29 Epir | Osijitz, Arko

Dear Mamin:

I think I am starting to get what they called in Emotional Healing class, depression. It often seems to me that the world has turned evil, and I hate my life. I try not to think of it, I try just to do my work, think of the patients and the medicines, see the beauty of the sky and of nature, remember the good things. But the bad things flood in and the good things turn distant. That description of the feeling of everything being dark or black is very accurate.

“It’s just a matter of making the threat severe enough,” said Arzaktaj. “You go under the ivy branch, all polished and civil, and tell them that if they surrender you’ll let them go about business as usual and perhaps even make some civic improvements, and if they don’t, you’ll kill all the men, sell all the women and children into slavery and raze the place flat.”

The country looks the same; the same trees grow, the same birds sing. The villages are built Arkan-style, with sun-slits in the red-tiled roofs and a small All-Gods temple with a small sun-disc. We’d find them empty down to the house-mice, or else everyone hiding in the temple on their knees, weeping in terror.

For the next half-moon, while we waited for the count, Mirko and I sent out Roskati and alliance-mixed divisions to liberate Roskat entirely. The wing-scouts reported that the Arkans from Moghiur were taking the northern route towards Osijitz, giving up on Roskat City and hoping to keep us from entering Arko proper.

Who should preside here, I wasn’t sure, and Mirko wasn’t seizing it, so I decided I would if no one else did, once we’d small-talked enough. Niku, who is always more voluble for being nervous, praised Mirko’s fighting at Sonokat, and got Vaneesh talking a little about her Priestesshood. “Chevenga told me a great deal about you,” she said.