An ordinary laborer makes five gold a year, though he'll rarely see as much as one gold in one place. A competent clerk, twenty, and likewise. A good clerk, one who does things you didn't ask for yet and does them well, forty or so. One who also needs needs specialist experience or has to be imported from Absalom because we don't have very many Shelynites and they could be selling spells and enjoying life more anywhere other than Cheliax? Yeah, you get up to a hundred pretty quickly.

"All right, that sounds feasible. Do we need to draft language now, or is there additional research to be done tonight first?"

She's not antsy about the meeting ending and Laia leaving. Nuh-uh. Not her.

City types and their coins. Enric knows what a story and a song cost, it’s being friends with someone who sings or tells tales. Or, sometimes, putting up a traveler for a few days. 

"We'll want to try to produce a quick draft so our friends can tear it to pieces when we show it to them this evening, I think," Xavier says.

“What’s happening this evening? Who is tearing what to pieces?”

Enric showed up late to the morning meeting, on account of not knowing there would be a morning meeting. Is this something they mentioned during the morning before he showed up? Or is he just in the dark?

"- My mistake. I mean that we should consult sensible people we know as our schedules permit before reassembing tomorrow, to get their opinions on whether the bill is a good one and what flaws exist in our first draft."

Oh, that's a good idea, she should try to remember to ask Alicia when she tells her about the pamphlet.

Okay that makes sense. Nothing to be irritated about.

”Thank you. Another question. Does this mean we’re meeting in the morning again? Or just the normal time. And is it legal to show the draft to people, or only if they’re delegates?”

"No more morning meetings unless something else comes up where we want to be very fast and have a proposal early in the morning floor session before someone else proposes a worse solution for the same problem. I wish I could promise that won't happen again but I'm not sure even the gods could. I think it is extremely unlikely anyone would try to prosecute you for showing the draft to people outside the building, and quite likely the Queen or President would intervene to protect you if they tried, but keeping yourself to discussing it with a handful of others at a time and not involving a whole roomful in the discussion would keep you on the safe side."

"Well, if you should need me to consult again I can generally be found at my temple," says Laia, getting up to see if anyone stops her.

Enric nods. Queen and Aroden are protecting him, but still be careful. Got it. Draft won’t get shown at the cafe. If there even is a cafe, now. 

Though, if he has to bring people to his room to talk about laws, they really need to recruit more men to the radicals. For decency. Other than him, it looks like it’s girls, and an archduke and lawyer both in the form of women. 

If you organize Theo's going to take your side but he has not actually decided that because he's not quite sure what the main issues will be and the moderate nobles other than Chelam haven't offended him.

None of us have any idea how being a political party works, and the one ally who does know says she isn’t going to be our leader. We also do not have a big house to have a dinner party in. Organizing might take a while. 

"Thank you for your willingness to come here and explain the situation to us," Xavier says to Laia. "May the righteous gods smile upon you."

"And on you as well!" And off she goes.

Jilia will also nod her thanks but she thanked her on the way in and two archducal thanks from different sources is enough for anybody. (And too much for some.)

"So, as I said before, we have the wording problems of copies and emendments for the cast and crew, and of selling onward marked-up scripts, plus defining the censors and fees."

A Publication Statute for the Purposes of Theater, Song, and other Performances

The theater, opera, and other forms of performance being highly valued in ours and other virtuous countries, and not being well covered by the laws governing text publications; and performers having admirable talents for recognizing works which will have great impact on their audiences but considerably less talent for assessing whether those great impacts will cause public unrest; we recognize the necessity of establishing another body to approve and reject performances within Cheliax. Therefore:

A board of censors for performed works, including theater, song, and opera, shall be established, its personnel divided among the cities and towns of Cheliax but its remit of approval stretching across the country. Any script, libretto, sheet music, etc., which is meant as the basis of a performance may be submitted to this board for approval. The statute shall refer to all of these as 'scripts'. Scripts approved for performance by this board are also approved for publication as text by the Fourth Publication Statute.

This board of censors shall initially be staffed as teams of two, of which one shall be hired from the censors employed under the infernal law, who have expertise in which scripts are likely to be dangerous to public order, and one shall be a Songbird of Shelyn or individual personally vouched for in this capacity by a Songbird censor, for their expertise in Good and promoting it via art. The authors of the statute expect that such Songbirds will be found primarily in other nations of the Inner Sea in the first years. Approval or rejection of a work requires agreement by the two.
This composition shall be reconsidered in ten years from the statute's passing by Her Majesty, or by an appropriate body she has granted legislative authority to, if such exists at that time.
Other statutes or acts of the Queen may designate individuals or groups trusted with the expertise and judgment to reject scripts which are dangerous to either public order or public goodness and give those people the right to act as performance censors without assistance even before this point.

A script being submitted for approval requires a fee of six gold pieces. If the script is rejected, either entirely or with proposed revisions for resubmission, four gold pieces will be returned to the submitter; if it is approved the censor (or pair acting as a censor) shall keep the fee to support himself and his work. If it cannot be reviewed within one month five gold pieces must be returned and an accurate count of the number of times each censor (or pair) has done this per month must be submitted to their superiors to demonstrate the scale of need for more censors to be hired in the area.

And to limit misuse for graft, but you don't need to come out and say that.

Approved scripts may be performed freely by any theater company, dancing company, musical group, combination of any of the three, etc. This statute shall refer to any of these as a 'performing company'. If a script's approval is revoked by some legal means not here provided, it shall not be criminal to perform it until such revocation is duly promulgated. Any unrest or crime which results from a performance, by the audience or by others beyond it, is not the fault of the performers or authors unless it is determined it was anticipated and intentional.

Scripts may be edited, rearranged, marked up, abridged, translated between dialects, and subject to modification in other ways, and distributed about the performing company and those staff necessary to facilitating the performance, without losing these protections, and copies made for this purpose may omit the Arcane Mark and be considered private use. If this privilege is abused, it may become criminal, either in the case that the results in contravention of the censorship laws are anticipated and intentional, or if they were unintentional but those responsible are told to desist, and then fail to do so.

A work, once approved, is permitted anywhere in Cheliax where this knowledge has reached. In order to facilitate this, copies of approvals should be sent to repositories in the archducal capitals and these repositories kept current with each other, with all appropriate swiftness.

An edited copy of a script which was performed without issue may be sold to another performing company for their use without violating the statute of approval which requires that it match the version approved by the censor exactly. (Care should be taken that this is truly for another performing company but unintentional violation which is not willfully violating or circumventing censorship law is not criminal.) Purchasers who suspect the modifications may be extensive or drastically change the meaning should request a comparison with the approved version of the script from their local censor, for which there shall be no fee, and while failure to do so is not proof of intention for untoward results it may be considered supporting evidence for untoward intention.

 

This statute shall place no restrictions on music without words or performed without sheet music, traditional mummer's plays without scripts, or other performances not already governed by the laws of censorship established since the overthrow of the infernal regime. These remain legal unless they violate other existing law not specific to publications or performances.

"I... think I have everything, there. I tried to be narrow, since I ought to present it myself."

This is too big of a law to remember, but theater people can memorize a lot more words at once, so it’s probably fine for them. 

“I have one question on the songs part. Does it have anything to do with teaching people songs without writing the words or music on paper? Or are there still no laws against that?”

"Still none, like the very last part says. I don't think I needed to say it, but I thought I should anyway."

“Okay, good. Wasn’t sure if it also meant songs without paper but with words. There’s a lot of important ones that have words and weren’t approved by anyone, I don’t think.”

Some songs have to be changed anyway, now that the queen isn’t evil and the good gods already came back. Aroden already did from the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone so maybe they can change it to ‘was left’? 

"I should tweak that to be a little more clear, but yes, for certain. If you don't write it down, this shouldn't touch you. This is purely a town and city law. Though I might invite you all to share a box of seats with me before we head home, if there's a performance in Westcrown that would show how enthralling theater and opera can be and why why the cities like it so much."

"I don't see any issues, but I can ask around this evening in case someone's thought of things that I haven't." Six gold is still a lot of money to spend on having someone do one thing for you but at least it's a comprehensible amount to spend all at once.

"I doubt I can find anyone this evening but I believe I have a second-hand connection to the proprietor of one of the smaller theaters in the city, I can possibly talk to him tomorrow at lunch."

Songs are safe. Enric feels a bit embarrassed at being worried, if it wasn’t at all a problem. 

The offer of the opera also doesn’t sit right. First, because it feels almost like the thing small nobles sometimes try to do, where they offer nice things from the manor to whoever cooperates with them. Second, because it’s accepting a gift from without understanding exactly what it means. If it was any archduchess or archduke except Jilia, he would have to be really careful about it. But she’s a normal person turned into an archduke, so he thinks it really is just to show why city people like the opera, and should be safe. 

“Thank you for the invitation, if there is a performance.”

It's actually scheming, in that her invitation would also be going to everyone else she wants to join the Party of the Commons as one of its notables (and she'd warn Xavier of this and expect not to see him). Politicians are equally fey as lawyers.

Oh no she’s been transformed into an archduke more thoroughly than expected.