A Marketfather’s interdiction due to unfair or unstable conditions can shut a market down, although this is rare. The Brownfriars’ reputation for honesty and accountability is unmatched, thanks to the complicated tenants of their order. They live lives of modest moderation, despite their temple’s great wealth.
Their motive is not profit, as the Woolbrothers seek, or propitious gain, like the Ifnites, but the pure glory of trade, itself. They frequently invest the proceeds from their many enterprises into unusual ventures, some of which do not seem to make sense to locals ignorant of larger trade affairs. They run a series of orphanages and cripple-houses for their membership that are well-regarded. And they regularly preach, during their blessing of the markets before opening, to teach the marketgoers the fundamentals of sacred commerce.
Though the Brownfriars have strict rules against getting involved in politics, they have been known to make loans to some enterprising nobles who favor the temple and support its aims. They’ve also taken exception to nobles who try to bully them, with disastrous consequences.
The Brownfriars have been known to employ religious agents who visit markets in disguise to evaluate their fairness and root out corruption. While they are restricted by the Laws of Huin from getting involved in the grain trade, and the laws of Orvatas from interfering with wool, they frequently trade in other commodities and even rare merchandise. Their lay-brotherhood is a semi-secret society popular with merchants – the Wilderlands League had several prominent adherents – and the Brownfriars are frequently receive substantial support from the larger trade guilds, particularly in Merwyn.
They had sent one lone monk from Vorone last spring, just before I arrived myself, to survey the nascent market and evaluate it, before giving it his tentative blessing and departing. But a much larger and more robust inspection was due on Luin’s Day, one of the busiest market days of the year.
Having a bunch of wild-looking, smelly, drunken hermits preaching in the market would not look well to the highly-regulated Brownfriars. Especially if there had been merchant complaints. It could be enough to deny the sacred seal of Kaupa, which could be bad for trade. I said as much to the hermits. They didn’t take it well.
“Those who mistake the allure of civilization for the call of the divine seek emptiness, though they cultivate all the riches of the world,” the least-bathed monk insisted. “Gold and silver are chains that bind us to the hollow promise of civilization!”
“I don’t have chains of gold or silver, I have chains of iron,” I countered, harshly. “Do not tempt me to employ them more than I already have, brothers. The other clergy have validated their existence by the social good they do for my realm. What is your order doing to make Vanador better?” I challenged.
They didn’t have much answer for that, beyond the passion of their preaching and the beauty of their poetry. I let them stumble through a few half-hearted explanations before I cut them off.
“I am not impressed, brothers. But I am patient. This is what I intend to do: no more than two of your order may come to the market on market day. You will preach from the designated portion of the market, with the other clergy. Your preaching is to be no louder than the market crier. Your monks must be sober. And if there is any disruption of commerce or complaints, you will be banned for the next two market days . . . after which a single monk may preach.”
This made all their faces pale. Market day preaching was where most of the Cornivil Hermits made their alms for the week. Without them, they’d starve . . . or be forced to live off the sacred bounty of nature once again.
“In addition,” I continued, “I want to fund a convocation. There’s a small grove of hemlocks two miles north of town, out beyond the Tera Alon quarter, that you can use. I’ll give you each twenty ounces of silver to supply an . . . extended religious discussion about your order’s future.
“Let me be clear: I don’t expect to see any of you again in the market until after the Luin’s Day festival. The silver should offset the alms you will lose, if not be substantially greater. And I want you to figure out, during this convocation, just where in Vanador’s society the Hermits of Cornivil will fit, to the benefit of the town. That means establishing a real order and structure, a hierarchy, a means of initiation and expulsion, a body of ecclesiastic law, a liturgy, and a method of accountability.
“But most importantly, I want your order to have useful purpose or I won’t have it in the Magelaw. If you can manage that, I might be persuaded to donate funds and land to sustain that worthy purpose. But this . . . harassment of my people will stop. Now. Or you will all be expelled from Vanador or worse.”
The three monks left to spread the message to their fellows, and I spent the rest of the day discussing my options with Lawbrother Bryte, who had returned from an extended period of solitary mediation on my behalf. Luin’s Day was going to be important for him, too. Not only did he not want a disruption from the hermits, he was enthusiastic about drawing up the edict that would limit their appearance in the marketplace.
Brother Bryte took to his job as my chancellor with the fervor and passion usually associated with more expressive and enthusiastic religious orders. The Luinites did not, as a rule, preach; they lectured on the law.
But after the spring equinox I’d given Bryte a secret, sacred commission: to develop a basic code of law for the entire Magelaw, one that involved and incorporated the rights and protections of the magi. I’d instructed him to build upon the existing laws, but refine and augment it to institutionalize my profession – my class, now. For there were enough magi, High Magi, and magelords wandering around Vanador to make us a small but significant portion of the population.
I commissioned Bryte to compose laws that took that into account in a way that Narasi Common Law had not. If he had questions about how to do that, there were plenty of wizards around to give their opinions.
Once again, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I half-expected him to resurrect the body of laws the Magocracy used for more than three hundred years and call it a day. After all, they’d managed the needs of magi as a ruling class successfully; indeed, many of our professional quirks and customs evolved from those laws.
But Bryte was given little restriction on his researches, and recognized an opportunity when he saw it. Few lawbrothers actually get the opportunity to draft an entire legal framework. He was not the kind of man to merely go through the motions.
For six months, in addition to his other duties Brother Bryte had buried himself into research and made notes while he spoke with my colleagues and observed how society with a lot of wizards involved actually worked. He quietly interviewed all sorts of folk while he worked, not merely magi but artisans, the Kasari, the freedmen peasants, the Wilderfolk, even the Malkas Alon. A great deal of his stipend went to paying the barmen who kept his cups full while he worked.
I nearly forgot the monk’s work while I contended with getting the Magelaw defensible. In fact, just as the harvest began, I realized that I hadn’t seen the scrawny priest around in weeks, and made some inquiries.
It turned out he had retired to a camp in the country, alone, to compose his final draft. I figured he’d just gone off on a binge, and didn’t think much about it – there just weren’t many court cases, either criminal or civil, to warrant more than a simple magistrate in Vanador, right now, and Lawfather Amberose was more than capable of dealing with those.
Brother Bryte returned to Vanador just before the harvest, as the news of the likely attack in the autumn had quietly broken on the town. He waited patiently for me to dispense with all of my military discussions, the Tera Alon and my wrangling with hermits before he insisted on a meeting.
“I’ve got it, Minalan!” he said, triumphantly, as he waved a large roll of parchment over his head that night. “Six months’ worth of work, but it’s all here! I’ve done it!”
“Done what?” I asked, confused.
“I’ve concocted a bo
dy of law for this crazy place,” he said, nearly bursting with enthusiasm. “All of it! The magi, aristocracy, merchants, the peasantry, the artisans, the clergy – I’ve got all of their roles laid out: rights, civil and military responsibilities, taxation, land rights, property rights, all of it! I’ve got civil procedure, criminal procedure – adversarial, not inquisitorial, by Luin’s staff! – urban law, rural law, torts, inheritance . . . I think this may be the most profound overhaul of administrative law alone since the Conquest,” he reflected, stopping himself mid-rant, before he continued.
“Minalan, this is not just the code, but penalties and institutional structures that will improve everything from market fees to tolls. It’s also bloody elegant, is what it is,” he declared, nearly in a daze. “I don’t put much store in the metaphysical, as you know, Minalan, but I would swear an oath that the Lawgiver’s hand was guiding mine, when I wrote some of this,” he assured me, sincerely enough to convince the skeptical.
It had been a long day filled with stinking hermits. The last thing I wanted was a legal lecture. But part of hiring good people is indulging them when they come to you all excited.
“Give me the high points,” I suggested, mildly . . . and we were off.
The monk spoke non-stop for more than two hours. I’m told that the Temple of Luin teaches their lexits special breathing exercises to be able to continue speaking as rapidly and clearly as possible, I had no doubt that Bryte had been a champion.
In minutes my head was spinning with complex explanations of civil duty, sovereign authority, executive responsibility, and the essential importance of accountability in the establishment of judicial trust. I had only a vague idea of what most of the technical language meant, but Bryte was more than willing to explain the concepts in simple layman’s terms.
“The primary issue is the role of the magi in civil society,” he summed up. “The Magocracy treated magi as aristocracy from the start, with their body of law, granting prerogatives and rights based on an accident of birth, alone, without even the institutional recognition.
“That’s an unbalanced approach to governance. In my system, the recognition of rajira entitles a man to some basic protections and responsibilities, but does not automatically entitle him to the aristocracy. Nor can a man’s rajira be summarily stripped from him, as the Magocracy once did,” he reminded me. “Only after judicial review and then further arcane review. No more summary erasures.”
Those had been dark days in the Late Magocracy, on the eve of the Conquest, I recalled. The decadent Imperial power structure wanted to not only dominate the civil life of the Empire, they wanted to conserve their own prerogatives by eliminating potential competition. For the last few decades of the Magocracy the Imperial Inquisitors roamed the cities and countrysides of Vore and Merwyn in search of emerging Talent . . . not to train, but to quietly intervene.
Plenty of promising wizards of the wrong class, house, or political opinion woke up with their rajira burned from their brains, if they were lucky enough to wake up at all. All by secret Imperial edict and enforced by the Dabersi Guards.
Brother Bryte’s approach was a little saner. All of the magically Talented were deemed special subjects under the law. They had certain rights, were subject to special protections, but in return they owed certain obligations to the state. Bryte established a special magistrate who would hear cases involving arcane matters, with the inclusion of two uninterested magi lay jurors for technical help; but that wasn’t to enforce privilege as much as it was to ensure that the plaintiffs or defendants could not use magical means to subvert justice.
Beyond that, the magi were neither exempt from taxation nor were they subject to additional taxation, save for the posted fees with the Spellwarden of a district – and those only for wizards who intended upon charging a fee for their service. Any arcanely-specific legal issues not covered under the law were to be addressed and rectified by a council of three wizards, three clergy, three non-magical noblemen, and three commoners.
Laws regarding enchanters and their wares were largely derived from the applicable laws regulating normal artisans. Special magical services, from court-employed truthtellers to basic spellmongering to simple rural dowsers were covered by the same essential body of law, and were made exceptions only where apparent. Magelord law largely followed that of the existing aristocracy, with the differences elaborated upon in clever and ingenious ways.
But the magi had special responsibilities to the state as a result. Just about any magi, regardless of age or class, could be marshaled to service by the count in time of war, for up to ninety days a year. Vanador’s perpetual state of war required that, he explained, sadly.
As impressive as his plans for wizards were, it was Bryte’s approach to the other legal matters was even more so. First among them was his most radical departure from feudal norms.
“There will be no bondsmen in the Magelaw,” he informed me.
“What?” I asked, confused and intrigued. “None?”
“All subjects of the Count of Magelaw are free men,” he insisted. “Even apprentices under contract. And any who live here a year without violating the law are considered free subjects of the Magelaw. I took your ruling on the Gilmoran villeins as valid precedent, and then codified it into written law.”
“That’s going to make an awful lot of people south of here uncomfortable,” I said, mildly.
“If they take issue with it, they can ride north with their swords, and take your seat from you,” he declared, combatively. “You, not they, were vested by Duke Anguin with the ultimate authority and sovereignty over the security of your realm. You need to exercise that decisively at the outset, and this is both the moral and practical way to do that,” he explained reasonably.
“If we give any bondsman his freedom after a year, hundreds will try sneaking into the Magelaw!” I pointed out.
“And we need thousands,” Brother Bryte reminded me. “Any man who can survive out in that wilderness for a year deserves his freedom, Minalan. And we need any man who does so to be recognized for that feat . . . and then subject him to taxes and conscription, accordingly.”
His next proposal was even more audacious, though less likely to cause a ruckus with my southern counterparts. He wanted to recognize the Alon as subjects to the County.
That went beyond novel and into the scandalous. For centuries, the few encounters between our species and the various species of Alon had been problematic, but largely the province of politics. Apart from a few episodes like me hiring Guri and his crew, or the Riverlords taking on Tal Alon as villeins, our peoples rarely mixed at a level where law would apply.
Yet in Vanador, Bryte lectured, there was a sizable population of Alon who now lived directly under mine and Pentandra’s dominion. Mostly Malkas Alon, since Rumel’s folk had immigrated in such numbers, but also the Dradrien and now the Tera Alon who had begun settling the city’s northeastern quarter. He’d designed laws to cover them, as well.
Under Brother Bryte’s proposed laws, the resident non-humans were to be considered free subjects, entitled to the same rights and subjected to the same duties and penalties as humans. There would be no restriction on them sitting in our councils, our juries and standing in court due to their species.
That said, Bryte also codified protected zones of habitation wherein the Alon ruled themselves according to their own laws and customs, when they did not conflict with the Magelaw. There was also an entire section he’d penned that detailed how those relations would be conducted.
It was an elegant system; one he had put tremendous effort into. But it had some serious political ramifications, if I enacted it, and I had to be wary of those.
“Oh, I understand your concerns,” the thin monk assured me, as he helped himself to his third glass of wine. “I anticipated every one of them. This is just my proposed framework,” he said, tapping the thick sheaf of parchment. “I’m confident that I constructed an elegant and effective system of
law that balances the rights of the individual versus the security and prosperity of the state . . . but go ahead and start mucking it up now,” he encouraged.
“Brother Bryte, I’m not trying to dismiss the great work you have accomplished—”
“Nor do I accuse you of that, Sire,” he assured me, suddenly realizing how his words must have sounded. “I was genuine in my direction,” he explained. “Legal theory is a world of eternal ideals and abstract ideas, responsibilities and agreements, penalties and incentives. Justice is blind, thankfully, to the real world in which we must practice our imperfect art. No body of law,” he instructed me, “is pure. Even Luin’s most sacred laws are augmented by mountains of parchment of commentary, precedent, exceptions, and other legal debris. I fully expected you to make changes . . . actually, I’d be shocked if you didn’t,” he chuckled.
“It’s just a lot to contemplate, on such short acquaintance,” I admitted. “I’d like some more time to read through it . . . maybe offer some commentary myself.”
“It’s your county,” he shrugged. “You asked me to put together the best laws I could. This is what I came up with. With these laws in place, you put Vanador and the Magelaw centuries ahead of the rest of the duchies, in terms of judicial reform. These laws ensure our markets are fair, that our policies encourage the prosperity and health of the people, that the security and protection of the state is institutionalized, and that the judiciary remains an impartial arbiter in cases of conflict. With proper implementation, it should take years before the system is hopelessly corrupted.”
“You think that’s inevitable?” I asked, surprised.
“As the setting of the sun,” he agreed, sagely. “The brightest legal ideal brings order out of chaos at its inception, but is stained beyond repair the moment they touch the grim reality of life. Corruption of the system is as inevitable as death. The best we can hope for is to keep it alive through dedication and studious application of accountability. But that’s not a bad thing,” he added, quickly. “Don’t mistake my perspective for cynicism.”
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