Quick Addition to Post 248

This last post should have gone on the end of Post 248... so rather than sending you there, I'm including this excerpt here.

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I did go off the ship once at Tor Ench… just to the kiosk at the end of the stone docks where they sold Pages. The important one was a special Edition. “SHEFEN-KAS DEFEATED”. That was the headline. I bought it and the back issues I had missed.

I knew it. I knew the way the vote would go. I knew it. I felt so hollow inside. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t. And my people had done the stupid thing and thrown him out of the office that the Gods had wanted him in. Chevenga would have been so good for Arko. He had been. He had been honest and true and worked so hard to make his conquest of us legitimate.

He had set us free and we had struggled and kicked and squalled like a horrid toddler… like I had been… and he’d been like a parent, a father, giving the spoiled, rotten Empire, rules and boundaries and limitations, to make it grow up.

These thoughts tumbled through my head even as I paid the news merchant and thanked him, dropped my latest story into the post office, hoping that Intharas would like it. I had to write about this. I had to quietly, gently, logically smack my people in the head and the only way I could… was if I persuaded Intharas to print my thoughts.

Chevenga had ripped the rot out of our country, and I could help the surgery, not with a sword but with my pen.  

Selestialis keep you safe, Chevenga. If the prayers of the damned have any power, I pray you will be happy.