Dearest Zann,

Here’s the report I gave to Candur.

—

Sir.

Last we met, you charged me informally with gathering information about the problems currently faced by the Rosolla Guard. I have not completed my searches, but events have made it necessary for me to present you with some preliminary results.

The Guard is currently understrength. Our guards work an average of sixty-five hours per swing. Some shift sets have guards working twenty-four hours out of thirty and then twenty out of thirty later in the swing. I found records of two guards who went fifty-one days without a day off.

Most guards are competent at their duties, but there’s a long-established culture of corruption among many of the old-time guards. I suspect the existence of at least one criminal ring in the Guard and maybe more. I judge it was men from such a faction who gave me these wounds (gesture up and down self) and threatened my life, to keep me, a known friend of yours, from finding them out.

The Guard is currently not attempting to discover or counter any external threats to our mission of keeping safe the seat of government for the Crideon lands. Such threats must exist, because the Valnelatar family took power here so fast that it disrupted all the politics in Crideon, and some of the politics outside Crideon, and we still don’t know what anybody’s doing about that.

Finally, Valnelatar Towers itself presents the Guard with two big, difficult problems.

First, the palace’s main protections are magical. They are very strong, we don’t understand them, and they are under the control of the retainers of the Valnelatar family. This means that the Rosolla Guard has no effective role in the actual protection of the Palace, even though that’s our mission.

Second, the Valnelatars must know we don’t control the Palace’s protection. If they’re keeping us at our posts anyway, it must be for some other reason, and we don’t know what that is or what other plans they may have for us.

Thank you.

—

To which Candur said, “That’s what I hoped you’d say. Good. Now we can really get to work.”

Love,

Ybel