by K. C. May
And Behrendt was the one who had made the arrangements for Arc’s shop.
Jora’s heart fell into her gut. Arc’s in danger.
A knock at the door startled her. She went to it, hoping it wasn’t Elder Devarla come to tell her they knew about Arc and about her plan.
“Good afternoon,” Rivva said brightly when Jora opened the door.
“Rivva,” Jora said, her mind blanking in surprise. “I–I wasn’t expecting you.”
The guards in the hallway stood at attention, three facing right and three facing left.
“The adept offered to send someone to fetch you, but I thought it would save time to simply come up myself. May I come in?”
Jora stepped back. “Please.” She rushed to the reclining chair and picked up her book, then set it on the dressing table. “Have a seat. I’d offer you something to drink, but I’ve run out of clean water.”
“It’s fine,” she said as she sat on the chair. “Oh, this is nice.” She picked up her feet and stretched out on the chair. “Perfect for reading. Too bad about the tree blocking your view, though.”
“I rather like the tree.” Jora sat on her bed cross-legged.
In the hallway outside, footsteps clomped in both directions, toward the stairs on each end of the corridor, then went silent.
“I see I’ve interrupted your studies. Have you had a chance to continue our project?”
Jora chewed her bottom lip. There were two choices here: tell Rivva the truth or lie and say she hadn’t yet discovered the identity of the culprit but she was close. Except that she couldn’t lie to the most powerful friend she had. She would have to tell the princess someday.
“Challenge the god! You have.” Rivva leaned forward with an awestruck expression. “Tell me.”
Retar’s bloody fists. Jora stood, pulled the stool close to Rivva’s chair, and sat, then took the other woman’s slim hands in hers. “I’m sorry, Rivva.”
“You know who’s at the head of the smuggling?” Rivva’s voice was but a whisper. “Tell me.”
Jora took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “It’s Quirza.”
“The Minister of Finance?” Rivva asked, her brow scrunched in dismay. “Are you certain?”
“I am,” Jora said. “I followed the money from the smugglers on the Isle into Jolver. The king’s servant Behrendt picked up it from a barbery and took it to her.”
“Behrendt? No. That can’t be true.”
“I wish it weren’t.” Jora hung her head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I expected either. The money is carried every week to Jolver with the fallen soldiers.” It made sense to do it that way. Thieves wouldn’t rob a wagon full of shrouded bodies.
Rivva stood and began to pace the length of the room. “What proof can you offer besides your word?”
“She receives a bag of foreign coins every week on Martis Day. I haven’t seen yet what she does with them, but perhaps she melts them down and mints them into Serocian currency.”
“There’s got to be a rational explanation. Something we’re missing. The coins are from something else. Legal trade from Noossmor or Loworia,” she offered hopefully.
“I’m sorry, Rivva. I followed them from the Isle—from the hands of the smugglers themselves into Jolver and to the treasurer’s own hands. For whatever reason, the Minister of Finance has sanctioned the smuggling, which explains why the king doesn’t know about it. If anyone could hide it from him, it would be her.”
Rivva shook her head slowly as if in disbelief. “Quirza. Of all his ministers, she’s the one I would least suspect, although...” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What happens after Behrendt hands her the coins? Where does she put it?”
“Let me have a look.” Jora got up and returned to the bed, sitting on it with her back against the wall. Then she opened the Mindstream and found Behrendt’s thread again.
Behrendt handed the bag of coins to Quirza.
She hefted the bag, weighing it in her hand. “It feels a little light this time.”
“Yes, madam,” Behrendt said. “I’m told a crew was attacked by a pair of Legion soldiers. We only received payment for their first shipment.”
Quirza harrumphed and then handed the bag back to him. He squatted down, turned a corner of the rug up, and lifted a board in the floor. He then put the coins into the space beneath the floor.
Jora paused the stream and scanned the room. “They’re in an upstairs room with a gray and black rug under the desk. The rug has a brown, palm-sized stain on it, like a tea stain. Under one corner, there’s a loose floorboard, and Behrendt put the coins into the space beneath.”
“Is there a painting of a woman?”
“Yes, on the far wall above a sort of sideboard. She has white-hair and is wearing a pale blue gown. There’s also a window that looks out onto a garden.” She pulled her mystical vision outward, through the door to the hallway.
“That’s Quirza’s office.” Rivva stood and paced the floor, her brow taut.
“Yes. Her name placard is outside the door.” Jora tried to jump to Quirza’s thread to find out what became of the coins, but it was conspicuously absent. There she was in plain sight, yet Behrendt had no thread connecting himself to her. Jora looked down and spotted the glimmer of sliver at the end of her sleeve. “She wears a barring cuff. I can’t see what she does with the money beyond hiding it in the floor.”
“No, you won’t be able to do that unless she takes the cuff off,” Rivva said. “Why is she doing this? She’s well compensated for her work as Finance Minister.”
Greed, Jora assumed. She need only look at the dominee to see that some people were simply covetous, whether it was for books, jewels, or gold.
“We go over financial reports every week in the cabinet meetings. We would know if she were embezzling from the royal coffers or slipping money into them. I don’t understand, but I’m going to find out.”
“Rivva, please be careful. If Quirza is unscrupulous enough to smuggle godfruit under the king’s nose, you could be in danger.”
“It’ll be all right,” she said. “I have an idea. If I can manipulate her into saying one wrong word, I’ll take the matter to my father.” She headed to the door. “I’ll be in touch.”
Jora wanted to object, to beg Rivva not to do anything rash, but doubt stilled her tongue. Who was she to tell the princess what to do? Rivva knew Quirza far better than Jora did, and if she thought she could find out why the treasurer was committing treason, who was Jora to stop her?
Chapter 19
After leaving the Justice Bureau dormitory, Rivva Bourye returned to the palace, staring at the front wall of her carriage. Usually when she rode alone, she waved to the people on the street, returned the greetings they called out, and generally paid more attention to what was outside than inside. That day, she went over her strategy in her mind, determined to confront her father about the smuggling without revealing that Jora had anything to do with her discovery.
A nagging doubt in the back of her mind reminded her to be cautious. That Behrendt was the one collecting the coins and delivering them to the king disturbed her. She’d known and trusted him for a dozen years before he rose to the position of head steward. Though she’d been sad to lose him as a personal servant, she’d understood that everyone aspired to be more, to be better. As a princess, she had aspirations too, but they entailed perfecting skills she already had, rather than improving her station in life. She didn’t have to worry about where her money came from.
Until now.
The questions circled around her mind. Did they need the smuggling money to keep the country running? Did the dominee get a portion of it? Or did this blood money pay for the clothes Rivva wore or her harpsichord lessons or her weekly massage, manicure, and pedicure? She could live without most of what she had if it meant ending the war. She’d lost both of her elder brothers in the fighting, despite them being princes and heirs to the throne. The law was plain; no able-bodied, able-minded man could
skirt his responsibility to serve in the Legion, nor had they wanted to. For a time, she blamed their commanders for putting them on the front line rather than in some menial job, but knowing them, they’d not have accepted safe posts. Her father had served his duty as well, even earning himself a reputation as a hero after his unit took heavy casualties. Sometimes, the right thing to do meant putting oneself in harm’s way.
When the carriage stopped, she got out by herself without waiting for the footman. She stalked inside, eager and determined to get started.
Behrendt was coming down the stairs as she was going up. “Good morning, Your Highness. Out for a stroll?”
She paused on the stair and glared at him, her hands clenching into fists seemingly of their own will. Was he merely making idle conversation, or was there something more to his curiosity?
“Is something wrong, Your Highness?” He looked genuinely concerned. How many years had he been fooling her with that false sincerity of his?
“Where’s my father?” she asked.
“He’s in the cabinet meeting.”
A meeting she should be in as well. She continued up the stairs, dismissing Behrendt with only a narrowing of her eyes. Everything in her wanted to redden his ears for his role in the smuggling, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she satisfied her own need for proof and gathered enough of it to take action.
Rivva climbed to the second story where the offices were located. From the meeting room at the end of the corridor opposite her father’s office, she heard voices raised in a passionate discussion. Though the dark walnut door was cracked open to let the sound escape, no one could see her nor could she see the cabinet members inside. She glanced at the door and hurried down the hallway to to Quirza’s office, the Office of the Treasurer. Inside, she shut the door quietly and looked around.
It was exactly as Jora had described—one window, a painting of Rivva’s great-great aunt above the sideboard, a palm-sized stain on the rug under the desk. She knelt down and flipped back the corner of the rug. Sure enough, one of the boards was loose, but nothing was under it now. As she replaced the board, something gleaming from the darkness inside caught her eye. She reached in and fumbled about. Her fingers felt something cool, hard, and flat. She pulled it out. A gold coin, about an inch-and-a-half in diameter, larger than the gold shells of Serocia. On one side was a man’s face. On the other, an emblem with beasts of some kind standing on two legs. A strange script was printed around the outer edge. A Mangendan coin? Or was it from Arynd Ban?
As she stared at it, her eyes blurred with tears. Until that moment, she’d harbored a sliver of hope that Jora had been wrong, but here in her hand was proof. There had to be more—something in the records to show what was being done with the money. After replacing the board and the rug, she slipped the coin into her pocket as she climbed to her feet, then went around the desk and sat.
The desk had two drawers on each side. Starting on the right, she opened them one at a time and rifled through the papers there, but nothing caught her eye. She found only notes from meetings, a few letters, a book on accounting practices, and a letter opener, old quills, a lead pen, and other odds and ends. When she opened the top left drawer, she remembered that Quirza was left-handed. She would naturally keep things in the left-side drawers that were important.
Rivva pulled out a stack of note pads, each one neatly marked with a number on its cover and nothing else. Flipping through them, Rivva discovered these were records from the four vice-treasurers who reported to Quirza. She opened the book marked Four and turned to the most recent entry, a balance sheet signed by Vice-Minister of Finance Kuma, who oversaw the minting of coins.
The balance sheet was dated four days earlier and showed four dates, starting with the previous week and going back three weeks prior. Three dates listed the number six hundred by it, and the other showed five hundred fifty. Below those numbers was a note that read minting date and the number three thousand five hundred twenty five, followed by the letter S, which stood for shells, the name of the Serocian currency.
Rivva studied the page, running through the possibilities in her mind. Those four figures near the top had to have represented the number of coins delivered from the smugglers, with the final number being the value of the newly minted shells. Three and a half thousand shells every month from the smuggling. That was no insignificant amount. But what was being done with the money?
She flipped through the other books, checking the last pages of each in the hopes she would find a matching number recorded as income. The book that accounted for taxes received from the governors across Serocia. Each province submitted a consistent amount every month that was listed in the income columns. She checked the other books, that of the vice-treasurers of war and trade. What she found there didn’t make sense. The expenses far outweighed the recorded budget allotments, and yet the balances were not in the negative. The only way they could afford to pay for weapons, armor, food, and other supplies for the war was by funneling the money that was being minted from the foreign coins directly to those budgets to cover the shortfall. Sure enough, she found entries matching those in the minting record labeled extraneous accounts.
Rivva leaned back in the chair. Her hands and face felt clammy. The smuggling was both financing the war and perpetuating it.
In the hallway, voices grew louder as footsteps approached.
Rivva gathered the books quickly and shoved them into the desk drawer, then shut it as quickly and quietly as she could. She hurried to the window just as the door opened.
Quirza entered, stopping short when she saw Rivva. Rivva turned with a smile. “Good morning, Quirza. I need a minute of your time. Are you free now?”
“Yes, what can I do for you, Your Highness?” Quirza asked. Her graying brown hair, coiffed to perfection as usual, swung as she crossed to her desk.
“I found a gold coin under the stair,” Rivva said. “A foreign coin, from the looks of it. I wonder if you know anything about it.”
Quirza plastered a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. “Nothing. Perhaps one of your guards did some bartering with a merchant from Noossmor.”
One of my guards, Rivva thought with a simper. “I’ve asked them all, and they knew nothing. I thought surely you would know, seeing as you’re an expert in all matters related to money.” She smiled sweetly.
The older woman held out her hand. “Let me have a look.”
Rivva hesitated, unsure she should give the woman a chance to steal the proof under the claim of having lost it. Quirza’s mouth curved into a smirk as if she suspected Rivva had no such coin, but that smirking mouth fell into a frown when Rivva removed the coin from her pocket and dropped it into the treasurer’s palm.
Quirza shot her a barely perceptible glare before turning her gaze to the gold coin. She turned it over to examine both sides. “It’s definitely not Noossmori or Loworian. I don’t believe it’s Barader, either.”
“Ah, well. I’ll take it to a friend whose mother’s a banker,” Rivva said, the lie wafting from her lips like a silken scarf fluttering in a breeze. “I’m sure she’ll be able to identify it for me.”
Quirza stiffened. “Would you mind if I kept it for a few days? I’ll ask my vice-ministers if they recognize it.”
“Oh, very well. Thank you, Quirza.” Rivva said. Though she would probably never see the coin again, the fact that she knew about it and could describe it was proof enough. She left the office without waiting for the treasurer to curtsey.
Jora paced in her room after the princess left, wringing her hands and grinding her teeth, something she hadn’t done since she was a young girl first learning about her Mindstreaming powers. The whole situation made her restless. Could the king truly not know what was going on under his nose? He’d have been a fool to ask Jora to investigate if he were involved, and Jora didn’t think him a fool. That meant Quirza must have been funneling the smuggling money into the king’s finances without his knowledge.
>
And Rivva was determined to confront her. Was she in danger? Quirza wouldn’t dare move against the king’s heir, would she? Jora tried to consider the possible outcomes. Quirza might explain what she was doing and why. In fact, if she had a good reason, who was to say Rivva or the king wouldn’t agree with it? What then?
The war would go on and on. More brothers would die. Fathers. Husbands. Sons. They would continue to die senseless deaths, not even aware that their own country was stabbing them in the back while the enemy gutted them from the front.
Disrupt the flow of money. The idea came to her like a gust of wind in her mind. What if the coins never made it to the palace? What if the wagon was robbed and the money stolen? Or someone along the route never reached his destination.
It would be easy enough for Po Teng to sleep the barbers involved, but she would need Arc’s help to move them to his fake shop so they wouldn’t be discovered. It was Martis Day, the day the money would be dropped off. I’d better hurry.
With her street clothes and boots under her robe and the hat tucked into the robe’s front, she opened the door, startled to find Korlan in the hallway, talking to Adriel. This wasn’t something she could do with him following her about. She closed the door quietly, hoping he hadn’t noticed her there.
How was she going to slip away without him knowing? An idea came to her. Jora opened the Mindstream and played, “Open way betwixt,” on her flute, her breath soft as a whisper.
“Jora?” Korlan asked as he knocked on the door. “Are you in there?”
Rather than summon Po Teng to statuize Korlan, she stepped into the ’twixt and out of sight. Sorry, Kor, she thought. I can’t let you get into trouble for this.
