The Highbridge Trade-Moot

Highbridge's elected civic compact: toll families, guild delegates, ward speakers, and caravan factors governing the lower world's human capital through argument, ledgers, and a High Reeve chosen for competence rather than blood.

Highbridge belongs to the people who keep it working. The Trade-Moot grew from the bridge's toll families, then made room for guild delegates, ward speakers, caravan factors, and the keepers of the kilns and water-doors because a city cannot be governed from one ledger. It is human-founded and human-led, but neither citizenship nor office is restricted by ancestry: a Hessk water-door speaker, Reshi caravan mother, or Vyr envoy may earn a bench by representing a recognized ward or charter. The benches elect a High Reeve for a seven-year term, and can unseat one by a two-thirds closing of the toll books. Highbridge speech is quick, practical, and crowded with contract words; even prayers sound like promises witnessed aloud. Its public faith is the Sealed Choir's service to the dead Wright, softened by the Good Neighbor's law of hospitality and the Long-Water rites of the Underbridge. The Moot's virtue is that it turns difference into administration. Its vice is that every human need becomes a fee, charter, queue, or vote before it becomes help.