Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
Before he could counter that, the vice governor slammed her gavel. “Votes in favor of continuing?”
Most of the hands on the Senate floor went up. For a simple vote like this, a more straw poll method would do—unless the vote turned out to be very close. It wasn’t.
The real vote, on the bill, would proceed.
“Have you any more explosions to detonate, Ladrian?” the governor said. “Or can we get on with this?”
“No more explosions, Your Honor,” Wax said with a sigh. “They were my old partner’s specialty anyway. Instead, I have a final plea to the chamber.” His maneuver had failed. Now he had one last card to play. A request not from Waxillium Ladrian.
But one from Dawnshot, the lawman.
“You all know me,” he said, turning around in a circle, meeting their eyes. “I’m a simple man from the Roughs. I don’t do politics right, but I do understand angry people and the hard lives of working women and men.
“If we’re going to take the role of parent, we should treat our children well. Give them a chance to speak for themselves. If we keep pretending they’re toddlers, they’re merely going to start ignoring us—at best. You want to send a message? Send the message that we care and are willing to listen.”
He took his seat finally, next to Yancey Yaceczko, a good-natured and patient fellow—and one of the senators who’d actually listened to Wax.
“Good show, Wax,” the man whispered, leaning in. “Good show indeed. It’s always a pleasure.”
Yancey would vote with him. In fact, a decent number of the nobles empathized with Wax. While a lot of the things Marasi had been saying recently made Wax uncomfortable about his hereditary position, in this instance the lords might turn out to be slightly less corrupt than their counterparts. The elected senators had to retain their seats, and voting for this bill was likely to improve the lives of their constituents.
That was the problem. According to the latest census, more people now lived outside the city than inside it. Most of the laws dated back to when there had been one city and a bunch of farming villages. Now that those villages had grown up into cities, their people wanted a stronger voice in Basin politics.
Elendel was no longer a scrappy settlement rebuilding after an apocalypse. They were a nation; even the Roughs were changing, growing, being modernized. Rusts, with all the land in the Roughs, he could imagine a time when more people lived there than in the Basin proper.
They needed to enfranchise those people, not ignore them. He still had hope. He and Steris and their allies had worked for months to erode support for the bill. Innumerable dinners, parties, and even—as he’d started doing for some of the city’s elite—some training on the shooting range.
All in the name of changing the world. One vote at a time.
The governor called for the vote, and Lady Mi’chelle Yomen cast the first one—against the bill. As it proceeded, Wax sat, as anxious as he’d ever been before a confrontation with a bandit group. Rusts … this was somehow worse. Each vote was the crack of a bullet. Lady Faula and Senator Vindel. How will they break? And Maraya? Was she persuaded, or …
Two of them voted for the bill, along with multiple others that he’d been uncertain about. Wax felt a sinking feeling, worse than being shot, as the vote proceeded—and eventually landed at 122 for, 118 against.
The bill passed. His stomach fell further. If Wax was going to stop a civil war, he’d need to find another way.
THE TWO SEASONS
MAREWILL 19, 348
Vol. 32, No. 247
Kyndlip Ternavyl, Editor and Proprietor
BILMING
“No Two Seasons Are Alike,” an Originators Proverb
5 clips
Handerwym Presents
NICKI SAVAGE
and
The COMPASS of Spirits
In my last letter, the Haunted Man, my two Faceless Immortal companions, and I saw the Coinshot Vila Mecant grab the Compass of Spirits and throw herself off a stone outcropping into the mists. The aluminum key that activated it, however, was still with me. Knowing Vila would be back, I entrusted the key to the Haunted Man, who used his hellguns to launch himself to another outcropping, leaving me to convince my faceless friends I had a plan… Which, of course, I did.
Chapter 8: “Flight of the Ornisaur”
KeSun rolled her eyes. “Exactly how do you expect to follow Vila and lure her out?”
“The aluminum bones we lifted from the ornisaur quarry,” I said, patting Tabaar’s giant backpack.
He groaned deep within his corpulent body. “Oh no…”
“You are incredible at imitation,” I said encouragingly. “Remember when you were Human the koloss in A Hero for All Ages? You were masterful! You can do this!”
“He can’t,” said KeSun, folding her arms. “Not without me. I’m the one with experience impersonating birds.”
Turning to Tabaar, she said, “If you are willing to yield some control to me, then we can carry Miss Sauvage across this abyss.”
“But the rest of my collection…” he said, the bag of bones shifting on his back.
“We’ll return for them,” said KeSun, with a compassion in her voice she reserved only for Tabaar. “I promise.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Will you kindly look away?” she asked. “We’d rather you not see us when we…”
“…merge,” said Tabaar.
What followed was one of the strangest things I’ve ever encountered, stranger even than the Beast of Belmon Couture or that time when I was Allomancer Jak’s assistant.
(Continued below the fold!)
* * *
The Two Seasons would like to retract our dear editor Kyndlip Ternavyl’s comments of two weeks ago, prior to her disappearance, when she compared our beloved mayor to “an irascible boar; no smarter, less attractive, and unable to keep from rolling around in every mire he comes across.”
* * *
ELENDEL SUPREMACY BILL THREATENS BASIN UNITY
UNITY OR DIVISION? PROGRESS OR PERNICIOUSNESS?
In a matter of days, Elendel’s Senate will vote on what Bilming’s top political mind, Professor Garven Munz, has called “the most monumental change to our government structure since the Words of Founding.”
Days of speeches, debates, and posturing are planned leading up to the vote, and the eyes of the Outer Cities are focused on the so-called Lawman Senator of the Roughs, whose recent visits north of the Basin have solidified his stance with which many Outer City dwellers concur: Representation Before Supremacy.
Governor Varlance and his cronies vehemently oppose this tack, their views summed up in Vice Governor Adawathwyn’s bold opening remarks that “We’ll need a strong, experienced leader when war comes to us from our masked Southern friends.” Admiral Jonnes of the Malwish Nation looked visibly shaken and did not return after the Senate’s following recess.
When Varlance was asked if he too thought the Basin might be headed toward war with the Malwish, he merely patted his chest where he’d conspicuously hung his military medals.
(Continued on back.)
* * *