The Principality of Caelvenne

Succession law

The Conclave of Nine Houses elects the prince from among its families, and no house holds the seat by right. The Valcroix have held it most often. Headship of a great house goes to whichever member the house chooses, and Farisel was founded by a widow and has been led by widows. A commoner leaves his goods by a testament written in daylight, shared among sons and daughters alike unless it says otherwise. A debt passes to the debtor's heirs and, in the great families, to the house itself. A marriage among the houses is a contract, sealed at the Mirror Vow, where the house's secret mirror-name, its ètinvime, is spoken aloud. Claupiose houses do not marry Ienvaune houses.

The ruling house: Valcroix

text Fezaud diol Valcroix, elected first Prince of Caelvenne, 294 │ ⋮ ├── Roltien diol Valcroix, prince; stabbed at dawn prayers, 603 ⋮ ├── Tilaud diol Valcroix, prince ═══ Princess Glaidith Tulvard of Aldmere (the Marriage of the Lake, 672) ⋮ ├── Lourien diol Valcroix, born c. 1085, elected prince 1132 │ └── (a brother or sister of Lourien, unnamed) │ └── Rorelle diol Valcroix, born c. 1118 ═══ Dobarmo IV deso Grarañe, King of Castavar (1135) │ └── two sons, unnamed

• Seat: The Fiajane on the Prince's Isle, Solvaine (solvaine); the Solvaine Isles (the-solvaine-isles).
• Arms: On deep blue, a white Solvaine water-lily, open, floating on a line of silver water. The same lily stands under the Radiant Iévaine on the realm's arms, ringed by nine stars for the Nine Houses.
• Words: Chosen, Never Crowned.
• Head: Prince Lourien diol Valcroix (61), who wears one gold ring shaped like a lily and no other jewelry.
• Heir: None by right. The next prince will be elected.
• Wealth and power: The house holds the prince's seat, the Lilies, the Fiajane's dining hall, and a niece on the throne of Castavar.
• Allies and feuds: Lourien is the Concord's perfect servant. The Lilyists, a small party of Valcroix clients, want the prince made hereditary. Lourien has never encouraged them and never discouraged them.
• History: The Peace of the Nine made Fezaud prince in 294. A priest in the pay of the House of Aijal stabbed Prince Roltien at dawn prayers in 603. Lourien was elected at 47 in 1132 and made the Gilded Pact in 1135.
• Hooks: A Valcroix keeper of pedigrees has found that the Marriage of the Lake may give the Valcroix a better claim to Vareth's throne than the Tulvards have. The pigeons from Grarañe have stopped coming. The Fiajane's kitchens have ordered seven courses for seven ambassadors.
• Direction: CONTESTED.

Farisel

• Seat: The Kettle House in the Counting Isles, Solvaine (solvaine); the villa town of Ionjale Farisel (ionjale-farisel).
• Arms: On rose-red, a plain copper kettle with one gold coin above it.
• Words: To the Kettle.
• Head: Bevele Bansine Farisel (49), who announces herself with rose perfume, and who has cut off Castavar's credit.
• Heir: Chosen by the house. She has four children, none named in the chronicles.
• Wealth and power: Farisel is the largest lender in the One Land. It holds Aldmere's 2,100,000 leusores, Castavar's 4,800,000, Clan Stormbrand's 40,000, and about 3,000,000 owed by four of the Nine Houses. Tevon of the Yards, senior captain of the lake navy's Yards at Solvaine, is a Farisel cousin.
• Allies and feuds: Farisel lives by the Ledgerites' creed in practice. Tésvol is bound to Farisel by marriage and debt. Every borrower resents her.
• History:
• 903 — The glass-merchant's widow Vailine Farisel founds the house by lending to Aldmere's crown when the older houses refuse. She lends her first kettle of coins at one in ten. The chronicles do not give the year Farisel took a door in the Pogna.
• 1068 — Farisel buys the failed House of Tésvol's debts, and Tésvol marries into it.
• 1135 — Farisel takes over Castavar's whole silver debt on new terms, in the week of the Gilded Pact.
• Hooks: A Kettle House clerk has died, and his private ledger is missing. A Farisel factor is on the Fur Trail to collect from Selra. Bansine's late husband was a Gatekeeper of the Drowned Court.
• Direction: CONTESTED.

Tésvol

• Seat: The First Sieran on the Furnace Isles, Solvaine (solvaine).
• Arms: On black, a round bronze mirror throwing six gold rays to the right.
• Words: Faster Than a Rider.
• Head: Not named. The house's best-known member is Sierelle Tésvol.
• Heir: Chosen by the house.
• Wealth and power: The house keeps its seat among the Nine only by marriage to Farisel. It also has the mirror towers, which are worth more than its bank ever was.
• Allies and feuds: The house is tied to Farisel. Sierelle is the Bench's unlikely darling, and the Concord finds that charming.
• History:
• 788 — Sierine Tésvol builds the first mirror tower line across the lake.
• 1068 — The Solvaine Bank Panic. Tésvol fails after lending to a Castavari silver venture, and survives among the Nine only by marrying into Farisel.
• Hooks: Someone has lent the cathedral's poor-fund at interest to a Tésvol, and that loan is keeping the family from ruin. Kaishon's ambassador and a Farisel cousin have each taken Sierelle to lunch three times this month.
• Direction: RISING, on mirrors instead of money.

Lalos

• Seat: A counting-house in the Counting Isles and a villa at Ienvaune (solvaine, ienvaune).
• Arms: On gold, a blue dome with a white sun-disc rising behind it.
• Words: The Dawn Repays.
• Head: Not named. Its best-known son is Cardinal Fezaud Lalos (66), prelate of the Sun Cathedral.
• Heir: Chosen by the house.
• Wealth and power: Cardinals and cathedral priests come from the Nine Houses, and the Lalos have given the Church its loudest voice. Through its cardinal the house takes bribes from the other eight, and through him it feeds the Bells too.
• Allies and feuds: The house stands with the Concord. Rislo Litoto's Berrode wants the cardinal burned.
• Hooks: The cardinal fought Prince Lourien for three years to keep the poor-fund from being lent at interest, and his own priest has lent it.
• Direction: STABLE.

Aijal

• Seat: None. The house lives on only as spies, and its master works from the Quiet Office, which by law has no address (solvaine).
• Arms: Struck from the Pogna in 603. Roltien Aijal bears no arms, and keeps a small painting of the bell-tower in his study instead. Aijal is the Caelvennois word for cipher.
• Words: None spoken since 603.
• Head: Roltien Aijal (44), master of the Quiet Office, last heir of the house.
• Heir: None.
• Wealth and power: The house has no money and no islands, but it has agents in every court on the continent, Tharxa included.
• Allies and feuds: Roltien is loyal to Caelvenne, and to the prince for as long as the prince is loyal to Caelvenne.
• History:
• 603 — A priest in the pay of the House of Aijal stabs Prince Roltien diol Valcroix. The Conclave hangs the Aijal patriarch and two of his sons from the cathedral bell-tower. The old wives say the bricked tenth door of the Pogna was Aijal's; the Bench says it is theirs.
• Hooks: The taverns still sing the bell-tower song, and it is bad luck to hum it near an Aijal. Three of his agents in Grarañe have gone quiet this year.
• Direction: STABLE, and ending with him.

Flurdel of Claupiose

• Seat: Claupiose (claupiose), where the Conclave rules through the houses that hold the city's wards.
• Arms: On red, a white mulberry leaf crossed with a purple sprig of lavender.
• Words: The Color Holds.
• Head: Bevele Claline, a widow in her fifties who holds the harbor wards of Claupiose.
• Heir: Chosen by the house. Her younger son is the bridegroom offered below.
• Wealth and power: Flurdel is a lesser house, not one of the Nine. It holds the Rèvascare and the Silk Lofts as wards and takes ward dues from the dye-houses.
• Allies and feuds: The house is Claupiose's pride. The Flurdel keep the Pitch Stair stone clean. Claupiose calls it a memorial, and Ienvaune calls it a boast.
• History:
• 271 — Claupiose's galleys burn Ienvaune's harbor. The Flurdel claim an ancestor loaded the pitch.
• Hooks: A match has been offered between a Flurdel son and a Teuvaun daughter, the first between the two cities since 271, and somebody has chipped the Pitch Stair stone.
• Direction: RISING.

Teuvaun of Ienvaune

• Seat: Ienvaune (ienvaune).
• Arms: On pale gold, a green vine branch with white grapes above a small silver nightingale.
• Words: Sweet After Bitter.
• Head: Lenvén the Vintner, head of the house, whose white wine goes to every table of the Nine.
• Heir: Chosen by the house.
• Wealth and power: Teuvaun is a lesser house, and host to the Nine every summer when the midges drive them out of Solvaine. Its bakeries make the pastries that sweeten Aldmere's Lord Chancellor.
• Allies and feuds: Ienvaune's grudge against Claupiose is 875 years old. Lenvén wants the match anyway, because the Wromthalm road runs through Claupiose.
• History:
• 271 — Two thousand die when Claupiose fires Ienvaune's harbor.
• Hooks: If the Flurdel match goes ahead, it will be the first Mirror Vow between the two cities in 875 years.
• Direction: STABLE.

The other houses of the Nine. Farisel, Valcroix, Tésvol and Lalos are four of the Nine. The other five are old banking and merchant families the chronicles do not name. Four of the Nine owe Farisel about 3,000,000 leusores among them. Each keeps a counting-house in the Counting Isles, holds islands as wards and has a door in the Pogna.

Caelvenne's houses are CONTESTED. They have never been richer. Their largest debtor has been cut off, and their army leaves when the Iron Contract lapses in 1147.

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.

Makes and sells. Credit first. Then mirrors, glass and lenses, dyed silk, perfume, Ienvaune white, printing, clockwork weapons, jewelry and painting.

Buys. Aldmere grain, which is most of what it eats; Castavari red; coffee "at ruinous cost"; furs; sturgeon roe; pepper, saffron and cacao; Kaishoni silk; and Tharaxi spears.

Taxes and tolls. - The Land Gate twentieth at Claupiose and the Lake Gate twentieth at Solvaine: one part in twenty of the worth of everything that comes in, save Compact grain. Ienvaune and Larvir take the same at their gates. - The Silk Hall's fifth: one part in five laid on eastern silk, won by the Claupiose reelers in 1119. - A lake toll on every foreign hull on the Mirror, one flirone for each ton it can carry, taken at Solvaine and Larvir. The Drift has never paid it. - Ward dues: each house charges the islands it holds a flirone a month for each house and a leusore a year for each shop, for watchmen and lamps. - The Vaides' charge of one part in forty for striking coin. Indulgences and tithes go to the Church, not the state.

Direction. CONTESTED. Caelvenne has never been richer on paper, and nearly all of that paper is owed by people under strain.