“Now?” Zai has to take a moment to lean back in the chair. “We know what’s happening in Port Azuru but we don’t have evidence to pin it on anyone. It’s a crime without a criminal.”

  “So we need to find the perpetrator?” Sophia blinks, taking a long moment to go over the receipts again. “But we have evidence already. Can’t we just send this to… an auditor? Is there any auditing body for the state?”

  Zai bites his lower lip, a sorrowful frown on his mouth. “Technically this would fall under the Political Apparatus.”

  The Foreign Princess digs for her political education in this strange new nation. “So… your thing? Isn’t the political apparatus controlled by your family?”

  “The higher echelons, yes.” Zai explains. “But the Apparatus is… unwieldy the farther we get from Landfall. It’s not enough to trust them to handle this matter with any sort of effectiveness.”

  Sophia gives a blank, empty look at this. “But aren’t you… you know?”

  “The farther you are away from those who control you, the further you fall. To the Apparatus here in this state, any orders from Landfall might as well be general suggestions. And small towns like this? It is nothing compared to the coinage coming through Sanji, it just slips through the cracks.”

  But in the small towns is where the people suffer the most--where the weight of the bureaucracy cannot shield them.

  Zai can read the confused glance on Sophia’s face, and he asks her a probing question of his own. “What does the Imperium do in this situation?”

  Uh… Sophia maneuvers her brain out of this series of accounting mathematics and into the larger picture of governance. “Depends on how bad. I know Mom would sometimes just send a Crown Auditor in if the numbers don’t match up.”

  Is it embarrassing to admit that mother sometimes had you double check accounting work for her under the guise of a ‘case study’ and ‘mother-daughter bonding time?’

  Zai blinks with a mild apprehension and surprise. “Personally. The Imperium would personally send in a Crown Auditor for a matter of this sort for a small town?”

  “Yeah.” Sophia ever so casually mentions this, as if dispatching an envoy from the Silver Throne was as simple as buying eggs out of a grocery store. “I mean if they take the train it’ll be like a week at most to do the books and come back? Since most of them live in Capital anyway, it's not like it takes that long. Well… maybe in the Adranic Island provinces that would be a trip, but nowadays it's mostly a day and a half aerostatic ride.”

  “And what would happen if one of them discovered something of this sort? Of this level of corruption within this town?”

  “Error of Blood, easily.” Sophia shrugs. “Followed by a Blade of Error probably. Honestly, if it was bad it might be a public demonstration as well, you know, as an apology.”

  The ritual suicide from a failure to the Silver Throne is dropped with such calm, incoherent simplicity that Zai needs to remind himself of that Imperial brutality so earned and used. “What if an auditor is… guilty of corruption?”

  “Oh definitely an exsanguination. I actually think it's part of the Oath they take. You know, pay your dues with coins, and sins with blood?”

  The Crown Prince of Tianci does not know, and he blinks at that statement. Silence, as that intrusive thought snakes into his brain. Oh dear Zai, how easy would it be to solve all your problems, if each corrupt member of all courts were to have their throats slit and piled in front of the Palaital Temple.

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  How wondrous if you were to see the people feeding off of the death of the Dominion like that: their staffers and servants, their husbands and wives, their sons and daughters joining them in a torrent of red flowing like a river down the thousand steps.

  A solution so bloody, so simple; the political temptation growing like barbed vines across his thoughts before coming to end him once more. Because that’s what father did.

  Because if your first step is in blood, then all your footprints will be forever stained.

  Sophia smiles. “Why, what does your Dominion do if they catch an Apparatus member who’s participating in corruption?”

  Zai tells it to her in full honesty. “If they’re well connected enough? Nothing.”

  The Fourth Princess of the Imperium stares in shock. “Nothing?”

  He gives her a theoretical case, trying to find holes in that system of her’s. “Sophia, what if a Crown Auditor was connected to let’s say a Provincial Governor; like a Baron or even Duke? What if they were conspiring together to siphon silver from the Crown? And if you brought them with a… Blade of Error: they could threaten your family, the Elise’s rule? What would your Imperium do?”

  “I mean that’s what the Impericutta’s for right? We send them in whenever someone is being particularly uncooperative, but it’s been a hundred years since that’s happened.” Sophia speaks the name of the Silver Throne’s demonic emissaries. “But the Silver Charter makes sure that the only civil war that could be waged would probably be between the heirs and their legions… but I mean I don’t think any of my siblings would be willing to do such a thing.”

  There’s a long pause as she corrects herself. “Well… Naomi might be willing to try out a military coup. She’s always said it’s on her bucket list.”

  Zai can’t tell if this is a joke or not. “The… First Princess?”

  The Fourth Princess shrugs as she gives him this admittance of military readiness. “I mean she was working on counter-insurgency contingencies with my mom, and Naomi said she could probably do it.”

  “Can she?”

  “Probably. Maybe mom will let her do the military exercise for her birthday or something. Again, it's something she’s seen being done in the western countries before. If you ask me, I think she just wants to see if she could do it better.”

  The fact that the concept of a coup, even as an exercise, could be tossed around like this so casually within the Imperial Household completely shakes Zai to his core, and he has to return this conversation to the topic at hand. “But, back to the main point: your… Impericutta would handle any corruption like this?”

  “Well, at best it never would happen.” Sophia states. “The moment a cancer starts growing the entire body is doomed. Like a weed, you need to stamp it out before it begins to flower.”

  She’s missed a point as well, and the Fourth Princess finalizes her opinion on her political system. “Well, even if any corruption does happen, the Silver Charter lets any petition with enough signatures be heard. So I guess in the end it’s really up to the regular people to raise any issues.”

  And this was the power of the Imperium.

  Sophia leans in like a dog, her fluffy tail wagging as she’s actually excited for this. “So what’s next? How do we find who is responsible for all this?”

  Zai rubs his temples, trying to come up with the next steps. “We’ll probably need the documentation for the rest of the guilds in town. Can you do what you did here, but to the other guilds; maybe even some shopkeepers?”

  If you agree to this, there goes our summer of rot. The internal monologue warns.

  But the thought processes, now all specifically watching the contours around Zai’s chest, counter that statement. Yeah but this is gonna be a hot girl summer. We’re of age now, in a vacation town, and we’ve got a hot boyfriend to do forensic accounting with.

  Sophia nods, joining her thoughts with his. “Because if someone’s hiding money they’re probably not using a three month system for all the guilds. Maybe they’re pushing money through seasonality, and that since this town is about to hit summer vacation season we can catch them in the act?”

  Sophia Elise the Eighth is five steps ahead of her husband, with him simply trying to stutter the words out. “Um… yeah. That’s a… plan.”

  So she sings to herself in her head, a cold scowl on her face. Political date time~