Letter from Kalyna Aljosanovna to Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells

I think I would have liked to stay, if for no other reason than to see what this daft place will become, but Papa is growing restless.

Well, that’s not quite fair of me. Yes, Papa is growing restless, but he also likes it here, and I could probably convince him to stay. The truth—and I will tell you this, Radiant, because you’re my friend—is that I’m scared of what I will become if I stay at the Lanreas River Guild.

That sounds very dire, but I don’t mean it in the way that I’m sure you, and perhaps Dagmar, despaired for my future: that I’d become a cult leader or a despot. I mean that this place is too damned nice and too blasted provincial. And, Radiant, a sick little part of me likes that.

If I were to stay, how long until I began to really, truly, derive satisfaction from well-executed leadership? From conciliation and compromise? To be satisfied with, for the most part, only knowing Skydašian and Zobiski folk? To only knowing the ins and outs of one little patch of land in this wretchedly big country? Gods, just the thought of it makes me long for freezing winters—for a change of pace!

I can’t become that person, Radiant. I already knew that, but it became even clearer to me when we were aboard the pleasure ship of Adomas’ stupid, worthless family. That gaudy thing, with the feathers everywhere? I loved it. And I loved running circles around them.

I tell you all this for your own records, because I know you’ll write it down someday, and I won’t have a version of these events that doesn’t give me the final word on why it is I’m leaving. Or, by the time you read it, why I left.

Besides, looking through Adomas’ papers has made me realize something important: the world deserves to know how exceptional I am. Of course that’s arrogant, but if Adomas gets to have a legacy, why not me? (Perhaps having one will someday excise Grandmother’s voice from my head.)

Anyway, speaking of Adomas’ hidden papers, I know it’s not in keeping with the Guild’s principles for me to take selections of them for my own use, but I’ve done so nonetheless. I think I will have more use for decades of blackmail material and poison recipes than you all will.

Sorry about your eye,

Kalyna