by Juliet Kemp
Ilana looked up, their head tilted slightly on one side in curiosity. “Of course.”
“It seems to me,” Marcia said, picking her way carefully through this, “that the Council is… unduly unbalanced. The introduction of the Guilds was intended, as I understand it, to recognise the contribution of the Guilds to Marek. To give you a say, as is appropriate for the close involvement between the Houses and the Guilds.”
“Yes, that is my understanding also,” Ilana said.
It was obvious that they weren’t saying everything they were thinking. Marcia rowed onwards.
“I am concerned that perhaps it might not have been working as intended,” Marcia said. “I am concerned that the Houses might not be paying enough attention to the Guilds.”
Ilana didn’t say anything, but their eyebrows had shot upwards.
“It seems to me,” Marcia said, “that this is not what is best for Marek.”
Ilana’s eyes were intent. “Yes?” they said, carefully.
“You are not being given what you were promised,” Marcia said, discarding all pretence. “It’s not just a question of the uneven vote. The Houses are deliberately excluding you from decisions. I don’t think it’s right, and, to be blunt, I don’t think it’s sustainable. I would rather seek to make changes while everyone is still on good terms. It will take time, of course, significant changes always do, but…”
“You may be too late,” Ilana said, and it was Marcia’s turn to feel her eyebrows rise.
“Too late?”
Ilana pulled a face. “It depends who you ask. Those highest in the Guilds, well, they are still pleased to be included at all. They feel they won a victory, and they do not wish to accept that that victory may have been a hollow one. Those a little younger…” They looked suddenly anxious. “We are speaking between ourselves, yes?”
“Between ourselves,” Marcia agreed. She felt a little pulse of excitement. Was there something here that she could take advantage of?
“Well. Those a little younger would agree with your assessment. I believe they are prepared to wait, a little, until it is possible to make changes. But they are not pleased with the Houses, not at all.”
“But what if we could make changes now?” Marcia asked.
“You believe you can?”
Marcia hesitated. “I want to try.” That was a different thing, and she could see from Ilana’s expression that they knew it.
Ilana shrugged one shoulder. “I do not see the political will for it, myself, not in those who must be won over.”
“What would it take, though?” Marcia asked. “In theory. What is it that your peers wish for?”
“The abolition of the Small Council,” Ilana said. “Or very stringent limits on its use. Guild agreement, for example, as well as House agreement, that a matter is suitable for Small Council.”
Marcia nodded. That was unsurprising.
“And an equal vote. Or more; an extra vote.” Marcia winced internally. That would be rather harder to sell. “Thirteen Guild seats. Fourteen, for preference, but most certainly thirteen.” Ilana met her eyes.
“You think you can do that?”
Marcia badly wanted to say yes, but she didn’t think that lying to Ilana would be good for their fledgling alliance.
“I don’t know,” she said instead. “I have been… asking questions. Making suggestions, you understand?”
“Not yet making waves?” Ilana said, with a slightly wry smile.
Marcia kept her face still. “I don’t think that going in too strongly will help. The Houses can be stubborn, sometimes, and keen on tradition. As I understand it, it was hard enough to get the Guilds in in the first place.”
“Yes,” Ilana said. “That’s my understanding too.”
“Were you involved?” Marcia asked.
Ilana shook their head. “Not directly, no. I was a journeyman, at the time. But it’s discussed, occasionally, the politics of it.” They quirked an eyebrow. “House Fereno was involved.”
“I don’t think my mother went far enough,” Marcia said, bluntly.
“But your mother still has the House vote,” Ilana said. “What does she think?”
Marcia opened her mouth to say that she needed to discuss the matter further with Madeleine, then she caught the expression on Ilana’s face, and, on impulse, changed her mind. “I believe you can count on House Fereno’s vote, when the time comes.”
Ilana’s eyebrows went up, betraying their surprise.
“I am glad to hear it,” they said, and Marcia’s stomach lurched. Should she have committed herself like that? Too late now.
“But I should warn you, I fear it will be a while before the votes are there. And you must realise that campaigning too energetically risks moving the matter backwards. The Small Council, on the other hand – that may be more straightforward.”
“Without the seats, you’ll be facing the same arguments another ten years down the line,” Ilana said. “We all know that. You must know it too.”
Marcia nodded, slowly. “Yes. But it’s a matter of getting the votes.”
“Your feeling is that the Houses are against this?” Ilana asked.
“I do not think they have thought it through clearly enough,” Marcia said, which they both knew was an evasion. “Of course, in theory, it needs only two votes.”
“One more, then,” Ilana said. Marcia managed not to react outwardly. She was already regretting that impulsive decision to promise Fereno’s vote, but it was too late now.
“Indeed. But in practice…”
“More would be more convincing,” Ilana agreed. “But – let us be frank together, as we have been so far. Do you have another vote?”
Their gaze was direct.
“Not yet,” Marcia said. “But I have not properly started. Something that would help would be if the Guilds were more willing to take House members on.”
“House members are no longer excluded from the Guilds,” Ilana said, mildly.
“No. In theory. And yet I am not aware of any who have been approved, and I know of several who have not.” Ilana knew that as well as she did. “If that were to change, I think it would help create stronger bonds between the Houses and the Guilds, and that could only improve the situation. Even before any formal changes in Council.”
Ilana nodded non-committally. “I will bring the matter up. Informally. Since, you understand, there is no formal problem here.”
“Of course,” Marcia agreed. Well. She’d brought it up, at least. The other thing… She hesitated, then, when Ilana didn’t say anything more, added, “Truly, though, on the other matter. I don’t think the Guilds threatening their own moves will help.”
“That’s not your decision,” Ilana said. “But I understand your point. I will… pass that on. To the relevant people. Quietly.” They smiled slightly. “Both of us need to be able to deny most of this, after all, for now.”
“You don’t think the Guilds will move yet?”
Ilana shook their head. “Not yet. But I think it’s coming. If it can’t be resolved first. I think – we have had enough, is perhaps the best way to put it. The Houses cannot survive without the Guilds, and Marek cannot prosper without us. Whatever the Houses may like to think about their importance.”
Ilana sat back and sipped at their infusion, and Marcia tried to keep her back straight and to look thoughtful, unmoved, the way her mother had taught her.
“Between us,” she said, again. “For now.”
Ilana took another sip of their infusion, and nodded. “Between us. But it is good to know that House Fereno supports us.”
Storm and angel. At least Madeleine would be pleased that House Fereno was in good odour with the Guilds for now; but if Marcia couldn’t talk her mother around in time, their reputation would be in tatters. She had time, though. None of this was going to happen immediately.
“And it is good to know that there is a potential future, here, that does not involve open warfare betwe
en the Houses and the Guilds,” Ilana concluded.
Marcia winced at the bluntness of it; but she too could see Ilana’s point.
She could avoid that. She had to. Whether or not anyone else saw it, this was Marek’s future at risk.
k k
The Council’s formal return to session was in the early afternoon. There was a great deal of pomp and circumstance involved, including a welcoming speech delivered by the Lord Lieutenant on behalf of Teren and the Archion. The Houses, in their full formal robes, went directly to the Chamber in litters; the Guilds paraded up Marekhill from the Guildhall with their banners carried by hand-picked journeymen.
It was a waste of time, was what it was, but there you were. Marcia would much rather be, for example, arranging to meet with her acquaintance in the Broderers to see if she could persuade them to consider Aden again for journeyman. But she had to sit through this, and there was no point in complaining about it.
“Excessive nonsense,” Madeleine grumbled from where the Heads and Heirs of the Houses were waiting in the foyer of the Chamber. Marcia, looking around at the beautiful carved panelling and the wall-hangings depicting Marek and Teren’s history, tried not to remember facing Daril down here, barely two months ago. Across the room, she saw Daril himself, dark hair neatly tied back, his mouth set in a line, standing next to his father. He glanced over and caught her eye, and she knew that they were both thinking about the same thing. To her surprise, the edge of his mouth tipped up, just very slightly, in the echo of a rueful smile. Marcia looked away. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“What do you mean, Mother?” she asked, to avoid considering it further.
“This nonsense of parades and what-not,” Madeleine said. “You don’t see the Houses parading around the city, do you?”
“Maybe we should,” Marcia suggested with a shrug.
“For what purpose? We do not need people cheering us to know who we are.”
Madeleine was making the assumption that people would be cheering. Marcia decided not to point that out. A year or so ago, she wouldn’t have noticed the assumption herself. She bit at her lip, then stopped, suppressing a grimace, as the taste reminded her she was wearing facepaint.
One of the Chamber guards came in to inform them that the Guilds were nearly there. The great doors of the Chamber were flung open, and the Houses moved inside, into their appointed places in the three-quarter-circle pews that surrounded the central stage. The Guild representatives filed in through the main doors to follow them in to the newer Guild pews that formed the back and highest – but furthest from the stage – level of the circle.
Down in the centre of the room, Selene sat to one side of the circular stage, next to the Reader’s dais and in front of the arms of Teren, painted behind the stage next to those of Marek, with the coats of arms of each of the Houses surrounding them. Once everyone was in and the doors were closed again, the Reader took everyone, one at a time, Heads, Heirs, and the elected Guildwardens, through the process of swearing to their duty.
The stone laid in the Chamber wall that they swore on had, according to the records, been laid there by Rufus Marek when the city was established and the Houses were in their infancy, minor Teren nobility come to make their fortune. Not that the official records put it quite that way. Marcia, taking her turn after Madeleine to swear to do her duty by Marek, city of Teren, noticed, for the first time, the small carving just underneath it. It was, unmistakably, Beckett, despite its rough, stylised outline. She stifled a smile. Apparently the cityangel wasn’t quite so much outside of the Chamber and Marek politics as the Houses might like to think.
Marcia returned to her place, and watched the rest of the Heads and Heirs, then the Guildwardens, perform their oaths. Watching Warden Hagadath kneel to place their hands on the stone, she wondered, idly, what the Guilds thought of the cityangel, and how she might usefully find out. Then her gaze moved over to Selene. Selene’s expression was intent, watching the oaths being made. Marcia thought, for the first time, about that phrase, ‘city of Teren’. She’d said it enough times before, but now she found herself thinking about it in the light of how the Houses treated Selene: as someone to be honoured but not to be included, as a representative of a power that none of them saw as having any say in Marek.
Notionally, Teren had power over Marek; could that power be realised in actuality? Selene hadn’t been acting quite the same as the previous Lord Lieutenant. Did she have political goals in mind in Marek, not just in Teren?
The last of the Guildwardens stood up and returned to her seat, and the Reader turned and gestured to Selene to come down.
“Heads, Heirs, Guildwardens,” Selene began, once she was at the lectern. She had no notes, which hopefully meant her speech would be short. “As the representative of your country, it is my honour and my duty to be here today.”
Your country. Marekers didn’t think of it that way.
“I am delighted to see the links renewed now, as every year, between Ameten and Marek, city of Teren,” Selene went on. Which was an… interesting read. Selene paused, and looked around the Chamber. “Indeed, I beg to hope that I will see more representatives of the Houses returning to Ameten in the near future. It seems that you no longer take the time to visit us, and it perturbs us that this is the case.”
There was murmuring around the room. Selene was right; it was no longer considered desirable for young people to spend a couple of years in Ameten, nor was there a need seen for the Houses to maintain their awareness of Teren politics, and their Teren links, the way Marcia had heard her mother talk about when she was younger. But this was very blunt.
Beside her, Madeleine would never be so crass as to fold her arms in public, but every angle of her body suggested that she would like to.
“In fact, I should like to go further,” Selene said, with a pleasant smile. “The Teren Government hereby issues an explicit invitation for one representative from every House to visit Ameten in the coming months, so that we can reinforce the links between this, Teren’s furthest-flung city, and our nation’s beloved capital and seat of government.”
The murmurings were louder now. Quite apart from the way that Selene seemed to be suggesting that she had the right to make such a demand – and it was a demand, for all that it was couched in terms of a request – Marcia couldn’t help noticing who was invited, and who was not.
At the back of the room, in the row behind the second row of the Houses, the face of every Guild representative Marcia could see was set like stone. Was Selene doing this deliberately? She couldn’t be unaware of what she was saying, and to whom. Marcia had been underestimating Selene, hadn’t she, sitting through all those dinners and balls and teas with a pleasant smile. She couldn’t have reached her position in Ameten without being politically acute; Marcia had even thought that, the other day, but not followed the thought through any further.
With a sudden shock, Marcia realised who had been talking to the other Houses, about the risks of the Guilds having more power. Did Selene know Marcia – or anyone – had been raising the matter? Marcia hadn’t been exactly public about her conversations with other Houses, but she hadn’t been hiding them, either. That was the point of trying to raise awareness. If Selene had been paying attention…
At least she couldn’t be aware of Marcia’s conversation with Ilana earlier.
It didn’t entirely matter, she told herself. Now she knew where that had been coming from, she’d be better able to counter it. It would slow things down still further, but… well, Madeleine had said that this would be a slow process, and she was likely right. And, perhaps, if Selene was showing her hand, pushing Teren influence more openly, the Houses would be less willing to listen to her, and more willing to think about their links with other Marekers. With the Guilds. Surely Marcia could use this, if she went at it the right way.
“We do so greatly value,” Selene went on, “the work done by our friends in the Houses, liaising between Teren and th
e wider world. But it is imperative that this liaison remain tightly joined to your country. The Teren Government is distressed that the closeness of our relationship has lapsed somewhat in recent years, and charges you to renew the bond, and work more closely with us, from now on. I look forward to renewing and strengthening our relationship.”
She stepped back, and the Speaker stepped forward, and banged their stave on the floor, concluding the ceremony.
There was no scope, in the Opening Ceremony, for anyone other than the Lord Lieutenant to speak. And as Selene walked out with the Houses and the Guilds into the antechamber, there was no scope for private discussion either. But as Marcia caught Warden Hagadath’s eye on the way out, she realised with a sinking feeling how the Guilds had seen this: as a challenge, and a further undermining of their position. She might see opportunities in it, but she wasn’t sure that the Guilds would; and she found herself, as she stepped out of the Chamber building into the sunny late-summer day, just a little fearful about the decisions they might make if they did not.
k k
Marcia and Cato had arranged to meet up late afternoon that day, at an infusion-salon between Old Bridge and the squats. Marcia often felt the need to let off steam after the more pompous sorts of Council sessions; and she could complain to Cato without him taking any of it seriously.
Today she needed it more than usual; and also more seriously than usual.
She was there before him, back in casual clothes and with her face wiped clean, and bespoke a private room. Cato was shown in half an hour or so later. Marcia had brought a book, a small pocket edition of a currently-popular romance, to pass the time; she hadn’t been foolish enough to expect him to be punctual.
“Hello, sister mine. This is fancy, then. Goodness knows what they’ll think of you, letting a ruffian like me in here.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Marcia said, irritably.
Cato’s eyebrows went up, and he sat down on the other end of the sofa from her. He lifted his feet up to put them on the sofa, and Marcia pushed them down again.
