The next morning was the Council Meeting.
The Council’s main chamber was a large, circular hall built of stone and dark wood. In its center was an open floor for debate and addressing the gathered burghers. Ringing the debate floor were sets of tiered seats like those of an amphitheater. Each of these had a price - to be paid each year if a burgher wanted to keep it.
I looked to the upper, outermost ring, five rows up. There were shopkeepers and some fishermen there, humbly dressed men and women yet wearing the best clothes they owned. They smiled and chatted, each setting the other at ease the way the people who don’t fit in at a party do when they discover each other. These were the ‘First Circle:’ theirs were the cheapest seats to buy and got them a single vote.
Going down the tiers, the garments become more opulent. Gold flashed from brooches and ringed, fat fingers in the Second Circle. In Third, people’s voices grew from polite to rude. A man from Fourth with his hair in oiled ringlets stood blocking an aisle, the clueless unawareness of the thoroughly arrogant. An older woman wearing a headdress of silver wire and black jewels, her face powdered white to hide smallpox scars, knocked over a man’s ledger and sent its loose parchments flying. She ignored his angry remarks as she stalked to the front, a fur train dragging behind her. Those in the Third and Fourth rows fawned at her, she smiled at them with the practiced fakeness of a star at a convention, and took her seat in front row of the Fifth Circle.
“Gerard,” she smiled and nodded. “Today is quite the day for you.”
“Iskelda,” I replied and sat down beside her. “It is! Nice to see a friendly face in the Fifth, today of all days.”
“We’re not friends, my child.”
“Aren’t we?”
“If I was twenty years younger, perhaps.”
“I doubt friendship is what you’d have in mind.”
“Let us settle for ‘allies’ then, shall we? Do you have the votes?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Of course I do.”
“When did you canvas the burghers, last?” she leaned forward and whispered under the din.
“About two weeks ago. It’s not a hot bill, Iskelda.”
She shook her head and gave me the side eye.
“What?”
She waved away my question. At one end of the debate floor was a stone table with three seats. Three old men had taken their places there. They wore purple robes and gold, false beards strapped to their chins like Egyptian pharaohs.
A guard blew a conch shell horn, its sound almost ear-splitting, and people became quiet.
“The Council is convened,” said the old man in the center.
Dura’s Burgher Council was a plutocracy. It sold the cheaper seats to buy stability; for every person in Fifth, there were twenty more who’d never sit there but thought that one day they would. The gold for the seats paid for the running of the town. It was enough, except for extraordinary measures. Like building sewers.
“The Table will allow for new business. Is there new business?” asked one of the three seniors at the table, at last.
I raised my hand, but was not picked.
“The Table recognizes Andam the Goldsmith,” said the center-seated senior.
An old, hunched man in First, with the angriest eyebrows I’d ever seen, got to his feet. “My brother,” he began in a frail voice, “arrived this very morning with news from Starka.” There were hisses from the gathering. “They have begun construction of new serpent gardens, for Set.”
Some among the circles cheered. Most did not.
Starka rivaled Dura like Carthage rivaled Rome. Before the Event, it had been just another trading settlement halfway across the Black. As we were physically closer to Darfur and thereby its culture, they were to Shem. Before the Event, only the unluckiest captains would stop at Starka for repairs. There was nothing of note there but inbred generations of Shemite farmer colonists and the giant, man-eating, Titanoboa water snakes they worshiped.
After the Event however, those yokel farmers became rich as lords. Starka had even more rice than Dura did, and it drew twice as many refugees. Starka treated them (even) worse; their elites would rampage through the camps for fun, slaughtering. Cannibalism in the camps - for food, not prayer as at Dura - was widespread. Settite gangs would force Armaneans to convert from the worship of Azathoth, en masse.
None of this mattered a damn to my fellow burghers. What bothered them was that Starka encouraged pirates against us and was moving towards an alliance with a warlike Shemite city-state, named Marna. Dura had six war galleys - two of which were in repair. Starka had three - but had recently purchased four more. An alliance with Marna would give them another ten. Starka would dominate the Black - and demand tribute from us. By founding new serpent gardens, Starka was virtue signaling to Marna’s theocratic, Set-worshiping rulers. It was another step closer to alliance.
The chamber discussed this but to no real end. There was much in the vein of ‘something should be done,’ followed by ‘well, why haven’t you done it,’ and ‘we will do something about it when you back us over those men sitting there.’
I kept well out of it.
“Is there other new business?” said the senior again, at last.
Again I was passed up; Iskelda instead was heard on the matter of the collapsing price of Tin. The third time however, I was recognized.
“There is an objection!” I heard from somewhere in the Third. People turned and looked; myself one of them. A thin, weedy man with gaunt cheeks and the sunken eyes of a corpse had raised his hand; Sempren I think he was. He owned a leatherworks. “Objection, honored Table!”
“What is the objection?” asked the center-seated senior.
“By the rules of the Council, only two points of new business may be raised by First Circlers in a session. Two have been raised; Gerard of Stone may not enter a third point.”
Muttering broke out. The seniors at the table looked at each other; one seemed to ask a question he wanted no others to hear. The other shrugged and shook his head.
“It is customary for the lower circles to waive this privilege,” said the center-seated senior.
“Regretfully Honored One, I do not waive it. Gerard of Stone has a bill that’s to be voted on shortly. Speaking for the Third-” someone hooted at him, “speaking for the Third, I feel he takes too much of the Council’s time with his business.”
Some people cheered him.
“Very well. The Table does not recognize Gerard of Stone. Is there any other new business?”
“What the hell?” I found I’d said aloud. I looked to Sempren, but the man took pains to avoid my eye.
“And so the great whoremonger and war veteran is silenced,” Iskelda looked amused.
“What the fuck was that about?”
“Sempren’s tongue is worth less than a slave whore’s on culling day. Someone has paid him for his words, no doubt.”
“Why would they want to stop me from sharing my news?”
“Perhaps because they already know it.”
Another forty long minutes passed. Some burghers sneaked out quietly to use the piss pots. Not all came back.
“The Table will hear the final statement and arguments against, in the matter of Burgher Stone’s sewer bill.”
I got up to speak. There was cheering and applause, more than part of me felt comfortable with, but less than the other part wanted. I reiterated my points about the sewers and the problems of disease, ending with my mantra that a well-cared-for Dura meant more prosperity for all. It was a formality; I had the votes, and the funding I’d ask for was less than that needed to build a sea-going warship. I tried to be considerate of people’s time and sat down.
“The Table thanks Gerard of Stone,” said the center senior. “Are there final objections?”
Hands flew up across the chamber.
I stared, jaw slowly dropping, as one person after the other spoke against the bill. Too expensive. But will they really work? Should we not try a small one first? The river does the job fine! We don’t have such things where I come from, and we did just fine!
“Look,” whispered Iskelda, “Look closely.”
“At the knife in my back?”
“At what you don’t see. Or rather, who.”
I looked at all the objectors. Only a few were people I had (thought I had) won over. Most had been ambivalent. Only a few open opponents had spoken, and they mostly just echoed the others or shared gleeful looks. Surprised looks.
If they hadn’t organized this rally to flip key voters, who had?
Seated in the First Circle across the debate floor from me was a round-faced, bald man in a formless robe. His face had a heavy, almost pouting look to it - more like a fish’s. His eyes were bulbous and seemed unfocused at moments as if staring at something beyond the chamber.
This was Caral, the fish merchant. He owned eight large fishing boats that brought Dura’s biggest catches, without fail. One wonders how even a fleet of fishing boats can get a man to the First Circle though, but six months ago Caral had arrived and Dura, and a month later he bought his seat.
Almost all those arguing against my bill had some part in the fishing trade.
“The Table wonders where these arguments were, before,” said the center senior. He looked thoroughly unimpressed. “That’s enough of our time. We move this to a vote.”
A narrow win became a narrow loss. The other side cheered and clapped each other on the back. Some tried to go to Caral - he rose quickly and left, some other burghers followed him- his own little bloc. They had all voted against me - except Caral. He had abstained.
“Well, that was a waste of time and money. Try to help people, and look what happens.”
“That was only your first mistake, Gerard,” Iskelda stood. “You think like a rabble-rouser, but if you want power in this room, use gold, not words.”
“I don’t have to use gold with you.”
She looked down her nose at me. “You could never afford it.”
I watched the richest and slickest operator in the town leave me to my defeat.
What had gone wrong? Had Caral indeed killed my bill - if so, whatever for?
Outside, a crowd began cheering. I got up and went to look from an open window.
Right outside the council building, Caral, standing on a crate, was addressing a large and growing group of people.
“The Council has voted against building sewers for Dura, but I cannot accept this. People of Dura, with you as my witness this day, I swear to Father Dagon that you will have these sewers. A well-cared-for Dura means prosperity for all. I will pay for the sewers from my own coffers!”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Drumbeats and flutes began, and some began dancing in the street.
“Son of a bitch!” I turned and ran from the chamber, my hand reaching for the sword I’d left behind that morning. What would a sword have done? Damned foolishness. I had already been defeated most soundly.
I exited the building. People packed the street; peddlers were giving away free food and wine for some reason -- had Caral even orchestrated that? I began shoving through the crowd heading straight for the man.
He turned, eyes widening as he saw me coming. He then turned and stepped off the crate, his men closing around him as he rushed off.
“Hey! Hey! Caral, wait!”
People in the crowd began screaming and diving for the ground. I saw the flash of gold coins flying through the air; even as they landed, people pounced for them. I was shoved aside by the mob, almost getting knocked over. I shoved a large, sweaty man off me - he crashed into a child. She started wailing. Those around gave me hard looks.
Caral was gone.
“Move,” I said to the sweaty man.
As he scrambled away, I saw pressed beneath him had been one of the gold coins Caral’s people had thrown. I bent and picked it up, holding it up to the mid-morning gloom. Stamped in the soft metal on one side was the design of a girl affixed to an offering cross. One the other was the symbol of Father Dagon.