Waking up inside a taco-folded mattress in a four-by-four supply closet is not a dignified experience.
I had to essentially slither out of the dark wooden box like a miserable, freezing snake. I hit the stone floor of the corridor, my knees popping loudly in the silent Keep. My neck was locked at a terrifying forty-five-degree angle. I smelled aggressively of wet straw and old lye soap.
I limped my way to the Great Hall, practically crawling onto my wobbly wooden throne.
"Willem," I rasped, rubbing my locked neck. "Tell me you found someone who owes us money."
Willem adjusted his spectacles, looking extremely nervous. He clutched his massive leather ledger to his chest. "Ah. Well. Not exactly, My Lord. I found people we owe money to."
The heavy oak doors of the Great Hall swung open.
Two men marched in, flanked by a handful of skinny, miserable-looking guards. The first man was Lord Petyr of the Dairy Marches, a nobleman who smelled intensely of sour milk and wore a faded velvet doublet that was three sizes too small. Beside him waddled Baron Horace, the Turnip-Baron of the Eastern Valley, a man whose family tree was clearly just a straight vertical line. His eyes pointed in slightly different directions.
They didn't look like conquerors. They looked like medieval debt collectors.
"Lord Elaric!" Lord Petyr declared, his voice nasal and grating. He marched up to the dais and unrolled a crumbling, yellowed piece of parchment. "Word has reached the Marches that Ravenhold is dripping with silver! We have come to collect on the debts of your late father!"
I stared at him, my neck throbbing. "My father has been dead for five years."
"And compound interest never sleeps!" Baron Horace yelled, looking somewhere slightly to the left of my head.
Lord Petyr slammed the crumbling parchment onto Willem's ledger. "Your father borrowed three premium egg-laying hens, a wooden wagon wheel, and my grandfather's winter boots. With sixty months of compounding default interest, the Crown legally mandates that you owe us a combined total of four hundred silver stags!"
I blinked. Four hundred silver stags for a wagon wheel and some old shoes. These pathetic, inbred nobles were trying to leech off my OnlyMaids passive income.
I opened my mouth to tell Thorne to throw them into the moat, but the Great Hall doors banged open again.
A messenger boy sprinted in, desperately wrestling a wildly flapping gray pigeon. The bird was furiously pecking at the boy's knuckles.
"Urgent news from the Capital!" the boy screamed, shoving the squawking bird into Willem's face.
Willem flinched, grabbed the bird, and yanked the tiny scroll off its leg. The pigeon instantly broke free, took flight, and fluttered up into the dark rafters to join the two birds from yesterday.
Willem unrolled the scroll. His eyes widened. "The Crown has fallen! The Capital has been seized by a rogue Duke!"
In the back of the hall, the four Keep Guards violently kicked their chairs away.
Shwing!
Four broadswords left their scabbards in perfect unison.
"To arms!" Thorne bellowed, his face turning red with absolute patriotic rage. He pointed his heavy blade at the heavy oak doors. "We ride for the Capital! We will shatter the Duke's lines and feed his heart to the crows! For the Son of Greg!"
Lord Petyr and Baron Horace jumped back in sheer terror, startled by the sudden explosion of military violence.
"Thorne, sit down," I grumbled, massaging my temples. "You don't even have a horse."
Thorne stood there, chest heaving, his sword raised high, ready to sprint for five weeks straight to save a man he didn't know.
I looked back at the two pathetic Lords. "I am not paying you four hundred silver for three dead chickens."
"It is the law!" Lord Petyr shrieked, tapping the crumbling parchment. "You must settle the ledger, or we will petition the Crown to seize your lands!"
The doors banged open again. A second messenger boy sprinted in, holding a second violently thrashing pigeon.
"Update!" the boy yelled, shoving the bird at Willem.
Willem expertly dodged the bird's beak, stripped the scroll from its leg, and let it fly up into the rafters. In the background, the younger peasant from yesterday's court was currently standing on a wooden table, quietly waving a makeshift net made of a burlap sack tied to a broom handle, trying to catch his dinner.
Willem unrolled the second scroll. He stared at it for a long, painful moment.
"Well?!" Thorne demanded from the back, his sword trembling with righteous anticipation. "Has the Duke executed our liege?!"
"No," Willem sighed, his voice completely flat. "King Alden... divorced the Queen."
Thorne blinked. His sword dipped slightly. "He what?"
"He divorced the Queen," Willem read aloud. "And then, three hours later, he legally remarried her. By doing so, he claimed the 'Royal Wedding Tax Stipend' from the national treasury, which he immediately used to bribe the Duke to leave the Capital. The King is back in power."
The Great Hall went dead silent.
In the back row, Thorne slowly lowered his sword. The absolute, unmitigated shame of serving a King who literally farmed his own wife for gold drops was too much to bear.
The guards didn't even sheathe their swords this time. They just dropped them. The heavy steel blades clattered loudly against the stone floor. One of the guards sat down, put his head between his knees, and covered his ears. Thorne just stared blankly at the wall, his soul completely hollowed out.
I sat on my wobbly throne, staring at the pigeon shit on the floor.
The King had absolutely no dignity. He used completely absurd, bad-faith legal loopholes to trap people and keep his money.
I looked at Lord Petyr. I looked at Baron Horace.
A slow, predatory smile spread across my face.
"Willem," I said, my voice smooth and totally devoid of ethics. "Fetch the woodcarver. We are going to settle my father's debts today. In full."
An hour later, Lord Petyr and Baron Horace stood in the courtyard, looking down at the heavy burlap sack I had just handed them.
"Four hundred silver stags worth of value," I announced magnanimously, crossing my arms.
Lord Petyr greedily opened the sack. His face immediately scrunched in confusion. He reached inside and pulled out a handful of beautifully carved, smooth wooden coins. Each one had a crude drawing of a turnip branded onto it.
"What is this?" Petyr demanded, holding up a wooden coin. "This isn't silver! This is kindling!"
"That, my Lord, is Ravenhold Store Credit," I explained smoothly, gesturing to the heavy sack. "It is legally binding tender, backed by the full faith and credit of the Voss estate. It holds exactly four hundred silver stags of purchasing power."
Baron Horace bit one of the wooden coins. He looked confused when it didn't taste like metal. "Where do we spend it?"
"It is non-transferable and holds no cash value," I smiled, wrapping an arm around Petyr's shoulder and turning him toward the village gates. "However, it can be exclusively redeemed at the OnlyMaids tavern located exactly one mile down that road. They serve a fantastic Artisanal Sour."
Petyr's face turned purple. "You cannot pay a sovereign debt in tavern vouchers! This is an outrage! I will not stand for this!"
"You accepted the sack, Petyr. The ledger is settled," I said, patting him on the back. "Now get off my lawn."
Thorne, desperate to take his depression out on someone, took a single, menacing step forward, cracking his knuckles.
Petyr and Horace swallowed hard, grabbed their sack of wooden coins, and scrambled out of the Keep's gates, furious and screaming about filing a royal complaint.
That night, I was dreading the walk back to my freezing mop closet.
I stood in the Great Hall, rubbing my neck. Willem walked in, adjusting his spectacles.
"Status report, Willem," I asked. "Did the Lords ride back to their territories?"
"No, My Lord," Willem sighed, opening his ledger. "Greta sent a runner up from the tavern. Lord Petyr and Baron Horace are currently sitting at a premium table. Petyr has ordered his sixth pitcher of Artisanal Sour, and Baron Horace just paid Bess forty wooden coins to watch her wipe down a table."
I grinned, my terrible posture suddenly not hurting quite as much. They were completely trapped in the ecosystem. I hadn't lost a single piece of silver, and my waitresses were reclaiming the wood.
"Perfect," I said, turning toward the dark corridor. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Willem. I have to go fold my bed in half."