Law and Daily Life

Three rules hold everywhere. The first is the Accord Days: in the seven days at the end of the year no court sits and no debt falls due. Caelvenne holds most of the debts, so Caelvenne sees it kept on the whole continent. The second is that a day's common labor is worth one silver coin, and so a fine, a bribe or a blood-price can be read anywhere as so many days of a man's work. The third is the longest night, the 6th of the Tenth Month. Nearly every people keeps it at once, and most of them keep it in the dark and speak of the dead.

Sickness everywhere. The chronicles remember the Gray Cough, a lung plague that came north from the Sunmaw in the 160s and killed a fifth of the Heartlands. People lay it on the gray rats that follow the grain barges. Mosquitoes carry the lake fever of the Surmave delta, the river fever of the Talodin and the jungle fever of the Nhal, and the jungle fever has one cure only, Tzalan bitter-bark. Ticks carry fevers in the Greenwarden and on the steppe, and the Grass Sea marmot carries a plague. Famine kills more than all of them together: the Year Without Summer of 623, the Black Autumn of 801, the Great Winter of 1089. A healer who knows plants is the nearest thing Aethorra has to a wizard, and would take offense at the name.

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Law

A law must pass the Moot of great lords and elected burgher-reeves. The king can refuse a law, but he cannot make one alone. The Moot sits at Hethlend from the 1st of Halshul, and its new laws are read from the steps of the Tirtird Cross and then in every shire town.

Law is judged at three levels. The crown's judges sit in the Law Hearth's hearth-house in Hethlend, and twice a year they ride the crown roads to sit a week in each shire town, where every hanging case waits for them. On a fief the lord holds court for his tenants in anything short of a hanging. In a village the reeve settles boundaries, strays and small debts in the Harvest hearth-house. Courts sit on Law-day, Tuvad, and never in the Accord Days, and oaths are sworn with a hand on the stones of the Law hearth. Duke Durift's Westmarch is the exception everyone complains of: his courts judge his toll-men, and his toll-men are never found guilty.

The watch. The Crown Wardens, some 8,000 paid men, answer to the crown alone. Towns keep watches of guildsmen serving in turns under their reeves. A village has no watch. The reeve blows a horn and every grown man turns out, or pays a fine.

Banishment and outlawry. Banishment is common and cheap. The sentence is read at the market cross, and the banished man is walked to the edge of the shire or, from Hethlend, across the bridge and out the Downs Gate. If he comes back before his term, he is hanged without a new trial. Under the Charter of Hearths of 641, a Bound man from Tharax is free the moment he touches Aldmere soil. Tharax has never accepted it.

Debt. Moot law holds interest between Aldmeri to one coin in ten a year. Foreign lenders are not bound by it, and that is how the crown has come to owe Caelvenne since 511. A debtor who cannot pay works the debt off for his creditor, for a term the reeve sets. Aldmere keeps no debtors' prison and thinks Solvaine's Hulks a disgrace.

Family

Marriage and divorce. A couple marries before the keeper of the Home Hearth, each saying yes aloud, and anyone under eighteen needs a parent's word as well. Most village weddings fall in Halshul and Wrunim, after the harvest and before the snow, and the couple will not sleep in their new house until a coal has been carried to it from a neighbor's hearth. Lords marry for land, and of late the northern lords have married the daughters of Clan Nugag and the Vargate Clans. The Law Hearth's judges will part a couple for cruelty, for desertion, or for a marriage "gone cold" once the two have lived apart a year and a day, and each takes back what they brought.

Inheritance. A tenant's holding and a lord's fief both go whole to the eldest son, or to the eldest daughter if there is no son, and the younger children are owed a portion in goods or coin. A widow keeps a third of her husband's land for her life. The crown passes to the king's eldest son. When there is no clear heir the Moot chooses, as it did in 352.

Women. An Aldmere woman may own land, run a guild, trade in her own name and hold office. Hethlend's Bridge-Reeve is a woman, and so is the Lord Chancellor. In the Southdowns most girls now get a child's bow on Bow-day along with the boys.

Who is not free. Nobody in Aldmere can be owned or sold. Tenants owe their lord labor days and a share of the harvest, and may leave at Harvest Home once their debts are paid. Few do. The next lord asks the same.

Children and schooling. About one Aldmeri in five can read, more in the towns. Market towns keep Hearth schools, where a Hearth-keeper teaches Hearthscript and the ledger figures for a few eighths of a mark, and the brightest go on to the Chancery as clerks. Most children learn a trade. An apprentice is bound to a master for seven years, one for each Hearth. A clever Aldmere boy goes to Solvaine or Mazbaaran, and often he does not come back.

Daily life

Food and drink. In the towns bread is Crown wheat. In the villages it is wheat mixed with Chomkel barley. Ale is drunk at every meal, and the big meal of the day is taken at midday.

Dress and houses. Everyone wears wool, and color tells rank: undyed or brown for laborers, blue and green for guild families, red for lords. Wromthalm linen goes next to the skin of anyone who can afford it, otter-lined cloaks mark great wealth, and Caelvennois silk is worn on Moot Rise and mocked everywhere else. Villages are timber frame, wattle-and-daub and reed thatch. Towns forbid thatch and roof in slate or tile, and lords live in stone keeps. In every house a coal burns through the night.

Health and hygiene. Aldmere heals with its hands, and heals well. Each town's Healing hearth-house sets bones, lances boils and sells Hearth-bee honey for wounds and coughs, and bonesetters travel the shires. The best known in the Crownlands is Lasmod the Bonesetter (lasmod, "kind"), who charges a mark for a leg and nothing for a child. Physicians trained in Mazbaaran serve the great lords. Tirtird herb-sellers sell Gap gentian root for the stomach and wormwood of the Sands for fever, and every child is taught the nightcap mushroom and the berries of the Downs yew. People wash in the river above the towns and never drink it below the tanyards.

Birth and death. The family of a newborn puts a coin on the Hearth-keeper's doorstep, or the child will always be cold-handed, and names the child at its own hearth on the first Quiet-day. The dying are nursed in the death-hearths of the Quiet Hearth. The dead are buried behind the village hearth-house, and on the first night the hearth at home is banked, not put out. On Quiet Hearth night, the 6th of Tulront, every family sits in the dark for an hour and names its dead aloud.

Pastimes. Dice are everywhere, and archery butts stand outside every gate. Summer brings boat races and tumblers. Autumn brings the cart-plays, and the one the crowds love best is the clerk who tries to count the stars for the tax rolls. At Harvest Home the villages dance to pipe and drum.

A day. A village family eats bread and ale at first light, works the strips until the big meal at midday, and works again until dusk. The week runs through the seven Hearths from Somald to Tunnath, and on Quiet-day nobody plows.

Where it is going: STABLE, under strain. Aldmere's law works because it is slow, done in the open, and heard by judges who ride the same roads every year. The strain is at its edges. The Charter frees Bound runaways whom Tharax wants back, the Gray Choir refuses to sow winter wheat, the Westmarch keeps its own courts, and the crown pays interest that a Moot law would forbid between neighbors. A law that takes a week to decide anything must now keep pace with 1146, and no one can say yet whether it will.

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Law

Tharax has almost no written law. The Phymun hold that writing is for treaties with people who cannot be trusted, so their law is custom kept in the memory of the Thirty. The two kings lead in war and share the rule. The Thirty, elders over sixty, decide matters of state, judge every capital case and serve as Kharnoth's priests. The five Skekar, elected each year and seated on Wardens' Day, the 1st of Lokok, oversee everything else, and they can arrest a king. The senior skekir names the year and heads the Tyrthas. In 1146 that is Sirtys Gonamik, a widow of fifty-eight. A Phymon woman can be elected skekir, though no woman sits among the Thirty.

Phymun answer to the Skekar, and the Road Watch, drawn from the mess-halls one hall to each ten days, brings disputes before them. Outdwellers answer to the Skekar through the eldest of each craft yard. The Bound answer to the Tyrthas, the secret watch founded after the First Bound Rising of 199. A foreigner found asleep outside a Strangers' Yard is walked back the first time and thrown out the second.

Outlawry and debt. Short of death, the worst that can befall a Phymon is to lose his seat at the mess. Every citizen's household sends a share of barley, cheese and iron to his daipox, and a man whose household cannot send it for a full year is struck from the hall and becomes, in law, an Outdweller. Debt is therefore the women's business, since they own the land and keep its tallies. Money is the iron bar, the nisox, scored in ten, and foreign gold belongs to the state. Nobody needs to be banished from Tharax. The Bound go over the Stair by night, and a Phymon who takes Caelvenne's pay or a foreign wife is spoken of in the past tense.

Family

Marriage. Mothers arrange marriages, and a bride wears crag edelweiss. Phymon men under thirty sleep in the mess-halls, so a young husband visits his wife by night and is back for the morning drill. The house, the goat-yard and the terraces belong to the wife. She may send her husband back to his hall for good by setting his spear outside her door, and the Skekar will not hear his complaint. A husband has no such power, and the Skekir's Wife is the story of why.

Inheritance. Phymon land passes from mother to daughter, which is why the women own most of Tharax. A son inherits his father's spear, shield and seat in the hall. When a king dies, the Thirty choose the next from the grown men of his own line.

Women. Phymon women own the land, hold the purse of the realm and keep accounts on tally-boards that nobody counts as writing. Phymon girls train in the Anvil and are branded like the boys, but they live in their mothers' houses and do not fight in the line, which Krirtys Sastorid wants to change. The few who speak for the Iron Contract's gold are mostly women, because they are the ones who count it.

The Bound. The Bound are born to labor, and they far outnumber their masters. A Bound family belongs to the terraces it works. When the land passes, the Bound pass with it. No Phymon may sell a Bound family off its land or kill one without showing cause to the Skekar, though the Tyrthas needs no cause. In the same summer that a Phymon child of seven takes the spear-point brand on the shoulder, a Bound child of seven takes a plain bar on the back of the neck (tokhekh, "brand"). The Bound marry among themselves with the landholder's leave, and their children are Bound. They may not read, carry a knife in Tharxa or keep the Furrow. Each Bound village has a headman, and the senior skekir knows every one of their names. They speak their own field-talk, dasthax. They rose in 199 and 520, and a third rising in 938 was betrayed before it began.

Outdwellers are free but not citizens. They make everything the Phymun need, marry as they like, own their workshops and, since the Reforms of 1108, may send their sons to the Anvil.

Children and schooling. A Phymon boy leaves home at seven for the Anvil. There he is branded without a sound and hears the Boy Who Would Not Cry on his first night. He learns the order of battle, the spear, the ibex hunt and the bear rite, and perhaps one Phymon in ten learns to read. Bound children go to the terraces at six. A Phymon mother pinches her baby when it smiles, because a child who laughs before one will not survive the Anvil.

Daily life

Food and drink. Tharax eats barley, goat and sheep. Wine is for foreigners.

Dress and houses. Phymon men wear red cloaks dyed with ibex-lichen, women wear red at feasts, and nobody wears gold. Everyone wears coarse Spine wool and hobnailed boots, and the Bound's undyed collars show the bar on their necks. Phymon houses are stone below and timber above, with a walled goat-yard and pine-shingle roofs weighted with stones. The Bound live in fieldstone huts at the terrace ends, or in the back rooms of the houses they serve.

Health and hygiene. Anvil boys wash in snowmelt all year, and warm water is thought a foreign habit. Wounds are dressed with crushed Anvil thyme and bad stomachs with Gap gentian root. All the learning in physic Tharax owns is a few Zarvani books taken in war. Among the Bound the old women keep the herb-lore, and the Tyrthas pays them little mind, which suits the Furrow's Sowers. Stonebane, the purple monkshood of the high meadows, is said to be the Tyrthas's tool when a death must look like fever.

Birth and death. A Phymon child is named by its mother on the tenth day. The Phymun bury their dead in rows on the Ancestors' Slope, facing the city, each with an iron bar in his hand, and kings lie at the top with a Karzhan eagle feather. The Bound bury their dead without markers at the terrace ends, and a Sower scratches a furrow on the underside of the first stone laid over the grave.

Pastimes. Tharax runs, wrestles, throws the javelin, hunts with Gap falcons and tells stories. It has no bells and few songs, because its armies fight in silence. The Bound sing field-songs in dasthax, and the Tyrthas listens to them carefully.

A day. The companies are on the Drill Field before the sun clears the ridge, and the Bound are already on the terraces. At dusk the men go to their mess-halls and the women count the day at home. The week is a ten of numbered days from kaim to dakt, and on dakt every hall eats together.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Tharaxi law was made to keep sixty thousand men equal and everyone else in their places, and it is failing at both. The citizens grow fewer, the Outdwellers' sons are in the Anvil, the Bound can see the Stair, and the gold the law says has a smell has paid for Tharax's steel since 1131. Something in Tharaxi custom will have to be written down soon, and whoever holds the brush will decide what it says.

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Law

The Conclave of Nine Houses makes Caelvenne's law in the Pogna, with the prince presiding. Each house holds some islands and towns as its wards, keeps watchmen on them and settles small quarrels in its own counting-house. Quarrels between houses go to the Conclave. The Lilies guard the prince, the Tharaxi guard Solvaine's shore by day, and the Quiet Office watches everyone and answers to no court.

Caelvennois law is mostly the law of contracts (lounile). A contract signed after dark or under a clouded dome is void, and that has saved more than one debtor. Interest falls due on the four Settling Days, the 1st of Punsimor, Clauve, Caudés and Jende, and the books close on Closing Day, the 30th of Gresil. Every merchant must be entered in the nélognel, the trade register. To be struck from it is how Caelvenne makes an outlaw: a struck man may not sign a contract, and nobody will buy from a man who cannot.

Debt. A debtor who cannot pay goes to the Debtors' Hulks, two old galleys moored off the Yards, and sits there until his family pays. Their book is kept by Miqui the Hulk-Clerk (miqui, "honest"), a Ledger-follower who lets families visit on Gresil and has never lost a name. A debt passes to the debtor's heirs and, among the great families, to the house. That is how the House of Tésvol came to be married into Farisel after the Panic of 1068.

Family

Marriage and divorce. A marriage among the houses begins as a contract, the dowry written in ledger figures and signed at noon. Girls of the houses float a lily on the lake at sixteen, and if it comes back they will marry within the year. At the Mirror Vow the couple face a mirror rather than each other, and only then is the house's secret mirror-name, its ètinvime, spoken aloud. Claupiose houses do not marry Ienvaune houses. The Church does not undo a marriage, but the Conclave's clerks will cancel the contract when both houses agree and the dowry is returned. The cardinals call it a separation. The houses call it a settlement.

Inheritance. Commoners leave their goods by a testament written in daylight, divided among sons and daughters alike unless it says otherwise. Headship of a great house goes to whichever member the house chooses, and Farisel has been founded and led by widows. The prince is elected, and no Valcroix has held the seat by right.

Women. Caelvenne's women run banks, reel silk, dive for the Drowned Court and build mirror towers. The Church's high offices go to men of the houses, so the women have found other roads to power.

Who is not free. No one in Caelvenne is owned. The poor of Solvaine are free to go hungry, and when they do they ring the cathedral bells.

Children and schooling. About four in ten Solvainers can read, and perhaps one villager in seven. Guild schools teach the trades, the cathedral school on Dawn Island teaches the Cathedral Hand, and the houses hire tutors in languages, law, ciphers and the ledger figures. A Solvaine child is likely to learn her letters from a printed bill of exchange.

Daily life

Food and drink. Caelvenne grows almost nothing it eats. Its bread is Aldmere wheat, and when the grain is late, the price chalked at the Grain Stair rises before anything else does.

Dress and houses. Anyone who can manage it wears silk dyed red, blue or saffron. Men and women alike wear scent, and the poor wear linen and old silk turned twice. Solvaine's houses are tall, narrow and painted, with a water door below and a land door on the walkway, and nobody sleeps on a ground floor that floods every wet spring. Every roof is tile.

Health and hygiene. Nobody drinks the canals. Water comes from rain cisterns under the squares and from springs in the villa hills, carried in by boat. The houses heat bath-rooms from their kitchens, and the poor wash in ward bath-houses the houses pay for, so that the Bells stay clean and quiet. Physicians are bought from Zarvand. The lens-grinders of the Furnace Isles make reading spectacles, and Aldmere's Lord Chancellor wears a pair on a chain. Lavender and villa-rose water wash the sickrooms. In bad summers the delta mosquito brings the lake fever to Reedside first.

Birth and death. A child born during the dawn liturgy will be rich and unhappy. One born during the Bells will be poor and never alone. Children are named at a dawn service facing east. The dead are rowed at dawn out the Reed Gate to the Dawn Fields, the burial grounds on the mainland beyond the marsh, so that the Sun sees them go. Drowned Court families give their dead to the lake at the new moon, with a knotted cord tied at the ankle.

Pastimes. Galley crews race on the Pavir after each Settling Day, and the whole city bets on them. Caelvenne has choirs, composers, painters, the Lantern Road's players, and a tavern song that must not be hummed near an Aijal.

A day. At dawn the eldest opens the eastern shutter and says, "The debt is paid," and coffee follows for those who can pay for it. The counting-houses open at full light, do business over long lunches and close at dusk. The week runs six days, from Siale to Gresil, when the banks close.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Caelvennois law is the most exact on Aethorra, and the most one-sided. It protects the lender, and in 1146 its largest borrowers are running out of ways to pay. A law of contracts holds only while both parties want the contract to go on.

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Law

The king makes Castavar's law with the Grandees, who vote him money in the Jevarrie, and the Rislo holds a veto over matters of faith, which he reckons broadly. The king's courts hear property, debt and violence. The church's courts hear sin, marriage, oaths and heresy, and heresy goes to the Office of Truth, which can take a prisoner out of the king's own cells. The Grandees judge their own lands in everything short of death, and the Upland Shepherds cannot be arrested on the drove-road.

The watch is drawn from the ratorlon of the garrisons, who walk in pairs and keep out of the poor quarters after dark. The Office of Truth needs no watch. It pays informers. Punishment follows rank: a laborer who steals is flogged, a lesser noble is fined, and a Grandee is invited to lend the king money.

Unhearing and outlawry. Short of the fire, the church's heaviest sentence is to declare a person unheard. An unheard man may not marry, swear an oath, stand as a witness or be buried in the church's ground, and whoever helps him shares his sentence. The crown outlaws bandits in the Upland, and any man may kill an outlaw found on the king's roads.

Debt. The Berrode calls lending at interest between believers a sin (talue), so Castavari borrow from Caelvennois, and that is how the crown came to owe Farisel. A peasant owes his Grandee's granary for seed and bread, and the debt passes to his sons. A masesben who cannot pay pawns his land to the lenders of the Mint Ward.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Marriage belongs to the church courts. It is made before a priest in silence, the vows spoken into the quiet the way Fojo heard his God. No weddings are held in Litota, and many are held at the Feast of Grace that ends it. Marriages are arranged on the evening walk, and a noble daughter marries where her father's treaties need her. Queen Rorelle married at seventeen to seal the Gilded Pact. The Berrode does not undo a marriage. A church court may separate a couple for cruelty or heresy, but neither may marry again while the other lives.

Inheritance. A Grandee's lands go whole to the eldest son, and younger sons go to the church or the knightly orders. Commoners divide land among their sons and give their daughters dowries. The crown passes in the male line, and Castavar remembers that Lasdara ended in 301 when its male line died out.

Women. A Castavari woman lives under her father's law and then her husband's, and may not be a priest or sit in the Jevarrie. Women still rise, by the sea, by widowhood and by faith. Captain Modarsa Tandosno commands the navy's best galleon, and the widows of the Third Crusade hold their own property for the first time in their lives.

Who is not free. Castavar holds no one as property, and its peasants are free in law. In truth most owe their Grandee a year's harvest, a son for the ratorlon, and their silence.

Children and schooling. About one Castavari in seven can read, nearly all of them clergy or nobles, taught in the cathedral schools and the orders' colleges. The navy's pilot school at Tandosa teaches boys of twelve from Zarvani star tables bound inside approved covers. Everyone else learns from the pulpit, and pays a Market Hand scribe to write a letter.

Daily life

Food and drink. Castavar eats from the olive, the vine and the pig. In Litota it eats no meat at all.

On the coast the daily meal is sardines, dried octopus and bread, and spring tuna is for feast days.

Dress and houses. Castavari wear dark wool and linen, the pious wear black on Fojiga, and knights of the White Thorn wear Rosemary of the Thorn in the helm. Every Castavari burned in war wears a glove over the scar and takes it off only to pray. Houses are whitewashed stone or adobe under red tile, built around a courtyard with a well or cistern.

Health and hygiene. Castavar had physicians once, and burned or lost most of them. The knightly orders keep infirmaries for their own men. The poor go to herb-women with Upland thyme, rosemary and thyme-hill honey, and the Office of Truth watches the herb-women. Zarvani medicine is smuggled in wine barrels, and the Sunmaw poppy is against the law. A pious Castavari washes his hands at the cistern before prayer. In the Warren of Grarañe the best-known midwife is Randue the Midwife (randue, "safe"). She has delivered half the quarter, and by what she tells the priest, she decides which thorn-shaped birthmarks are worth reporting.

Birth and death. A child is named at the first service of Fojiga after its birth. The priest says nothing, and the family speaks the name into the silence. The dead are buried in the church's ground after a vigil without music. A family whose son never came home from the Sunmaw hangs his empty glove by the door.

Pastimes. Castavar amuses itself with sermons, processions, horse-racing, dice and gossip. In Llusodo the young men run before the black bulls of the Llovo March, and in Litota there is no music on any day.

A day. The bells ring before dawn and business is done by noon. The towns shutter through the heat and wake for the evening walk, when marriages are arranged and informers take notes. The week runs from Ieno to Fojiga, the day of silence.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Castavar's law has two masters, and in 1146 the church is winning. The Rislo wants the Grandees' mines for the Fourth Crusade, and the Office of Truth can overrule the king's cells. If the Old Jevarrie and the Crownmen join, the king's courts may win back their ground. If they do not, the Office of Truth will be the law.

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Law

The Khaasar's word is law. He rules the provinces through the Jaarzebeem, each with his own court, troops and judges, and through the Grand Vizier, whose clerks keep the tax rolls, tolls, market weights and salestoot. Royal Mazbaaran has no Jaarzeb, so its law comes from the Khaasar directly, which in 1146 means the Grand Vizier's.

Zarvani law rests on the oath. Contracts are sworn before a fire, a Rahaash witnesses anything large, and any case that turns on whether someone lied goes to a Rahaash, who judges it before a temple fire. A man proved to have broken an oath sworn on the Flame may never swear another, and that ends him in trade more surely than any fine. On Truth-day, the 7th of Kelong, any subject may tell the Khaasar one true thing without punishment. Prince Faasheer has said he will end it. The watch is the Unfading in the capital and each Jaarzeb's troops elsewhere.

Exile and debt. Zarvand exiles those it will not kill, the Ember Pilgrims among them, and the Deep Sands shelter whoever the Jaarzebeem want and cannot find. Debt is sworn like any contract, with its interest named in the oath. A debtor who cannot pay works for his creditor for a sworn term. Zarvani law keeps servants and debt-workers, but no slaves.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Couples wed by the Fire Marriage. They circle a fire seven times, and the Rahaash asks each whether they have ever lied to the other. It is the only time a Zarvani is expected to answer "yes." Either spouse may end a marriage before a temple fire by speaking three true reasons, and the wife takes back her dowry. A spouse who lies about the reasons has broken an oath before the Flame, and few will risk it.

Inheritance. Sons and daughters both inherit, sons the larger share, by a will sworn before a fire. A Zarvani prince must kill a mesa lion before he can inherit anything, and the throne passes by survival, as it has since the Poisoning of 398.

Women. Women of good family go veiled outside the house, and so does the Grand Vizier, the first woman to pass the House of Learning's examinations. Women run most of the silk workshops of the Mulberry Quarter, and they own and inherit property in their own names.

Children and schooling. Every fire-temple keeps a school, and every city child learns the letters and then the numbers, in that order. The House of Learning takes the best by examination. About three Zarvani in ten can read. Nearly all city people can. The Deep Sands cannot, and do not care.

Daily life

Food and drink. The date is the valley's bread, and wine is drunk openly.

The richest houses freeze water in shallow pools on winter nights and keep the ice in straw-lined pits for summer. Pomegranate seeds counted before eating are years of life, and nobody counts past forty.

Dress and houses. Zarvani wear long, loose robes of cotton or silk, pale for every day and red or saffron for feasts, and the men wear headcloths. Scholars wear plain dark robes, and so does the Khaasar. The rich build around gardens with water in them, with wind towers and cellar rooms for summer afternoons. The poor share courtyards. In summer everyone sleeps on the roof.

Health and hygiene. Zarvand has the best physicians alive. The physicians' courts of the House of Learning teach medicine, sell the Khaasar's licensed poppy and send their graduates to every court that can pay. The most sought after in Mazbaaran is Mimsaan the Physician (mimsaan, "kind"), who treats the poor of the Reed Wharves in the mornings and the palace in the afternoons, and has not been told what ails the Khaasar. Wormwood of the Sands is the desert's medicine for fever and worms. Every town has bath-houses fed by the salestoot, and people wash there before going to the fire-temple. The Talodin mosquito carries the river fever, and the Long Drought of 330–338 is still the measure of a bad year.

Birth and death. A newborn is carried past a fire on its seventh day and named. The dead are washed, wrapped in pale cotton and buried before the next sunset, and a lamp burns at the grave for seven nights.

Pastimes. Zarvand loves poetry, and Avisteer III's verse is the measure of every poet. Market storytellers tell "The Rahaash and the Liar," and there are snake-charmers, falconry, horse races, and lute and drum in the garden houses.

A day. The day begins before light, when the Rahaasheem feed the temple fires. The town works through the morning, shutters itself through the heat and wakes in the late afternoon. The week has five days, and on Kelong the fire-temples are full.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Zarvand's law is only as tolerant as its Khaasar, and its Khaasar is dying. The oath, the temple schools and Truth-day will outlive any prince. Avisteer III's refusal to persecute the Shadowed will not outlive Faasheer.

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Law

Kaishon's law is written, numbered and kept. The ministries write it in the Emperor's name, and the imperial house's own laws, the succession law among them, are kept in the Law Wing at Tsenkin. Every district has a magistrate chosen by examination and moved every few years so that he cannot grow roots. He wears the jade crane on his robe, every citizen begins a sentence to him with hyáu-sen ("Honored One"), and he hears every case from a stolen pig to a murder. A tenth taken in bribes is thought moderate.

Every household is entered in the register with its members, land, stove and duty to the army. The city watch is drawn from the conscript garrisons, and its true work is fire. Since 927 every stove has been registered, and inspectors look into every kitchen on the tenth day.

Outlawry and debt. A Kaishoni struck from the register may not own land, marry, sit an examination or appear in a magistrate's hall, and many such people end among the Rampart Squatters. Debts are registered with the magistrate and pass from father to son. A debtor who cannot pay may be sent to the state workshops to work it off, and the Kilns of Kokrin are full of debtors' sons.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Families arrange marriages through go-betweens, and the marriage is entered in the register. Mandarin ducks, which pair for life, are the wedding sign. The bride's family tells its Door-Kin that she is leaving, and her new family tells its own that she has come. Neither rite is written down. Either family may petition the magistrate to dissolve a marriage, and the register records the result and never the reason.

Inheritance. Land and goods are divided equally among sons, and daughters receive dowries. Office is never inherited, because it must be won by examination, though the Seiro family has given Kaishon nine Grand Chancellors. The Measured hold that the succession law bars women from the Jade Throne.

Women. Women may not sit the examinations. Princess Seitotai sat them under a false name, placed third, and had her paper burned. Outside the ministries women run a great deal: a widow owns the largest gambling house in Kokrin, a woman keeps the Kite Terrace, and every household shrine is kept by its mothers.

Who is not free. Kaishon holds no slaves. Its conscripts are not free until their term ends, nor are men sentenced to the Rampart. The Tsenkin Hill-Folk are free because the register has never managed to count them.

Children and schooling. About one Kaishoni in three can read, and every province has state academies. A boy going to his first examination is given a brush by his father and a bowl of rice by his mother. He takes the brush, and leaves the bowl by the stove until he returns. Learning is for passing examinations.

Daily life

Food and drink. Muhau rice is boiled at every meal, and everyone drinks Shanyo tea. The first bowl of every meal is set by the stove for the Kin, and the youngest child eats it afterward "so it is not wasted."

Conscripts on the Long Rampart live on rice, Rampart soy and paddy eels.

Dress and houses. Officials wear silk in the colors of their rank, and commoners wear hemp in blue and brown. Farmers live in rammed-earth houses under tile. A Fire Wards family in Kokrin lives in two rooms and shares a courtyard stove, while a Seal Quarter family has a walled compound with a pond and a household shrine that nobody calls a shrine. By law every city block keeps a well or a covered water jar.

Health and hygiene. The state keeps granaries in every province. In the Year Without Summer Kaishon opened them, and came through better than anyone. Physicians are examined like other officials. Tsenkin ginseng is worth its weight in silver, Shanyo deer antler velvet is a medicine, and Sorogei camphor keeps insects out of clothes. Bitter-bell is an old poison of the court, and there is a Kokrin herb-seller who swears a palace servant has been buying it: Tèinai the Herb-Seller (tèinai, "safe"). In the Southern Reach the magistrates pay any price for bitter-bark. Every city ward has a bath-house, entered in the fire register like any other stove.

Birth and death. A birth is entered in the register within ten days, and the Door-Kin hears the child's name before the magistrate does. The dead are buried on family hillsides, their names cut in Measures. By the ministries' reckoning a funeral is only a custom. By the family's, the dead join the Kin and are fed with them on the longest night.

Pastimes. Kaishon fights crickets, plays buitso, keeps caged cicadas, flies kites and gambles, all of it against the law or nearly so. On Kite Day every roof that can hold a child flies a kite with a paper wish tied to its string.

A day. In the cities the fire-tower drums keep the day, and in the country the paddies do. The week is ten days, and on the tenth, shôktéwâ, the shops close and every household cooks for the Kin.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Kaishon's law is the most complete on Aethorra, and it now hangs on a succession law that may exist in two copies differing by one character. The register and the granaries will outlast any emperor. Whether the throne's law is the Measured's or the Meritists' will be settled in the Seal Quarter, and perhaps by whoever holds the seal.

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Law

The Hrodvald have no written law and no king who makes law. Each clan rules itself through its reldith, where every free clansman may speak, and its stelest, the war chieftain. Since the Frostmarch Concord of 877, all the clans have agreed that blood feuds are settled by drolak, the blood-price, paid in silver before the clans rather than in blood at night. It is honored about half the time. The hrinduk recite the code at each Vuvud. The Vuvud settles feuds between clans, hears drolak too large for any reldith and, in time of war or famine, elects a Hearthking. Nobody keeps a watch. The halls keep order among their own, and the hounds keep it everywhere else.

Outlawry. An outlaw, a golest, has no clan, no hall and no drolak. Anyone may kill him and owe nothing. Since 877 the clans' outlaws, oath-breakers and drolak-refusers have gathered in the taiga of the Wolfmarch, where Golen No-Clan leads them and raids the clans that cast them out.

Debt. Everything is weighed. Hacksilver is chopped from brooches, bowls and bars and weighed against an Aldmere mark, and gold arm-rings are wealth that nobody sells except in a very bad winter. Debts between clans are settled at the Vuvud. A hall's guest eats free, and a stelest who feeds all comers, as Selra does, ends up owing the House of Farisel.

Family

Marriage and divorce. Marriages are made between clans to end feuds and seal trade. The groom's kin give arm-rings, the bride's kin give a hound or a cow, and the couple swear before the Hearth-Stone of the groom's hall. Either may end a marriage by declaring it ended three times before witnesses at the hearth, and the wife takes back what she brought, the hound's pups included.

Inheritance. Children inherit equally, and whoever keeps the hearth keeps the longhouse. A stelest is chosen by the reldith, most often from the old stelest's kin, and that is why Kruman Ironjaw's lack of a living son is a grave matter for his clan. The Hearthking's title is never inherited. When a clan splits, its Hearth-Stone is broken.

Women. Hrodvald women fight, trade, lead and speak in the reldith. Three women have been elected Hearthking, Thuba Nugag leads her clan, and Statha the Far-Seer is the most revered priestess in the north.

Who is not free. The Hrodvald hold no one as property. A raid-captive was held for ransom, and one not ransomed by the next Vuvud was taken into the clan or let go. The "free clansmen" of the reldith are those who are neither captives nor golest.

Children and schooling. About one Hrodvald in twenty can read the Storm-Runes. Children learn by doing: nets, oars, axes, the ice. They give their ages in winters, and they learn never to count longships leaving. The hrinduk and storm priests are the north's libraries.

Daily life

Food and drink. The north eats black rye bread with everything and drinks ale and mead.

In spring everyone drinks sweet sap from the Farrur birch.

Dress and houses. Men and women alike wear wool and fur in layers. A stelest is known by the gold on his arms, and a sailor by the blue voyage bands tattooed on the arm. A family and its animals share one timber longhouse with a turf roof, the hearth in the middle and benches along the walls.

Health and hygiene. The Hrodvald bathe in steam-huts beside the water and then in the lake or the snow, even in winter. Storm priests read weather, ice and entrails for the sick as well as for longships. On Krasvuv's Keel Strand the man who sets bones and pulls teeth is Fakoth the Bonesetter (fakoth, "kind"). He charges a cup of mead for a finger and will not touch a stelest before he has been paid. Seal fat is rubbed on cold-burns, and every child knows wolf-lichen, the wolf-bait poison. The great killers are winter and hunger. The Ice Mother's Count at the end of Selthar is, said plainly, the stores running out.

Birth and death. A child born in a Wolf Winter will never be warm and never be afraid. A child is named after it has lived nine nights. The dead are buried in barrows, and on the coasts the Salt-Sworn give their dead to the sea. A longship that does not come back is remembered by an oar laid in the path to its stelest's door.

Pastimes. The north races sleds on the ice, wrestles, sets hounds to fight and hears sagas sung to the lute. On Midwinter Silence, the 6th of Stauni, nobody speaks from sundown to sunup, and the hrinduk find it the hardest night of the year.

A day. In summer the sun barely sets and the town works half the night. In winter it barely rises, and people mend nets, tell sagas and count the stores. There is no week. A journey is so many nights long.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. The Concord's law has held for 270 Vuvuds by being honored half the time. Selra wants one law and one nation, Kruman wants the Old Way, and the Speaking Mound allows a challenge that could settle it with an axe. If Selra holds, the north may get its first law kept on purpose. If Kruman wins, drolak will go back to being something a man pays when he would rather not wait for winter.

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The free peoples keep their own law, and most of it is shorter than a great power's.

The Ember Pilgrims own nothing and teach anyone who asks to read, and that is one reason three realms want them dead. The Upland Shepherds of Castavar keep a drove-road law older than the Berrode, pay their Grandees a sheep in ten and cannot be arrested on the road. The Wolfmarch Outlaws began as nobody's law at all, and have begun to make their own.

Where they are going: RISING. The free peoples' law grows heavier as the great powers' law fails at the edges. Bound runaways shelter with the Drift, the Ember Pilgrims and the Qaflan. Outlaws become a people in the Wolfmarch. The Tolmar promises any free rider a horse. When a realm's courts cannot reach a man, the Road, the river or the steppe usually can, and in 1146 more people are choosing them.