[This letter has been written in a neatly loopy hand on a few odd-sized sheets of parchment that look as if they had been salvaged from larger documents. Tucked into a heavier parchment packet, the outside is addressed to "Nemi at the Stormbird's Roost, Starling Street, Imbryck".]
Reneca 5th
Seaglass Inn
St. Loomis
Nemi,
I have not heard anything from you since before the New Year, so I hope this letter finds you well. It has been largely uneventful here in St. Loomis, though the past few months have been difficult. As you may perhaps have heard, the harvest was not good here this fall, owing to the cold and stormy weather that ruined the best of the crop. Lord Greyleigh and the Mayor sent a delegation to Imbryck to request aid from the King, but nothing seems to have come of it. This seems very odd and very hard, as people here have been quite desperate. The town's only aid has come from the monastery, which shared what little they had from their own fields, and from the Mistwatch who it seems watch over the people here in many ways. The Greyleighs themselves did what they could, and could perhaps have done more, but obviously it is their own lands and the peasants upon them that have fared so hardly.
I hope things have not been so bad in Imbryck, though it is hard not to worry when so little news is to be had from there of late. However Old Bobert says it is much the same there as ever, except that people are "very tight". I am not at all sure what that is meant to convey, and Old Bobert was very tight himself and did not say anything further about it. He did say the Roost looked well, but of course he did not stop there since I failed to send a letter with him on his last trip. Have there been any further refugees arrived from the plantation isles? If there have been, I am sure that you and Ayallah have done whatever you can to welcome them and make them feel at home. And if they have had need of medical care, then you will have sent them on to Theora at the clinic, and all will be well for them there too. I hope you will tell everybody at both the Roost and the clinic that I miss them and wish them all well.
You may not know the answer to this next question, but I wondered if perhaps anybody had heard anything yet from Lord Redford? I deeply regret not being able to personally convey the resignation of my position, and indeed I wish it had not been necessary at all. I wish too that he had not gone off so suddenly with so little word, and left me behind. I suppose he felt that I should not have the time to attend him given the other duties I had just assumed, and perhaps it is so. But I wish that he had at least said more before he left, and sent some word at any point since. I left him a letter, to be opened whenever he should return, but I fear whether he has ever returned at all. I know you have little care for the doings of lords and ladies, which is entirely understandable, but still if you might discover any word of Lord Redford I would be very happy for it.
Of myself I have little news. I believe I told you previously that I had many charges here at the Greyleigh manor, whose care and well-being I am responsible for. Some of them are quite stubborn and will not heed good advice nor take proper care for their own selves, but indeed that is nothing but what I am used to. We often go on excursions into town and through the Greywood on the manor grounds, both of which they like very well. They did give me some trouble a few months ago, when they wished to go into the market at a time that the market was closed, and the guards were not very pleased with any of us. But they have all come through the winter well, even with the general hunger, which makes me glad. I would have been very much grieved to lose any of them, difficult though they are.
I am sure you will be glad to know that Ras is well too. I recall that you sent a letter to him some time back, and I was pleased to think that the two of you had become friends. Perhaps I will see if he too wishes to send a letter back to Imbryck to you. He is still working in the lumber camp here so that we may continue to earn money to pay for our passage to Idiri. It has been very slow to earn so much money. I must say that stowing away was a very much more affordable way of making the trip around the Adelantean. But it is very much easier to stow away a single person rather than two, and I cannot very well stow Grit away at all. And in any case that adventure of mine very nearly ended poorly, so despite the labour and the time involved, I am sure it must be better to pay for passage instead.
It grows very late, and I must lay down my pen and rest for the night. I truly do hope that you and Ayallah and everybody else there are happy and well, and that if there is a single thing that I may still do for any of you, even at this great distance, that you will tell me. I miss you all very much.
In peace and honour and friendship,
Rukhnis