III
All in all, we’re doing shockingly well. Yuyan, that most excellent woman, has been holding out on me—after last year’s fire season wrought such devastation, she sent the majority of the valuables to the Lhasa house, and has had it perpetually stocked and prepared to move in ever since. And myself not a word the wiser! The moment we saw the flames on the horizon, she had the servants hitch up the horses and off we two went, nothing on us but for a few coins and the clothes on our backs like the Caesarians of old. We likely won’t return. Lhasa is lovely this time of year, and I really can’t think of something I’d rather do less than face the headache of rebuilding again. You see, we’ve had word that the entire estate was razed to the ground. I do hope the servae thought to free the horses from the stables. How awful if they had burned.
—TRANSLATED EXCERPT FROM THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF IMPERIAL HISTORIAN DYAN KLEIOS, SENT FROM CONSUL TZU SULIMA OF ROMA SERICA. DATED 293 PQ.
Editor’s Note: This letter is of particular historical interest, being the first known personal address to an Imperial Historian without the Iveroa name. For further reading on the scandal and political fallout of Dyan Iveroa and Martius Kleios’s marriage—despite being two patres familia in their own right—see more from this author’s text, Suns and Swallows: The Scandalous Joining of Two Dynasties (604 PQ).
Don’t go down to the Sinktown-way.
If a crim catches you then there you’ll stay.
They’ll put you in a pot
And gobble you up hot
Stray too far and now you’re lunch.
—CHILDREN’S RHYMING GAME, POPULAR IN LUXANA AND SURROUNDING AGRICULTURAL VILLAGES C. 730 PQ