Tess,

  It hasn’t been a good day. Sorry to start off that way.

  The Talavar stopped at Haven yesterday for the first time since I arrived. We were running pretty low on produce, and no one seemed certain when we’d see it again, so I was actually relieved, fool that I am, to hear the whistle.

  We didn’t get much in the way of produce, though. “Slow harvest,” the Conductor said, and then ignored the rest of my questions. I found him to be a very unpleasant man. He oversaw the blood collection while his people unloaded supplies (a damned measly number of them in my opinion) and then stepped back onto the train without a word.

  It surprised me—I was expecting him to have news or some sort of tidings from the Citadel. It turned out he did, he was just too lofty to deliver it and left that task to his lieutenant, or assistant, or whatever they call the person on the train who does things the conductor is too important to do. Not that she had much more to say than he did. She connected to the local network just long enough to send a data packet to the governor’s slate, which she said was “a new directive,” and then she was gone too.

  I admit I was curious about the content of that data packet. When I left the Citadel I thought I would never want to hear its name again but the isolation of this place has made me hungry for anything that comes from outside the station, if only to reassure me that other places still exist. I never thought about what it would be like to be so entirely cut off from the world as the people in these smaller outposts are.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Anyway, my curiosity was soon satisfied, and I am a poorer man for it. The governor (His name is Reuben. I’ll tell you about him later, he’s not a bad sort), came to see me this morning to discuss the Citadel’s new directive. He hasn’t told anyone else about it yet, but wanted to talk it through with me. Maybe he imagines I have some pull with the Citadel, having been so recently a resident there (I haven’t told him I was essentially banished), or maybe it was only that it pertains to my work.

  Anyway, the “new directive” was pages and pages of price sheets. The cost of nearly all goods and all medical care is to increase by nearly 50%. Reuben tried to hide how shaken he was, but he failed, and I didn’t help much.

  People are going to panic when they find out. Hell, I’m panicking. They can barely afford to live as it is. And I’ll tell you what hasn’t gone up… the blood stipend, that’s what! Not by a single credit. By the time we see the train again, everyone in town will be so far in debt they’ll have to be bled dry.

  What am I going to do? I can’t even communicate with the Citadel without sending a courier and that could take weeks or months. Even then there’s little chance they’d relent. Damn them for waiting to drop that grenade until the train was practically out of sight.

  I could use your brilliant mind here with me right now, so if you could take a short break from being dead I would really appreciate it. Otherwise I’ve got to go deal with this on my own.

  Always yours (and cog off for staying dead),

  Samar