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To His Majesty Random,
King of Amber
The first part of this letter is from a subject to her King; the second from a foster-daughter to the man she loved and trusted like a father.
First, then, my Lord, I formally request you to release me from my oath of allegiance to you.
Recent events have led me to the conclusion that the oath is meaningless - not to me, who would never willingly have broken it, but to you, who took my service and would have thrown away my life so cheaply. Who takes no action when others bend or break their own oaths. I have lost all respect for you and your judgement. I have seen loyalty repaid with contempt, and corruption rewarded. I have seen the lives of those I love put at risk by your weakness.
I cannot serve such a King.
I have no faith anymore in your protection and see that I must take responsibility myself for protecting those I care for. This, and not any other loyalty, must now take first place in my life.
If you feel you cannot grant my request, then - if I may speak the language those more experienced have taught me and you appear to condone - 'go ahead and exile me'.
Either way, please understand that I no longer consider myself bound to obey you, your requests, or your edicts. I do not consider myself Amber's enemy (or indeed, anyone's, if they offer me and mine no harm), but I do consider myself 'apart' from her Royal Family and its supposed rules. To protect my husband and daughter, I will do from now on whatever I must.
And second: I want you to understand how hard it is not to hate you right now.
I loved and trusted you more than anyone in my life except Tamarind. I never doubted that you would always take care of me. I thought I meant something to you. You took me in and raised me and I would have done anything to please you and make you happy. Time was, I would have given anything to be your real daughter. I couldn't have loved you more if I were.
You and Vialle raised me almost like your own child, and I have always been grateful to you. I just never realised how important that almost was. Would you have sacrificed a real daughter as easily as you would me? I cannot believe it.
How could you do that to us? To me? How could you have been prepared to condemn me to further imprisonment, maybe to death, for so little? Twenty Shadows - practically nothing at all! What did any of us do to deserve it? What - except risk our lives in your service? How could you have been so weak, so wrong, so blind, that you almost allowed your brother to trap all of us for his own ends? How could you fail us all so badly? Kings - and fathers - are supposed to be better than that.
And here's the thing, you see - if even you could betray me, who shall I trust? No one. If even your affection for me means nothing, what shall I depend on? Nothing.
You haven't just taken away my love and trust for you - you have taken love and trust from my life, period. You have poisoned everything I believed was true and good and real with doubt. And you have done what my true father never could - you have allowed me to understand how he could have become what he was, and forgive him for it. How a person might go mad when the world stops making sense and the people who are meant to make it right seem weak and worthless, and you feel powerless and unloved.
I could bear hating you. I wish I did. What hurts so much is to feel only sadness and contempt, and to still wish so terribly hard that you had been the person I thought you were.
Beltaine
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