Letters

The heroes of Li Fu province return and place their prize tiger heads on stakes outside the palace.

Meanwhile, cousin Ramachandra returns from the capital, and immediately summons the entire House to his palace, while Lady Varadiya has put down the unrest that rose in her province when the roads fell.

Once together, the lords confront the reality of their new situation, and the other Houses' reactions. Paniren is the first to react, with a formal request for us to aid them with engineers, while Modina comes a close second with some very enticing offers. Not much comes out of any of this.

Darshi has a strange and somewhat uncough visitor, a master craftsman headed for the imperial city. Aftyer some negotiations back and forth, he finally settles in the province of Lord Ramachandra, working under very favorable conditions.

Varadiya has a visitor from Paniren who tries to insinuate herself into her good graces - with astonishingly little success. She even proposes a marriage to a younger scion of the house.

Hazir travels to Modina territory. On the way, he witnesses Varadiya's diplomatic misadventures. His own task is to recruit out-of-work Caravan Captains. This isn't as easy as expected, but he spends his time building contacts and visiting monasteries, so the time is still well spent.

Jangir has some shady dealings going on, tough none of it came to light at this point.