The heavily sprung, luxury carriage of the Royal Inspector hit a massive, frozen pothole.
Inside the velvet-lined cabin, Inspector Vance was violently thrown against the door, his expensive silk hat tumbling to the floor.
"Barbaric!" Vance hissed, adjusting his perfumed handkerchief over his nose. "We have reached the edge of the world, Captain. I can feel the very earth devolving beneath our wheels."
Captain Rhol, riding alongside the carriage on a massive warhorse, leaned down to look through the window. "We are less than a mile from Ravenhold Keep, Inspector. The road has turned entirely to frozen mud."
"Expected," Vance sneered, brushing a speck of dust from his coat. "The Turnip-Peasant thrives in the filth. Prepare yourself, Captain. When we open those gates, do not make sudden movements. If the King's intelligence is correct, Lord Elaric Voss is building an army of savages. They will likely be covered in their own feces, barking at the moon."
"I hear something, sir," Rhol said, pulling back on his horse's reins.
Vance listened. Through the freezing wind, a loud, chaotic noise was echoing down the valley. It was a massive roar of human voices, rhythmic thumping, and raucous laughter.
"A primitive war chant," Vance diagnosed confidently, his elitist pseudo-science kicking in. "They are working themselves into a blood frenzy. Draw your sword, Captain. We will show these mud-primates the gleaming steel of civilization."
The carriage rolled up the final hill and stopped before the heavy wooden gates of Ravenhold Keep.
"Open in the name of the King!" Captain Rhol bellowed.
The gates swung inward. Inspector Vance stepped out of his carriage, holding his perfumed handkerchief tight, fully prepared to face a horde of grunting, rock-wielding cavemen.
His brain completely short-circuited.
There was no mud pit. There was no tribal war chant.
Instead, the massive courtyard was perfectly organized into long, pristine wooden rows. Hundreds of wealthy merchants were sitting at tables, laughing, drinking, and throwing massive handfuls of silver into the air.
Suddenly, a woman walked past Vance. It was Bess.
She was carrying a wooden tray loaded with heavy clay cups. Her scratchy gray wool dress was sliced jaggedly at the mid-thigh, exposing her thick, bare legs to the winter air. The collar of her dress plunged dangerously deep, held together by a single, straining thread. She was sweating lightly from the exertion, her face flushed as she smiled warmly at a table of drooling merchants.
"Would anyone like the Premium Garlic Herb Butter for an extra silver stag?" Bess asked sweetly, her voice cutting through the noise.
The merchants cheered and aggressively emptied their coin purses onto her tray.
Inspector Vance stood frozen in the gateway. His jaw was literally hanging open. His entire understanding of provincial biology was crumbling in real-time.
This is not a mud-hut, Vance's mind screamed in absolute confusion. This is an optimized, hyper-efficient extraction of wealth! And she has knees! Why can I see her knees?!
"Can I help you, mate?" a voice asked.
Vance snapped his head around. Sitting on a wooden barrel near the cellar entrance was Lord Elaric Voss. He wasn't covered in feces. He wasn't crawling on all fours. He was casually tossing a silver coin in the air and catching it, watching the courtyard with the smug, lazy satisfaction of a fat cat.
Vance straightened his silk coat, trying to recover his Capital authority. He marched over to the barrel, Captain Rhol heavily flanking him.
"Lord Elaric Voss," Vance demanded, his voice ringing with aristocratic authority. "I am Inspector Vance, the Royal Auditor of the Crown. The King has received reports of illegal silver hoarding and dangerous magical poisons being distributed from this Keep. I am here to audit your treasury. The Crown demands its ninety-percent cut of this... this chaotic enterprise!"
I looked the Inspector up and down. He smelled like lavender and entitlement.
"Willem!" I yelled over the noise of the tavern.
The old steward scurried out of the Great Hall, clutching his massive leather ledger to his chest like a shield. He looked terrified of the Royal Knights.
"Willem," I said lazily, hopping down from the barrel. "The Inspector wants to see our profit margins. Please explain our current tax bracket."
Willem swallowed hard. He opened the ledger, which I had forced him to aggressively doctor the night before using terminology he didn't even understand.
"W-well, My Lord Inspector," Willem stammered, reading the charcoal scratches. "According to the books, Ravenhold Keep is currently operating at a massive net loss. We are practically bankrupt."
Vance's eyes bulged. He pointed a trembling, gloved finger at the courtyard, where Elara was currently raking a pile of silver into a sack just for leaning over a table.
"Bankrupt?!" Vance shrieked. "I am looking at a mountain of silver right now! You are extorting the entire northern trade route!"
"Ah, but you see, Inspector," I interrupted smoothly, putting a hand on his velvet shoulder. "That isn't revenue. That is Gross Merchandising Volume. The Keep doesn't actually own that silver. Those maids are Independent Contractors. The Keep simply takes a minor platform fee for hosting them."
Vance stared at me. He had never heard these words before. In a world where the King just pointed a sword at you and took your cows, modern corporate tax evasion sounded like dark magic.
"Furthermore," I continued, gesturing vaguely at the Keep walls. "We have massive overhead. The depreciation of our assets is staggering. Do you know how much it costs to replace a wool dress when the hem magically falls off? And the mead? We buy it at a premium from Baron Grell. Technically, because of our reinvestment into the local infrastructure, the Crown actually owes us a tax rebate of forty silver stags."
Inspector Vance touched his forehead. He was getting a severe migraine. He looked at the ledger. It was filled with columns of numbers labeled 'Sweat Equity' and 'Simp-Yield Projections.'
"I... I need to sit down," Vance muttered, his elitist brain completely broken by the sheer audacity of my bullshit.
"Elara!" I called out. "Get the Inspector a VIP table. And bring him a free basket of the salty white bread. He looks thirsty."
The sun dipped below the jagged peaks of the northern mountains, plunging the thick woods outside the Keep into freezing darkness.
The merchant was fat.
That was the first thing Silas noted from his crouched position in the branches of the dead oak tree. The man had a heavy, sagging belly that pushed against his expensive wool tunic.
To Silas, fat meant surplus. Surplus meant theft. In a world where the winter freeze had turned his wife and two daughters into stiff, hollow husks just nine months ago, a fat man was a walking crime against nature.
The merchant stumbled away from the warm, glowing lights of Ravenhold Keep. He was drunk on sour mead, humming a toneless song as he trudged into the treeline to relieve himself in the deep snow.
Silas watched him from the branches. He didn't feel rage. Rage was warm. Rage made you sloppy. Silas felt absolutely nothing but the freezing wind against his face and the cold, heavy iron of the rusted skinning knife in his hand.
He is wearing imported leather boots, Silas's internal voice noted, cold and analytical. The soles are thick. He has never felt the mud freeze between his toes. He carries three pouches of silver. He gave two of them to the Lord's whores just to look at their knees. My Calla died for the lack of a single copper penny. The ledger of the world was unbalanced. Silas was simply the accountant.
The merchant stopped beneath the oak tree, sighing heavily as he unlaced his trousers.
Silas calculated the drop. Eight feet. The deep snow would muffle the landing. He needed to sever the vocal cords first. A scream would carry back to the Keep's walls, and the Iron Maid was always listening.
Silas dropped from the branch.
He landed soundlessly in the snow directly behind the merchant. Before the fat man could even register the shift in the air, Silas wrapped his left arm around the thick neck, pulling backward to expose the throat, and drove the rusted skinning knife deep into the side of the merchant's windpipe.
A wet, horrific gurgle escaped the man's lips. Blood, thick and black in the moonlight, sprayed across the pristine white snow.
The heavy man thrashed, his fat hands clawing desperately at Silas's arm. Silas held him steady, his expression completely blank, riding out the violent spasms with the practiced patience of a butcher.
Forty seconds, Silas thought, watching the light fade from the man's terrified eyes. Quicker than the frost. He should be grateful.
The merchant went limp, collapsing heavily into the bloody snow.
Silas knelt beside the fresh corpse. In the distance, the faint, muffled sound of laughter and cheering drifted over the Keep's walls. The Lord's tavern was thriving. The silver was flowing.
Silas wiped his blade clean on the dead man's expensive wool tunic. He didn't take the boots. He didn't take the silver. He wasn't a thief.
One, Silas thought, looking toward the glowing torches of the Keep. The ledger is open.