Spring 76: aftermath

Dearest Zann,

First, Wande and Jhus were fine. They hadn’t seen any trouble all day, although they had heard stories from people who had. I hugged them both and Jhus kicked me. Wande seemed to be taking it all very calmly, and she said she wasn’t worried about what was going to happen, but that night I felt her shuddering as she tried to go to sleep.

I’ve since seen Quoon and Fafafa at Kayar’s Tavern. They’re well. Their people too. Ostavon didn’t happen to be around, but Quoon said that he had seen him and he was well too.

There was some damage, though. I saw five burned-out buildings just in our neighbourhood. Some overturned carriages. A dead Qualison Guard in an alley.

We had some crowds clustering around the palace, trying to get in. They didn’t get anywhere; they kept trying to come in between the towers and wandering off confused by all the defensive spells around. A couple of people tried so hard that they ended up walking erratically in circles and had to be rescued from getting flattened by an incoming longcoach in the middle of the road. Candur and I watched some of this from a high parapet and we both felt pretty useless afterwards.

Everybody has questions. Who killed the chancellor? How many of them are there? Where are they now? What are they going to do next? All the crowds rioting–are they part of it? Or are they just people?

Quoon has lived in Crideon for a long time. He says that if something like this happened under the Talistags, the King would come out of Cas Crid and face the crowd and say something. It might have been something unwise or ineffectual, but he’d make some kind of speech. He’d look at his people’s faces. The Valnelatars don’t do that. They haven’t exactly pretended it didn’t happen, but they certes didn’t talk to any humans about it. They just appointed a new chancellor and sat quiet.

(The new chancellor is somebody named Kerinweth. Never heard of him or her.)

Love,

Ybel