Dearest Father,

  I do not know if my other letters have reached you yet. I was very far away. We have traveled quite quickly. I am writing from the imperial post office in Sharkel. I do not know if it will go west by rail or canal. The postmaster does not know either. I have asked. But he says it will be fast. He would not wait for me to write my letter before he sent away his assistants. One went across the river to Xarakel. One went down the river. One went up the river. One went up the canal. One went away on a fast horse.

  I have news of the world to share. It is said in the capital that the emperor is dead. There is fighting between the great houses. The postmaster here in Sharkel did not believe me. He said the Undying Emperor cannot die. But I saw troops from [REDACTED] fighting with troops from [REDACTED], and [LONG REDACTED SECTION]

  There is other news I should tell you. We visited Constantinople on our way to the capital, and [LONG REDACTED SECTION]

  I do not know if Lieutenant Rimehammer is alive. His cousin Felix is a captain in my unit. I am also a captain in my unit. I do not know if you have heard about my promotion since I do not know if you got any letters I sent since we crossed the border from Wallachia into [REDACTED]. We are not at war with [REDACTED]. But letters do not always cross borders. My commanding officer got me a messenger stag to send one letter from [REDACTED]. Maybe you have gotten a letter carried by a stag.

  I am also writing to say I have found a man to marry. Mother said I would never find a husband if I joined the army. But the army has many men in it. Including men with good breeding. The man I want to marry asked me to marry him last winter when we were in [REDACTED]. I told him he must ask you for permission. I hope you will say yes. His name is Mikolai Stepanovich. He is a colonel. And he is tall. And he is handsome. And he is smart. And I like how he smells. And I know you have had other letters I wrote about him in. I met him first at the start of my deployment to Wallachia. Back then I still could use the military post. I know I said he is creepy but I take that back now. He is different because he is a very powerful wizard. And he thinks I am more beautiful than Princess Anna of the Gothic Empire. She is famous for being beautiful. I have never seen a more beautiful woman. She is even more beautiful in person than in her paintings.

  Tell Mother that if she is mean to Mikolai then he will turn her into a frog. Also, I want my mother’s wedding dress. It may need mending. I left it in the cedar chest with the red bird painting. It should not be eaten by moths. I hope that Mother has not gotten rid of my mother’s wedding dress. It was very close to my size. I do not think I can borrow a dress from one of her daughters and have it fit well. The dress I wear for my wedding should fit me well. It is how weddings are supposed to be.

  With Affection, Your Daughter Katya

  P.S. The postmaster has now said he will handle this letter personally. He will make sure it goes up the canal the next time he gets a mail boat. He said it will be soon because [REDACTED] is sure to want to send word to [REDACTED]. Even if it is just a rumor and that means that a mail boat should have showed up before we did in our ship but surely not more than a day or two from now. He will also seal it for me with a priority mark so it goes fast.

  Cousin Shabetai,

  I write now from the city of Sharkel, not so far from the triple boundary between Cimmeria, Ruthenia, and Khazaria—the very heart of the Golden Empire, if you believe it or not—to explain and apologize for the circumstances that have resulted in my sudden absence from the sultan’s palace. I do not know what, if any, of those circumstances have become public knowledge, but as I have found a trustworthy courier in a friendly quarter of the city, I will risk embarrassment in an effort to give you what intelligence I can.

  There had been considerable excitement within the women’s quarters over the arrival of not one, but two new Circassians, a pair perfectly matched in beauty and with contrasting colors of hair. As I am sure you understand, the excitement was not entirely of a positive nature; the sultan has a surplus of consorts as far as most of us are concerned, and there is always considerable competition of a subtle sort. Sometimes we cooperate in order to compete more effectively, but that can be a risky sort of degradation.

  That subtle competition had escalated after his proposal to marry Princess Anna was rejected. Before that, I had given up my hope of becoming the sultan’s Esther and had set my sights lower, hoping to gain his favor while I acted as our ear in the private palace. Yet the fact that he made such a proposal indicated to us concubines that he was willing to break with the Osman tradition that had developed surrounding the imperial harem. To gain wifely status is to gain social and legal priority in a manner more formal and enduring than merely becoming Alaeddin’s favorite. Even the more complacent concubines could not ignore that.

  And it was a very opportune moment for another reason; it was common wisdom among the other concubines that the Circassian who had recently been the sultan’s favorite had fallen out of his favor, either because she spoke out loud her jealousy of Princess Anna’s beauty or because of a rumored past friendly association with Prince Vlad, who is so far out of the sultan’s favor that even handsome Radu keeps himself scarce from court in order to avoid bringing the Ceres incident and Rumelian revolt to mind.

  Alas! I doubt I shall become a wife now, even if I shall manage a return to the sultan’s palace. The circumstances of my removal involve one of his nemeses, whom I must presume is well-known to him even if he had not discussed the topic with me before said removal was achieved.

  The name of the sultan’s nemesis is Ragnar Rimhamar. He is a Swede, which I have gathered is some variety of Varangian, and is an agent in the employ of Marcus Corvus, a man of uncertain origins who is the commander of an independent mercenary company. Ragnar is as fair of hair and skin as Radu, although he has more of the former upon the latter, and the latter encapsulates a more robust form. I had ample opportunity to form this judgement with high confidence on Ragnar’s side of the comparison, as he was unclothed when he emerged from the depths of the Byzantine bath at the center of the women’s quarters. He held in one hand a flat woven wicker disk roughly the size and shape of an Avar hussar’s shield.

  While others panicked and fled, I stood in place, dumbfounded and totally transfixed by the unexpected sight of an intact adult man (other than the sultan himself) in the most private part of the palace. When he approached me, my tongue was tied, and I let out only a wordless high-pitched squeak like that of a mouse through my tightened lips. He shook his head, told me that this was no time for delay, and struck me over the head with the wicker disk, gripping the edges with both hands; suddenly I was in darkness and tumbling, landing to find myself in a basket of incomparable largeness.

  Far above me, there was a distant hole in the wicker ceiling through which I could see the ceiling of the bath with its mural; then, less than a hundred hasty heartbeats later, I saw again Ragnar’s face, his collarbones now showing the upper collar of a doublet. He spoke to me, introducing himself, declaring himself my rescuer, and asking that I give him directions to the quarters of the sultan’s newest slaves, as he had promised their rescue in particular.

  Shabetei, you may think poorly of me, but if you have ever been at the bottom of a magical basket held by a large muscular Varangian, you will likely understand that I decided to give him directions as best as I could. If anyone asks, tell them I did so in the hopes I would be released after he had found and abducted his true targets; as that would have removed two new rivals for the sultan’s affections, I can nearly convince myself that such was my motive. On several occasions, I heard the clash of weapons and shouting, all of it from eunuch guards and therefore quite high-pitched in contrast to Ragnar’s deep grunts; then the Circassians were lowered down, both of them clinging to a rope, the blonde smiling and the brunette looking rather cross. Then the end of the rope fell in, the basket was lidded, and the world became completely silent. After a strange great bobbing motion, the top of the basket was removed to reveal that we had gone up the stairs of the tall tower claimed by Gulben, the sultan’s favorite little sister.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  I believe she claimed it because it overlooks the rooftop garden of the princely quarters usually occupied by the sultan’s half-brother—and frequently visited by Radu, the handsome Vlach prince whom she is rumored to desire. If the desire is reciprocated, you may find leverage over him accordingly with the intelligence of my report. In particular, there may be within Gulben’s quarters a life-sized portrait of Prince Radu as Apollo, the head of which has been damaged by having a real man’s head shoved through the canvas.

  Gulben let out the most outraged and inarticulate shriek as she, wide-eyed, sailed down to join us, landing on top of me heavily enough that I was grateful for the give in the wicker floor beneath me. Ragnar’s face, his cheek decorated with the print of a pair of painted lips and framed by the burst image of Radu’s on said portrait, appeared one more time. There was some strange form of movement beneath us, and Gulben complained that she had been abducted by a carpet thief.

  We had a considerable length of time in the quiet of the basket to converse, and then the basket was opened again. The rope started to move, and so I grabbed hold of it, and so did the other women, and we found ourselves on a most peculiar ship and without the presence of Ragnar Rimhamar. It had a sail and three banks of oars, each on top of the other, and all connected mechanically via drive chains to a pair of centrally rotated gears driven by a flux engine—I can only conclude that the ship must have been made at a French shipyard with the intention of operating a warship under the guise of a galley, though I cannot comprehend why they would choose a galley of such unusual construction. The ship was occupied by what I believed at the time to be pirates, and which I now understand to be a mercenary company with the service of three exceptionally powerful magic-wielders—four after binding Gulben into their service with a difficult blood-oath.

  I do not know which great noble house employs them, but I believe they attempted to assassinate the Undying Emperor through a strange combination of magic and artillery. All evidence suggests they succeeded. It appears the Golden Empire may descend into civil war; this will be a time of great opportunity and great danger. We may in particular find the Sixth House friendly based on the names I have overheard; they have a strong base of power that extends to Circassia.

  At present, the mages are visiting Xarakel, the notorious Black Tower on the other side of the river from the city of the White Tower, and I have been afforded the liberty of presumptive harmlessness as a rescued concubine under the protection of Rimhamar clan. Under that protection I plan to remain; I am not sure if I can make safe travel arrangements as a foreign woman in the middle of an empire that has just lost its emperor; we are both very familiar with the succession struggles of the Sultanate, and Koschei’s claimed heirs are far more numerous, with noble houses built up into independent power bases over multiple generations. I believe we will be heading west through the canal to the Kama River and from there deeper into Khazaria. I will write when I can, although I do not know when the couriers will be reliable. If they are not, I will use the pseudonym of being your distant relative “Esther” and may be of necessity somewhat cryptically indirect in my words.

  Ragnar Rimhamar himself has been conspicuously absent throughout. The latest version of the story I have been told is that he went in the opposite direction with a mermaid hanging off each arm and a dolphin underneath each foot, preparing a secret greater mischief against the vile sultan on behalf of an irate Princess Anna and a distant church patriarch somewhere in Rome.

  Best wishes,

  Your Cousin Rebecca

  Accursed be he who breaks this seal if he be not of my house.

  Dear Mother,

  I am writing to tell you that you have become a grandmother whether or not you have managed to find Vyacheslav a wife since I last heard news from home.The egg has hatched; Zaleska and I became man and wife shortly before that occasion, and there is now a little Kransky boy. I hope he will have his mother’s magic; he has her gray eyes, and his hair may yet darken to the golden harvest-wheat color of her hair. The set of his face is like mine, though he has his mother’s colors; may God grant that he grow tall and healthy.

  Now that I am below the first fold of the paper and into the text that shall be behind both a layer of paper and a focus-powered protective seal of destruction sufficient to incinerate my words if some unrelated person should open it, I will turn to more private news—I have sent this missive by private courier not simply for speed, but to ensure that it is neither read nor censored by the operatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or whomever else may be in control of the imperial post. Things are unsettled in the capital.

  The Undying Emperor has died, and I sincerely believe it was effected by my hand. During a dispute over a demanded bribe, we fired a two-pound polished cold iron roundshot into the capital, striking a seemingly abandoned tower. When I peered through a spyglass to review the results of my shot, I could find that a window had been broken. From what I have heard since, it was but scant seconds later that the Undying Emperor collapsed in full view of his court. The bronze Gothic two-pounder was elevated and adjusted by my sight and windage to strike that distant abandoned tower, and it was I who swung the hammer to strike the phoenix stone. Thus, his blood—or black ichor, or ash, depending on whose account of the event you believe—is on my hands.

  My conscience tells me there must have been some important magic at work within the tower, some hidden project of Koschei’s that was part of his secret to immortality. While our emperor was not known for virtuous morality, he has reigned for a long time, and the Golden Empire has developed into a great power under the stable government that has grown up beneath his greedy gaze. Should my role in this matter become known, I will be a pariah. I tell you this because you must be prepared to guard all my secrets from investigation, even the most innocuous-seeming ones. I know you savor my letters, but this is one that you should burn after reading.

  As this letter was written in Sharkel, I plan to arrive home not far behind the courier; it should not be difficult to book a train ticket at the Xarakel station across the river. My commanding officer has offered us liberty and the option of resignation should we want it, and I have had enough adventure for a lifetime. More than most. I fired a shot that toppled an empire. I have fought in the field, from fortifications, and across the waves. It has been ten years since I purchased my lieutenant’s commission and half that since I last saw home.

  Stay safe; make sure that Father knows to ride and mend the outer fences, that the gardeners clear the brush from the manor walls, and that the rooftops are in good condition. Vyachaslev should call out the village militia to schedule an inspection and parade, if he still holds the appointment and has not sold it on; it is best that they should be ready for what may come, and the pending return of the long-absent scion with his new wife should give ample excuse to prepare for ceremony by repairing, polishing, or in some cases repurchasing their requisite arms.

  Fyodor Kransky

  P.S. Please take Great-Grandfather’s copper-shod ash staff out of storage. Have it seen by an alchemist to take care of any verdigris and give it a fresh polish. I am sure Zaleska is powerful enough to handle it without adverse effect.