“How many members are there, Your Decency?” Donald asked.
“Only about two hundred now. Big lands eat small lands, sometimes with consent, sometimes without. Big lands can afford more safety features than small lands. That’s just life. Our Lands of Krossington are about three thousand square miles, with some 140 miles of land frontier.” Donald was stunned to be passed such privileged information. He sensed that TK was going to make him an important offer, which would have happened two weeks ago but for the crash. “We pay ten thousand ounces of gold annually to come here—you really have to enjoy politics to stump up a pile like that.”
An elderly, stern-faced man wearing a black wig stepped up on a kind of sack at the top of the Lords Chamber, not ten feet from where TK and Donald sat. This man was known as the Speaker. He presided over the Assembly and resolved questions of protocol.
“Order! The Assembly is now in session.”
“Hear! Hear!” chorused the members.
“Before the normal work commences, it will first be necessary to resolve a grievance between two clans. On 5th October last, a flying boat operated by the Krossington clan injured the sovereignty of the Dasti-Jones clan under our laws of Naclaski and Frite. I now offer Member His Decency the Honourable Sovereign Frederick Arthur Ludwig Sergey Dasti-Jones, Lord of the Isle of Thanet, Canterbury, Dover, Hastings, Maidstone and lands in between to state his terms.”
TK had already explained to Donald that this was a formality and would not be dangerous. The Dasti-Jones clan was allied to the Krossington clan. Frederick Dasti-Jones stood propped on his stick and stated that acceptable terms had been agreed and the Canterbury Assembly had voted the matter settled.
“I now ask the offender to speak,” the Speaker said. “Member His Decency the Honourable Sovereign Thomas Thompson Krossington, Lord of the North Downs and the South Downs, of Southampton and Portsmouth, the Isle of Purbeck, Reigate and lands in between will establish his position.”
This was not a formality. It could become dangerous. TK was sweating and the hand holding his speech trembled for the first few seconds until he calmed himself. He began with an elegant resumé of the evolution of the laws of Naclaski and Frite, how they had come to express the core values of the new sovereign society, one that demanded no less than the absolute right to private air all the way to outer space. After the Sack of Oxford in 2073, radio waves were also banned from private air after years of debate over the technical difficulties and security implications. By way of light relief, he inserted an anecdote about one clan—now extinct—which had unsuccessfully taken a glory trust to the Land Court for failing to exclude cosmic radiation. The glory trust had successfully argued that excluding sunlight from a client’s land was neither desirable nor feasible.
Donald noticed an obvious partisanship across the Assembly between those who laughed with an artificial gusto and those whose faces remained cast in stone.
TK closed in on his topic with a description of the last flight, including some rather pedantic technical details about the maintenance records for the navigation instruments. He explained the training and service records of all four crewmen and emphasised that the Krossington clan sustained a low rate of offences compared to other sovereign clans. He concluded the disaster was caused by a freshening of the eastern wind leading to error in dead-reckoning navigation. He finished by praising the effectiveness of Battery George’s gunners in their enforcement of the Naclaski law.
The Speaker thanked His Decency and called upon common guest Donald Bartleigh Aldingford to support.
Donald was of course used to public speaking and in court was agile like a swift, but that was after long preparation. Today TK had given him a speech, which he had barely glanced at before being led to the Lords Chamber. Now he was faced with more than two hundred stern and in many cases downright hostile listeners who viewed him with contempt as a common servant.
He read it evenly and with increasing animation, feeling his old debating technique coming back. The speech was only a few hundred words, explaining that he had been ordered to take the flight by His Decency Tom Krossington and he was travelling under Krossington contract. He extended his gratitude for having been treated in accordance with the law of Frite and thanked the Dasti-Jones clan for having agreed terms quickly. After which trial, he was glad to sit down. TK patted him on the sleeve and murmured:
“Excellent. Well done. Now comes the fun.”
To begin with, Donald could not make head or tail of what was going on. Members waved white batons in the air, were selected by the Speaker, stood to pontificate over some long-standing grievance against another clan, only to be countered by contrary claims from that clan. It was like a primary school class. Gradually Donald realised there was a pattern to the claims. Enemies of the Krossingtons tried to discredit the ‘excuses’ for the offence, whilst allies attacked those enemies on the basis of other Naclaski offences, some dating back more than thirty years. The ‘claimed’ strengthening of the eastern wind was the point most wrangled over. The weather record came from a station within the Lands of Dasti-Jones, the implication being the clan had fabricated the evidence to defend their allies, the Krossingtons. However, in the end nothing came of the squabble. The Speaker called on the Assembly to vote on whether to accept TK’s position. The ‘ayes’ had it by too clear a margin to warrant a count.
“Good,” TK said. “Our diplomats had to do a little work in the background to ensure that result.”
“What happens if a flying boat gets shot down by an enemy?”
“Don’t even ask.
