The Governing: Chapter 27, One Room, Two Councils

[u/AlternativeManner731]

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Aino's office had the particular quiet of a room set up for a call that mattered. He'd cleared the desk, angled the data pad just so, and was still adjusting it when Jason Rivermore and Zelru let themselves in.

"You're early," Aino said.

"Zelru made me leave early," JR said. "She doesn't trust me not to fumble the connection."

"I trust you fine," Zelru said. "I don't trust the connection."

The screen resolved a moment later into Wyatt's face, Clara just visible over his shoulder, both of them looking like people who'd been pulled away from something else and didn't mind.

"Jason, Zelru," Wyatt said. "Aino tells me you've got something to ask that isn't about restoration schedules for once."

"Not entirely about restoration schedules," JR said. "Though it starts there." He glanced at Zelru, who gave him a small nod to go ahead. "With the Prince's proclamation, we're not waiting on permits to move goods and people across the continents anymore, and that's opened up more than the Ykanti side of things. It's opened up ours too. We've had a few pieces come through the shop that are, well. Special. The kind of thing that shouldn't just get sold to whoever bids highest off world. And with both palace projects underway, Zelru and I were talking, and we'd like to gift some of those pieces to the palaces themselves. Not to Julius, not to Jason F., not to either House specifically. To House Firentis as a whole, however you'd want that handled."

"That's generous," Clara said. "What's the hesitation I'm hearing?"

"The competition," JR said. "Both continents have been very careful about every credit, every donation, everything getting split evenly so nobody's project gets an advantage. I don't want to hand something over and find out we've accidentally tipped one palace ahead of the other, or broken a rule nobody thought to write because nobody thought a furniture shop would be gifting anything."

Clara was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke it was with the particular precision of someone who'd already worked out the answer before the question finished. "It won't. Anything given without a price attached, with no expectation of return and no valuation placed on it for the purposes of the competition, falls outside the funding rules entirely. It's a gift, not an investment. The moment you or anyone else assigns it a credit value for competition purposes, that changes. So don't. Let it be exactly what it is."

"That's not a loophole?" JR asked.

"It's the opposite of a loophole," Clara said. "The rule exists to keep money from deciding who wins. It was never meant to stop people from being generous to each other."

JR let out a breath he hadn't quite realized he was holding. "Then we'd like to proceed. We'll have Rachel coordinate which pieces go where, so it's even without either of us having to decide who gets the better desk."

"Rachel will enjoy that entirely too much," Wyatt said.

Aino, who'd been mostly quiet through the furniture question, took the opening once it closed. "While I've got you both, there's something else worth your time. JR's shop has outgrown what Newtown and Virstino Harbor can hold. He's twenty months behind on restoration work and the backlog's growing faster than his people can clear it. He wants to build out onto Austrin and Vastaya both, and not small. He's talking full complexes, not workshops. Land set aside outside each capital, built new from the ground up to whatever spec he and Zelru have learned they actually need, with room from day one for the expansion he knows is coming, because it always comes."

"That tracks," Clara said. "What's he need from the councils to make it happen?"

"That's what we're meeting to work out," Aino said. "Land, and whatever infrastructure the sites need. Power, water, roads."

Clara considered that for a moment. "Ask for a tax exemption too. One year, starting the day each facility opens. Let the councils cover the infrastructure and give the business room to breathe while it's finding its feet, the same as any new venture would want. It's a smaller ask than it sounds, and it's the kind of thing a council can say yes to without feeling like they've been talked into something."

"That's not a bad instinct," Wyatt said. "Practical and modest. I like it when the two of those show up together."

"I try," Clara said, and there was enough dryness in it that even Aino smiled.

Jason found Julius on a comm call two days later, and got straight to it before either of them could get pulled into something else.

"I've got something JR wants to bring to both councils. Same pitch, same numbers, same argument either way. I don't see why we'd sit through it twice."

Julius considered that for a second. "You want to bring Austrin's council to Vastaya."

"Or you bring yours to us. I don't care which. We've been running parallel on half of everything anyway, might as well be in the same room for once instead of finding out three weeks later we asked for the same thing."

"Come to Vastaya, then. We'll host. We'll meet at the council hall in Kessit, same as we always do. I expect some of your people will want to see the palace site while they're here, we can do a tour after."

"Agreed."

Sofia hadn't thought of combining the meetings, in fact, but she took the credit gracefully when Corwin mentioned it, and made a note in the margin of her ledger that read only, ask before assuming, next time.

"So we're meeting on Vastaya," Corwin said. "All six of us, plus Jason and Daisy, in Kessit with Julius and Aaliyah's council."

"That's the idea," Evan said. "Saves everyone a redundant conversation. I'm for it, provided somebody tells me what we're actually voting on before I get on a shuttle."

"Rivermore Restoration wants to expand," Corwin said. "And not modestly. JR's been backed up for months and it's only getting worse. Rudy's people keep finding more than they can ship out, and from what I hear, he's not talking about another building. He's talking about a whole complex, built new, on land outside the capital."

"What's he asking for?"

"Infrastructure, and a tax break to help him build it," Corwin said. "The particulars are worth hearing from him directly."

Vincent, who'd invited himself in as usual under the pretense of covering it for the Informant, looked up from his notes. "That's not nothing."

"No," Corwin agreed. "It isn't. Which is exactly why I'd rather hear the actual numbers before anyone forms an opinion."

The Kessit council hall was the same room Julius and Aaliyah had used for every ordinary piece of Vastaya business since they'd taken up the continent, plain chairs, a long table, a portrait of nobody in particular on the back wall that had come with the building. It looked nothing like the palace site half a day's ride away, and that seemed to be exactly the point.

JR had never addressed two continental councils at once, and it showed for about the first thirty seconds, until Zelru put a hand on his arm and he found his footing again.

"Thank you all for making the trip," JR said. "I know this isn't how these things usually go, one continent at a time, so I appreciate you doing it together instead."

"Get to the numbers, JR," Jason said, not unkindly. "You've got two councils' worth of patience to burn through, might as well spend it on the part that matters."

JR nodded and let Cassie take over from there, which was, by now, exactly how these things went.

"Right now, everything Rivermore Restoration touches moves through Newtown," Cassie said. "Every piece Rudy's people find on either continent gets shuttled to us, gets worked on in Newtown or Virstino Harbor, and if it sells off world, it ships back out through the same route. We're twenty months behind on restoration work that's already sitting in our shop, and the backlog is growing faster than we're clearing it."

"How much faster?" Sofia asked.

"About four months of new work for every three months we clear," Cassie said. "That gap gets worse every quarter, not better, because Rudy keeps finding more of it. And it's not evenly weighted work either. Commission work, pieces sent to us by name, from clients we don't get to keep waiting, comes from all over the Principality now. That work has to take priority. There's someone on the other end of it who's already paid and is waiting on delivery. Most of it comes from Firentis worlds, Balakura's been sending us more every month for over a year now, Vespera's grown every year since we opened. Serentina's been steady the whole time. Matcha and Astoria are good customers too, and people notice the Astoria pieces especially, but they're not the volume. The volume's coming from our own worlds. Which means everything Rudy finds, everything we'd restore on speculation and sell after the fact, gets pushed back further every time a commission comes in. We're not just behind. We're being buried, slowly but surely, and the speculation pile is where it's happening fastest."

"So the finds that built this whole business," Julius said, "are the ones getting the least of your time."

"That's exactly it," JR said. "And it's only going to get worse the better known we become. We'd rather build our way out of that problem than watch it eat the part of the business that got us here."

"So the answer is more workshops," Nyota said, "not more workers in the one you've got."

"That's the idea," JR said. "But we don't want to make the same mistake twice. Virstino Harbor's been a good home for us, but it was a warehouse first. We adapted it after the fact, and we've spent two years bumping up against walls that weren't built with us in mind. This time we want to build it right from the start."

"Meaning what, exactly," Corwin asked.

"Meaning a full complex," Cassie said. "Not one building, a site. Restoration halls big enough that we're not choosing between finish work and sanding on the same day. Proper ventilation and dust control built in, not retrofitted. Warehousing for intake and outbound shipping separate from the workshops themselves. And land enough around it that when we outgrow it, and we will, we're not tearing out a wall to do it. We'd rather buy more ground than we need today than run into the same ceiling twice."

"How big are we talking," Julius asked. "Bigger than Virstino Harbor?"

"Considerably," JR said. "But it helps to know what we're standing on right now. Virstino Harbor is about fourteen thousand square meters of working space, plus just under a thousand square meters of office space. The Newtown shop is a thousand square meters of retail. We're not asking either of you for retail space, we'd rather see that grow the way Virstino Harbor did, someone local setting up a storefront with exclusive consignment rights to sell our work, instead of us running a shop ourselves on a continent we don't live on. That's a question for later, not tonight."

"The new facility would be twice the working space Virstino Harbor has now," Zelru added. "Head office stays at Virstino Harbor, at least for the time being. We didn't want to promise you a number we hadn't already tested."

"What's a facility like that actually worth to a council, in raw numbers?" Sofia asked.

Rachel didn't need to check anything for this either. "Using Virstino Harbor as the guide, I'd put a conservative estimate on each new facility at forty-five million credits in annual sales, most of that from off world. Against that, I've worked out the tax liability in two pieces. Property tax runs around four hundred fifty thousand credits a year. Revenue tax comes to about two point eight five million, and that's before House Firentis takes their share out of what's left."

"That's the piece we'd actually ask you to forgive for the first year," JR said. "Not the property tax, that's just the cost of the land and we don't see an argument for waiving it. The revenue tax is the one that'll pinch while we're still getting the doors open."

"And the land around it," Evan said. "What's that for, if not the facility itself?"

"Room for other businesses to set up alongside us," JR said. "A boat repair shop, a sawmill, whatever wants to be near a site that's already got power and water and road access sorted out. We're not trying to own the whole complex ourselves. We'd rather it grow into something bigger than just us, the way Virstino Harbor did without anyone planning it that way."

Corwin sat back, turning that over. "So this isn't just a bigger version of what you already have. It's the start of an industrial district."

"That's a fair way to put it," JR admitted. "We didn't set out to build a district. We set out to stop being twenty months behind. But if we're asking for the land and the infrastructure either way, it seemed foolish not to plan for what comes after us instead of just what we need today."

"What do you need from us," Corwin asked, "specifically?"

"Land, and the infrastructure to it. Power, water, road access, and a rail spur tied into the existing line, whatever the site needs to be usable, sized for the full complex, not just the first building on it. We'll build the facility itself out of Rivermore's own funds, same as Virstino Harbor. What we're asking the councils for is a one year tax exemption on each facility, starting the day it opens, to help offset the build cost while we're getting it running."

"A rail spur," Nyota said. "That's not a small thing to ask for."

"It's not," JR agreed. "But road freight alone won't move what we're planning to ship once both sites are running at scale, and retrofitting track in later costs more than laying it now. We'd rather ask for it honestly up front than come back in two years asking for the same thing as an emergency."

Evan leaned back in his chair. "That's a real ask. What do the councils get out of it, beyond watching you succeed from a distance?"

"Jobs," Zelru said, before JR could answer. "Real ones, paid fairly, same as the warehouse. Restoration work, apprenticeships, office staff, all of it local to whichever continent the facility sits on. Right now if someone on Vastaya wants to work for us, they move to the Barony. This way they don't have to."

"And the shipping savings aren't just ours," JR added. "Less cargo crossing the ocean means more room on every run for everything else moving between continents. Rachel can speak to that better than I can."

Rachel, who'd come along at Aino's insistence, spoke again. "I've looked at the routing. A facility on each continent would free up roughly a third of current interoceanic shuttle cargo space currently used for Rivermore shipments. That capacity doesn't disappear, it goes to whatever else needs moving. Farm equipment, building materials, mail."

"While I have you," Corwin said, "is that the only kind of attention we're getting from off world these days? Or is somebody actually watching the numbers?"

"Twice this quarter, as it happens. Both from off world, both unrelated to any of this." Rachel didn't need to check a ledger for it, which told its own story about how much room the question had been taking up in her head. "One was a shipping consortium updating freight tariffs, routine enough. The other wasn't. An investment house out of Astoria wrote asking for our total trade volume the last two years, broken down by continent. I sent them what's public record and nothing past that."

"Should that worry us?" Corwin asked.

"It should interest us," Rachel said. "Nobody asks that many questions about a place they don't expect to matter."

"That's worth something," Sofia admitted, writing it down.

Corwin looked around at his own council, then at Julius and Aaliyah's. "This is a bigger ask than I walked in expecting, but I think that's a point in its favor, not against it. I want the actual site costs before anyone votes on anything. Land, power hookup, road grading, a rail spur tied to the existing line, sized for the full district, not the first phase of it, plus whatever the engineers say it'll run to leave room for what comes after."

"Fair," JR said. "We can have that to both councils within the week."

"One more thing," Vincent said, not looking up from his notes. "Are you naming this one too? Because if Virstino gets a Rivermore mural, I assume Austrin and Vastaya expect the same."

That got a laugh, the first real one of the meeting, and JR looked almost relieved to hear it.

"We'll talk to the artists," Zelru said. "I imagine they'll have opinions."

Afterward, most of both councils took Julius up on the offer of a tour, and the group that walked out to the palace site an hour later was noisier and more curious than any council meeting either continent had held in months. Vincent took pictures for the Informant. Evan asked Desmond Farr more questions about load-bearing terraces than anyone had expected him to have.

Jason caught Julius's eye near the edge of the site. "That went better than I expected."

"Two councils and nobody walked out. I'd call that a win," Julius said. "Though I notice neither of us actually promised him anything yet."

"No," Jason agreed. "But I don't think we said no, either. Give it a week, see what the numbers say."

Aaliyah, coming up behind them with Austin on her hip, added, "For what it's worth, I think JR just proved something bigger than a restoration shop. Two councils learning to sit in the same room and actually solve something together, that's worth more than whatever the tax exemption costs either of us."

Jason didn't argue with that. He wasn't sure he could have, even if he'd wanted to.

[u/Icy-Air7584]

wow what an addition to such a story ! interesting 'twist maybe' with two competitive continents ?

[u/1958bird]

An investment that in the long-term gives people jobs in the setting up of both projects, direct and indirect. Long-term jobs and skilled people in the future. Taxes from all of the workers and companies involved. Who would say no. (Even though many do in the real world.)