Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (30 page)

She began to ask specific questions to her spies.  How often does someone from the Crew stop by a business to collect funds and oversee operations? What happened if someone didn’t pay their protection?  Who showed up if there was a problem? Quietly the guardsmen shambled back into the house in the Northside ward and dutifully returned an answer.  

Day after day the chronicle of observed behavior grew on Pentandra’s table.  She began to see just how extensive the Crew’s operations were in the ward.  Much of the business involved protection money from merchants and even guilds.  One in seven of the businesses along the High Street, from what they could tell, were paying a portion of their profits to Opilio’s thugs every week, and the pressure on all the rest to conform was growing.  

Ancient Andolos, one of the more thoughtful guardsmen, explained the process to Pentandra one morning over tea.  

“The Rats look for businesses or merchants who are in financial distress, but who cannot secure funds from a patron, a moneylender, or a temple.  They send in a very
reasonable
fellow first, one who dresses like a noble and throws coin around like drops of piss.  He casually proposes a loan just in time to save the day, at
reasonable
terms.  Then he extends a line of credit.  Then the terms
change
, and another fellow comes around, if payments aren’t made to the Crew’s satisfaction.  He’s less
reasonable
.

“That’s when things get ugly.  Threats and intimidation, beatings, even worse.  Eventually, if the poor bastards can’t pay on terms – very
un
reasonable terms at this point – then the Crew takes over the business.  Sometimes they let it run undisturbed, just taking a larger cut of the profit.  Sometimes they use it as a cover for some other, more sinister enterprise, or loot it at their leisure.  With local conditions as bad as they’ve been, there have been a lot of unfortunate souls who have fallen prey to them.”

“But that’s just the beginning,” Andolos continued.  He had been in the town watch for years before joining the palace guards, and he had seen the rise of the Crew with a watchman’s eye.  “Once they get into your business, they
own
you.  Not just the business, but your entire family.  That’s when the Crew starts asking for ‘favors’.  Not much, at first, and folk are happy to help, just to keep the thugs at bay.  But then the requests start getting more serious.”

“How serious?”

“The Crew is efficient,” Andolos sighed.  “If they have a problem with a customer, sometimes instead of sending in their own thugs, they recruit an unwilling gang of other customers in the ward and force them to beat the man and menace his family . . . or face the same fate themselves the next night.  Being forced to participate in such brutality reinforces just how easily their turn could come, and the guilt keeps them cowed.  

“Last summer one man, a carter over on the east side, reneged on a pledge to repay a debt to the Crew.   Instead of beating him, they bound him in his chamber . . . and then compelled all of his neighbors who were in debt to them to have at his wife while he watched for two silver pennies a turn, until the interest was paid.  The poor woman drowned herself in the river in shame.  The carter joined the Iron Band, died on patrol.  Pity.  Nice couple.”

“That’s ghastly!” Pentandra said, shocked.  “That’s not merely crime, that’s terrorism!”

“That’s how the Rat Crew operates.  It’s worse in the docks – Bloodfinger is a right bastard, and thinks everyone is out to cheat him – and
far
worse in the camps.  The things they do to the poor souls there . . .” he said, shaking his head.  “We’ll deal with them in their turn,” he promised.  “Back in my day they’d rough a man up, or cut off his pinkie, but they wouldn’t
destroy
him, or his relationship with his neighbors.  Nothing like this, my lady.  Those Rats are evil. They’re milking Vorone of everything they can, milking it dry.”

Pentandra couldn’t argue with that.  She consulted with Coinsister Saltia, one afternoon at the palace, and had her postulate some figures for her.  From the estimates she was making based on how much from each business under the shadow of the rats was paying, the Market ward was losing more than twice as much in protection payments every week than it was paying in taxes.  

That didn’t account for the other effects the Crew were having on the district.  Petty crime was rampant, housebreaking was a nightly occurrence, and the streets were dangerous at night.  Footpads and pickpockets roamed freely, some working for the Crew, others just desperate and violent.  

And this was one of the
better
wards in Vorone.

The more she studied the matter, the more Pentandra realized that the Rat Crew really was a danger to the Duke.  They were eroding the economic infrastructure of the ward, the commercial heart of the capital city,  like predators, not mere parasites.  If Vorone was to be a functioning capital, then their influence had to be
destroyed.

The Constable and his men were growing impatient, too.  A week after she’d begun the effort she’d cast no spells, just asked questions and taken notes.  The guardsmen wanted action, and Sir Vemas was eager to begin his war against the Crew.

But Pentandra knew that they were not ready for that, yet.  Their investigations had revealed just how extensive and ruthless a foe they faced.  As talented as they were, the idea of the guardsmen pretending to be a new gang in town without the ability to match the Rat Crew’s power, somehow, seemed a recipe for a lot of dead guardsmen.  

Supposedly that’s what her magic was supposed to do for them.  She just didn’t know how to do that.  Yet.

“You know, Sir Vemas,” she finally announced at one of their evening meetings, “with all of these professional thugs and killers around, it seems an absolute
shame
not to take advantage of that talent,” she began, and then told them of her nascent plan.

Chapter Nine

The Tumultuous State Of The Duchy

The Trophy Room was half-filled with ministers when Pentandra arrived for the first regularly scheduled weekly meeting Count Angrial had established as routine for the day after every Temple Day.  Ostensibly it was designed as an opportunity for the Duke (and the Prime Minister) to oversee their various duties and coordinate their efforts.  The inaugural meeting had been largely ceremonial, with Anguin delivering a passionate and well-delivered speech about their great mission, and Angrial presenting them with their official warrants. 

This time, the meeting of the ministers of the court was to be more focused on the business of the realm.  That would, in her experience, lead to yet more meetings, which would then begat more meetings.  She was quickly discovering that the life of a Court Wizard - barring her Rat-catching duties - was largely comprised of meetings.  There were far, far more to attend than she had ever proposed at the Arcane Orders, and most of them seemed to devolve quickly into assigning blame for failures or attempting to take credit for other’s success.  Pentandra found the entire ordeal an exercise in patience. 

She had stopped on the way to the meeting in the main hall to fill her tea cup with hot water from the kettle . . . and had added a small dash of strong honey spirits from a flask to make the tea – and the meeting – more palatable. 

There,
she thought, as she sipped her doctored tea and took her seat. 
Patience.

This morning she found, the palace was buzzing with the Duke’s impressive attempt to tackle the accumulated cases set for his justice and held in abeyance since his father died.  Prisoners who had languished for months or years in the palace dungeon, cases between nobles regarding inheritance, and contracts between estates had virtually halted with the gurvani invasion.  That meant that much serious business in the remnant of the duchy was as frozen as a goblin’s chamberpot without ducal justice.

But unlike many high nobles faced with the task, Duke Anguin attacked the backlog tenaciously.  During a marathon three-day session in the Stone Room he heard case after case of minor criminal issues, listened to evidence, was advised by lawbrothers, and seemed determined to dispense justice.  While his rulings were rarely greeted with cheers, they brought considerable resolution to the realm.  It was a sincere, tangible sign of Ducal authority, one it would be hard for opponents of the regime to undermine.

Of course, it wasn’t just his dedication to justice that inspired the lad.  Years of legal logjams had suddenly been freed . . . and had led to dozens of fines and a few generous confiscations to add to the treasury. 

Anguin even ordered two executions (though he had to find a temporary ducal executioner when it was realized that he had none) and sentenced nearly a hundred men from the garrison, the town watch, and the palace guard accused of corruption and cowardice to serve anywhere from one year to five in the grim Iron Band. 

It was a most satisfying indulgence in justice.

Lawfather Jodas nearly preened as he gave his report of the affair at the start of the meeting.  Not every decision had been a pristine judgment of godlike wisdom, as was Luin’s ideal, but eliminating four years worth of accumulated work in three days was a professional accomplishment anyone would be proud to relate.

The state of the treasury was less triumphant.  Coinsister Saltia reported that she was depending on the loans to keep the mercenaries paid, the horses fed, and food in the palace kitchen, but the draw on the treasury was significant.  Feeding two thousand infantry soldiers alone was costing a small fortune, and while a price could not be put on the peace that they enforced, the price of feeding that peace was tremendous.  

But then Viscountess Threanas presented her summary of ducal expenses, as well as income, and things got really dire.  Actually paying the wages of the Orphan’s Band was costing more than two hundred ounces of silver a day, on top of their board.  The burghers of the town were reluctant to pay more than a token of the cost, despite the persuasive arguments of Father Jodas.

But there was, she admitted, at least a
trickle
of funds into the treasury.  The storehouses were filled, she added with dark humor, with a tremendous amount of iron ore and timber collected in tribute . . . and completely worthless to the duchy. 

The timber and ore had been intended to support the ducal fleet, she explained, which was estranged from Anguin’s control.  Though the materials had value otherwise, the cost of paying to transport them into a market, once tariffs and fees had been added, was far more than the materials were worth.  Until things changed, the storehouses of the palace would remain collecting dust and quietly rusting.

Edmarin’s confiscated treasury had soothed matters, some, the old biddy admitted, reluctantly, in her dry voice, and the coffers of coin they’d taken from some of the more corrupt officials had also helped.  More, the fines collected by running His Grace’s docket were significant, if they could be collected - enough to pay for two weeks of the Orphan’s Band, ultimately. 

“But you cannot rule a duchy with hired swords,” she lectured the room.  “It places too great a drain on the treasury in the best of times.  More, their presence threatens the traditional place of the Wilderlords, and keeping them here will undoubtedly cause hurt feelings, particularly among our precious few peers.  Once the immediate danger is over, I
strongly
recommend we send the Orphan’s on their way.” 

Threanas had been a fixture of the court in Vorone for decades.  She knew so many obscure details of the duchy’s finances, both north and south, that replacing her would be politically troublesome – and potentially dangerous to the realm. But she also witnessed the follies of two previous dukes, and her opinions, however harsh, were well-respected even by those with an intense dislike for her.

Unfortunately her style conflicted mightily with that of plainspoken Coinsister Saltia.  The unassuming nun was passionate about her performance and devoted to the purity of the accounts, but she had little flair for finance and almost no personal style.  That was a far cry from the elegant manner of the aging courtier. 

Worse, Saltia became flustered when she felt pressured, and Threanas
lived
to bring pressure her subordinates in order to get the best performance out of them.  Threanas was the kind of woman who felt compelled to dominate every social situation she could manage as a matter of nature. 

That was annoying enough when it happened in a civic organization or a lay society, but Threanas’ attitude was particularly troublesome at court.  She’d already started hammering away, sending poor Saltia to deliver negative inquiries to various officers in her stead.  The poor priestess had told so many officers that there just wasn’t enough money in the treasury to do what they wanted - or needed -- to do was punishing.  And it was just one of the deft social manipulations the well-experienced woman was naturally prone to.

But even the meticulous little nun had to admit that the older woman had a rare talent with numbers.  As Threanas dutifully reported that she estimated she would be able to  squeeze almost seven hundred ounces of silver out of the town per month, Pentandra caught the irritated look on Saltia’s wide face.  When the southern peer announced triumphantly that she’d likely be able to do so without inspiring another riot, the nun began frowning.