Dear Diary,

"Children are not blessed gifts, That implies they're property, Children are all people too." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Children

In this third Verse of the Book of Children, Tabitha states plainly a fact many parents may disagree with. When I first read it, it upset me greatly, so much I could not understand the second two lines. But in the end, when I reaffirmed to myself my faith in our Goddess and read the Verse without my preconceptions, I realized she was, in fact, completely correct. Children are not objects. They are no more extensions of ourselves than our partners or parents. They are people, just like us, with hopes and dreams and strengths and weaknesses and fears. People, just like us. Small people. Smaller than us, needing us to help them grow. Often ignorant, needing us to help them learn. Weaker than us, needing us to protect them. Just as our Goddess does for us, without considering us less than she is due to some cosmic fluke of birth, but seeing us as people deserving of respect, and care, and nurturing. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Y'know, I did not expect Saffron to get that final takeaway from this Verse, but I'm entirely unruffled by her doing so. Seriously, if my Worshippers are doing all that good shit for kids, that's at least a good fucking start. Teaching, protecting, nurturing, respecting them as little people who never asked to be here.

Shit, I don't think they asked to be here. I'm not sure it would really change anything, but I remember Grandma Aetos' description of her own reincarnation. Which, now that I think about it, didn't sound so much like 'asking' as 'being called', so I guess most of the Souls like that aren't asking to be born either. Just filling the body that's waiting for them. Of course, I'm kinda wondering now at what point those Souls get called. Is it at birth? Maybe a little while later, when cogitation starts happening? Maybe earlier, when the brain is there and neurons are firing and shit? Fuck, maybe Souls wind up jammed into zygotes and shit, just chilling without any real thoughts until the gray matter starts forming. The stuff Saffron has told me about Auras makes me think that might even be true.

Makes me wonder about 'family names' and shit like that. Like if there's any genetic component to it, or even something more, I dunno, mystical. Like calling for an ancestor to come back and rejoin the party. Yeah, I get where that would be a thing when a family desperately needs help and shit, but some part of me really thinks it would be cool if Anise was, y'know, somehow connected to Anise by more than just a name. Not because 'oh, I need her back', even if Saffron might think that in the darkest parts of the night, but because I really wish she'd had more time to celebrate her family winning despite everything stacked against them.

But that can't happen. Because I ate her.

Yeah, I get it, she totally wanted it that way, and doing anything else would have been a betrayal of the faith she put in me as her Patron. I'm not sure if she ever Worshipped me, but if she did, I'd have been letting her down on that account as well. So I'm not gonna beat myself up about it. Not on purpose. But I still feel some kinda way about it.

Fuck it, not like I needed a reason to spoil my kits, but I'm just gonna make that one more reason to make sure my daughter Anise gets the opportunity to do everything my grandmother-in-law Anise never got to. Yeah, I'm gonna do the same for all my other kits. Because you don't play favorites, you give each of them everything you can give them that they want or need. For Anise, that's become a constant stream of challenges for her to overcome without putting her ever-less-tiny body in danger. For Isadora, it's all the milk and meat mush she can stomach and a soft, warm place to snuggle and snooze. For Hailee, it's all the focused attention I can give her, it seems.

Heh. I kinda wonder if maybe those old school Communist types had that one little bit right, 'to each according to their needs'. Fuck it, I'm probably misremembering. But that still sounds like a good idea, at least for a family. Hell, maybe it's a good idea on a bigger scale, too. Have to talk to Saffron about that. Or maybe she's already thought of it. She probably has. Sure as shit that's what we're doing for any kids who show up to the Temples or Academies.

So I spent most of yesterday chatting with Baba Yaga, and spent most of today sitting in my office tryna document some of it, wrap my head around other bits, and generally digest it enough to give Saffron some advance warning about whatever's gonna happen. Long gossip session. Most of it was petty bullshit. Okay, I don't know from most, but a lot of it was. Of course, even in the petty bullshit I picked out a bunch of patterns. The kind of shit that happens when everybody is under stress and nobody can do jack shit about it, so they're all on edge. Which means nobody has the time or energy to spare to be soft with one another. Understanding. Caring. Nurturing.

Which, from what I can tell, is why the Courtesan's Guild is making an absolute killing. Just raking in the money and favors and everything. They haven't done anything with it except used that to keep a lid on the simmering pot that is Boltophsberg, but even there my read on Danica tells me she's not doing it to boost her own profit margins. Seriously, I'm not even sure that after everything they're spending to keep things from boiling over that they really are increasing their bottom line, except in the sense that folks like her people are always the ones who get hit first. They're not royalty, or nobility, or in the case of Boltophsberg, any part of the 'military' or 'academics' who have their hands on the levers of power, but their profession means they gotta look like them. But unlike the military or the academics who have military guards, the sex workers can't keep the angry mob from killing them.

Okay, yeah, some of them are gonna be part of the mob from day one, and some will manage to convince the mob that 'rape' is a fate worse than death, because in that moment they'd rather be violated than killed, but that's not better. I ain't even gonna talk about the ones who forget that they're not really part of the whole power structure. Shit, even Danica apparently has to take jobs now and then, although from what Baba says, she's mostly picking her jobs to get the ears of folks who can maybe stop the worst of the excesses of the Adventurers and Scribes.

Because while the Marshall's report missed a lot of the local color and definitely some of the stuff that locals hide from outsiders, the whole idea of the Adventurers convincing the Scribes, who include most of the folks who would be considered 'judges' and 'tax collectors', to increase taxes to pay for more defenses to hold off the aggressive Alliance is pretty spot on. The thing is at this point most of that money is being fed back into guards and troops and 'Heroic' sorts whose whole job is to keep the Shipwrights and Sailors from organizing any coherent kind of protest.

Meanwhile not even Baba can tell if Vyenemoinen is keeping his head down because the wheels are coming off his latest attempt at governing Boltophsberg, or because he engineered the whole thing to wipe the slate clean. So on top of having a chat with him to straighten out his whole 'multiple wives and not friends with either of them' situation, I gotta maybe have another chat about how he's been in charge of the City since it was founded, which in my book makes him responsible, which again from my admittedly imperfect yet massively tentacled perspective, means that if he's tryna do his best for as many people as possible, I'm gonna do my best to help him, but if he's just tryna make sure he's always on top of shit pyramid means I'm gonna tell Marie to prep the tempura batter and warm up her biggest deep fryer.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Hey, I pay attention to my Wife. 'Deep fried until lightly crispy'. After letting me ragdoll her in the sexiest of ways the other night, the least I can do is follow the instructions she's set out for Deities who Don't Deserve That Title.

At any rate, on the ground the Shipwrights are mostly allied with the Courtesans in trying to avoid an all out violent City-wide riot, while also trying to convince the Scribes to back down on the punishing levels of taxation. 'In the sky', so to speak, Pyevatar envies and hates Ilmatar only slightly less than Ilmatar hates and envies Pyevatar. Both due to Vyenemoinen not paying enough attention to either of them and Lemonkyenin not having the juice to pop up an Avatar, which means he can only provide his gigolo services to one of them at a time. I haven't met with Mokosh or Perun yet, but from what Baba tells me Perun is just a bigger, older Lemonkyenin, and Mokosh is just fuckin' tired of all her family's bullshit.

Yeah, apparently both Mokosh and Baba have tried to extol the virtues of sharing, or even proper scheduling, to Mokosh's daughters, but they're not having it. Seriously, on the one hand I can kind of get it. If my sister and I wound up with the same sugar daddy, I'd have some issues with that, and if I found out we had the same side piece, that would only make it worse. If my mom and my High School school psychologist both told me I'd get more inner peace, not to mention bigger better orgasms, from Google Calendar than from hiring assassins, I'd probably ignore them both too.

Okay, maybe not the school psychologist. But then, I think I might have wanted to audition her for the role of 'new side piece'. She had a little bit of that long tall Tallulah going on. Fuck, I know I've said it before, but I am an absolute buffoon for not realizing how Bi I was. And yes, married to two women with two more in the Concubine to Wife Pipeline, but still Pan. Seriously, if Lachlan had Saffron's brains, he might have a shot at a permanent slot on the Homestead roster. Some small part of me is thinking that with four partners, I really ought to stop looking, but another part of me is just like, 'no, nom them all'. I think we all know where that impulse is coming from.

Okay, I just had the awfulest thought that if Lemonkyenin winds up going full on Dark Side and needs to be ended, I could maybe ride him into my Maw. Which is just wrong, but another part of me is thinking that he's just arrogant and macho enough to Consent to that shit, assuming his Magic Cock™ will addict me to it so strongly that I, I dunno, spit him out or something.

I don't spit. I swallow.

At any rate, the situation in Boltophsberg is, in a word, a fuckin' powder keg. One which has two of our Alliance ships in close enough proximity to potentially wind up involved. So before lunch I tagged Karen and asked her to collect the Marshall, then stepped down to the Questing Tentacle, where the two of them were waiting in the stern cabin.

"Champion." Karen had her uniform on. Probably for the best. I did not need any more accusations of tryna steal Worshippers. Especially with maybe kinda sorta winding up with Ivan possibly changing his Patron to the Black Dragon after that visit. Then again, it's possible it wasn't so much Patron as the closest his Ace ass would ever get to deep and abiding lust.

"Diaz." The Marshall nodded to me without standing from his chair. The winds had picked up a little over the past few days, and even in the port the deck beneath my feet swayed a little. I took the hint and, after waving Karen to a seat, plunked my ass in a chair as well.

"Hey Marshall. Karen. Wanted to give you guys a sort of warning, combined with maybe some direction."

DuBois tilted his head slightly. "From the Imperator?"

I shook my head. "Nope. I'm gonna discuss this with her over the next day or two maybe, but I figure I'd rather have you two ready to duck when the fire starts flying than have her ready to dictate peacetime policy during a shooting war."

Yeah, that got him very, very tense very, very fast. "Should we be battening hatches?"

I shrugged, rocked my head back and forth. "I dunno, Sir. But honestly? It depends on how long that shit takes. I'd definitely keep the crossbows strung, even if you don't ratchet up the tension quite yet."

He nodded. "So... Things are coming to a head."

I waggled my hand. "More like they would have done so a while back if folks weren't desperately trying to keep that from happening." He frowned, and I said, "what?"

He sucked his teeth, shook his head, and growled out, "either they're doing a piss poor job of it, or somebody's doing the exact opposite."

I blinked. "I hadn't thought of that. Baba hadn't thought of that, at least not that she told me."

"She might be the one doing it."

That was frighteningly possible. Friendly old crone who baked mean pastries and brewed great tea notwithstanding, she was also shrewd as fuck. "Okay, I'll keep that in mind. In the meanwhile..."

I waited until they both got that 'waiting for orders' look and the Marshall said, "what do you want us to do if things go south?"

"Try to avoid getting involved in any fighting without direct orders from myself or the Imperator." I thought about it for a second. "Try to provide humanitarian aid where you can."

They both looked at me like I was speaking some unknown language. Karen even asked, "what kind of aid now?"

I sighed. Fuckin' Zeus. No idea if this was his fault, probably wasn't, was probably Ares', but I was gonna blame him anyway. "Provide Healing and shelter for any noncombatants. If somebody tries to board while armed, or acts like they're gonna try to take over the ship, just cast off and stand off shore. Contact the Black Dragon for support if you have to do that, or if you've taken on so many refugees you need to offload them somewhere safe."

"Will she be close enough?"

"I'm headed there next to tell Swanson to bring her in to just outside of visual range from the docks."

"They'll still be able to see her from the cliffs."

I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, they will. But she'll still be a few miles out, and she's not exactly a secret any more." The two of them looked confused, so I admitted, "I took Ivan out to show her off." They both spent the next couple moments obviously trying not to facepalm, so I said, "for what it's worth? Not only is he low key in love with her, I think, he's also not an idiot. If we tell him 'back the fuck off or the Black Dragon will intervene', his people at least will back the fuck off. The ones listening to him, at any rate."

The Marshall pondered that for a second, then asked, "what if key figures in the local government ask for asylum?"

I nodded. "Disarmed. One chaperone of their choosing, just so people can't try to say we've 'kidnapped' or 'replaced' them. Other than that, no unsupervised communication outside the ship." When they both looked a little confused by that, I explained. "If they've lost control, they're just more refugees, but maybe with the Skills and connections to help fix shit after the revolution blows over. If they're still in control, I don't want them using our ships as mobile safe staging grounds or command bunkers."

The Marshall nodded grimly, then smiled. "I hope you know I'm gonna rub Leonard's nose in you thinking two steps ahead and around corners like this when I talk to him next."

I smiled at him. "Thanks, Sir."

"You know I work for you, don't you?"

I shrugged. "You taught me everything I know."

"Hardly."

I snorted. "Yeah, but I'll back that up if Lenny asks me, so long as you keep calling me Diaz and I get to keep calling you 'Sir'."

That got a laugh out of him. "So. Be ready to fight if we need to, take in refugees if things turn south, important persons are to be handled as refugees. Anything else?"

"Anything you think I need to make the call on here and now, Marshall?"

"What do we do if some group attacks the Questing Tentacle?"

I nodded. "Put them down as cleanly as you can, then rendezvous with the Black Dragon."

"And if they attack the Black Dragon?"

"At that point everyone involved will be at least a mile out to sea, probably three or more."

He waited, then asked, "and that means?"

"You can stop worrying about 'cleanly'."

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