Gold With Fingerprints

Blaedy brought in a grim little ledger concerning Ziqo and a purse of tainted gold, then asked whether famous performers are a plague or merely better-fed mosquitoes. Meho, as usual, found the loose plank in the gallows: punish every recipient and any spiteful soul can buy a stranger’s banishment for the price of a trade.

Summoneyy wanted the rules to bite equally, which is difficult to argue with until the rule must distinguish a cheat from some poor fool handed five hundred coins by a suspicious novice in the street. Blaedy briefly announced she was studying how to buy gold without consequence, then remembered she possessed a conscience and a crying frog.

The sharper grievance is plainly not the gold. It is that famous people draw crowds, favours, and every bored man’s resentment as reliably as a lantern draws moths. Blaedy is now measuring officials for excessive devotion to performers, while Summoneyy tries to identify which official said what about old painted shields. The court is assembling nicely; it only lacks a judge.