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For the rulers of men, the congregations of Power that took place could not be called anything other than a Thing.

For the servants of the gods, events where too much authority congregated together and where simple silent agreement could change the way the island worshipped had to be called a Meet.

Either could be summoned, either could be called, but where citizens, landlords and politicians needed to watch the times and seasons to effect the ruling of the land, the priesthood had the duty and privilege to create the schedules that everyone else led themselves by. So it was, traditions emerged to allow everyone to put time aside to allow attendance of Things to take place at specific times.

While Meets still remained in the realm of need and happenstance.

Maybe the day when one of the Temples took precedence over the others was not far and Parsimoni, too, would have its religious Elders bound by the seasons and time. But right now was the time when Power pooled became greater than the individual parts, but Authority dispersed remained Authority in kind.

That is, so long as people kept which was which in mind.

Throughout the years, the citizens who owned lands, riches and slaves were disproportionally part of the Nori diaspora that had made peace with the Island at a time before recollection. That was not to say there were no Nori poor nor, indeed, Nori slaves. Nor that there weren’t rich Parsemoni bloodlines who had a greater say. But the difference had existed for so long that it needed help to be even kept alive these days.

Some already used the word “Nori” to just mean rich people instead of descendants of the old raiders. And most Nori aristoi simply called themselves “Parsimoni” when they had to call themselves anything at all: it was the name of the island and they were part of its rulers.

The Tritos Thing, then, was a meeting of the leading citizens to decide upon policy, upon laws, upon customs and upon officials.

So in many ways, regardless of who their ancestors were, they were all Parsimoni and they were all Nori today.

The place the Thing traditionally took place in was an old central plaza now in the eastern part of the city. It used to be in it’s middle, but Tritos had long outgrown the geographical features of that time. However, just as then, today there were chairs, servants, and people who made a wide circle for a few men to stand in and talk.

The plaza was cobbled with stone and, although it was frequently used as a forum, there were no houses nearby. By custom and law, only temporary tents and stables could occupy this flat stretch located between two small but wide hills.

And the people who used it to sell and hawk their wares could always just be moved aside.

Currently, this was the second day of the Thing and so was much less crowded than the first day.

It was three days after Alessia went out with her mom. The celebration to the Marin had ended the day afterward and the Thing called a foreday after. Because tradition held Things after celebrations, the arrival of Alessia’s mother always provided an opportunity to have one. Rain could delay it a couple of days, if the weather and the gods did not agree with the timing. The death of a great hero or persona could waylay it a couple more, if Tragedy were in everyone’s minds.

But whether wet or in a mourner’s black, the Thing would meet in this square and in this plaza. People would be voted into and out of office. The aristoi would all have things to say, and the politicians among them even more. Important things would be announced and approaches to resolving matters would discarded or embraced.

A Thing could, sometimes, take a single day. In truly tumultuous years, it could take a week. But regardless of how long it took, people would meet until all issues were settled.

…or at least all the ones that could not be waylaid.

On the first day, the public offices were voted on and the not-so-public ones were assigned.

Many of the citizens that came to vote yesterday were not here today. Despite it being a bright and sunny day, many did not care to hear the going-ons of their city. At least not from its governing side.

Alessia’s father was made Anax yesterday, just like he had been since Alessia could remember anything. It was not a public office but, rather, one assigned on a joint vote by the various councilmen and councilwomen elected by the public vote. And yet it was essentially a council position with ultimate power over the going ons of the temples and the various religions in Tritos.

She and her mother had been for that, of course, as dreadfully and mind-numbing boring it all was. They had sat under the shade of tents with servants blowing wind their way for hours just so they could stand up and applaud for a foregone conclusion.

About the only thing that made her smile genuine was that the Elders were there too, watching her father figuratively soak a rag in alcohol.

Today he would provide the spark.

“I surrender the floor to the Anax,” one of the councilmen talking about the rising price of slaves said and nodded towards him.

“Thank you, councilman, I will try and make this brief,” her father got up from where he had been sitting with Alessia and her mother and gave them a nod. His face was so serious that everyone there shared a laugh: it was nothing short of a blatant lie for her father never made things short.

This was also the first time he had acknowledged her presence since Alessia started playing the role of dutiful daughter again. But then, that at least she didn’t mind; it allowed her to be with her mom for just that moment longer. To her, it just so happened that having to ignore an unfinished fight and all the awkwardness that came with it was the price that it came with.

They were already on the third hour of the Thing and the servants were working hard to keep the steady stream of food and wine coming to their employers. Alessia knew that some people lived for these sorts of meetings, but save for the rare spots of tension there was little to keep the whole affair from being dreadfully boring. But then, as a priestess-to-be, what concerned her would be talked about in a Meet not in here.

The sun was scorching today but still her father stepped into the light. He walked towards the middle as if he were dragging the whole of his office behind his back. He had his priestly robes on, lest people forget what he was supposed to be, but the man standing here was a servant of the people.

And it was that, precisely, that was the problem.

“Good citizens of Tritos and guests,” her father nodded around him and at the visiting Elders. The Head Priests acknowledged the greeting but did not return it in kind; something that Alessia was happy to note her father didn’t notice, “Thank you for lending me your ear. The office of Anax is not something I can claim ever gets any easier, and the prosperity that we’ve enjoyed has only added to that weight.”

“The priesthood of the Anila constantly keep trying to make roads here,” he said, giving the audience time to grumble, “And many new gods have shrines erected in secret, away from the tax of our divines or the piety duties that people flocking to Tritos need to pay.”

“Yet our temples only get bigger,” he boasted without the hint of a smile, “Yet visitors and foreigners only increased their demand of the favor of our gods.”

“Success, as it turns out, is a hard burden to bear,” he nodded and gave the people all over the Thing to react.

And, indeed, hard rows of claps, clamor, and even whistling briefly drowned the plaza.

“So, if nobody has questions, I will now get into the minutia of things,” Alessia’s dad went on as if he didn’t expect it. There was a certain tradition to these presentations and speeches. A certain expectation of how it should be. An orator was supposed to allow the council, or the audience if he let them, question him at certain intervals.

Alessia’s father had always allowed it as he jumped from subject to subject. It was rare, however, for someone to take him up on it at just the intro of it.

And yet, Elder Eulalia had weakly gotten up and trembled momentarily before he stabilized himself with his staff. There were a couple of strains of thoughts as to how these questions should be announced, but simply getting up wasn’t particularly disruptive.

All the same, Alessia’s father was looking at his religious peer with confusion, “Elder Eulalia, was there something unclear about what I said? I promise, if you’ll just let me speak, I’ll eventually get through everything.”

“Why yes, Neoklis,” the Elder replied, “There is something I felt compelled to ask. As you know, I am just a visitor to Tritos and cities this big are oft hard for me to navigate. So I thank the council for humoring the old me for a bit, but I think there are things your presentation won’t answer.”

Murmurs started to spread around: did not the Elders talk to each other? Why would he ask this here and not in one of their private conversations? The obvious answer was that the Elder wanted this made public, yet Neoklis was supposed to get along with all the other Head Priests. Did they have a fight then? Or what was this?

All these questions must have gone through her father’s very head as he frowned, “And I would be glad to answer, yet how can you know that I won’t touch on it without hearing what I have to say first?”

“Certainly, it’s not impossible,” the old man finally allowed, “But allow me to satisfy this curiosity of mine by asking anyway. If you were going to talk about it, I’ll apologize and interrupt you no more.”

Her father looked flat-footed, completely unaware of what he could have done to invite this public inquiry. But he was an old hand at politics, and only someone who knew him like Alessia could see how unquieted he was starting to become, “Ask then, Elder Eulalia.”

“Why haven’t you been sending us your Torch Bearers,” the Head Priest from the western parts of Parsimoni asked and people, for one single golden second, all shut up.

“What do you mean?” Alessia’s father gave voice to the same question going through the heads of everyone in the Thing. Though for him, it wasn’t confusion.

It was shock.

“My daughter trained with every single one of you,” nonetheless, Neoklis found the grit to reply, “Lighted every single one of your Torches and is, even now, about to finish her journey. How can you stand there and accuse me of holding anything from all other holies!?”

The outrage was real and very well articulated. It made the crowd of citizens begin to stir as they all quickly slid into Alessia’s father’s side.

Alessia, meanwhile, bitterly noted that the one time he had something good to say about her was when it was helping him.

“Your daughter-” Elder Eulalia clicked his tongue, “-is a fantastic example of what a priestess should be and one I will be glad to call ‘holy’ someday.”

“Yet you said it yourself, didn’t you?” the old priest gestured at the Anax, “Tritos is a bustling city. Tritos has been blessed with success!”

“And not just for this past year, but every single one going on for decades!” the old man announced and Alessia felt a thrill of satisfaction at having provided this information, “Yet, the only Torch Bearer from Tritos that’s familiar with our rites and that’s going to see anointment in this year is going to be your daughter, Neoklis!”

“Tritos…has plenty of Torch Bearers, Eulalia,” Alessia’s father growled back.

“I thought it might be because the material success of this city was proving a hard obstacle for the priestly families to overcome,” the Elder now ignored her father’s remark, a light breech of etiquette only ignored because of how old he was, “Yet, were that the case, were Tritos with its huge amount of Citizens and slaves not well served by those capable of invoking the gods, how would you still be Anax from year to year? How would the good citizens of this city allow themselves to be poorly served by a Head Priest who couldn’t maintain a Torch lid for them?”

“The answer is that they wouldn’t and you couldn’t,” Eulalia did not give Alessia’s father the opportunity to respond, “They DO have the Torch Bearers needed to sacrifice and beg for them”

“And that means you have conspired against the Parsimoni priesthood, Neoklis,” the old man said, looking a bit tired, “You are making a weave of your own godly servants and the rest of us? We are not in it.”

The only reason why the old Nori had to make concessions to the Parsimoni was because of the enduring quality of their unity. Because, without the priesthood also agreeing to their rulership, the raiders would have been without the sort of priest that could call miracles in a land that resented them.

And it had been the reason why the Anilan priesthoods had not been able to clasp any of their authority here, despite having decades to try.

It was not a light accusation and made the members of the Tritos Thing look uneasy.

“How dare you?” her father growled before the tide could turn against him. Before the Citizens, too, could start questioning him, “Do you think that is something I could hide?”

“How many Torch Bearers did you fail to see when you went to my temples?” Neoklis pointed at Eulalia, “Did you not stumble upon priests capable of casting miracles?”

“In all the years that you have visited, did you never talk with the priests servicing our temples?” Neoklis demanded, “Did you never talk with our aristoi? With our citizens or, if you doubted even them, our slaves?”

“How dare you accuse us of that?” Alessia’s father loudly said and made the Tritos Citizens nod to themselves.

“Ah, yes” Elder Dina decided to stand up and talk, “The aritoi, the citizens and the slaves. How could they not notice?”

“Elder Zina?” Alessia’s father gasped, surprised.

“The bloodline of our holies has mixed into the Nori for many generations now,” she said, “Something that is fine and proper, yes, but at what point does an aristoi who can light Torches stop being an aristoi and start being a priest?”

“How many Nobles in Tritos don’t have to come to the Temples and, instead, simply attend to their family shrines?” the female Elder asked quietly enough that people had to lean forward to catch that.

And that was the other blow that Alessia thought might hit well.

Because now her father wasn’t just being accused of being unfaithful, but of stealing from the Temples as well in the way that mattered the most: Gold and jewels were valuable, but god speakers were even rarer than that. Alessia’s father was, in essence, embezzling Authority away from the Temples and Parsimoni Priesthood.

It wasn’t like her father had made a conscious decision to have this happen and it wasn’t like there was a whole host of miracle workers servicing every Noble family under wraps. But there WERE aristoi daughters and sons who could light the odd Torch and perform specific callings. Not enough to be a Torch Bearer, in truth.

But enough to account for the strange lack of Torch Bearers in Tritian Temples.

This was why her father had been Anax for so long; because he had turned a blind eye to this pecularity for so long.

But where the Elders erred, and where her Father had no hope of convincing otherwise, was that this wasn’t deliberate. Alessia knew that her father regarded the whole thing as an inconsequential annoyance that he could resolve any time he chose.

And maybe he was right.

But the thing was that he, unlike Alessia, had not left Tritos for so long that at some point along the way he had forgotten how the rest of the island was.

The resources that Tritos now had really were beyond Elder Zina and Eulalia’s reckoning, so the numbers quickly added up.

A quick conversation could have cleared up all of that of course.

But, and here Alessia struggled to contain her excitment, she well knew how her father was.

Her father really did not respond well to criticism, veiled or otherwise.

Necessary or not.

If her father really WAS trying to make a parallel priesthood to isolate himself from the authority the Elders communally had on the rest of the island, well, they would be giving him advance warning that they had caught him in the act if they talked about it.

And if he wasn’t, he would essentially respond the same way as if he were.

“You are speaking nonsense!” one of the aristoi there spoke up, “We are not trying to usurp the priesthood. There’s nothing sane about that!”

“Do you deny that there aren’t people capable of lighting Fires in your houses?” Elder Zina demanded, “That your shrine has never known their benefit?”

“That’s-” the man tried to reply but trailed off as the old Priest stared him in the eye.

“Enough!” Alessia’s father seemed to get over the shock of being put on the spot, “Know that, though you be guests, and so entitled to sacred hospitality, you are overstepping far into Tritos matters, Elders.”

“We can leave the city right away, if you like, Neoklis,” Elder Eulalia offered, “So as to not bother our hosts, we can simply take this up with the other Elders in the other cities and have this conversation again on another time with everyone else so congregated.”

Tritos was, in all probability, the biggest and richest city in the whole island. Trito was not, however, so strong and influential that it could easily and needlessly come into conflict with all the other Parsimoni polys.

Worried murmurs filled the air and, all of a sudden, Alessia’s father seemed to realize how expendable an Anax truly was when the whole city was what was at stake.

“Ridiculous, you would bring on that evil when we can simply resolve things right here and right now?” Neoklis tilted his head up, “I trust you didn’t speak now just so that you could make vile threats at the whole of Tritos. Speak then, what do you want done about your inane accusations?”

“Yeah, what do you want us to do about it?” a man in the throng of nobles asked.

“What ridiculous dreg,” another complained

“Show them whatever they want, Anax! We’ve done nothing wrong!” one even yelled above the crowd.

“The temple,” Elder Zina said as if she had been waiting for this, “And the Fire. I trust you can still lit a Torch, yes?”

“You want me to perform a miracle?” Neoklis blinked.

“We want to ask questions,” Elder Eulalia corrected him, “We want you to perform a summoning.”

Neoklis opened his mouth. Moisture and breath came out as he struggled to articulate his response.

“The gods don’t answer to us,” he settled on, “Only we to them. Demanding answers from them is insulting! It’s sacrilege! It’s-”

“-only done when the need is greater than the offense it might give,” Eulalia finished for him, “If you like, I can perform the summoning instead. Tritos isn’t my city and your temples aren’t my temples, but I still well remember how the rites go.”

“No…no,” Alessia’s father replied, “I’ll….I’ll do it.”

“However, the Thing is still ongoing,” he said, “Surely this can wait until the dignity of the Council isn’t at stake anymore?”

“Brother and sisters-” Eulalia loudly asked the Citizens and aristoi gathered there, “Do we have your permission to put a break to the Thing while we go and resolve this holy issue?”

Sudden calls for votes were not altogether unheard of for the Things in Parsimoni. However, this might have been a first.

Slowly, men and women started getting up with one of their arms high in the air.

Eventually, almost all of the plaza were full of people assenting to the request.

“Well,” Elder Zina told Alessia’s father, “It seems the will of the people has spoken.”

“Lead the way, Anax. This is your city and it would be rude to lead in your temple.”