Has the Succession Taken Effect

"Has the succession taken effect?"

En's wife held three death confirmation papers and looked at the noble legal representative. She knew who had taken the key to the field after her husband died. She did not know what succession effect meant.

"Record it as unable to answer," the representative said.

Eira looked at the record board. On the first line of the citizen's testimony, "does not know the legal effect" was about to be stamped. If she answered in the woman's place, the woman's words might survive, but the owner would change.

"Record the question as improper."

The chief committee member frowned. "Are you challenging the question, not the witness?"

"The witness came to speak about what she experienced. Classifying legal effect is the panel's job."

Eira split the testimony board in two. On the left, actions and losses. On the right, legal effects. On the left, the witness answers in her own words. On the right, both legal representatives attach the clauses they rely on. If the two differ, the panel decides.

The hourglass had thirteen hours and twenty minutes left. Rephrasing questions would cost more time. Eira did not stop the clock.

"Who took the field key after your husband died?"

"The Vellen family steward."

Darius's representative cut in. "That was a preservation measure under a management entrustment."

Eira pointed to the right column. "Write that there. This is the left."

"What did you hear would happen if you didn't hand over the key?"

"They said they'd hold back the winter wages and the death confirmation together."

"After you gave up the key, what did you lose?"

"The rent on two rows of the barley field. Eleven silver coins a month. We used to receive it while my husband was alive."

The representative read the phrase "posthumous claim by a derivative interested party" again. Eira did not strike that phrase either. She had it written verbatim in the right column, then asked.

"In plain terms, what is actually being disputed here?"

The representative fell silent.

"Whoever used that term should translate it."

He answered reluctantly. "It means the husband's losses alone, since he was the one who signed the contract, cannot be used to show the original contract was wrong."

En's wife answered immediately. "Then ask my husband. I filed the confirmation three times because I wanted to ask him."

A low sigh, not laughter, passed through the gallery. The representative swallowed the fact that a dead man could not be asked. In the right column, direct confirmation was impossible due to the death of the original contracting party. In the left column remained the key, the wages, and the eleven silver coins.

"What do you want today?" Eira asked.

"Decide who will sign the death confirmation in his place. Don't let the field key be sold before the ruling. Compensation comes after that."

The transport corps deputy submitted a record stating he would answer on the proxy signing right by noon tomorrow. The panel kept that deadline and issued a temporary notice that the field key could not be transferred to a third party before the effect was ruled on.

Darius requested the floor from the gallery. "The family steward took the key to protect the winter planting. Daughter, if you turn even good intentions into the language of crime, no house can survive a crisis."

Eira did not respond to the family address. "Write the purpose of management in the right column. The time consent was given for transferring the key, and the disadvantage that followed refusal, will be confirmed in the left column."

Darius produced a receipt showing Vellen had paid part of the field tax on the family's behalf. It was a real expense. But there was no clause stating the key was taken as collateral for it.

Eira announced a new rule for questioning. Whichever side wants to use a technical term must add, within the same sentence, who loses what. The witness speaks of action, price, time, and the disadvantage after refusal. Legal effect is contested in a separate column. Each witness gets twenty minutes of direct testimony, and each side gets five minutes for connecting explanation.

The noble representative protested. "If plain language gets it wrong, precision disappears."

"The original term stays on the right. If the translation is wrong, point out which action was left out."

The chief committee member approved the rule provisionally. The extended testimony time meant two more hours would come off the remaining dismissal clock. Eira added that cost to her own liability sheet.

Every time a legal term came up, the citizen scribes attached the original wording to the right board and placed four questions on the left. Who took it. When did they find out. Could they have refused. What did they lose after refusing.

Taking the first three testimonies over again took an hour and a half. Ink had dried on Eira's fingers, and her water cup had gone cold twice. The imperial scribe read out the remaining time in ten minute increments.

The second witness was the deputy of the northern transport corps. The imperial representative asked about the "absence of proxy approval in the chain of command." The deputy could not answer.

Eira changed the question. "After Roven's command authority was suspended, whose signatures are needed to send out the carts?"

"Two northern council members and one transport corps deputy."

"Which signature is missing today?"

"One council member. That's why nine of the thirty-one carts have stopped."

"What is lost while waiting?"

"A day's feed for the horses, and the daily wages of forty-six drivers."

The imperial representative argued that under a fast track treaty, command would integrate immediately. The deputy did not evaluate the treaty's validity. "There is still no name for the integrated commander. On top of the three signatures needed today, there is now one more blank."

That statement went into the left column. On the right, the imperial claim of integrated command and the northern proxy approval proposal were placed side by side. The transport corps entered the hearing not as a political symbol but as nine stopped carts and forty six days' wages.

With ten hours and five minutes remaining, Isolde Fenn, representative of the widows' association, took the witness stand. She laid seven rings out in a row on the table.

"There are seven written proxies on the registry. There are ten association members including me, and my own experience is separate. I will speak only for this registry and for the two who have not yet answered."

The chief committee member asked. "Do you represent widows in general?"

"No. I represent only these seven names here. My own experience I will speak separately, under my own name."

Darius's representative asked about "the succession effect of property attached after marriage." Instead of answering, Isolde drew the boundaries of the field on a wax tablet. A stone wall to the north, a waterway, three small pear trees. Before her marriage, her share had been four plots.

"So who took the key?" Eira asked.

"My husband's older brother. The day after the temple certification."

"Did you refuse?"

"I did. Then the renewal fee for my trading license went from twenty silver to fifty. I held out three days, then gave him the key."

Isolde marked her own share as one silver coin. The seven rings represented the different losses of the different proxies. One had lost a shop key, another a water usage token, another her share of the seed storehouse. The amounts differed too.

At the back of the gallery, a woman named Bett stood up. "Don't speak about my water usage token here."

Isolde checked the proxy documents again. Bett's name was on the proxy registry, but the paper attached to it was not a testimony proxy, it was a notice of refusal to participate. The scribe had put both forms in the same slot. Isolde removed one bronze ring from the string, returned it to Bett, and had the water usage case struck.

"Being my association member doesn't make you my witness."

The proxies dropped to six. Isolde recorded both the time of correction and her own failure to verify.

"Are all of them asking to have their marriages annulled?" the panel asked.

"No. One wants to keep living with her husband and just wants the key back. Two want the property record rewritten. Two are demanding separation costs. One hasn't decided on a remedy yet."

When Eira's scribe tried to write the heading "Female victims of forced marriage," Isolde covered it with her hand.

"I corrected it to six names. If you need a slogan, write it under your own name after the testimony."

The scribe changed the heading to "Losses of Key, License, and Share for Six Proxies."

Isolde stated her own conditions for remedy. Return of the keys to the four plots, refund of two years of overpaid license fees at thirty silver, and the addition of a direct refusal box to the next property record. She did not demand an audit.

She also spread out the license fee receipts. Six months before the marriage it had been twenty silver, the first renewal after she refused the key was fifty, and the renewal after she handed over the key was twenty five. The noble representative claimed it was due to market prices.

Isolde produced receipts from five other shops on the same street. The average increase that month had been three silver. The panel would have to ask about the reason for the remaining twenty seven.

When the noble representative claimed it was customary family management, she asked. "Does a sack of custom pay tonight's barley bill?"

"I am speaking of legal stability."

"Then say whose hands the key belongs in."

The panel had the noble representative record the claimant of management authority by name. The husband's older brother was recorded as the first responsible party. The final effect had not yet been ruled on, but a nameless custom could not go on holding the key.

Before Isolde left, she brought out an old petition from the sixth proxy. It concerned a market mill mortgage case twenty six years earlier. It recorded that illiterate merchants had rung the bell tower three times to announce their objection.

"Why did they ring the bell?" Eira asked.

"It's said it was so people who couldn't write could announce that they had an objection. What happened to the contract after that isn't in this paper."

Attached behind the petition was a receipt for repairing the bell. It recorded that after being rung three times, the cracked clapper had been repaired by the market guild for sixteen silver. Only the act of ringing the bell and its cost remained.

Corvin, from the gallery, recorded only that oral account. Three times, the market bell tower, an old citizen objection. No one spoke of bells in other cities or of any simultaneous effect.

Seven hours and forty minutes remained. The direct testimony of the citizens and the transport corps had been recorded, but the claim of coercion had not yet been finally proven.

At that moment, Aurel's protocol officer walked out into the center of the chamber. He had no document, no seal in hand.

"This is the regent's oral decree. Citing the border crisis, the public hearing is to be suspended immediately."

The scribes stopped their pens. The protocol officer repeated the same sentence once more. Eira looked at his two empty hands.

"Who signed this?"

"His Highness spoke it directly."

Behind the protocol officer, the gatekeepers began closing the exits of the gallery. Isolde's six rings and her one silver coin were still sitting on the witness table.