The United Councils had sat long past the customary hour for dinner, dealing with nothing interesting or important – instead floundering in details and semantics under the mistaken impression they were sacrificing their time and talents for the good of their respective regions and organizations.
The sour smell of hollow stomachs and sweaty buttocks pervaded the room, which had large cathedral windows that had been painted shut years ago so that fresh air would never be allowed to revivify the counselors and merchants and captains and burblers who gravely sat through tedious redundancies.
Merdin Jernagin, the current Grand Master of the Merchant’s Guild, finally raised his well-scrubbed fist and brought it crashing down on a stack of reports detailing the annual production of wool and suet in West Knitting.
“I want my dinner, you peahead!” he roared at Darius Bumpity.
Bumpity, a finicky clerk and functionary on a very limiting salary, dropped his wordy report detailing the resurgence of beards among elderly men to glare at Jernagin with enough sharpness to dice granite. Gathering his scattered papers together in a tidy rectangle, he sat down on the edge of his chair with a hiss of disapproval he mistakenly thought was inaudible.
“By the guts of my aunt Gertrude, I am not going to perish from starvation while you throw pebbles at us! Beards, indeed! I move we adjourn this meeting until such a time as someone has something of importance to communicate instead of all this rish-rash of a nothing that constitutes, that constitutes . . . that frustrates the very reason for this Council of Councils to exist, namely . . . “
Here Jernigan ran out of steam and vocabulary; he resorted instead to glaring silently at those around the dark, archaic, table, as if daring them to step outside to settle things with battle axes.
Master Jernigan’s secretary, a thin fellow who liked to suck on the tip of the long brown feather that curved out of his velvet cap, hurriedly came up to him with a whispered suggestion.
“Ah yes, thank you, Fundling, thank you. I have an important matter to bring before this Council myself! But not before I’ve had my dinner and a flagon of mead
and a burr nut tart and then a good night’s sleep. I move we adjourn until tomorrow morning at nine, and don’t say another word, you creeping charlie!”
This last was directed at Darius Bumpity. Bumpity’s eyes narrowed, which caused his sharp, feral, nose to bend upward unattractively. But he was a clerk and a functionary on a very humble salary, so he held his peace.
Master Jernigan was extremely pleased with himself as he hefted his considerable girth from the antique blackwood table – a table with cunning scrollwork that was centuries old, and which occasionally caught at the blouses and tunics of those that sat at it to decide on policies and procedures for the Council Lands. There was a thin ripping sound and Master Jernigan’s tunic, of a deep, rich purple with seed pearls around the hem, was rent up his ample belly.
“May the Black Pit take it!” he exclaimed, then willfully wrapped his blue cape around himself to conceal the breach. Nothing was going to stop him from his dinner, especially not an inanimate object that ought to have been kindling for a roaring fire long before.
“Franklin, get a seamstress to my room while I’m dining to fix this thing!” he instructed his feather-chewing secretary, whose name he never pronounced the same way twice. “I’m going to Pothouse Annie’s.”
He stalked out of the council chamber, wrapped up tightly in his cloak like an indignant cabbage roll, to the general relief of those left in his wake.
