MAYOR M. HELD A SECRET MEETING in Ana’s backyard. It was just the mayor and Penso the logician, plus Ana’s son Cane, because Penso was his teacher, and Ana, because it was her house. Donalta and Gatta stayed inside to run the shop and tend to the pottery.
The meeting took place at Ana’s small wooden table. She poured mint tea from a teapot with the Rabbitleaf signature dancing across its sides.
Penso scrunched his eyebrows low and rolled back the sleeves of his oversized trench coat as Mayor M. summarized the situation with Nemico. She handed him the paper announcement with its persuasive reasoning: Why buy one when you can buy ten?
“We’re concerned,” Mayor M. said. “A bit concerned about the ramifications.”
“We’re terrified!” Ana couldn’t help but butt in. She had tried to stay quiet through the Mayor’s explanation, but she couldn’t help it. Moderata was always so calm and reasonable, but this was no time for calm or reason. “They’re going to steal all our business! Terralogica pottery will become worthless! The whole town is going to starve!”
Penso studied the paper, biting his lip and pushing a messy lock of hair from his forehead. Then he handed it back to the mayor and stood up from the table. Ana had forgotten how much her son’s teacher appeared to be little more than an extremely tall child himself, with his baby face, his oversized clothing, his posture stooped like a gangly question mark.
“I need to think about it,” Penso said. “I’ll be back.”
Ana and Mayor M. watched him walk out of the backyard, letting the gate slam closed behind him. He hadn’t said how long he’s be gone for—an hour, a day, or a week.
“He’ll be back,” Cane said, pointing to Penso’s leather satchel in the corner of the garden. “He won’t leave his books for long.”
Mayor M. sighed and sipped her tea. Ana knew how busy Moderata was, always making sure the roads were clear of debris, the village fund and stockpiles properly filled, always checking for the possibility of trouble from Gemella, and now of course, there was the threat of Nemico. Ana could see fine lines forming around Moderata’s mouth that hadn’t been there before, a tired look in her eyes, which had always been so bright and energetic. The last thing Ana wanted to do was waste the mayor’s time.
“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” Ana said.
“Just wait for him!” Cane said. “I promise, he’s going to solve all our problems.”
Mayor M. sighed heavy and long, as though she had been holding her breath until that moment.
“I’m glad you have so much confidence,” she said.
“You won’t believe all the things he’s been teaching me.” Cane’s eyes lit up. “Logos, ethos, pathos, ad hominems, false analogies, post hoc ergo procter hoc.”
Ana had never seen her son so excited about anything before—certainly not about his pottery studies. She and Donalta had to beg him to complete his brushwork exercises, while Gatta finished all of her schoolwork early.
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Ana said.
“But you will, Mom,” Cane said. “He’s going to explain it all.”
Penso returned in half an hour. Ana had just poured a third pot of tea and was starting to worry that she couldn’t make Moderata wait any longer, when the gate to the yard crashed open. Penso flew through it, coat billowing around him like the wings of a bird, and sat back down at his seat like no time had passed.
“I’ve thought about it now,” he said. “And I’ve got a plan.”
“What do we start with?” Cane was bouncing in his seat. “Double standards? Hasty generalizations?”
“Core values,” Penso said. “That’s where we need to start.”
“Core values?” Cane frowned and shook his head. “That’s not part of logic.”
“Core values are the most important part of logic,” Penso said. “Without knowing your core values, you can use the tools of logic to prove almost anything. Without values, argumentation is just about winning.”
“But we want to win,” Ana said.
“I don’t think that’s really what you want,” Penso said. “I think you want something beyond that.
What do you care about? What’s most important?”
“We don’t want Nemico selling their gemella in our town,” Cane said.
“Shh,” Ana hissed, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. The word gemella was considered unseemly for children or polite conversation.
“We just want to sell our pottery in peace,” Mayor M. said. “Like we always have.”
“That’s a good start.” Penso nodded. “I think we can work with that. I need you to set up a council of people from Terralogica. The council should be small but have a range of people on it: different ages, talents, backgrounds. How soon can you assemble a council like that?”
The mayor closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose.
“Three days,” she said.
“Perfect,” said Penso. “I’ll see you in the meeting hall.”
The Logician’s Council, as it came to be known, had its first session exactly three days later. Only seven of the fifteen people the mayor had contacted agreed to participate, but Mayor M. and Penso decided that seven was enough. The town meeting hall, which had struggled to hold all the people who wanted to know about Nemico and its pottery, now seemed gigantic in its emptiness. The seven councilmembers each sat on their own bench near the front of the room, their voices echoing through the unoccupied space.
The council included Scontro Fishspear, who had first detected the existence of the Nemico pottery, and Grandma Lucy Lemonflower, who was the oldest person in Terralogica and still worked in her shop each day, balancing on a walking stick as she paced between stacks of plates and bowls. She couldn’t walk far, so her granddaughter Cugina Ravenflower pushed her to the meeting hall in a wheelchair. Cugina was about eighteen years old and had recently completed her pottery education at the same school where Cane and Gatta and all the other children of Terralogica studied. She had dark hair and wore dark clothes, and Cane found her extremely intimidating.
Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth were also on the council. They were Before-People, which was the name for the people who had been in Terralogica before Terralogica existed. Before-People could be recognized by the –Eth ending of their names and by the medallions they wore, the metal stamped with their family’s signature. They had a different style of pottery as well, which did not have signatures on it but instead was painted in deeply-colored glazes that no one else in Terralogica knew how to produce.
Cane was surprised that Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth had agreed to serve on the council. Before-People didn’t usually mix with other people from Terralogica. They had their own living area on the edge of town farthest from Alleata, where they grew their own food, sewed their own clothing, and sold pottery to their own, less populous set of tourists, usually other Before-People from villages across Isola.
If you saw Before-People walking the path through town towards Alleata on their way to buy supplies, you weren’t supposed to speak to them. Don’t bother the Before-People, went the saying that Cane had heard all his life, and as far as he knew, no one did.
Of course Mayor M. was the head of the council. Ana and Cane were on the council as well.
For the first meeting of the council, Penso had placed a giant slate writing board in the center of the stage at the front of the meeting hall. The words Core Values were written across the top of the board in chalk. Everyone could tell that Penso had written the words, partly because he was holding a piece of chalk, and partly because of the handwriting, which was atrocious by the standards of everyone else in the room, though no one said anything about it. People in Terralogica all knew that outsiders from other villages weren’t taught brushwork as part of their educations.
“As you know, this council’s purpose is to create and execute our plan to overcome the threat of Nemico,” Penso said. “But before we can create a plan, we need to decide what our values are. This will guide us and make sure we never let our interest in argumentative strategy distract us from our purpose.”
Penso looked out at the seven people spread out on the benches in front of him.
“What do you value, as citizens of Terralogica?”
Everyone was quiet for a moment, as though they’d never been asked to consider such a thing. But for Cane, the answer was obvious. It had been around him his whole life, necessary but invisible like air, and everyone but him seemed to breathe it just fine.
“Pottery,” Cane said. “We value pottery.”
“Hmm.” Penso frowned. “I suppose that’s right. But what about it?”
“We value craftsmanship,” said Grandma Lucy. “Good craftsmanship is what Terralogica stands for.”
“Getting closer.” Penso walked to the slate board and held his piece of chalk against it, ready to write. “What is your belief about good craftsmanship?”
“Gemella hasn’t got it, and neither does that gemella Nemico,” Scontro said.
“That’s not your value,” Penso said. “That’s just what you think about someone else.”
Cane studied Penso’s calm face as he held the chalk still against the board, wondering how he stayed so patient.
“Good craftsmanship is worth paying for,” Ana said. “No, it’s more than that. It’s worth doing.”
“That’s right,” said Grandma Lucy. “Terralogica believes good craftsmanship is worth doing and worth paying for.”
“All right.” Penso scrawled Grandma Lucy’s sentence across the slate board. “That’s a good start. What else?”
“We don’t lie,” Scontro said. “We don’t like liars.”
Penso nodded. On the board, he wrote: “Terralogica values honesty.”
Cane looked at the two core values on the board and tried to think of another one. Two core values didn’t seem like enough, but he couldn’t think of any others. He had been studying logical thinking for over a year, but he’d never given a moment of attention to values. He wondered why Penso had never mentioned the topic before.
Cugina raised her hand. “I’ve got something.”
Penso nodded at her. She seemed hesitant to speak, like she expected someone to disagree with her idea before she’d even said it.
“I don’t want us to start printing out all that gemella paper and throwing it everywhere, like Nemico is doing.”
Her eyes darted around the room, as though daring anyone to tell her it was a stupid idea or that young people shouldn’t say gemella.
Instead, there were murmurs of agreement from around the room. Scontro let out a little growl of approval. Even Mayor M., who had been sitting quietly on the stage behind Penso, trying to look neutral like she was only running things and not participating, smiled and nodded.
“That’s right,” Ana said. “Terralogica has always avoided wastefulness.”
Penso wrote Ana’s phrasing on the board: Terralogica avoids wastefulness.
“These are the values you have identified as crucial to Terralogica,” Penso said. “If you agree to them, they will become your guideposts as you determine how to defend yourselves against the attack from Nemico.”
Scontro looked skeptical as always. “What if we think of more later?”
“Then you can add them,” Penso said. “Core values can be added or revised at any time, as long as everyone agrees.”
“But what if the change is insincere?” Cugina asked. “Like if we want to do something wasteful, couldn’t we just change our list of values?”
Penso smiled. “Your values are up to you,” he said. “If you want to change them, even in an unethical way, that is your choice to make.”
“No,” Ana said. “We won’t do that.”
Cane turned his head to look at Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth, the only people who hadn’t said anything for the entire meeting. Stanca-Eth was slouching a bit like the discussion was making them tired. But Stufo-Eth was sitting straight-backed and alert, face carefully calm like they were trying not to showcase their feelings
“If you agree to these three principles,” Penso said, “please raise your hand now.”
Everyone in the room raised their hands, even Stanca-Eth and Stufo-Eth, and Scontro who was famously suspicious of agreeing to anything.
“Then it passes,” Penso said. “We have our core values. Everyone meet back here tomorrow for the next step.”
“What is it?” Cane blurted out. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk without permission—he always got in trouble for that at school—so he raised his hand right after he said it. He hoped the answer would be something more fun than core values, something with logic and puzzles and problems to solve.
“We start using logic.”
Penso squinted his right eye, almost a wink at Cane, though Cane didn’t think of him as a winking sort of person.