.
I know it isn’t my place to say, but damn that fool Dréog for thinking that assassinating Aréna was going to bring the feuding Counts together, and damn Nikolaos for making such a spectacle of liberating his head from his shoulders. Damn the entire lot of them.
The last time Countess Leila visited our camp she apprised us that by the time I see our farm again it will be in the County Ailurus, outside the Town of Rose Crossing, on the Nagamon River…what odd names. I understand that this entire ordeal is over secession from County Felvasdyr, but I don’t see what was so bad about the Town of Greathaven or the Candlefish River that the Countess felt she had to rename them. I have been reliably informed that these are questions an Animal Handler Second Class doesn’t ask (because if he does, he gets latrine duty for another week).
However, our Countess is as good as her word, and during this last visit she not only brought each of us an entire year’s pay, but the deeds for the parcels we were promised! Now we will have the land to start that breeding business we’ve always dreamed of, and the Countess even hinted that because of my service we may get to breed some of the animals for the Rose Crossing Carnival! Imagine, a horse that we bred in the greatest circus in all Alésia!
I have to admit, when I was told I was being conscripted into an army that wasn’t an army, to tear down bridges, sit on the banks of the river, then rebuild the bridges, I was certain that Countess Leila had been at the Winterberry Brandy again…but I have to say, it all seems to be coming up roses. Maybe Rose Crossing isn’t such a bad name after all!
Also, this job is going much faster than we had hoped, due to the Felvasdyr and Tz’alikul engineers stationed across the rivers. Even though shouting across a raging river works about as well as you’d imagine it would, we have been able to gather that they also have no idea what is going on. We have worked out that the bridges were torn down to protect the Counties from each other, even though none of them ever raised an army or mounted an attack, thank the Goddesses. Now, with their help, each bridge is being rebuilt many times faster than we had hoped, and the bridge at Montwatch isn’t going to be rebuilt at all, at least by us, so we won’t have to cross the Nibaasii Mountains again.
As you have no doubt gathered, with this letter I have enclosed my entire pay packet and the deeds to the parcels we have been allotted. Pay whatever debts we have accrued, set aside enough for fencing in the new parcels, and take whatever remains to the new shops in Rose Crossing. The Countess was wearing a gown made of something called ‘silk’ (probably Kypiq) when she visited us, and she looked so regal I thought the Queen herself had come to our camp. Buy yourself a silk gown, one for little Saria, and whatever else you need or want. Do not concern yourself with the cost, we are gentry now, and I can finally afford to clothe you in the manner you deserve.
My candle is guttering so I must bid you farewell for now, though I shall see you again before the last of the ice is off the river. Give all my love to Saria…
Forever yours,
Jaath
