13. Settling Debts #4
Plans might be stretching the word, but inspiration had struck, and he was on a roll.
Viz looked up, one eyebrow arched. “And those would be?”
“I’m going to pay my taxes,” Gabriel announced with such gleeful satisfaction that Viz’s forehead creased in confusion.
Turning those gems into a stamped, sealed, irrevocable receipt from the Crown claiming the Goldmar debt was paid was the best way to ensure Vellast never got them back, no matter what happened.
“You are... paying taxes,” he repeated, staring at him as though he’d grown a second head. “And this brings you joy?”
“Immense joy,” Gabriel said.
Miles turned to face him. “You want to do this now? Before tonight?”
“Opportunity is fleeting, darling.” Gabriel examined his nails with studied nonchalance. “Windows close. Circumstances change. Better to secure certain arrangements while we still have the means to do so.”
Miles pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Fine,” Miles sighed. “Fine.”
“Excellent.” Gabriel beamed. “I do love a productive morning.”
Viz glanced between them, then shook his head. “I do not want to know, do I?”
“Probably not,” Gabriel agreed easily. “Plausible deniability and all that.”
“Of course.” Viz rolled his eyes. “Now get out, both of you. I must coordinate a strike on multiple locations around the city before dinner, and unlike some people, I prefer preparation to improvisation.”
As they left Gardmore’s and stepped back into a gloomy Averdon day, Gabriel felt lighter than he had in days.
Action was always preferable to waiting, and knowing that Vellast’s operations would soon crumble around him satisfied something primal in his chest. Vellast was too dangerous to leave in play anyway.
It had been foolish to think they could simply leave Averdon without dealing with him.
“To the tax office?” Miles asked, guiding them through the streets.
“To the tax office,” Gabriel confirmed cheerfully. “Let’s see what Vellast’s ill-gotten gems can accomplish.”
***
The Grand Treasury Collection Office loomed over its neighbors like a peacock among pigeons.
Where the surrounding Crown buildings wore their grime and soot like badges of bureaucratic misery, the Treasury’s facade gleamed.
Gray granite polished to a mirror finish reflected the shuffling taxpayers ascending its steps.
Massive bronze doors depicted the wealth of Averdon in elaborate relief: merchant ships, overflowing coffers, suspiciously well-fed nobles, and bizarrely smiling thin commoners.
“Subtle,” Gabriel observed.
“The Crown has never been accused of understatement.” Miles matched Gabriel’s stride up the steps.
He looked a little green. He clutched his satchel like it contained a bomb rather than diamonds.
“I have the backstory ready for this. They’re southern heirlooms. If they ask for the original bill of sale, we can claim the records were lost in the war.
We can return with a signed affidavit from a jeweler if they require it. ”
“Miles.”
“It’s a lot of gems, Gabriel. They’re going to ask questions. You can’t just walk into a government building with a king’s ransom in loose stones and expect them not to flag the transaction for money laundering review.”
“Watch me. You’re giving them too much credit, and I’m getting a handle on this lord thing.”
Miles paused to argue, but Gabriel pressed on until Miles scrambled to catch up.
The doors swung open at the lightest touch.
No friction to impede the flow of coin into government hands.
Inside, the Hall of Tribute stretched before them, a four-story monument to efficient extraction.
The floor was a mosaic of gold and silver tiles, and the chandelier overhead cast merciless white light that eliminated every shadow where a copper might roll astray.
The air smelled of the ozone of magical protection spells and cold metal, bracingly crisp compared to the usual government mustiness.
An usher materialized at Gabriel’s elbow before he’d taken three steps. The man’s livery put most minor nobles to shame.
“Nature of your business, my lord?”
Miles immediately stepped in front of Gabriel, bristling. “We have an appointment. Well, not strictly an appointment, but a matter of urgent legal—”
“Are you here to withdraw or deposit?” the usher asked, looking at the quality of Gabriel’s coat.
“Deposit,” Gabriel said. “Settling an estate debt.”
The usher’s bored expression vanished, replaced by the eager warmth of a gambler spotting a mark. “Oh, right this way, my lords. No waiting for depositors. Ignoring the queue is one of the perks of patriotism.”
They were whisked past the queue of miserable citizens clutching their withdrawal or refund slips and deposited at a brass-and-crystal teller cage. The woman behind the glass wore severe navy and gold. She didn’t smile. She didn’t need to.
“Account designation?”
“Rookgate estate on behalf of Goldmar, pending transfer to Fairfield,” Miles said. He placed the pouch on the counter and cleared his throat, his posture stiffening into his ‘Official Guild Mage’ stance. “Now, regarding the nature of these assets. You will find their provenance is—”
“Liquidatable?” the woman interrupted.
“I... well, yes, but I feel I should explain that the lack of recent appraisal documentation is due to—”
Gabriel tried not to roll his eyes. Miles, bless him, still thought the government operated on fairness and consistency.
“Sir.” She looked at him for the first time. Her eyes were hard and flat. “Are they stolen from the Crown?”
Miles froze. “No.”
“Are they cursed with anything contagious?”
“No. ”
“Then I don’t care if you dug them out of a wyrm’s nostril.” She snatched the pouch. “Deposit initiated.”
The teller swung a complex lens apparatus—a Truth Loupe, Gabriel recognized—over the gems. Numbers materialized in glowing script above the stones, tallying their liquidatable value.
The lens glowed a soft, cheerful green.
“Pistachio,” the teller muttered, examining the clarity. “Excellent color. No flaws.”
“It... it doesn’t know?” Miles whispered to Gabriel, watching the machine tally the sins of Lord Vellast and come up with a simple mathematical sum.
“It’s a Treasury machine, darling,” Gabriel murmured, delighted. “It doesn’t scan for crime. It scans for carats.”
The figure hovered just above forty-eight thousand.
“This exceeds your debt by one thousand, two hundred, and thirty-seven gold,” the teller said. “Do you wish to apply the surplus as credit, or receive it in coin?”
“Coin,” Gabriel said.
The transaction completed in under three minutes. No one even asked where the diamonds had come from. The teller’s stamp hit the receipt with a thud, and Gabriel found himself holding a crisp “Certificate of Settled Debt” while Miles hefted a chest of gold coins.
Back on the street, Gabriel held the receipt up to the gray light, admiring the official seal.
“I want to frame this. I want to hang it over our bed.” He grinned at Miles.
“We just paid forty-seven thousand gold in back taxes using gems stolen from the man who helped create that debt through shady business dealings, with his own diamonds from the profit of the same shady business dealings that created the debt.”
Miles looked down at the cask of gold coins in his arms. “It shouldn’t have been that easy. What happened to signing a hundred forms and giving a blood sample?”
“It is efficiently corrupt. I love it.” Gabriel tucked the receipt away. “How long until we can file it with the Office of Unclaimed Holdings?”
Miles’s expression shifted to something more resigned.
“Ah. Well. That is a different department. They take money here. Master Quillmane merely processes paper. I suspect he will require the original receipt, three notarized copies, a witness statement, and the sacrifice of a small goat. We should budget the entire afternoon.”
“Of course.” Gabriel sighed dramatically. “The Treasury wants our money. The Holdings office wants us to suffer. But, alas for Palthor, I have discovered my lordly prerogatives, and I have my own requirements.”
Miles caught Gabriel’s eye, and something conspiratorial passed between them, a shared recognition of the absurdity they’d navigated to reach this moment.
“You know,” Miles said, shifting the cask of coins to his other arm, “I believe you’re right…my lord.”
“Save the niceties for Palthor.” Gabriel patted his coat where the receipt nestled against his heart. “He’ll need them.”
The Office of Unclaimed Holdings hunched between its neighbors like a sullen child forced to sit at the adult table. After the Treasury’s gleaming opulence, the building felt even more drab.
“Ready?” Miles asked.
“Absolutely.” Gabriel straightened his shoulders. “Let’s make Palthor’s afternoon interesting.”
The familiar scent of dust and despair greeted them inside.
Clerks in gray robes shuffled between towering stacks of paperwork, their movements slow as funeral processions.
Dejected petitioners slumped on benches just as Miles and Gabriel had done the day they had returned to Averdon.
The collective misery was so thick that Gabriel could taste it.
He and Miles walked past them all.
“Sir,” a clerk called out weakly. “Sir, there’s a process—”
Miles didn’t slow. He navigated the maze of filing cabinets with the confidence of someone who’d spent the past week learning where Master Steward Palthor Quillmane conducted his business. The door to Palthor’s office stood ajar, voices murmuring within.
Perfect.
Gabriel smiled at Miles and then pushed it open without knocking.
Palthor sat behind his desk, ink-stained fingers frozen mid-gesture as he addressed a round-faced man in a clerk’s clothes clutching a sheaf of documents. Both men stared at the intrusion.
“Lord Goldmar,” Palthor’s lined face was already settling into familiar disapproval. “I’m afraid that’s not how the process—”