"Every society is held together by some combination of law, honor, tradition, and the cold reality of who would win in a fight. You are proposing fights you will certainly lose, and neither law nor tradition are on your side. It can be productive to change tradition and to change, over time, how people conceive of honorable conduct. If you ever travel, which I would recommend, you will find that people conceive of honor in different ways in different places; there is real power in having nobles who think of themselves as men of Iomedae rather than of Asmodeus, even if the laws are the same, and of having laws of Iomedae not Asmodeus even if the men are the same.

But while this convention has real power it does not have infinite power. Announcing that all nobles are hereby to be appointed by a vote of villagers will fail unless there is a concrete means by which it is enforced, and if that means is that a greater lord will come in and go to war, you have the problem that the greater lord will not, actually, do that.

I will be disappointed if instead of the essential work of this committee we are diverted into offering remedial politics lessons. Plausibly this convention should offer remedial politics lessons, but you get five more minutes of them, here, and then I'm going to ask you to submit further proposals in writing."

"Is Friend Carlota the chair, that she may say that I cannot speak?" She sighs. "I only thought I understood Galt, before now."

Sefora closes her eyes, and imagines a thousand blades on a thousand pale necks, ready to fall. She is not strong enough herself to see it through. Not yet. 

"I did not mean vote, I meant hire, like a merchant's guard captain. At any rate, there are no barons here. Just counts and dukes. Perhaps we might get justice for villages, if not for cities-  I would call for a vote on the following:"

She writes with metronomic precision letters on a page. 

"Should peasants and villages be permitted to form village councils by vote among the villagers?"

"Should peasants be permitted to form a militia, to make them safer?"

"Should a small portion of taxes be diverted to paying and purchasing weapons for the village militia, to make them safer?"

"Should that militia be commanded by a person appointed by the village council?"

"Should judges be appointed by votes by the village councils?"

"Should judges be permitted to call on the village militia to enforce justice on barons?"

"Should barons or anyone below a count get to have guards?"

"Should our chair be Friend Carlota, or someone who is not a duke?"

"While she's working on that, can we return to the proposals? I'd particularly like to have the first in a form to recommend to the broader council. In Chelam we've had a lot of trouble learning of problems as people are nervous of reporting them."

"Have an anonymous report box, if enough people can read."

"The contents will be burned every day by a new crony she will appoint, paid by taxes. I am done."

She presents the paper.

"Thank you. I've added this to the queue of proposals and we'll discuss the first of them after we discuss the four proposals presented ahead of them." She turns to Raimon. "I'd expect an anonymous complaint system to fail because people cannot write. Is that not your experience?"

"Who says that Friend Carlota can set the agenda? Who made her chair?" 

"All right. One of Séfora's proposals is that we call a vote to change the chair of the committee, and she is plainly going to interrupt proceedings until we do that, so in the interests of minimizing interruptions we will bring that one of her proposals to the top of the queue. Can each committee member nominate a person who they believe should chair this committee going forward. I nominate myself. Having governed Chelam both before and after Infernal rule, and worked in Axis in the meantime, I have written proposals for about a dozen alterations to our code of laws to improve the safety of Chelish citizens, all of which I believe stand a good chance if this committee manages them well of passing a floor vote."

Rosa looks at her assessingly, and then says "I propose Count-Regent Napaciza as chair."

...well, if the Hellknights want to declare her their enemy fair enough. She hadn't been picking that fight unless they seemed inclined to, but she neatly writes a memo to pass a secretary to introduce motions for the total dissolution of the Hellknight orders in Countering Diabolism and in Army Reform.

"Second."

Rosa looks startled to hear the second. He was not expecting the crazy rebel to compromise.

He may have been outplayed. He'll have to see if he can assuage the political duchess's pride.

He is mildly surprised by the hellknight and very surprised by the - revolutionary? bandit lord? - however much she's been butting heads with the duchess. He doesn't even particularly want it, but hadn't even planned to say that he was willing, on the assumption that no one but Aniol would even consider it. "I am personally content with the Duchess of Chelam as chair, but I will serve if called."

"Abstain."

"For Count Napaciza."

"For the Duchess."

"Can I ask you to reconsider your abstention, Representative Pages, you're the tiebreaker." Carlota finishes her memos and hands them to a page. 

"Well, I suppose he said he's fine with you, so it can be you."

"Thank you. By a vote of four to three this committee selects the Duchess de Chelam as the chair.

Let's return to the first proposal under consideration, which was the proposal to affirm that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence, that it is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory and further his duty to ensure that he not permit the escape through his territory of those who have done violence in the territory of his neighbor, and that no person acts wrongly should he, having failed to secure redress for lawlessness in a specific Chelish territory from the lord of those lands, speak or write to that lord's liege to make him aware of the problem yet unredressed, presuming he speaks truthfully and with courtesy, or speaks or writes to the lord of a nearby territory to the same effect."

"I don't love the courtesy requirement. You think more people know how many times to say 'my lord' and how to imply all the right things than know how to write a few words in a suggestion box?"

"I think of courtesy as being a matter of intent, not of knowledge. If someone gets all the titles wrong but humbly requests help they've spoken with courtesy; if they write impeccable Westcrown Chelish but choose to frame their message as a denunciation of their lord as a cowardly bastard in cahoots with the bandits, it seems a bit much to put in the Constitution that they've done nothing wrong. I suppose we could say 'truthfully and not in a manner otherwise prohibited by law' and then the Rights committee can decide if there's a right to fling insults at people without our taking a position on it."

"If I correctly understand that this proposal contains no penalty beyond embarrassment for lords who fail in their defensive obligations, but does prohibit them from punishing peasants who complain to others, and make that embarrassment known, I am in favor. I may want a clause specifying that, because it is not wrong, it cannot be punished." People certainly haven't consistently restrained themselves on that front in the past.

"I do think that enough men can write, even in very remote regions, that anonymous written suggestions would not be useless, or at least not for that reason. Not every man can read, but almost all know one who can. If the boxes go unused, it will be because they are unknown, because they receive no response, or because the peasants don't believe that they actually protect anyone's identity."

"I like the idea of specifying that as they did no wrong they can't be punished for it." She adds that. "We could add a recommendation but not a requirement for the anonymous boxes, see if anyone finds success with them."

"Please rephrase this proposal, and for that matter your others, more simply. I believe I understand it, but belief that you understand a contract being agreed to is, as everyone who has dealt with the past regime knows, more dangerous than lack of understanding. I have no reason to believe you are hiding traps, Duchess, being of Axis and not Hell, and yet I will not be comfortable approving anything until I am satisfied I could find all the traps if they were present."

Is he actually illiterate or is he pretending to be so he can imply she's a diabolist? It doesn't really matter. 

"I will do my best to explain the proposal in simple language," she says. "affirm that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence" does not set out a law or a punishment, but a statement of the intent of this body. In simpler words it might be "we say fighting on the roads is bad and fighting on the rivers is also bad". "that it is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory" also does not set out a punishment. It is a claim about what obligations lords have. In small words it might be "if a man has land in Cheliax it is his job to enforce laws on his land". The next bit means "it is also his job to not let bandits who just burned down a village somewhere else run away through his land, or shelter safely in it". The final part means, "if a person writes to a neighboring lord, or to a greater lord, to say that their lord is not doing his job, then he has not broken any rules and he should not be punished, so long as what he said was true and the sort of thing it is otherwise legal to say."