“Not while the Commonwealth forbids any settlement in the west.” Enrin Lessos said.

“The solution to that problem” Eidre said. “Is simple. Start enforcing the law out there, rather than doing what the Commonwealth does and pretending it isn’t happening. We’ll be able to settle more safely, and settlers will have to pay a fair price for land and not attack their neighbours. Now, if we want to start doing that, prosecuting the killers would be a good way to get onto the Wyverns good side.”

“Why do we care about the wyverns “good side”? We can defeat them in a war, and they’re already agents of the Commonwealth.” Mato Calwere said.

Oh, father save me, this is going to turn into a Town Hall repeat…

“If the Commonwealth killed three of our militiamen, would we demand justice, and should the Commonwealth grant it?” Aune Sade asked, standing up to get their attention.

“Yes!” called the delegates.

“Then why not the wyverns?” Aune asked.

There was a lot of hemming and hawing and a few yells of “hear, hear.”

Aune has them, they either admit to a double standard or concede.

Finally, Enrin Lessos raised his voice. “Morally and legally, killing a rational animal is not the same as killing a human, and killing occupying troops is not the same as killing militia doing their duty.”

Well, nice for someone to finally spell it out.

“And why? They both have fully formed souls.” Corentin asked.

“They are not made in the image of the all and therefore-“

The hall exploded into a screaming match.

“Order! Order!” the speaker barked.

He was ignored. Hans heard a lot of yelling about goddamn scalies, Commonwealth stooges, glorified animals, innocent victims of Commonwealth policies, and noble fellow inhabitants of the peninsular. The noise felt like it was crushing him, and went on for what seemed like forever.

“Order!” the speaker roared yet again, slamming down his wooden hammer onto the table like he was tenderizing meat. That seemed to get their attention.

“With all due respect, we should wait until more pressing matters are resolved before we deal with this.” A woman said.

“This is a pressing matter. When the majority of West Point migrates south for the summer, do we want this unresolved? They’ll likely already be preparing to move.” Eidre said.

“Again, we can defeat the wyverns. The facts of the matter are simple. The Commonwealth has their boot on our throat. We are being bled dry by excessive taxes and tariffs, they are occupying our cities, we have no political representation, and we are being squeezed into the eastern corner of the peninsular due to their refusal to allow settlement in the west. A few commonwealth stooges getting killed in some skirmish is irrelevant. When, mr. speaker, when will we have an emergency session about those issues rather than this nonsense?”

“Do you remember the silver riots of 1570?” Hans yelled. Show these bastards what their stupidity and bigotry has led to.

A few of them nodded along.

“What does this have to do with the dead wyverns?” someone asked.

“I nearly died there, and Uln with me. Why’d that happen? Oh, sure, the Commonwealth was taxing us through the nose for our mining licenses. That was part of it. But you all know what the real reason was.”

He glanced at Aune Sade. The Ylundans had gotten it bad during the silver riots, though not as bad as the Woose.

Better to be the wrong sort of human than not human at all.

“Get on with it!” someone yelled.

“The Woose were easy targets. Going after the taxation agents on the silver fields was too much trouble, so the miners got nice and drunk, convinced themselves the Woose and Ylundans and Mother knows who else were the real problem, and went off and tried to run them off the goldfields. It’s always the same. The silver fields run out, so a bunch of miners go and do Black Creek and then everyone gets up in arms because the Commonwealth had the balls to hang a mob of torturers and rapists. And then the Commonwealth occupies Trackford, and what do you do? Go and kill a bunch of border guards because they aren’t human and you can get away with it. And then when I try to do something about it, a mob tries to kill me and my wife. You’re too busy slaughtering a bunch of innocents to go after the people we actually have a grievance with!”

He’d had enough of running from these people. He wanted to fight back somehow, even if it was just with words.

The delegates rioted again.

*

“That” Eidre said in the dining room of Corentin’s home, “was a bloody mess.”

“Indeed it was.” Hans said, rubbing his head. Carfane had just reached a new low, as far as he was concerned. They’d gotten absolutely nothing done, had spent the next four hours listening to a spectacular screaming match that went round in circles, Corentin’s attempt to submit a concrete resolution for voting on had been ignored in favour of more arguing, and the session had been adjourned by the speaker until next week in order to give everyone time to calm down. Eidre, at least, had convinced them to head out to Halidon’s Hill on the anniversary of the battle. He guessed that about half of the diet members were in favour of prosecution, but the other faction was much, much louder. He wouldn’t be surprised if next morning, someone was found dead in a park with a rapier in their hand and a stab wound through their chest.

Uln laughed. “Fuckers had it coming. They want to talk about their “morally and legally” nonsense, you can tell them it’s nonsense.”

“That is not how polite society works.” Corentin said, like he was talking to a small child. “People might be foolish but you cannot tell them that to their faces, otherwise-“

“They might try to murder us? Oh, wait.” Uln said.

Hans laughed because it was that or cry. “They can certainly try.”

“We need to try a different tack.” Eidre said. “Appealing to their hearts hasn’t worked. There’s plenty who’ll listen, but plenty who won’t, and we need a clear majority. We need to appeal to their heads, and to their patriotism, to try and get the undecided to decide.”

“Patriotism?”. Hans raised an eyebrow. “I think we saw enough of that today.”

“Halidon’s Hill. Remember when I asked them to agree to a remembrance ceremony out at the battlefield-I remember that place well enough without needing some bloody ceremony, I can tell you that-I'm going to give them a speech. I’ll take plenty of opportunities to remind them how important the wyverns were to the victory there. Then, when the second session starts, I point out that we need to negotiate from a position of strength, winning the wyverns over will weaken the commonwealth and help our position, and bringing down the killers will be a show of good faith that will give us a start to that.”

“Tell them that we need to unite or die. Though that didn’t work out at the town hall meeting too well.” Hans said, remembering Larice Sade’s phrase.

“In short, yes. Hopefully this lot are more rational.”

Hans didn’t have much hope in that.