Letter sent to Sorazin Bey

[Ahmet]

Sorazin Bey,

You should reconsider your order to Sergeant Grimes, sir. He does not have to die. He should not have to die.

I had a plan to save him. Your orders have come, rather unfortunately, to undo all of that. His sacrifice is entirely unnecessary. Unnecessary! It's nothing but a ritual slaughter to appease bloodthirsty butchers who'll never be appeased with anything but dinar, and dinar we're already going to give them.

Rescind the order to have him march to his death, please. Help me save his life.

Respectfully yours,
Legate Ahmet Yildirim

[LiAlH4]

Legate Ahmet Yildirim,

I write to correct certain misapprehensions in your letter and state the position of the Fourth Legion to the Legates of Ephia's Well. You may provide this letter to your counterpart if you see fit to do so.

The Fourth Legion does not, will not, and will never support a trial of any man or woman of the Janissaries in Ephia's Well with the Rose sitting in judgment or as prosecution. And I will not surrender my authority over the service and punishment of my own men.

You invited a conflict between the law: My own, derived from the Sultan, and your own, derived from the Sultan. It cannot be that in a time of war the fate of a Janissary, for actions performed internal to the Fourth Legion, shall be decided on the whims of an Ephian court. I will not allow this. I trust that you understand my reasons. Had you convened your show trial, I would have been forced to announce my own contemporaneous judgment under my authority. And our Well would have been mired in conflict over which law should stand supreme, likely requiring the intervention of Baz'eel to sort out another failing of this factitious satrapy.

Your plan was a failure from the moment of its creation. And I add, that we of the Fourth Legion heard nothing of it prior to your hasty, closed-door meetings with the Rose. You should reflect on why it is that you promised much to the Capitana, and swiftly bowed to Cinquefoil pressure without consulting us. Just as you should reflect upon the absurd decision of your Magistrate and your choice in vesting an untried, untested man with such power to oversee so great a trial as the brooking of Emilia Laurentis.

And yet.

It is indisputable that Sergeant Grimes gave an order that usurped my lawful authority of life and death over one of my own women, however new her conscription. What has passed is a matter of military discipline. Whatever the Banda Rossa may believe, I had resolved to the potential of this course of my own accord before any meeting was had with them.

Sergeant Carrot Grimes will march as is his duty in the vanguard of the column that undertakes the Scald. The Wroth watches him, as it does all of us.

I ask that you direct all further correspondence in this matter to Lieutenant Rennik Colmes. If you convince him of the merits of your "plan", and it has changed so as not to involve a trial, and the peace of Ephia's Well shall not be threatened, and the war effort shall not be imperiled, I will hear him. All pious men and women respect the mercy of B'aara. But I weigh the actions of Sergeant Grimes against these considerations, and observe that his failure in his duty has more than justified my course.

Sorazin Bey
Al-Komayyad

Dictated.