Letter to Lyrist Aubrey Domergue

[Loops]

[An envelope containing two letters is delivered to the Lyrist Domergue.]


To Lyrist Aubrey Domergue,

It is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation from my commission in the College of the Balladeers of the Lost Hearth. Despite my dedication to our cause, I find myself unable to continue fulfilling the duties required of me. This decision does not come lightly, but I believe it is in the best interest of the College and my fellow Balladeers. I am grateful for the time spent in service and for your leadership.

My effects have been removed from the College, and upon confirmation of your receipt of this notice, I shall see my cloak and raiment returned.

May the Wheel turn kindly for you.

Yours in song and spirit,
Aeronwy Caddick
Tesrin Hray 11th, IY 7788




Dear Aubrey,

Please find enclosed my letter of resignation. I realise that you denied my resignation offer three days ago. Yet despite your refusal to accept it, I find myself now incapable of providing fit and fair service.

Two nights ago, I was summoned to meet with Ser Arkaeos, who set upon me with wild accusations. I was accused of secretly conspiring against you for matters that I kept you appraised of throughout. I was also charged with making some profane comments regarding the Sisterhood that were grossly untrue. I shall not pen them onto paper. He claimed I had disappointed the Grandmaster d'Auvergne.

Worse still than the accusations was the simple fact that I found myself without a care.

At the time, it was an ungodly hour after a long day, and I found myself simultaneously unable to articulate the complicated, winding trajectories of the investigations you asked me to complete and utterly dismissive of the entire notion of a conspiracy on my part. I had in mind at the time our recent conversation and a begrudging acceptance that I would do your bidding and vote for that Ahmet, who would see the Grandmaster cast from her station and deny the forces of King and City, all for the scribblings of some Ashling. Ser Arkaeos had assumed otherwise.

And, as we parted, Ser Arkaeos stung me with a comment that I imagine he intended to be advice for my role within the Balladeers. He told me that if I am going to disobey an order, I should be able to justify my actions at least.

Justify my actions. After these past weeks spent aching and unable to articulate my restlessness, I realise that is the problem. I can no longer justify my role within the Balladeers.

I came to Ephia's Well to meet the heroes who would save the world. I fantasised that I might one day be among them. Hypatia convinced me that the stories were true and that I could do something wonderful.

Yet, how quickly I was turned into a bitter and sceptical figure. From the moment I donned the cloak, I was confronted with orders to betray my own banner. I watched as Balladeers murdered an officer of the Rose. I marched at the Grandmaster's command to fix the wrong we wrought. But that was my first impression, that something wasn't right.

In the time since, it has become truth. I cannot accomplish anything within these halls. I can go out of them and affect sweeping changes, lead a mob, get the citizens cheering a cause, convince people to die in battle, and make grown men weep. I ran the League of White rally from the Verdant Stage into the Pyramid on a whim, just to know I could still do it. Yet, no matter what I do out there, my every attempt to do good is squashed by someone in here.

And I marched and marched again. People died at my heel, fighting in a war for a state not our own, and I have come to accept I will never be able to sleep well again because of the injustices of their ends. You commanded that Alejandro would never be remembered in our halls, the man who died fighting by my side—a mark against your leadership.

And, oh, fight by my side, he did. Just like Cashano fought by your side unto his end. Imagine my disgust when I returned and found the Balladeers infested with bigoted rhetoric, more concerned with shutting down hospitals and charity houses and exiling people from Il Modo than our good works. And your command regarding this? When you told Haluin he may hold these opinions but not let himself be caught making them publicly? When he did so the next day for all of Ephia's Well to hear and did so without rebuke?

Imagine how Cashano, the man who died at your side, must have felt to know you, his Lyrist, was not willing to protect him from that. Oh, how we used to drink and commiserate this nonsense.

And I sought to quest. As near as I can tell, you have scarcely quested, but for the depths, Selsi, Hypatia, and I dragged you down to. As Lyrist, you certainly have not made arrangements for your Balladeers to be able to quest through the Assuru. No, rather than arranging our passage, you have used your time and authority to liaise with the Astronomers and come away with them convinced you to have to disbar my own student, who I was preparing to undertake the quest at my side.

You did not even grant me the dignity to fall on my sword on her behalf as her superior. A superior should take responsibility for the actions of their subordinates. I should have had that opportunity, especially since she was proceeding with a plan that you had initially allowed her to do before your little meeting with Estellise changed your mind—another mark against your leadership.

I wonder if you even understood how grave of an insult it was to me that you would charge her thusly and not I.

I was rebuked and insulted as I sat you down with Mirielle and Selsi, and we agreed henceforth that we could discuss a coordinated voting block as a Rose before this campaign season even began in earnest. You took that opportunity I gave you, cast me out from subsequent meetings, and used the time to gloat and goad them, but you came away with nothing to show for it. You had not an ounce of contrition for your failure and what seemed to be an abject lack of understanding of just how deep that failure ran.

The Balladeers are supposed to lead the Rose banner, not be like this.

I have never seen the College of Balladeers so continuously penniless, weak, and lacking influence and coordination as they are now. You come to me and despair that you cannot even persuade Aurelio to stop his students wandering around, drunk and vomiting about the winefloor. Well, now you shall be left with Aurelio and his students and Niranye—if you do not excise her as well—who avoids you unto the ends of the disc.

Know that neither Aurelio nor I ever let us go so long without funding when it was our responsibility to liaise with the Legates. Know that you have undone months of work to unite the Rose at our Grandmaster's command. And know that even if Ahmet's campaign goes well, that is not off of your back.

And that is not even mentioning again that we were barred from the quest for over three months by your own hand. Your agreement was signed into law forbidding us from questing, so you looked to be in an advantageous position for your own personal politics, and all the while, you lied to me that you were trying to help us be able to delve once more. How can I trust you as a leader, really? Where were your unimpeachable morals and refusal to equivocate with your allies then, when it truly mattered? On the greatest cause of all, for life itself?

But what is three months?

You know as well as I do that the world is coming to an end. No matter how much the Sultanate tries to hide the truth from the masses with their beguiling laws and restrictive traditions, what remains of the world is a speck of dust upon some grinding difference engine, calculating something I cannot even fathom. That we can walk to the edge of the world, where darkness touched it, and see it peel away into the ash and void. That the sea of pearls is sinking and the world is drying out.

What is the proportion of ten years that three months? How many people may die if we are late to the line because of it? Will it be everyone?

We can count the days that remain. I cannot spend them doing nothing but bickering and being overruled on my every action. Even scratching at ash with a rake would be more productive than this.

The Balladeers are a broken institution, and I have now accepted that they shall not be fixed until they undergo a change that I cannot provide. I have been rebuked again for trying to enact a change through example to my students and my own actions. There is nothing left for me in these arcades but further betrayal and the slow erosion of my hopes and dreams.

So I retire from this Rose cloak. You may have it, and no more need you be troubled by my attempts to do ought of regard. I have voted for Dante. I am not even certain he will succeed in the election, and I certainly don't believe he is being honest with me. There is perhaps a less than 1% chance he will let me take the life-giving waters that pour from the cup of that Pilgrim and use them to bring green to the world again. I surmise that is more of a difference than I shall make within this college.

And I shall pray that whatever you are trying to do works, that I am a fool, and that you are able to pull the Rose from the spiral it has fallen into. The Balladeers were supposed to lead the banner, not be the fallen members of it. I shall weep with joy if that day comes.

There is nothing more to say, for I have been made bitter and resentful in the place where I once had a dream. You have heard most of this before, yet I needed to write it again. And now I can finally let go.

Regards,
Aeronwy Caddick