I'm afraid I fail to see where I misunderstood Covenant's demand.
Covenant stated, "I didn't tell you to make any sort of law, or even
suggest it, at any point. I stated that I wanted the stealing to stop,
period." Please recall that I spoke with the thief and he offered to
make amends. In fact he had never intended to target your guild
specifically; he had not known his victims were all Sentinels. But
Covenant said that he did not want amends, that he did not want
Sentinels to be able to be stolen from by Ashtanites at all, and he
wanted me to make sure of this. Am I supposed to wave some magic wand
that prevents any thievery in Ashtan at all times? How exactly am I
expected to do this without passing legislation?

Regarding his comment that if "Ashtan wants merchants to come into the
city, they had bloody well make sure a merchant has some assurance that
they can walk into the city without getting robbed before they get to
their customer" - we have long had a visiting merchants law that
protects announced visiting merchants, which I know that Covenant and
most Sentinels are aware of.

As far as stealing from the young and naive goes, it is something that I
find distasteful personally, but neither my city nor guild has any
policies on theft from non-citizens and non-guildmates. Covenant
attempted to strongarm me into enforcing his own guild and city policies
on mine, and I declined.

As for the death of one of the victims, I was entirely unaware of this
until today as it was not mentioned at all in our conversation. If I had
known there had been an unprovoked death involved, I would have most
certainly disciplined the perpetrator. I do frown harshly on the
breaking of Divine mandate where it concerns the killing of innocents.
This much, one Sentinel secretary should know, as he brought such a case
to me today and the perpetrator in this case was disciplined and later
outguilded.

I am not heartless. I do sympathize with the desire to protect your
guild. But it is my belief that the methods Covenant is taking to do so
are misguided, tainted by his personal bias, and unnecessarily hurtful
to those in the Sentinels who are citizens of Ashtan or friends of
Ashtanites. A situation with a single person has been blown into
hostilities with an entire city. I personally do not consider the
Sentinels as a whole with bad feeling because of Covenant's declaration.
I have lately been approached by and spoken with many of your guildmates
who do not wish hostilities between Ashtan and the Sentinels, and I
would encourage any other sentinals who wish to speak with me citvilly
regarding this situation to do so.

Regards,

Shakti Devi.

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Valnuary, in the year 298 AF.