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Region: Kirinna

Kipum from Lower Administrative Overseer Yanka-damkatum to Barankati

Say to Barankati, Lower Administrative Overseer of Vendacama, my brother: Thus say Yanka-damkatum, Lower Administrative Overseer of Isklakata and Kisharratum-maikana-Ketzani, your brother. For you may all go well. For your household, you family, your children, your affairs, your work and your administrative duties, may all go well. For me, all goes well. For my household, my family, my children, my affairs, my work and my administrative duties, all goes well. For your lord, Narna-kishti, mat all go well. For great Kisharratum, all goes well, and our lady of the house is in preparation for the early time of festivals which are approaching.

I write to you, Barankati, my brother, on the behalf of Kisharratum-maikana-Ketzani, and on the behalf of the administrative office of our palace. With the festivals on their way, as you know the division of taxation and their dispersal to major centers in need of their goods has been allocated, and the orders given out. Vendacama was assigned with the task of seeing to it that three-thousand crates of your best corn flour was to be sailed to the city of Karatanu, the abode of our goddess Kushili, so that her people might be fed off of the excess spoils of Vendacama and the farming villages which are under your domain. However, when these crates were open, I am told that they were packed in only measures of two-thirds—thus only two-thousand crates were truly supplied. Additionally, I am told from the overseers of Karatanu that there has been deception in the quality of the flour, and in many cases insects had infested their contents, or the flour had become damp and rotted. Before you may so much as begin to spin your yarns and compose kipum in response, listen well to me: I am lower administrative overseer, and I have reviewed these facts, and my lord has reviewed these facts, and should corrections not be made, Kisharratum shall review these facts. Why do you withhold on your duties? Who has put you up to this? The farming lands all have provided their proper tax save for your own! Just in the way that the farmlands flow their goods and meet the needs of the excessive taxes during these ritual times, so too have the cuttlefishers and fishermen provided you with great stock—with no ill intent. If you do not rectify this issue, your lord and yourself will be brought forward to answer, as well as your own overseer. Remedy this at once! Should you not, I shall send Asharkar to investigate the matter, and they shall recover truths!

When the festival times are over, you, your lord and the lord of Vendacama, Narna-kishti, are summoned to come to the place of her majesty, to the spine. As is the case in all such deceptions to the divine order, and to the flow of state goods, legal procedures must be followed to establish guilt and mete out punishment. Should your person truly be at no fault or of little fault, you should fear not—it is our masters who command us and suffer the brunt as such. However, if your master is not responsible, and you are responsible, then by my advice you must made amends with the gods and seek their favor! Do you take the gods as fools? Or the needs of the great walled cities of Gwananki? For what reason would you or your lord or his lord withhold corn flour from this time of celebration? Furthermore, be it your knowledge or not, Vendacama is the place in which Urde-Saya has chosen to spend the festival. Should your actions inconvenience the hero of Parya, there will be grave consequence! Remedy this situation! Then bring word to your lord and his lord, Narna-kishti, of their summons, after the ritual times. For your sake, I shall give offering to Ketzani, here in her home within the palace, and hope that she has mercy upon you. May your reasoning for deception be in justice, but how one may justify withholding the wealth of one-thousand crates of corn flour, and providing foul corn flour as well, is beyond my mortal understanding. Given the gravity of this issue, I am sending two Asharkar to oversee the situation, and four palace inspectors to ensure the work is being done as needed. Barankati is a land wealthy in corns! Do not withhold your wealth from the tax!

As your greeting gift, I give to you a box of golden ornaments to provide good offering to your patron god. I also give to you a tablet detailing how one may read the Sawari printings with their fingers, and not their eyes. May your gifts be received well, and any who should do harm to them, or hinder them—may harm be done unto them! Do not detain the messenger who sends this message! Receive him with kipum, return him with kipum, and have him restored to the place of Isklakata at once! Send word when you have heard and understood my words, and send word back to me, so it might reach our mistress.

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