1255/12/15

Dear Tailiki,

I did some checking, and the cheapest apartments I could find that are fit to live in are about twenty drachmas a month – I think that’s equivalent of a bit over two hundred Neshineri marks or three thousand five hundred Hureshan leptons. The reason this letter has been so delayed is that I checked out a number of apartments in my copious spare time, seeing if they were livable and ruling out a number of cheaper ones that had weak floors or non-working plumbing or other unacceptable problems. Those apartments are in the Ftylar district, where there are also some factories and where a lot of factory workers live. So you’d have to put up with some noise and smoke from nearby factories, I’m afraid. The cheapest that I could find that aren’t near factories or other undesirable neighbors are near twenty-five drachmas a month, in the Krosolar Hills district. Neither is close to the university on foot, but you can get to the university by tram from them in little more than three quarters of an hour, even with all the stops.

Since you lost the books you had when your father was arrested, I’m sending you a couple more easy reads to practice your Kosyan with. One is a children’s book, a story about a little girl who travels to an island on the far side of the world where everyone has several heads and decides which one they’ll wear each day, among other oddities; the other is for adults but aimed at a broad, popular audience, a spy story set in the days before the League city-states were united. Let me know what your mother’s address is, and I’ll send her a couple of books too.

I haven’t made much progress on my research lately for a number of reasons, partly the apartment hunting (which I don’t begrudge) and partly because of preparations for putting on “Love Blooming on the Field of Battle” toward the end of last month. I got roped into helping build and paint the set as well as performing the role of a courier that I mentioned in an earlier letter. I don’t know anything about carpentry, but those who did just had me hold things in place while they hammered nails, or things like that. And I don’t know anything about painting, but this was very broad strokes with a house-painting brush rather than an artist’s brush, just giving the vague impression of city walls and a sky and sun. An artist painted the outlines of the city walls, and the sun and clouds, and told us what colors to fill in inside each of those lines.

The play itself went off better than I expected, nowhere near as popular as a play in modern Kosyan, but there were more people present than just the students currently taking Old Kosyan, who were required to be there by their professors. I am proud to say I did not forget a single one of my lines, even on opening night, as nervous as I was. (A bit of nervousness was in character for the courier, who was delivering bad news to a cantankerous group of archons.) I don’t think I’ll make a career of the theater, but if Pydesen puts on another Old Kosyan play next year, I’ll be willing to help out.

Your friend,

Ftangu

---

Sixteenth day of the first month, 1256

Dear Ftangu,

I wish I could have seen you in that play, though I’m still not fluent in modern Kosyan and probably wouldn’t understand a word of Old Kosyan. Now that I’m living in a different country from Ridra I don’t have anyone to practice talking with, though I still correspond with her. It took me only a quarter of an hour to puzzle through the Kosyan paragraphs of your letter, so I think I’m improving.

Thank you so much for the books, and for checking out apartments for us. Mother and I have compared our budgets, and we think we’ll be able to come to Sderamyn about the end of the year if we’re very frugal and don’t have any unexpected expenses. Which means no buying books, though I can afford a library subscription. Most of the books available there are in Neshisum, though there are a good number in Hureshan, including a primer on Kosyan for Hureshan speakers – I was glad to find that, since the only ones I’d seen in the bookshops were for Neshisum speakers. There is one shop I’ve found that sells used books very cheaply, but the only ones they had on offer were novels and a few popular biographies, almost all in Neshisum with a few in Hureshan. I bought a children’s book in Neshisum, but passed up the rest. I’ll keep checking the shop on my off days in case they acquire a Kosyan dictionary or textbook.

[in Kosyan] I’ve read about a third of Dasidra in the Ftimasu Isles; it’s very funny, though the jokes sometimes take a moment to hit me as I think a sentence through. I haven’t encountered many unfamiliar words, which is good because I still haven’t found a Kosyan-Hureshan dictionary for sale at an affordable price here, and the library doesn’t allow dictionaries to be checked out, only referred to in house. So for the few words I don’t know, I write them down and look them up on my next trip to the library.

I’m sure the Kosyan part of this letter has many errors in it, and you can tell me about them when you write back.

Your betrothed,

Tailiki

---

1256/2/4

Dear Tailiki,

I’m getting back to focusing on my research on tenth-century gender explorers, and sharing with the Gender Explorers Club every few months what I’ve learned by digging through the libraries and archives. Some of them are helping me comb through the archives for more references to known gender explorers, or new ones we didn’t already know about, which is nice, because I’m too young to have a grad student assigned to me.

Dipredra, Kofpasar and I walked from the university to a park on the waterfront and picnicked there a few days ago. The waterfowl there are aggressive, having gotten used to people sharing breadcrumbs, and aren’t satisfied with what you give them; they’ll take your whole lunch if they can. We managed to fend them off with only a couple of biscuits lost.

I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying Dasidra in the Ftimasu Isles; my mother read that when she was young, and so did I. It was extremely popular in my mother’s time and is still pretty widely read in Kosyan-speaking territories. I think it might have been translated into Hureshan; if you can get it, reading passages in Kosyan and then in Hureshan and comparing them might help.

There were not that many errors in your Kosyan. I attach another page explaining them.

Your friend,

Ftangu

---

Twenty-ninth day of the second month, 1256

Dear Ftangu,

I told my mother in a letter how hard a time I was having to find a Kosyan-Hureshan dictionary and a Kosyan textbook in Hureshan to replace the ones I lost. She mailed me both! I should have thought of asking her; of course she has access to Hureshan bookstores. And I think she’s earning a little more cleaning the department store than I am cleaning the hotel, though I’m a little fuzzy on how many leptons make a mark.

So I am buckling down on studying Kosyan. I’m still practicing Neshisum with Taia and Rui, and with the girls at work, because I’ll probably be living here for almost another year in the best case. But I’ve finished Dasidra in the Ftimasu Isles and started Blood in the Shadows, which is wonderfully thrilling once I’ve looked up a few words to understand what is going on in a scene.

My latest budget calculation puts me in Sderamyn around the first days of 1257. Hopefully no unexpected expense will push that further out.

Your betrothed,

Tailiki

---

1256/3/11

Dear Tailiki,

Blood in the Shadows is wonderfully dreadful, isn’t it? My father had a copy, which I read when I was much too young for it, and couldn’t half understand the political intrigue or the romance. And yet I think it’s an easy read for children or foreigners as far as grammar and vocabulary go, as complex as the plot is. Let me know when you’ve finished it and I’ll send you another couple of easy reads.

My assistants in the Gender Explorers Club have turned up another gender explorer, though her life is poorly documented and so far we haven’t learned any more about her. In a court document from 938, a person named Faroseng, also known as Farosedra, was charged with selling adulterated wine. She was found guilty and fined five drachmas, which was a lot of money in those days. Other than the masculine legal name and feminine alternate name, and the facts of this court case, we know nothing about her. The court recorder is concise and doesn’t go into unnecessary detail about what clothes the defendant wore, of course, and so far I haven’t found mention of her in any other document of the period. We’re lucky he recorded her chosen name and not just her legal name. It goes to show how many more there must have been who explored aspects of the other gender and didn’t get recorded in documents that survive to this day.

Your friend,

Ftangu

---

Third day of the fourth month, 1256

Dear Ftangu,

I’m more than half done with Blood in the Shadows. I’m reading two or three pages every evening before bed on work days, and more on days off.

Mother writes that she has lost her job at the department store. Apparently she and her manager were questioned by the police about whether they’d seen me, and her manager didn’t like the police getting involved. She’d been looking for work for a week as of her last letter. Hopefully she’ll have found something by the time she writes again. I’m still cleaning rooms at the hotel. My improvement in Neshisum is pretty slow, just using conversation with my hosts and with friends at work, but it wasn’t much faster when I was studying it in the evenings instead of Kosyan. I can make myself understood in a pinch, but according to Taia I sound like a small child.

Ridra writes that Kenet told her that her family was questioned by the police as to whether they’d heard from me. Her father said no, and she lied and said no as well. They asked her who my friends at school were besides her, and she named some girls I was acquainted with, but didn’t mention Ridra. I don’t know if the police can pursue me into Neshinark. Taia and Rui say they can’t, that I’m safe here, but I can’t help worrying.

Can you find anything out through your contacts?

Your betrothed,

Tailiki

---

1256/6/4

Dear Tailiki,

I wrote to my contacts in the Bureau of Antiquities, discreetly asking whether and why the police were still looking for you. They wrote back, not unexpectedly, that you were suspected of possibly knowing more about your father’s conspiracy with the monarchists than your mother, seeing that you were in the line of succession and she wasn’t. In any case they want to question you before closing the case. I wrote back that you were out of the country and planning to stay away, though I wouldn’t say where, never had any knowledge of your father’s plot, and had no intention of claiming the throne, and that if they could pass that on discreetly to the police, it might prevent your mother and friends from being harassed further.

I suspect that the police may be reading your mother’s mail. It might be wise to correspond with her via a friend who can pass along your messages rather than directly, as you did with Kenet.

A few days ago, just before classes started again, I went on a picnic into the countryside with Dipredra, her friend Stadyn (a clerk at an importing firm), and Ngesar. Ngesar has a car, a five-year-old Antelope, and he took us well out beyond the nearby villages to a shady spot on a hill overlooking Lake Sgenim. It was a fine day; I wish you could have been there. Maybe I can show it to you when you come, although I doubt I’ll have a car by then. We’ll probably have to stick to sights in the city, and there’s no shortage of them.

I asked Dipredra if she could recommend some more books for you, a little more challenging than Blood in the Shadows but still easier than the typical book written for native-speaking adults. She asked me about your interests, and gave me a long list; I’m sending you a couple of the ones I was able to find at a bookstore. Archon’s Curse is set in third-century Dyram, around the time you fell asleep, and features a sorcerer who gets elected as one of the archons and puts a curse on a rival archon. The author’s note claims it’s a fictionalized version of a true story; I haven’t done the research to know if that’s true. Queen of the Longest River is set in eighth-century Khareush, at the zenith of the Imakha Empire, and is about an orphan girl who has various adventures and ends up queen of the empire. I asked Seridra and she said it’s based on the life of a real Khareushi queen, though she hasn’t read the book to see how accurate it is in its details.

I’m working on another paper, this one focusing on the larger gender exploration movement of the tenth century and the social connections between known gender explorers. My next paper will probably be about the end of the movement, about the backlash and the persecution that the later gender explorers suffered that apparently made it so unpopular that gender explorers became rare and isolated for a few centuries afterward. But that’s well into the future; I’ve hardly begun research for that paper.

Your friend,

Ftangu

---

Twenty-fifth day of the sixth month, 1256

Dear Ftangu,

I have done as you advised, sending my latest letter for Mother to Ridra and asking her to pass the message along. I don’t know anyone else’s address, except Kenet’s, and her father is in the pocket of the government. But I’m afraid the police might be reading Ridra’s mail too.

I feel uneasy. If the Hureshan police have been reading Mother’s mail, and if they’re still interested in me, then they already know where I’m living and may be watching me. They probably only haven’t arrested me because they don’t want to offend the Neshineri government, I’m guessing. Do you know how to tell if someone is following you? I doubt I should take the exposition in Blood in the Shadows at face value.

Speaking of which, I’ve finished it, and started Queen of the Longest River. Thank you for sending the new books, and thank Dipredra for me for recommending them.

Your betrothed,

Tailiki