Chapter 29
I hung my head, and winced.
Mirwanna was laying into me about my unauthorized trip away from the palace, without my guard detail. Everything she was saying was true. But, Damn It, I was a powerful magic user! I could take care of myself!
"I still can't believe you, Paul! Didn't the assassination attempt teach you anything? Your defense is that nothing happened for the two days you had gone out? Are you MAD?!!!" Mirwanna said, with a screech in her voice.
I winced at hearing it. "I am not a helpless child, Mirwanna. I am a very powerful magic user, and a dragon. I have spells at the ready the likes of which you have never witnessed.
"Furthermore, as the Duke De Landkur, I really need to understand my city and my people. I went out, yes. But I went as a person, not as the leader of this city. I have already discovered things that have to be straightened out. I refuse to stay hidden behind walls and magic in fear, within my own city!" I finished with my voice rising.
"All right. Fine. You are a powerful magic user. But you still need to use caution! As your ruler, I am commanding you to maintain a proper guard when you leave the palace, from this time forward. A poisoned dart does not respect magic. While your draconic magic protects against many things, nothing protects against magically enhanced poisoned weapons. Do you understand me?" Mirwanna said icily, tacitly referring to the fact that while the knife thrown into my back by the assassin was magicked, it was not a 'magically enhanced poison weapon', which was an entirely different level of weaponry.
"I understand," I replied, just as icily.
She nodded and left. I was feeling very pissed, myself. I stormed out, and wound up visiting the gardens outside. As I sat outside, I noticed someone enter the gardens from further along. It was Mariel Minturi with her attending guards.
I got up and wondered over to her. She stiffened at my approach. Her features went dark.
I bowed to her. "Princess Minturi. It is a pleasure to see you again," I said to her.
"My Lord Landkur. What can I do for you?" she asked through stiff lips.
"Simply a little of your company. The garden is lovely, is it not?" I asked her.
She looked at me curiously. She was sure I wanted something. I couldn't blame her for her being suspicious. If I were in her situation, I would probably be very suspicious and resentful, myself.
She shrugged, and remained silent. As we moved through the garden, I tried to make conversation. Nothing. She was probably feeling like the world was against her. Poor kid.
I could also see that she was a very powerful magic user herself; or at least, she had the raw ability. She fairly glistened with power. As I looked closer, though, I could see that there were very few magical 'connections'. She was either untrained, or someone had purposely broken most of the connections she'd had.
I wondered if her own father had severed her connection with her magic. No, that didn't make sense. I could only come to the conclusion, that for some reason, her father had never let her be trained. It was something I could not understand. She was brimming, overflowing with power. She had a very pleasant aura. It was a pale blue, with a nice greenish tinge.
I finally gave up trying to talk to her. I bowed, and left her in the garden. I made my way to my suite in the palace. When I got to my outer room, Vivian was there, 'holding down the fort'.
"Good. You're here. I have two appointments for you. The first is with the guard commandant. That will be in one hour. The second is with the head tax collector. He will be available for you, when you are finished with the commandant. You're seeing the tax collector?" Vivian asked curiously.
"I want to know how taxes are assessed and collected. When I was in the city, yesterday, something started nagging at me. I want to know how it is determined that the tax money is collected, and I want to know how and why it is disseminated the way it is," I explained.
"As long as he doesn't try to collect from me, we'll be all right," Vivian growled.
I grinned, and went into my 'home office', as I called it. I had my main office (in the palace, an office which connected to my rooms), and I also had an office down in the city center, which I had still not visited. I was thinking it was about time to visit it.
The meeting with the commandant went well. I explained what I wanted to do, and he was very willing, though just a bit surprised. I was going to do inspections of the watch houses throughout the city. No inspections had been done by a Duke, in uncounted years.
The next interview, with the head tax collector, was a different thing altogether. I got the feeling he was reluctant to be here. He evaded most of my questions, and was hiding things. I decided a closer look at the tax situation was in order.
Two days later, with an appropriate guard that even Mirwanna would not complain about, I started my inspection of the watch houses. I started with the sector captain's headquarters, then I went to each sub-station in that area.
The city was divided into 4 sectors. North, South, East, and West. I had started with the sector captain closest to the palace, which was the north sector. While going from headquarters to the sub-watch stations, I would stop at a merchant's at random, and ask about how he paid his taxes.
He explained that he was required to be registered with the tax assessor and the city planner. He was required to keep records of his sales, and once a month he would be taxed on his sales. I nodded at that. Not a bad system. So why was the head tax man so nervous about my asking him about taxes?
I asked how he paid his taxes, and he showed me his receipt from the tax runner. It seemed to be a viable system. I committed the receipt number, and total amount of payment, to memory.
I did this with several businesses. I wanted to have a grasp of what was paid. I would then see how it was disbursed. It took the whole day just for the northern sub-stations.
I was able to view a watch change. I saw that a captain or a lieutenant was in charge of the house. Sometimes the captain was absent, due to obligations, and his assistant took over.
Sergeants were directly in charge of the station armory. They did the paperwork, and prepped the next shift on problems, and what to look out for. They also informed the watchman themselves about problems with other stations, and what kind of spillover to expect. All in all, it was a good system. After inspection, the men were teamed and sent out on foot patrol.
In each district, or sector, there were several wizards on call. Also there were lower level magic users, who were paid the same as lieutenants. They were rotated from watch house to watch house.
All in all it was a good experience. I was anxious to visit other sectors. Particularly, I wanted to inspect the Southern sector, which was where I'd had my problems. It was where the 'lower city', or poorer section of the city was.
Thank God we were sitting next to a great sea. This allowed anyone who wanted fish, the ability to do so. Everyone ate, no matter what. It was what supplemented the fish diet, that made life better or more interesting. A diet of just fish would get old really quickly, even though a person could nearly live on it, alone.
On the fifth day of my exploring the city, officially, I saw Trayla.I detached a guard and told them to fetch her to me. I think I could have used better terminology. He dragged a kicking and screaming young girl to me.
It took me just a short time to calm her down. I asked if she could bring her mother. She nodded, and ran off. A short time later, she arrived with a very nervous woman. I greeted her, and explained that I had a job for the both of them, if they cared to attempt it.
Trayla's mother took in washing and did sewing, to make money. Trayla had done messenger running, until recently. They were still living off the two silver coins I had paid Trayla.
Silver went a long way in this society.
I told Trayla's mother that we had a place for both her and her daughter in the palace, if they wanted it. I also told them I would like Trayla to come and be friends with a young girl, who was far from her home. She was here alone, and could use a friend.
Trayla looked interested. Her mother, Lenetha, was a little suspicious at first. But I finally convinced her that I was not looking for sex. I understood her suspicion. I had a parchment brought to me. I pulled a pen from my cloak pocket. Everyone was fascinated with my pen.
I wrote a note to Lord Segleman, who was the 'palace factotum'. He was in charge of everything with regards to running the palace. I wrote that I wanted this woman and her daughter to be hired. I also wrote what their jobs would entail. They were to be housed in the servant's quarters in the palace. I gave this parchment to the mother, and asked that she present it at the palace's servant's entrance, so that she and her daughter would be employed.
The mother was grateful, and I had a feeling of satisfaction after they left.
That's when it hit me. It had been very easy to find Trayla and her mother. Also, her mother had agreed to this change in their life very easily.
I started to get suspicious, myself. That's when I felt a light touch from the Goddess, and felt her approval and amusement.
Great. The Goddess was manipulating things from afar, or where ever it was that Gods and Goddesses hung out at. I felt another ripple of amusement. I rolled my eyes, and we started heading towards the city center. I wanted to do a little research about taxes.
I stopped at several shops along the way. I recorded the receipt numbers, the names of the tax collectors, and the amounts of the taxes. I thanked the owners. They bowed me out of their shops, and sometimes they bowed me into them also. All in all, it was very embarrassing to me, as I was not used to being bowed to.
Lastly we arrived at the government center. It was a large building. It was two floors high, and also extended one floor beneath the ground. It was a grim looking building. I frowned. It actually looked almost like a prison.
It was a scaled down version of the huge palace, actually. I looked at it with my strange combination of normal and second sight. There were spells all over this building. Mostly of protection and preservation.
I got off my horse, and a guard took it away. The commandant went inside with me. We entered a large hallway. He led the way to the collector of revenue's office. Ok, they called it the tax assessor's office.
He had a medium sized office, with access to long thin rooms that had shelves with volumes of books that were the tax receipts for the last five years. Older records were stored in rooms downstairs.
For some reason, the head guy was gone. One of the assistants was most anxious to assist me when he discovered who I was. I had him look for the last month's record of tax payments by citizens. I gave him some receipt numbers, and a tax runners name.
Shortly, I was getting an idea why the head guy was not here. Every record I checked was incorrect. The payments that were recorded as received from the merchants, were smaller than they had actually paid, according to the receipts I had. Someone was skimming, and skimming big time.
The commandant was getting more and more angry, almost as angry as I was becoming. How was this allowed to happen? The corruption had to be very deep indeed. I told the commandant that I wanted watchmen here, with chains.
While I was waiting for the reinforcements, I started thinking. There was another way to resolve this. If the corruption was as deep as I thought, taking them all into custody could wind up hurting the city more than helping.
I knew what to do.
On the earth I was raised on, no one really handled money. What they handled was accounts and funds; and safeguards were in place to prevent theft. Here, actual money was handled, daily. There was a treasury somewhere, with actual money in it.
I looked around, and figured I could manufacture a spell for this situation. The outer walls of this building were spelled, but there were no spells inside to prevent theft. I was going to introduce integrity and honesty, if I had to cram it down everyones throat, with spell upon spell upon spell!!!
Edited by TeNderLoin