Tyiir Jitiri
11405 Tailiering 2 Aly
Lianjiaz, Pinjir, 564-28-1147

I told you when I wrote in Abadius that you should not expect to hear from me again until Abadius next, as things are very busy and postage very expensive (and I know that it is much more expensive still for you to reply, and expected no such thing). In this case I hope dearly for a reply, though I cannot pay you for it; if you consider myself in your debt I hope that no better opportunity to repay it will present itself in this century. 

I don't know what to make of the convention. I have mostly been enjoying it. It matters, and it is all done very straightforwardly, and I think there is something of Aroden in it, though He never tried it as far as I am aware of. It sparked riots, two days in, which were very ugly and the reactions to them moreso. But we have abolished slavery of halflings, and contemplate taking serfdom with it, and are trying to see if you can do censorship just by making people liable for any crimes that they incite with their writing - this after the freedom of the pen sparked riots! And most importantly to me, though surely not to Cheliax, after a week of this the Lord Marshal Cansellarion proposed marriage. 

I am very happy. When we discussed marriage I said I knew it was necessary for the good of Chelam and I was not particularly expecting it to be more than that. He will be very good for Chelam; I am making plans already to offer land to the paladins when they retire on the great road that you spoke of, so that it will remain safe without the cost of constant patrols. And the Church is in a dreadful state and I think I can fix it except that the Church has no reason to let me fix it, only now they have reason. The Lord Marshal's wife may acceptably concern herself with the Church's work in Cheliax, and in time perhaps could run it just because everyone else is too busy to. 

I have been thinking of ambition, if you hadn't noticed. Writing the constitution has made me appreciate what nerve the Goddess had, what it took to do it then and do it better than anyone who has tried to do it since. I think that it would serve the Church to have more orders and more writing and more sermons that conceive of Iomedae as the goddess of good laws.

But on all of this I do not particularly require your advice; I like politics, and time will tell if I'm any good at it but it is too late to change my course now anyway. I want your advice on marriage. I have rather few sources of advice. You need not betray the secrets of Axis; even the secrets of the Material would be sufficient. The problem is that these matters are not written of, not for respectable women, and I have no married girlfriends of whom I can inquire. I am not asking mechanical questions; if anything the problem is that in Cheliax that is all that is understood. I sought old advice on marriage, and it advised me to avoid speaking too much or seeming ambitious, but as this advice is not how I acquired my fiancé I am skeptical that it's how to keep him. (Or to speak more precisely, I am not at all concerned with keeping him. But I would like him to be happy, and to love me, and I would like to be a source of strength to him because he is a busy and tired man whose work is important and I do not want to become another source of busyness and tiredness for him.) And at present while I think he would like to care for me as a man does a woman, he does not. He hasn't had any practice. I suppose I would like to seduce him. I know how this would be done in Asmodean Cheliax. But I do not wish to, for love is not the object of that game, and more importantly he would not wish me to. I have been praying, and I am in the process of trying to hire a lady-in-waiting out of Lastwall who can help me be a cultural translator, but you are more likely to respond than Iomedae and I expect that my lady in waiting will be inexperienced in seduction. 

You are happily married. It is a thing that stood out to me in our acquaintance. I would like your advice, if you can afford any; and I happily invite you to the wedding, though I do not really imagine you can attend. 

Yours,
Carlota

P.S., express again to your husband my gratitude for forwarding our correspondence! I acknowledge my paranoia as likely entirely silly, but I am reluctant to place it among the habits to be free of.