He doesn't have much committee business anymore, now that Magic is licking its wounds and Judiciary has been dissolved and reformed, and so Alonso is there early. He'll figure out what they have and order something of medium strength.

Conradí is here! Not for the meeting, which he doesn't know about, he just saw the announcement about "special privileges for delegates" and figured he might as well check it out. He orders some wine and starts looking for anyone interested in betting. There are other delegates, right? Does anyone want to bet on the outcome of convention votes?

Thea hasn’t actually been told about the more formal meeting, but she has still figured this is her chance to meet other politically active commoners and get organized.  Her earlier attempts at networking had failed to translate into actual political connections.  In particular she wants to collaborate on blocking any other idiocy along the lines of banning all books.

It takes Victòria a little while to show up, what with detouring to check out the park with Raimon, but she's here well in time for the meeting. After skipping lunch, she's ravenously hungry; she orders a cheese-covered pasta dish, pays a little extra for a bigger portion, and heads for the meeting.

Quim is at the staircase keeping an eye out for anyone he recognizes, or anyone expressing interest in going upstairs. The Avenger gets waved past (so would the other Avenger). Iroria he makes a mental note to check if he's going up to check.

Several unimportant sortitions will be open to bets on votes and on how long until the first new lion fight. How much is Conradí betting?

Depends, what odds are they offering?

This one will offer 2:1 on getting a Lion fight by the end of Sarenith.

This one will offer 1:1 the first fight not being literal lions.

This one wants somebody to take his long odds bet that they will make Valia and the Avenger bitch do the fight to the death and let the crowd rape the winner thing before the end of the convention.

He'll take the second and the third bet, at half a day's stipend each. The convention made it pretty clear they wanted actual lions, so he figures it'll probably be lions, but if they were going to make Valia fight to the death they'd've done it over the weekend. (He's still pretty annoyed at how much money he lost betting on that trial.)

This guy was sitting at the right angle to see that Victoria came into the tavern but is pretty sure she didn't hear. Still gonna go sit with a safer crowd just in case.

Hearing city people talk about their sex lives makes the Duchess's insane prudishness somewhat less confusing. 

For those among the commons with less bloodthirsty tastes, Lisandro is showing off some magic tricks. Slightly rare creative uses for prestidigitation! Fey-dragon familiar using those at-will illusions! Nonmagical sleight of hand, just to keep them on their toes! 

He arrives a bit later.  He thinks of himself as better than peasants (obviously) but he is (equally obviously) not nobility or even wealthy (and is thus a commoner).  So here he is, to eat dinner with the commoners.  He should try to figure out what commoners want in a constitution.  The lions vote earlier in the day took him by surprise, but in hindsight it was predictable.  So what would add commoner appeal to a constitution… …a national celebration on election days?

Right now Conradí's trying to see if anyone will bet him on when the next delegate is going to kick the bucket. (He thinks it'll be more than a week, less than a month.) Is Fernando interested in betting?

He’s not actually interested in betting, but he is trying to socialize and he does like puzzles.  He’ll bet a few silvers…

He isn’t sure who or exactly when… but for cause of death… he’ll bet on someone breaking the law or having broken the law in an execution worthy way?

If he had to say when… yeah he would also bet more than a week, less than month (a bit over a week sounds about right to catch and try someone that slipped through the cracks during the riots who did something braindead stupid…)

(Fernando isn’t sure he believes everything he’s heard about the riots… like the delegate that apparently thought killing free slips was legal sounds more like an object lesson than a real person.)

He'll bet against execution, sure. They didn't even execute Valia, they're obviously planning to let delegates get away with practically anything.

If you personally commit enough murders you probably get executed?  Did you hear about the delegate that thought killing free slips was legal, and led a mob against a whole house of them, including some delegate slips?  At least, that what Fernando’s pieced together, he missed most of the post-riot trials, he was busy working on convention stuff.

"Well, if he's killing delegate slips, that's different."

“Yeah, maybe he could have gotten by with something less than execution without it being delegates.  I don’t know how the trial went.  Killing delegates… that’s one way you might beat me on this bet, some idiot delegates killing each other, like the nobles that keep looking to duel each other.”

Nod nod. "Wish they'd tell the rest of us where they're dueling. I don't see much point if there's not a crowd, you know? Let everyone see you're better than the other man."

“The, uh ah, Archmage doesn’t seem to like dueling, so even if doing it outside the convention is technically not forbidden maybe they don’t want to make skirting the rules a spectacle?”

Fernando’s getting nervous and stuttering a bit, but he calms down when a clever idea occurs to him.

“Say, uh, if the Queen doesn’t go for the Lions thing, do you think she’d go for a law requiring duels to take place under proper conditions, which would of course happen to include open public viewing?”

"Ooh, that'd be great."

Fernando has successfully put forward a fun idea commoners would get behind!  If he can think of a few more fun ideas that have a pretext to go in a constitution, he can get commoner support for the eventual constitution that they want to get passed!

“I’m not sure any committee is willing to hear out the idea, but if you had some specific formal language in mind, you could try throwing it in as amendment on something vaguely relevant that’s under floor discussion.”

Fernando is too excited by the idea of deliberately using the lions political strategy to think about the wisdom of spreading the idea around.

Huh, he hadn't thought of proposing amendments that didn't have much of anything to do with the original law. Maybe next time someone brings something to the floor he can try proposing an amendment to give all the delegates a bunch of money, or another try at the no taxes rule.

"Making things go through committee is a dumb rule anyway."

“I mean, it gives more time for a group of people to focus on the exact wordings and details and such.  So it seems like a pragmatic enough rule at first glance.  But it certainly seems to have consolidated power in a particular way…”

"And we've all seen how they try to shut it down if someone tries to start their own committee."

“And with the newer committees, nobles had stacked the membership in advance with all the members pre chosen.  Also they dissolved and reformed a committee they didn’t like.  And…”

Fernando catches himself, he actually likes how the committees currently are, as he’s on the single most important committee, so he doesn’t want to rock the boat too hard.  He tries to think of a way to finish his sentence but comes up blank.

"I think they should stop making the laws so complicated. That law against worshipping Norgorber that got suggested, that's a good law."

“Some…”

He hesitates.

“Some level of detail and nuance is needed.  But I think they really need to explain things better and only add the complications as needed.  Maybe give more time to hear each proposal several times and mull it over.”

An actual constitution (even just a bare bones essential one that defers most of its implementation details to the Queen or Churches) will in fact be longer and more complicated than anything passed in a single vote so far.

Someone has come down the stairs and is tapping on shoulders, passing by the magic show with an apologetic shrug and interrupting Fernando's conversation.

"Excuse me, sir, you've been invited to the meeting upstairs."

Fernando hadn’t even realized there was an upstairs meeting!  He plays along like he was expecting it.

“Of course, lead the way.”

Dia’s been watching people come and go and assumes there is some form of extra meeting(s) going on.  It isn’t a good sign that Thea wasn’t invited from the start, but hopefully that will change soon?

He waggles his eyebrows at Fernando.

And indeed, Thea gets a shoulder-tap too.

Oh good, Dia called that one right.  Thea doesn’t know what she would do without her.

“Have fun!” 

Lisandro doesn’t mind not being in the secret meeting. Definitely not. He’s definitely not considered renting a second room to hatch some other kind of plot. That would be petty.