Lasyll,

I appreciate the efficiency. Most people wait until I am alive to mock me.

Your three points, addressed in kind:

One. You tell me Hashan has never actually required fair treatment, due process, or protection from being murdered by citymates, that it depends entirely on whether the Regency likes you. You offer to explain how this works, as though it were wisdom rather than an indictment. I did not write to Seldin because I misunderstood the rules. I wrote because I refuse to accept them as you have described them. If you are correct, Hashan has a larger problem than Ruddra's corpse.

Two. You suggest this belongs on Hashan's boards. I agree entirely. Which is why, before embracing death with Alania killing me for writing the first public news, and returning to the living, to see her made an enemy of Hashan. I went to the Hashan board. And I could not post. Because Ildiko's mute did not merely remove my voice from the city channel, it closed the very door you are now telling me I should have used. I stood there in silence that was not my choice, in a city that was not protecting me, looking at a board I was not permitted to address. But I WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

Three. That also answers your third point. I did not spend five thousand sovereigns on the Public board out of habit, or vanity, or some compulsion to subject Sapience to my tortured thoughts. I spent them because it was the only board open to this. Poetry is where I chose to write. Public is where I MUST. The Regency left me no other door, and you now criticize me for walking through the one that remained. Call that irony, or call it what it is.

You are a former Hashani, Lasyll. I wonder if that is by your choice or what, and whether the answer to that question would illuminate anything about the city's current practices.

I hope this clarifies, as I still stand for Hashan and for what I 'believe'.

Ruddra Rousseau
Trader, Alchemist, Citizen of Hashan
Alive again, and still talking

Penned by my hand on the 1st of Ero, in the year 1005 AF.