thoughts from the subarctic

Prince Zaetori was Princess Tsetheroxa’s father. He died trying to fight a polar bear. It was a very Erethani way to go, I’ll give him that.

Is this about Prince Zaetori?

They’re all right.

This is the sort of idea that only a foreigner would come up with.

There is not a lot of local production of hair dye in Ereith, and the majority of foreign dyes look weird to us because our hair colours occupy a different range of saturations from most people’s.

I think Erethani ex-reds might be somewhat likelier to be open about it than foreign ones, but although I don’t know for sure either way, I suspect that someone somewhere has found some dye that does the job.

Xenophobic translators do the work more grudgingly and accordingly aren’t as good at it as I am.

I’m the least xenophobic translator in Ereith. I ended up in charge of all the translation-related parts of the process - getting our immigration website available in foreign languages and so on.

Why would I know this?

Most reasonable people understand that if someone’s an ex-red they’re going to be at an unfair disadvantage and you shouldn’t duel them any more than you should duel a lateborn four-year-old two months into spring. And luckily most people who are unreasonable about ex-reds are unreasonable in the way that means they’d find dueling one to be beneath them.

Reds weren’t allowed to own weapons. Part of the integration project is teaching them all to fight.