It pains Lexi to think of him then, remembering his words and his easy, reassuring smile. She longs for both every moment of every day. It pains her to force those images and the feelings they cause into the farthest corners of her mind so that she may focus on the business at hand.

The petitioners’ plateau levels off a dozen steps from the chamber entrance. Its surface shines like glass reflecting some invisible jade pool, a natural feature of the stone when it is polished deep and rigorously enough. There are no seats or other furnishings for petitioners, only perfect painted blue circles in the center of the space, perfect prompts for petitioners to stand.

Order and deliberation in all things, that is the Crachian way.

The three members of the Gen Franchise Council, on the other hand, are seated on the next plateau; a good two dozen steps up from those blue circles. The thin oval backs of their naturally carved and shaped chairs rise high above their heads. They each wear Spectrum tunics, the cuffs of their sleeves draped in crisp triangles. The runic pin representing their individual kith-kinship is worn in the corner of the right cuff, the pin representing their Gen attached to the left.

Senior Councilman Stru is a hairless, ancient thing. Every inch of his flesh seems to be straining toward the floor. He sags in the center of the trio. To his right is Councilwoman Burr, the youngest of the three by a good two decades, a sharp-eyed, ambitious upstart with close-cropped dark hair and impatient fingers that quietly punish the armrests of her seat. To Stru’s left is Councilman Jochi, a short, cherubic man with a thin mustache and a perpetually welcoming expression on his impossibly round face.

The fourth occupant of the Council’s plateau is a state scribe, a young scholar standing behind a lectern upon which rests a tome thicker than three battle shields. The scribe attends it dutifully and intently with quill in hand.

Gens are the foundation of Crache. They began with a simple, revolutionary idea: that any group of people, regardless of birth or social standing, could come together to serve a function for the greater good of the nation. It began with humble kith-kins joining together and pooling what resources they had to create something larger than the sum of their parts in order to produce a good or a service that would be useful to the community. In recognition and as reward for this, all of that Gen’s needs, be it food or clothing or shelter, were provided for from the coffers and larders of Crache itself, coffers filled by heavily taxing non-Gen merchants and collecting from Gens who produced hard revenue, and by the spoils of war efforts that seemed to press ever forward without end.