by Patty Jansen
She sat down in the chair by the hearth and grabbed the fire poker. Stabbing the firebricks until they fell into a hundred-odd little flaming pieces always made her feel good. The fire rose to a roaring inferno when she did this, and the heat warmed her through.
So, Enzo had trouble naming a thing she wanted that could be bought with money.
She wanted the house in her name, so she could continue to care for Father. No money involved there, because the house already belonged to the family.
She wanted Jintho’s shop to succeed, crazy as the idea seemed to her. Jintho badly needed something to go right for him. No money involved there, either.
Thinking about shops, she wanted the shelves of all the shops in Miran to once again be full of interesting things. Fruit from Barresh, clothing from Asto, other items, big and small, from all over the place. She wanted people to be able to buy technology that the council always said Miran would develop, but which hadn’t happened for the past twenty years.
Why did no one accept that Miran was a traditional, agricultural nation, which did not have enough people to develop technology that wasn’t years behind what everyone else in gamra was doing? At least not without help from people from outside Miran, and probably not even then.
That was it: she wanted no money or material things or anything for herself. She wanted the boycotts lifted.
That required the council to vote in favour of dropping restrictions on foreign visits and foreign settlement and investment, and opening their records to gamra inspectors. It also required allowing some gamra investigations regarding things that had happened in the past, most notably a group of foreign people that had occupied a disused wing of the council buildings. Had they been prisoners? Had they lived there by their own will? This needed to be answered.
Like any of those things were going to happen.
She picked up the law book that still lay on the table from last night. Somewhere in there were rules or safeguards against a minority of families gaining too much power. Somewhere, there were rules about things Foundation families could do that seemed archaic, but had gotten Father so wound up that he’d risen from his wheelchair and walked down the stairs.
She leafed through the pages. There were three extremely thick books with tiny print on the thinnest paper she had ever seen. What were her chances of finding these things before the voting happened?
Father would know, if he had a clear episode, but he’d just had one, and they were usually days apart.
She skimmed past pages to do with criminal behaviour, reading snatches of text.
Once the verdict has been reached, the judge shall have the final word in the punishment. The judge can only be contradicted in cases of capital punishment by the heir of a Foundation family as evidenced by the Foundation token.
That was interesting, but Miran had done away with capital punishment many years ago. Not to say that no prisoners died in jail, but that was supposed to be accidental.
And what was this Foundation token? It wasn’t the first time she’d come across the term.
Hang on. She remembered a trip to the library with school when she was little. She’d been an idiot during that trip, by the way, boasting that her father worked in the tower and that she’d already been to the library so very many times—what a cringe-worthy big-mouth moment that had been.
During that excursion, the teacher and a guide had taken the class into some rooms where she had never been before—which a boy named Hiran really liked rubbing in. Seriously, why did she have to think of this now? This was so terribly embarrassing. She had been such a precocious piece of shit as little girl.
It was kind of dark in that room, with a small pool of light in the middle, where there was a glass cabinet. Inside, on a bed of red fabric, lay four silver chains with on them, near-identical pendants made from a simple river stone encircled by a silver band with tiny characters engraved.
The Foundation stones. Each used to belong to a Foundation family, but they had all been handed back after some scandalous event—which she couldn’t remember. There were, of course, five families. She was sure there had been four stones, or maybe there were five? Had the teacher said anything about it?
Damn her stupid memory. She’d been much more preoccupied with the embarrassment inflicted by a classmate.
Someone knocked on the door.
Ellisandra snapped the book shut. “Yes?”
“Elli?” That was Jintho’s voice.
Ellisandra sighed, put the book on the table, rose and went to open the door.
Jintho stood in the corridor holding a tray with a plate that held a couple of bean patties and oven-roast bread dripping with fragrant herb oil, her favourite.
She stepped aside to let him in. The wonderful smell of food followed in his wake.
“You’re hungry, sis?”
“How did you guess?”
“You are really very bad at tantrums. You should look at Enzo more closely. Maybe he can give you lessons.” He carried the tray into the room and put it on the table.
Ellisandra snorted and took a big bite from the bread.
Jintho poured two cups of tea, put one on the table near her and took the other one while sitting down in her visitor’s chair. “I’m sorry, by the way. I didn’t mean to upset you, you know that. You’re my favourite sister.”
“Not to mention your only one.”
He managed to look put out, and then grinned. “Come on, Elli, you can’t stay angry if you tried.”
“Not at you, I can’t, but . . .” She sighed. “Do you have any idea what part of Foundation Law the council wants to change?”
He looked taken aback. “But you wouldn’t . . .”
“Be interested in politics? No, I’m not, but something is going on and the only thing I’m asking is for someone to explain what it’s about. I’m not dumb and I hate it when everyone treats me like I am.”
He let a short silence lapse. “No, I never said you were dumb. I’m sorry, Elli, if I’ve given you that impression. It’s just that—”
“Women are not supposed to ask about politics.”
His cheeks went red. “Um. Yeah. That’s pretty much it.” He looked at his hands. “Pretty stupid, really. Amandra Bisumar was one of the best High Councillors Miran has ever had. Chased out because she had a Coldi lover.”
Ellisandra nodded. She knew the story.
“Anyway, if you want to know about Foundation Law, you’d have to ask Enzo—”
“Who won’t tell me, because I’m a woman, remember?”
“True. I don’t have a clue, to be honest. I don’t much care about politics.”
And that, precisely, seemed to be the problem. No one cared. “Maybe we should start caring. I gathered from Father that it’s something to do with safeguards, and responsibilities of Foundation families. My best guess is they’re going to dismantle some safeguards that give Foundation families power over the council. They’re going to compensate those families by allowing them to sell their houses or land, or to compensate them for not having been able to sell their property up until now. It’s going to cost a lot of money, but they’re hoping that they will be free of constraints placed on the council by these laws, which I understand are ancient and have been mostly forgotten.”
Jintho stared at her. “And you ask me what was going on? You know twice as much as I do.”
“I’m only guessing. You know what I think, Jintho? I think we should try to find out what this is about.”
“You should go on the council.”
It was the second time today that someone had suggested the same thing. “Why does everyone keep saying that? Enzo already has our seat. I very much doubt he’d give it up for me.” In fact, the world would end before that happened.
“No, but there is the public section.”
“You mean . . .”
“I mean the way Nemedor Satarin entered the council. Being voted into a seat.”
“Stop dreaming, br
other. All the people in there are Nikala merchants. Why would anyone vote for me? They’d just say that I’m already represented by my family.”
“Why would they vote for you? The same reason you want to get in. Because you’re a woman and half the Mirani population are also women?”
For a moment, she could see herself standing triumphant in the council assembly hall while people cheered. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know how you do this, Jintho.”
“Do what?”
“Not only do you get all enthusiastic about your own outrageous schemes, you manage to think up schemes for other people and get them all enthusiastic about it.”
“Schemes?”
There was so much pain in his voice that she already regretted having used that word. “You know, about opening a shop. Or, for that matter, importing sweets from the coast, or wanting to buy up farms for investment . . .” She counted off on her fingers. She had meant it as a joke, but the pained expression didn’t disappear from his face.
“Elli, I’m serious about the shop. I’m going to have to do something to make an income. I can’t keep living here anymore.” That desperate tone, she knew, too. He’d go into one of these moods on a regular basis.
“Just keep living here while you’re looking, all right?” That’s what she always said.
“This isn’t like any of the other times.” He shook his head, his expression distant. Ellisandra wondered if she should ask what was the matter, but whenever she had done this before, he’d always come up with a long story about some trivial concern. Jintho was full of self-doubt. One time a merchant had told him that he disliked the artwork in the bathhouse and he’d spent days moping over that. He had already put on his moping face.
She wasn’t in the mood for moping. “By the way, do you know anything about Enzo getting married?”
He gave her a sharp look. “No. It’s the first time I’ve heard. Is he?”
“He says so.”
“But what he says and what he ends up doing aren’t often the same thing.”
“That’s true, but I can’t see a reason for him to lie.”
“I don’t know, Elli. Enzo speaks to me as little as he speaks to you. He sure would have mentioned a wedding to Father—”
“Father would have told me.”
“Really? I think he’s getting worse all the time. There are hardly any moments where he thinks clearly anymore. All he can remember is his bitterness towards Enzo, because he doesn’t agree with Enzo’s political direction, but often he can’t even remember what that direction was supposed to be.”
Painful as it was, that was true, too. She considered briefly that Enzo’s announcement might have upset Father so much that afternoon, but on other occasions that someone had done something that upset Father, the facts twisted by Father and the stories from other people in the house added up to a complete picture. This was not one of those times.
13
AFTER JINTHO was gone, Ellisandra threw another firebrick on the fire, dragged her chair closer and went back to the book of Foundation Law.
As soon as she opened the pages and the musty smell of the unused book hit her, she felt sleepy. The intense cold of the theatre always made her tired, something she didn’t usually notice until she sat at home by the fire and her cheeks glowed and her hands pricked with sensation coming back into them.
She forced herself to read the first page. The section that detailed ancient Foundation Law wasn’t very big. It was the exceptions and amendments that had been made afterwards that made the law books cumbersome. Sections like the one she’d been reading before Jintho came in. She’d lost where that was, and although the information was interesting, it was not what she needed. Obviously, she wasn’t going to find the section dealing with safeguards by leafing randomly through the pages, so she was going to start right at the beginning.
Across the first page was written in big letters,
Foundation Law
Underneath that, in smaller letters,
To aid and guide the harmonious co-existence of the people of the cave and the people of the mountain.
That’s what they used to call the Endri and Nikala, with the Endri being the cave people. They’d always been known as soft and delicate and unsuited to hard work.
She turned the next page.
Section 1.
It is recognised that the location of the pass and the adjacent valleys, known as Miran, was first settled by the cave people. It is recognised that they built the first dwellings and ploughed the first fields. Therefore, by designation of this law, they own the land and the buildings on it.
It is recognised that the mountain people work on the fields and within the walls of the town, that they deserve compensation for their work. They deserve sustenance, accommodation and care for as long as they remain on this land or in the buildings.
It is recognised that these two halves make Miran. That one is incomplete without the other, and that the other is unsafe, hungry and cold without the one. This is law.
Ellisandra knew those words off by heart. Every Mirani child learned them at school. When she was young, Foundation was the heart of every Mirani organisation and decision. Both peoples had their tasks, and the Endri’s task was to give the workers housing and food and care for their sick and their leisurely well-being. That was where the theatre came in and why so many Endri women worked in the hospitals.
Did children still learn Foundation?
Of course, because the mutual responsibilities rendered the society almost without money, nothing in Miran was worth anything except when traded with another Mirani person. The Endri were rich only within Miran, and unless a family sold outside Miran—which a fair few used to do before the boycotts—there would be little wealth and money that could be taken out of the country. That was the main disparity within the Endri class. Some of them could leave because they had real money. Many of them could not. That was what the first conflict in the council, the one that had resulted in the Foundation families being ousted from the High Council, had been about. That was what almost every conflict in Miran was about: imports and exports that undermined Miran’s unique economy.
She turned the page and arrived at a description of the composition of the council—then consisting only of Endri. The High Council had originally consisted of a representative of each of the five Foundation families, and each had been given the right to veto decisions made by the council. She could imagine that situation had soon become unworkable.
The Calthunar family was the first to go when their main heir remained childless. According to the stories, he was a strange character who became involved with a young woman who was later murdered. In one of the most public cases in Miran, he had been convicted and sentenced to death. But because a section of the council didn’t believe his guilt, there had been a delay in his sentencing, during which someone had let him escape. Who had done this, and whether the family line was still alive, was one of the great mysteries of Miran.
When he had gone, only four Foundation families remained. For many years, the Andrahar, Ilendar, Velisar and Takumar family representatives had made up the four remaining seats in the High Council. Everyone got on relatively well, the council was mostly in agreement with each other and no one had ever used the right of veto.
However, the distinct power imbalance increasingly caused tension. Andrahar and Ilendar were both Trading families, incredibly wealthy both inside Miran and out. They viewed the Invasion as quaint history, because they had Coldi colleagues, friends and even lovers, and sold handsomely to Asto. They saw no need to keep adhering to the most important Mirani pastime of hating Asto and the Coldi people—not that the Coldi saw Miran as of enough importance to hate them back.
The Velisar and Takumar families had been much more traditional, part of the Mirani barter economy whose wealth only held in Miran and who had no interest in allowing foreign influences and foreign money—which, to be honest, was something people would
have to accept eventually if they wanted a better life.
Ilendar and Andrahar wanted to introduce a proper currency.
Velisar and Takumar argued that a currency would encourage investment from outside Miran and it would breach Foundation Law.
The argument went on for so long that the resulting stalemate had lasted more than a year, during which the council had not been able to make their normal decisions. There was claim after counterclaim from the High Councillors, each of whom demanded that the others left. Eventually a councillor got them all to do something illegal based on a technicality and managed to dismiss the High Council. The Foundation family heirs couldn’t work together anymore. The High Council broke up and became a body elected by the people out of a list of candidates put forward by the existing council. It was not much later that the Nikala were allowed to stand for election because it became clear that the Endri population was in decline through infertility in many of the women. And about thirty years ago, the public section had been instated, thirty seats that were open to anyone, Endri or Nikala, and decided by general election. Most of those seats were held by Nikala, because Endri were represented by their family heir.
But what about the old laws?
Did anyone still have the right to veto? Did Father still have it, or Enzo?
What were the rules surrounding it?
She flicked to the later pages of the book, but there was so much small text on those pages and the language was all so dry that she stared at it without reading anything. She was too tired for this. There was too much to absorb in these books for her to do it within just a few days.
Maybe she should ask Father about the veto right. He enjoyed being asked questions. Whether his answers were correct was another matter.
But when she lay in bed, she couldn’t get to sleep. Thoughts churned inside her head.
Enzo’s comments on what she wanted, and his and Jintho’s suggestion that she might want to stand for the council really got her thinking. It was all very well to keep saying that she wasn’t interested in politics, because that was what the men wanted her to say. But the council was where the decisions were made, and if she was interested in those decisions, then she supposed she was interested in politics.