What. Why is this nonsense happening.

"Should we not be finding a room? With a table?"

"What do you need a table for?"

"To... write? Take notes?"

Abadar save him from ignorant sailors who are apparently clerics.

"Then go ahead and get a table from somewhere. It's a beautiful day."

Josep looks around a little helplessly at the other members of the committee.

"If you're such a bookish sort maybe you have a book you could write against."

Josep throws up his hands and stomps off to find a servant who can, apparently, fetch a table.

Lucia comes out and looks with distaste at the bright sunlight. Then she summons up a little cloud to shade her head, sits down, and looks smug.

He probably shouldn't be surprised the priest is a sailor, and he isn't really sure what he was expecting instead. Damn that meddling Erecuran insisting on including people with no real interest, this will be tricky.

"I suppose we can meet here if you insist, but this kind of policy is complicated work, we'll need a great deal of writing if we're to do our job properly."

"I have merchant marine experience which I suspect is relevant and six hundred people breathing inside of four walls threaten to suffocate me, so we're meeting here. You're welcome to take all the notes you need. What a lovely cloud, is it friendly or would it zap me if I touched it?"

Lucía is always happy to be flattered. "It's friendly if I want it to be! You may touch it! You're a sailor? Have you been to Halmyris? It's my city!"

"We've anchored there, yes!" Pet pet the cloud. "On the Dutiful, if you've seen her, though I seldom tended to go ashore myself. Jofre Espaillat, cleric of Gozreh."

Lucía bobs her head. "Condesa Lucía Velacruz i Montemayor, Lightning Sorceress, and recently the Contessa ever since they executed my uncle Rodrigo," she says with a happy smile. 

(Josep comes back with a pair of servants and a table, and is not pleased to see Lucia. Why is the girl here too!)

Ignasi Cisterna bustles up. He's a comfortably prosperous man, but not one who looks comfortable now.

Priest... unwashed peasant... fellow merchant... fellow merchant... noblewoman.

Ugh. He hates them all. He should probably suck up to the noblewoman even though she's a fool. Hopefully she's a fool a long way from home.

"Your name, please?"

"Ignasi Cisterna, sir." You say sir to priests, even priests who used to be scruffy sailors, if you don't say more.

"Roger Texidor, of Corentyn."

"Josep Roig, of Blackridge."

"And I'm still Jofre Espaillat. Well. The good news is that a some ports that wouldn't admit a Chelish ship were specifically opposed to the Infernalness and will now accommodate us and our wares. Anyone have bad news that we should figure out how to recommend on?"

Lucia waves her hand. "Yes! there are pirates, bandits, and bad enforcement of internal and external passport control. Many of the richest merchants have fled and taken their skills beyond our use, or have been executed with the same result."

"I too am against pirates and bandits - do you actually like the internal passports? Why's that?"

Lucía shrugs. "It is easier to enforce taxation, if we know who is in the county, and who has left."

"I've been at sea since I was a boy, and seldom went ashore, can you say how that works?"

Lucia grins. "Taxes? Well, it is like port fees, but for living anywhere in the county."

"I'd thought it was mostly about - farms? Which don't get up and go anywhere."

"Certainly farms. But there is a lot of trade, in a port city, and gold goes in ways that can't be seen."

"And how does having internal passports help you know where the gold's going?"

"We know where the merchants are going."

"So you - send someone to find them, when they've been around long enough to do some merchanting?"

"Every year there's taxes, at the same time. If the merchant is out with his caravan, we make a record, and then when he comes back, we tax him then, for the travel tarriff, and the year tax"

"Aha, okay. So he can't just happen to be away when they're due. That makes sense."

In practice you bribe the record-keepers to lose track of who has paid already and who's in arrears, and make sure your rivals pay twice and you pay no times, but if they don't know that already Roger's not going to tell them.

"And when a caravan goes across several counties, each and every one of them wants their own cut, and a percentage for the captain of the guard to pocket besides. And then everyone wonders why it is that goods cost so much more farther from the port towns, and they say it's the greedy merchants, as if it wasn't all going straight to their own lords. Get rid of the passes, I say, and get rid of the internal duties while you're at it. Let the foreigners pay to bring in foreign supplies, instead of honest Chelish men."

"Hear, hear!" says Cisterna. This fellow merchant is willing to say it and so he's probably capable of saying it and everyone knows the internal tariffs are terrible.

Lucía just thought of a very clever idea to impoverish every noble who doesn't control a port city. "What of port fees? It seems to me that if we kept those, or perhaps raised those slightly, your suggestions to abolish the internal passports might well have some merit."

WHAT THE SHITTING HELL

How do you tell countesses "absolutely no raising port fees unless you want to annihilate the trade?" Especially not with the abolition of internal passports! Those together will just destroy foreign trade!

"Port fees are already pretty high. Used to be we'd all tolerate it because a lot of ports in the Inner Sea wouldn't let a Chelish ship dock and trade, but that's not true any more; if anything I'd imagine they need to drop."

She looks at Jofre with some interest. "D'you think we could get more tax in total if we dropped the fees? That's what the Abadarian priest says?"

"Well, an Abadaran would know more about that than me, I haven't got a head for numbers. Sometimes you'll get someone who'll pay whatever you ask because they can't make it anywhere but your port, but if I have the supplies to set for an expensive harbor or a cheap one and as far as I know my cargo'll sell the same price either way, obviously I want the cheap one."

"An Abadaran would say that it's possible for the prices paid for goods at the docks to rise to attract ships. In theory, they're right. In practice, that assumes the ship's captains and owners have a much better head for numbers than Mr. Espaillat, and so is unreliable. Best to avoid it."

You could sell goods deep inland for just as much and the same profit, that way, but you'd lose money closer to port, and Roger doesn't sell much far inland anyway.

"Certainly," Cisterna tells the countess. "Every captain's out to get low rates and good conditions, and every port's competing to give them."

"Okay! Let's start by removing the internal passes, but keep the right of ports to set their own port fees. That means I can lower them, and then raise them if it doesn't work! Shall we have a vote for it?"

"Condesa, I think we ought to work out our proposals in more detail before we begin to vote. Many policies have complex effects. For example, while I think removing internal duties has much to recommend it, internal passes are used to distinguish bandits from legitimate travelers." And sold to more sophisticated bandits so they can fake it. "It needs further thought before we vote on it."

Lucia curls her lip at this merchant who wants to tell her what to do. "Delegate Jofre? Were you our chair? What are your thoughts in regards to votes?"

"I don't mean to make anybody vote before they feel like they're ready. Though I guess if you think it'll have a majority with him abstaining we could the rest of us vote on it to check."

This girl is an idiot, but she's still a countess. "Can I at least convince you to separate your proposals? They have no natural links as you've currently suggested them."

Lucía fiddles with her earring. "That does make sense?!"

"Then if we are voting now, I vote against removing internal passes, but for ports setting their own fees." This supports the one that gives her power, so she's hopefully not going to take it as much of a personal insult. Clearly he offended her already but this should help.

...He ought to talk to the sailor and see if he'll let someone else be chair if they promise not to bring the committee back inside. The man has absolutely no business trying to run anything except possibly a ship, and probably not even that.

"All right, and the rest of you?"

"In favor on both counts, both abolishing internal passes and ports setting their fees. Ah, assuming that the crown may impose a tariff on top of whatever fees are required by the port?"

He doesn't particularly want it to be easier to bring in goods from abroad, his specialty is mostly in internal trade. And much of domestic production is currently in shambles, bringing in more imports could be disastrous. 

"If we assume that do the previous votes stand, then?"

"I'm sure we'll return to that question later in any case. Nothing prohibits the committee from overriding its past decisions." He hopes.

"For abolishing internal passes, for ports setting their own fees."

"Who else is a candidate to set the port fees?"

"There's the question of whether the town fathers* sets them, sir," he says, "or the lord of the city, or Her Majesty the Queen."

(*: Alternate translation: "City council," "Senate," "Parliament.")

"Individual docks and their owners. ...I think only in Katapesh, but they do it, and I've heard Taldor used to. The Church of Abadar says they ought to but they say that about everything."

"I wonder that we haven't got an Abadaran. I guess they wouldn't sneak around like I used to do but there ought to be more new ones. Maybe we should go ask around till we can get one."

"The only one I've met is wasting his time on Slavery, like he's going to do anything useful there with the committee half made of slips." Also if there was an Abadaran it might be hard to get things past him so let's not.

The rest of the minutes read almost like a glossary of what terms are relevant to the topic and their meanings, since everyone has different backgrounds. Punctuated by arguing. Jofre calls time when the shadows are yea long.