Rule of the (Best) People

Writers note: I often use my short fiction to explore a larger world and this is broadly what this is - a narrative primer on the politics of a particular polity that will be prominent in a later novel of mine, as well as its major reform vs revolution theme. I think this short fiction still works as a story in itself, but is certainly focused on introducing this area of the world. So, prepare to read about the clashes of aristocracy (lit. ‘rule of the best’) and democracy (lit. ‘rule of the people’) and a whole lot of speeches. Also, I’ve stopped trying to put first-line indentation into a blogging platform that isn’t designed for them, as ugly as I think the end result looks. The story is about 5,000 words, should take 15-20 minutes to read: enjoy.

Rule of the (Best) People

The crowd roared, packed in so close that none could feel the cold the night provided. Exactly what they were shouting differed according to their political persuasions and ran the gambit from ‘Markamones bless you!’ to ‘string him up!’.

Finding herself more amenable to the latter group, Dora Maviyannis stood silently on the Grand Square, central feature of the People’s District, in the middle of the throng. Her face was stony. She had the sinking feeing they were about to lose.

The speaker left the raised wooden platform and melted into the crowd, clapping shoulders with some and avoiding elbows from others. Another rose to speak. No orator, his words were lost over the noise of the masses.

‘This is ridiculous. It’s offensive. We should be making progress. Instead, here we are merely trying to prevent the Senate from making things worse,’ said Daniele A’Themi from besides her.

It was a sentiment she had heard a lot from him over the past days and months. He was restless. Impatient. She shared his anger but could not see what complaining about their situation would do to help alleviate it. She told him as much. He was used to hearing it and scowled in silence. On her other side, Giustino Sarkis nudged her.

‘Don’t you go dampening our little firebrand,’ he said, loud enough for Daniele to hear and with his droll humour all over his words. ‘I need both of you perform your best tonight or what will I print tomorrow?’

‘How about “bastard senators think they can push the people to their breaking point and avoid the consequences”? Or a simple “rise up, people of Xhodesi, tear the Grand Temple to the ground, break its very foundations, and rid us of the tyranny of Senate and Tetrarchy”?’ Daniele mooted.

‘Well, Permissive Negligence or no, I don’t think I could avoid censorship with either of those.’ Giustino laughed, Daniele sighed.

‘Daniele, we must deal with the battle in front of us. Fight it. Win it. Then move on,’ Dora said.

‘Of course, Theodora,’ Daniele replied. He had a tendency to use her full name when he was annoyed at her, which was increasingly often.

The underwhelming speaker yielded the podium. Another man stood up and was met by cries of indignation. Konstantinos Soufos, the lord steward, whose law they were all there to debate and vote on. He wore the long, loose-fitting shirt common to men of all classes on the Islands, but made of Qenkani silk rather than cotton, with a tight-fitting azure waistcoat and the black sash of a senator. It was beyond unusual for a man of the Senate to request to speak at the Chamber of the People – and even more so for the lord steward, one of the four men who made up the ruling Tetrarchy.

Soufos raised his hand for quiet and, to Dora’s annoyance, received it.

‘It appears that many people have much to say about my legislation. Surely you all wish to hear what I myself would say in its defence?’

This was not his place. His place was on the floor of the Senate, in the Grand Temple of Erpia and Terpsi, debating in comfort with the ten-score senators. Sipping wine and basking in the glow of their venerable bloodlines. Descended from the old princes, many of them claimed, from before Markamones’ revolution and the declaration of the republic. As if that was something to be proud of.

His place was not amongst the thousands who turned up to the Chamber of the People, stamping their feet and raising their voices. Exposed to the elements as the hall for which their meetings were named, tucked inside the Temple of Markamones, was far too small to house all who wished to attend.

‘A vote!’ someone shouted. It was the popular magistrate, elected by the people to preside over their meetings. Dora was still unsure as to where his loyalties lay. ‘A vote on allowing his excellency, the lord steward, to speak before us.’

It would be a simple verbal vote. First, a chorus of ‘aye’s. Then, the same of ‘nay’s. The popular magistrate seemed to think it was enough, for he let Soufos take the podium.

‘People of Xhodesi,’ the lord steward began, ‘our great city, our grand republic, faces grave problems. My predecessor left our treasury empty and our debts high. Debts to the bankers of Thema, and of Thasionos, and of others besides. Debts that they, on behalf of their governments you can be sure, shall soon call in, with interest enough to bleed our city dry.

‘We must therefore be shrewd. Where should the people’s money be going? To our navy, and our army, to defend our island. And to our debts, to rid ourselves of this advantage that our enemies hold over us. Yet, at this present moment, where does that money go? The lord chancellor, my respected fellow tetrarch, uses the money that I, as lord steward, must pay out of our treasury to him, for whatever policies he sees fit, to buy up and forgive the debts of the poor at home.

‘A popular policy, so I hear, for who would not want their debts forgiven? What poor vagabond, having indebted themselves through their incompetence, or laziness, or disfavour from the gods, would not want all the consequences of their actions removed without a thought? But as a policy, it is an unwise one.

‘It is not the city’s fault that these people have indebted themselves and we do them no favours by rewarding them for such behaviour. The city is a mother to its people. What mother would not wish to keep her child from harm? But a good mother knows that children must sometimes be taught a lesson, be disciplined, for, in the long run, their own best interest.

‘And, more crucially, that money is needed. Not to coddle the indebted and ungrateful few but to save our republic from her own debts. If debts must be paid, and they must, pay our collective debts first – the debts that tie our city to the capricious whims of the Themans. Would any man here truly say that his own comforts are more important than those of our city? Are we Xhodesii not raised with the civic virtues of self-sacrifice and patriotism?

‘So, I have proposed a law, considered carefully and passed after sombre discussion by the honoured men of the Senate, to reduce the lord chancellor’s discretionary spending and ban this practice of buying up and forgiving citizens’ debts. This chamber, representing the people at large, was established and empowered by Markamones in his wisdom to overrule the decisions of the Senate when it sees fit. But that is a power best used seldomly and only after long discussion. It is, as a rule, best for our city to defer to the greater education and expertise represented in the Senate.

‘Therefore, I implore this chamber to decline to use its powers. To understand the greater public good being served and the great scrutiny already applied to my policy by my colleagues in the Senate. I hope that we may be guided by Markamones, founder of our republic, by the twins Erpia and Terpsi, for whom we owe the very existence of our city, and all the other gods, be they Archikoni, Musi, or Anevikoni. And I hope the correct decision is reached by this chamber.’

The crowd erupted once more, in applause and derision, and the Lord Steward stood there to take it all in. He smiled. Waved. As if only the praise reached his ears, and not the calls for his blood. He turned, narrowed his eyes, and hushed the crowd once more. Another man took to the platform, calling out:

‘If you would hear from my, as he put it, respected fellow tetrarch, the lord steward, then surely you would hear from me,’ said the lord chancellor. ‘After all, it was this institution that elected me, not the Senate, and to the people that I believe myself ultimately accountable.’

Yannis Koreion was, in Dora’s opinion, the best chance they had to remove the aristocratic elements so entrenched in the Xhodesii constitution and create a true citizen-republic. That had been said about many lord chancellors past – they were, after all, the only one of the four tetrarchs elected by the people. But Koreion had, since his election the previous year, embarked on a programme of genuine reform. Land reform. Debt forgiveness. The weakening of the guild system and of aristocratic privileges in the justice system.

Koreion was still of the Senatorial class himself – no-one not of that status and wealth could possibly afford to stand for election – but of their reformist faction. A faction that, if nudged in the right direction by the radical political clubs of Xhodesi, might well be their salvation. That was Dora’s opinion, anyway. Daniele was increasingly unconvinced.

The vote to let the lord chancellor speak was merely a formality. He indicated for Soufos to make way, remove himself from the platform, and began his own speech.

‘The Grand Republic is indeed under threat. But are its enemies external? Did we not defeat the Themans in the Gulf Sea War, just a decade and a half past? Could we not do so again, whenever we chose? Or does anyone here believe that the Themans, cowed under the rule of their Prince, could so easily defeat the free people of our republic?

‘No, our threats, I am afraid to say, my fellow citizens, come from inside our own house. Poverty is our enemy. Deprivation and ignorance. The divide between our richest and our poorest. Those are the evils we must fight and I do so with every instrument I have been endowed with by our constitution. Every instrument given by our founder Markomones, in his wisdom, to the men who occupy that office which I hold at this present moment.

‘At its best, the Senate represents the greatest amongst us. Men of education, of wealth, of power, of duty. Men who can guide our republic towards virtue and piety. But those men have allowed themselves to be guided not by the common good but by their own pockets. They balk at seeing the monies taken in by our government used to alleviate the situation of poor debtors – men who arrived at their position not through their own failings but through the whims and caprices of wealthy usurers. They do not see benefit to themselves in this policy. Instead, they see the interest lost and decry that more profit, more blood, could have been extracted from our most unfortunate fellow citizens.

‘But the Senate does not exist to represent merely the interests of the men who sit in it. And, when they forget that, this chamber exists to correct their failing. Hence, I urge you all to veto this new law passed by the Senate at the urging of my colleague the lord steward and free my hands to continue my most necessary work, guided by Markomones.’

Dora added her voice to those who praised the lord chancellor’s oration. Even Daniele seemed impressed and managed a small cheer. It was not an out-and-out call to democratise the Senate, but it was an open critique of that aristocratic institution and its sectarian interests. A clear division of Xhodesi into its two societies: the people and the Senatorial class. And a declaration of where the Lord Chancellor stood in that conflict.

Somewhere at the back of the crowd, the cheers turned to cries of protest. People pushed forwards or back. Dora asked her friends, each possessing half a foot in height on her, if they could see whatever the disturbance was.

‘Fighting,’ Daniele said, his voice grim.

‘Thugs, hired by the lord steward no doubt, are going at the crowd,’ Giustino added.

‘What are the guards doing?’ asked Dora.

‘Waiting.’

They were pushed forwards by those attempting to remove themselves from the growing fighting and pressed against those ahead of them. A few cried out. Some pushed back. Around them, members of Daniele’s political club and of hers shielded them from the worst of it. They had other clumps of supporters dotted around the crowd.

‘Now they’re going in,’ said Giustino. ‘Only because the lord steward’s men are losing.’

‘Not long past, we could have relied on the guard,’ Dora said. ‘They are supposed to answer to the lord chancellor, after all.’

‘Another example of the Lord Steward using the city’s treasury to enhance his own power. If only the guards were more loyal to the city than they were to their purses. When revolution comes, they’ll need to be replaced – by a true militia of the people, answerable only to the people.’

Dora looked at Daniele, eyebrow raised. His dreams of, as he put it, ‘true revolution’ seemed so ridiculous to her. They were not going to fight their fellow citizens but convince them. Xhodesi already allowed the people more power than any other state she could think of – they just had to remind the people of their strength and guide them in its use.

The jostling quieted. The lord steward took to the platform once more.

‘It seems disruptive and dangerous elements are attempting to influence this great institution,’ he declared. ‘To preserve itself from such undue coercion, I can only assume the Chamber shall vote to disperse this session.’

Outrage followed. Any measure not resolved at the end of a meeting was assumed to be settled in favour of the status quo. If they broke up the Chamber, they would not have another chance to veto the lord steward’s legislation.

Feet were stamped. Voices raised. But Dora was optimistic. The undecideds would never vote to end the session and, once they had sided against the lord steward once, perhaps they would continue to do so in the final vote.

The popular magistrate called for a vote and it was obvious to all that the Chamber had decided by overwhelming majority to remain in session. The cries of ‘nay’ drowned out the few meek and embarrassed ‘aye’s. Dora smiled. Rile the people and reap the consequences. She shared her hopes with her companions. Giustino agreed.

‘We just need a final couple of voices, perhaps saying some very inspiring things that could be published and sell a lot of copies, to convince them. Which of you wants to go first?’ Giustino asked.

Dora pushed her way through the crowd to the platform, assisted by some supporters. The thing itself was marble and rose to about head height, with stairs up two sides. It was the beating heart of Xhodesii democracy – from which speeches were made and results announced. Markomones himself had commissioned its erection in the early days of the republic.

Guards stood around its base. At the stairs, she announced herself and her intention to speak. They reminded her that it would require a vote. She pushed past them without an acknowledgement.

On the platform itself stood the popular magistrate and the lords chancellor and steward.

‘Miss Maviyannis,’ the popular magistrate said by way of greeting. She bowed her head to him. ‘The people have let you speak before, but never before so many.’

‘Put it to a vote. They’ve already let two men without a vote in the chamber speak.’

‘Men of the Senate. Tetrarchs no less.’

‘Precisely. Unlike them, I am not of the Senatorial class but of the people. My sex is denied a vote. Surely we are not also denied a voice. Let the people decide.’

He announced her and her intention to speak. As the crowd voted by mouth, the two tetrarchs made their exit by opposite ends of the platform. The vote was close but, in such cases, the popular magistrate was supposed to err on the side of allowing more debate.

He turned and looked her up and down. After an age, he stepped aside and indicated for her to take his place. She had spoken often in front of a few hundred at the various political clubs and in debates of the Chamber of the People, though only when there were few enough in attendance that they actual fit in the hall after which the Chamber was named.

The Grand Square lived up to its name. It was a huge thing, surrounded by the largest and most important buildings in the city. The Temple of Markomones on one side, which stared over the crowd at the Grand Temple of Erpia and Tepsi. On the other two sides stood, on the one, the Temple of Nyxos and House of Trade and, on the other, the Grand People’s Library, one of the greatest collections of knowledge anywhere in the world.

Filling up the space between them, all around her, were thousands upon thousands. So many that most would not hear her words until they were printed the following day, but still they waited. Dora smiled and offered a small prayer to Markomones before she began.

‘The Lord Chancellor speaks true, my friends. He points out that which some would rather forget: that poverty stalks our people. A poverty created not through any fault of our own, but engineered by those who would profit from it. Are we not a centre of trade and manufacture? A city of great industry and prosperity? Yet, where is that prosperity? I do not see it in the tenements or the dockside. Nor on the markets, where the people must spend their stagnant wages on ever more expensive necessities.

‘Where, then, is that prosperity? I shall answer you. It is in the palatial mansions of the senators and the merchants on the Board of Trade. They who deprive the people of the prosperity created by the people and then force them into debt just to survive.

‘And why not? Who is to stop them? Afterall, is it not true that the Senate appoints the lord steward and lord ambassador? And that the Board of Trade appoints the lord merchant? Three of our four rulers are controlled by them, so why should they not rule for themselves instead of for the people?

‘So yes, we must rein in their excesses. I commend the lord chancellor, the only tetrarch who owes his loyalty to the people, for his endeavours. His attempts to alleviate our city’s unjust poverty through the forgiveness of debts and other policies besides. Indeed, I call on him to go further. Could we not lower tariffs on foodstuffs, if the lord merchant could be convinced not to tax the bread out of our mouths? Could we not abolish the poll tax and instead raise taxes on land and dividends, if the lord steward could be convinced not to take from the people and give to his friends?

‘But no, they will not be convinced. So we must go beyond mere talk of policy and discuss our very constitution. Should not all of our rulers be elected by the people, as the lord chancellor is? Should not even the senators themselves be elected, rather than passing down the privilege of their seats to their descendants through their Senatorial writs? Abolish the aristocracy, finish the work Markomones started, and create a true democracy in our great republic!’

The usual shouting, both in favour and against the speech, followed. A few pierced through the rest.

‘And what, votes for women? I heard that’s what you want!’ one came.

‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘Are we to be kept in tyranny while the men of our city are freed? Do we republican women no raise the next generation of republican children? Do we not serve our city through our labour and passions just as much as any man amongst us?’

‘That’s enough, Miss Maviyannis,’ said the popular magistrate behind her. ‘You’ve finished your speech and have no permission to begin another.’

Dora smarted but refrained from continuing. She had adapted those last lines from a speech she had given to her political club just a week prior. It was a good speech; showed all the hypocrisy of any who called themselves radical yet extended justice to but half the population. She would give it again another time.

The crowd were still bellowing as she descended from the platform. As she reached the bottom, she was taken aback by the vitriol of a few men around her. The lord steward’s men, perhaps. Supporters of Daniele and herself, those who had escorted her, were not far away and fought their way towards her. Before they reached her, a hand shot out and struck her in the temple, knocking her back.

She fell against the guards at the base of the platform, who let her fall to the floor. She felt a kick against her arm and clutched it to her chest. Another took her in the back.

A fight broke out above her. Men shouted and cursed and hit and fell. One spat on her before he was dragged away. Then, she was being hoisted up. She cringed away and struck out towards whoever had grabbed her, but it was Daniele. They were surrounded by their own supporters. Her assailants had been pushed back and disappeared into the crowd.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘In pain.’ She used a sleeve to wipe away the saliva in her hair and looked at it in disgust. ‘Were they hired?’

‘Who knows. Probably. Bastards.’

Her friend helped straighten her clothes and, when she shuddered at his touch, stopped and offered her a handkerchief. She took it, wiped the rest of the spit and dirt off, and offered it back to him. He looked at it, shrugged, and let it drop to the floor. Sometimes she forgot that he had a tender side – he hid it so often.

‘My turn,’ he said with a glint in his eye. He mounted the steps.

There was no question as to whether Daniele would be allowed to speak. Unlike those too rich, too poor, too foreign, or too female to be allowed a say in the Chamber of the People, he himself had a vote and the right to speak that went along with it.

There was some small discussion with the popular magistrate. The man knew Daniele well. Who didn’t? A hero of the Gulf Sea War who had become the leading, and most extreme, voice for a radical democratisation of Xhodesi – and every other state, for that matter. Whether hated or loved, everyone had an opinion on the man and everyone held that opinion fiercely. To most, her friend was not a man at all but a symbol.

‘My fellow citizens. Our republic’s threats are greater than either the lords chancellor or steward know. They go beyond finance and debts and to the very core of our constitution. Must I truly argue against the lord steward’s measure? When we can already see, all of us who recognise the general good of the people, the necessity of debt forgiveness? No, I shall not speak on that, but on our greater threats. The threats of aristocracy and tyranny that strangle our constitution and thwart the vision of our founder.

‘We Xhodesii are the children of revolution. Do we not all offer worship to the deified leader of our first revolt? Revolution is in our histories and our prayers and our blood. It is who we are and what sets us apart.

‘So why do so many now fear revolution? I tell you that they do not! They could not! The people of our city recognise revolution as the vanguard of liberty, equality, democracy. Of food on our plates, land of our own, and the promotion of our common good.

‘No, only few fear revolution, and attempt to spread this fear to the people. And those few should fear revolution, for it is they who would be cast down and replaced by a government of the people, elected by the people, and working for the people. It is their property that would be redistributed and their power that would be cowed.

‘Citizens, our constitution has been hijacked! It has been stolen from us and we must take it back – by whatever means are necessary. For revolution can come in many forms. It can be slow or fast, bloodless or bloody, but it must be total.

‘Total as was Markomones’ revolution when he cast down our prince and created the triumvirate. Since that great day, the constitution he left us has been corrupted. The Senate was not democratised but kept an aristocratic hangover from the days of the principality. The merchant class were given their own man on our ruling council, turning triumvirate into tetrarchy and reducing still further the power of the republic’s true children – the people.

‘Guided by Markomones, we must continue his work with revolution ennewed. A permanent, eternal revolution. One never stolen from the people by those who wish to set themselves up as princes in all but name.

‘I tell you, my friends: that revolution is coming. Every crime of the Senate against the people only hastens its arrival. So take heart. Our present bondage is temporary. Our future liberation eternal. For liberty, land, equality, and justice! Up the republic! Up the revolution!’

However loud the crowds had been before, it was nothing against their reaction to Daniele’s speech. Both adoration and outrage reached new heights.

Giustino had taken a place by Dora’s side as the speech progressed.

‘He’s something else,’ he said once it was over, his words almost snatched away by the general noise around them.

‘He’s going to get us all killed,’ Dora replied. ‘We need Cycer to come and talk some sense into him – apparently my attempts aren’t working.

‘He’s tried. The Movement is heading towards a split if Daniele cannot rein himself in.’

‘It can’t. What position would that put us in? Would we have to leave Daniele’s club? Run away to Lydesis and hide behind Cycer? Or would we stay and support Daniele as he hurtles towards our destruction?’

‘I’m just a printer, Dora. Daniele’s words of revolution sell well. Cycer’s essays and treatises on reform and pragmatism, less so. My head belongs to Cycer. My heart, and perhaps my purse too, to Daniele.’

‘Let us hope a schism is avoided then. I am not sure your head could survive separated from your heart, or vice versa, nor either without your purse.’

The crowd’s shouts turned to violence. Dora could see and feel it all around her. At the edges of the throng, Giustino reported skirmishes between their men and the lord steward’s, and around the platform too.

The guards marched in. They were careful to arrest and drag away only those who were loyal to Daniele and Dora and the other radical leaders. Whole sections of the crowd, whether they were fighting or not, were beaten and people dragged away seemingly at random. Giustino provided a running commentary of the horror. All Dora could do was try her best to stay on her feet as people pushed and shoved all around them.

For the guards to be so heavy-handed, and so partial too, was unheard of. The Chamber was sacred, its meetings sacrosanct. Yet the guards appeared to be taking away as many as they could who they thought would vote against the lord steward. Dora’s heart and her hope dropped.

She saw Daniele attempt to speak from the podium, but his words could not reach her and he was escorted off by the guards. They released him – arresting the great Daniele, surely even they recognised, was a sure-fire way to start a riot – and he returned to them, pushing through the crowd.

‘Fight back!’ he shouted. ‘Rally and fight back!’

Upon reaching them, he dropped his voice.

‘Is this the death of our democracy? May the tetrarchs merely decide to send in the guards to swing the vote in their favour? Is this what we have come to?’

‘We could still win. Let it calm down. The people will be outraged and join us against tyranny,’ said Dora.

‘Or they will be intimidated and vote how their masters tell them. No, I will not wait to watch this farce play out.’

Disgust on his face, he stormed off through the crowd.

After a time, it did calm down. The atmosphere was different. Fearful. The vote was called. A vote on legislation was not made vocally, but through the casting of beads. Each man belonging to the franchise would go up to the platform, be given a wooden bead, and discretely place it in one of two great containers. They went up dozens at a time. Once they had casted their vote, they were anointed by a priest of Markomones with a thick paste on the back of their hand. It stained the skin and both signified their participation in the great system of democracy and prevented them from going back to cast a second vote.

It took more than an hour for all who could to cast their votes. Even longer to count and recount the beads, overseen by the popular magistrate. They were placed in hollowed out rods that held exactly a hundred each. The eventual vote would be given in the number of rods for and the number of rods against.

The longer it went on, the less confidence Dora had. The whole process felt sham. Going through the motions of democracy when anyone could see the reality of what was happening. Finally, the result was announced, well past midnight. The Chamber had narrowly voted not to veto the lord steward’s law. They had lost. Perhaps Daniele was right.