Chapter Forty-Seven

  The priest hadn’t been understating things. The tithe box had a trio of guards around it at all times, and with good reason. It rattled with every bump in the road, the jingling coins drew covetous looks from pilgrims and common travelers alike, but those looks didn’t last much longer than it took for the behemoth paladin guards to put their hands on the hilts of their swords.

  The travelers themselves were a motley crew if Vanysa had ever seen one, more than a few gave her lewd, lascivious looks when they caught sight of her radiant face, but surrounded by paladins as they were, even at night when the campfires crackled and travelers all went to their own tents, she only had to loudly brush off advances, and the offender would usually withdraw without trouble.

  ‘Not that a little extra money would be a bad thing to have,’ the prostitute contemplated, ‘but if I make money in the open on this trip, odds are good I’ll have some tagalongs looking to snatch it up. And I am ‘nawt’ havin that!’ She thought with steel resolve. None of them could have imagined she was carrying a full ten gold coins, she pled poverty at every turn, making only a few coppers minding the children of some of the travelers and using that to procure food for herself.

  The rest of the time she sat on one of the many wagons, chatting idly with the other peasants. Some were pilgrims going to Kami Miyako for a holy celebration. Others were second or third sons going to make their fortune in the city rather than remaining on their family farm. She listened often to the paladins talk, some of them had been peasants and risen in rank through service, it was fairly obvious where these younger lads got their ideas on how to make their way in the world.

  Armor clinked gently in time with the slow pace of the hooves, and the travelers settled in fairly quickly into a rhythm with one another… and it might have stayed that way… save for one difference in routine.

  The route to Kami Miyako was a long one, there were other towns, other villages along even this route, and that meant the treasury boxes increased, along with the escort.

  This by itself would have been meaningless to the curious green-eyed woman, but having worked in a brothel, she knew how vital book keeping was, and had even serviced the book keeper once or twice to keep more of her fee back from the house.

  And the bookkeeper on this journey didn’t seem to do things in the ‘usual’ way.

  In typical practice that she’d seen a thousand times, two book keepers would converse, count out sums in small quantities, sets of five, ten, or twenty, verify each other’s counts, have a witness seal it, and update each book with the withdrawal and the transfer differences.

  But there was no count when the tithe boxes were handed over. And finally letting her curiosity get the better of her, Vanysa approached the giant paladin who was busy waiting for the handoff to be completed, he wore a bored expression on his mustachioed face and paid little attention to the proceedings.

  The book keepers might as well have been brothers, they were both stooped, balding, wearing brown robes, and walked as if they had sticks rammed straight up their asses. They had squinty brown eyes and long noses and looked down at even those who were larger than themselves.

  The pair chatted familiarly about nothing, swapped books, one was given a total, the other wrote it down, and then they brought their books over to the paladin to sign as a witness… and Vanysa could not help herself.

  “Scuze me… but how come ye don’t do it normal like? That’s nawt how ‘countin works anywhere I ever seen.” She asked, and the sticks up the asses of the accountants seemed to go further up their respective rectums, as if their asses had tightened up so much in one second that they would never shit again.

  The paladin who had been reaching out to accept the count, stopped in midgesture.

  “What do you know of counting, peasant?” The accompanying accountant asked.

  The paladin grunted and stared down at her, as if to tell her to explain herself. Vanysa pulled back the hood of her cloak to expose her golden blonde hair to the sun and said, “Well, till I started whor’n, not much. But I seen a lot of coin pass through them places. Money gotta move, and it gotta move right. Plus, I had to handle lotta coin.” She struck a pose to highlight the sensual frame she’d sold over time, “I don’t come cheap, think I don’t learn how to manage it?” She gave her head a vigorous shake, “Nosir. I do’nae keep my brains in my boobs, boyo. An that right there?” She pointed to the two books, “Don’t make no sense. You didn’t count nothin, you didn’t check each other’s books, you just kinda handed it over after a look.”

  The two accountants turned pale, “Well, we’ve known each other for years! We already know that neither of us make mistakes!” The traveling accountant exclaimed.

  “That makes sense, little lady.” He said to Vanysa, “I trust my own men enough that I don’t feel the need to check everything they do.”

  “Sir, any of yer men ever lie to their wives about whores an card losses and drinks an… how someone like me ends up with their salary?” She asked, and the Paladin’s face became one of stone, he didn’t verbally answer, but there was no need.

  “Right.” She answered, “I spent a lotta time with some real bad men, lot of em be dumb as a horse’s ass and smell twice as bad.” She crinkled her nose a bit, “But this stinks worse’n them. I never knowed a ‘countant what would take another’s word for a sum unless they checked it first, usually twice. But yer tell’n me these two just never look on account of they know each other? Fer that matter, Sir, didja see the others do any count’n either?” Vanysa furrowed her brow as she stared up into the paladin’s face while he considered how often he’d signed off on documentation saying the numbers had been checked and were fine.

  His face became more pale.

  “Never.” He answered.

  “Aye, so I’ll just betcha we got more in them boxes than we got in them books.” She smirked a little when she saw the two accountants grow even more pale, and the paladin more confused.

  “If you’re saying they’re stealing, why not ‘less’?” He asked.

  “On account of I’ll betcha the actual stealin is in Kami Miyako, this,” she gestured to the books and boxes, “is just the admin.”

  “Admin?” He asked while he was looking back and forth from the frozen, pale accountants to the unexpectedly clever whore and wondering privately, ‘How much trouble am I in?’

  “Aye, one of my regulars used to chatter about how he funded his habit… me, with a little trick. He an and his buddies would write on the books that there was less in a shipment than there was. Say they got a box with ten gold, a hundred silver, and a thousand copper. Nobody knows but them what’s in the box at the start, so they write ‘nine gold, ninety silver, nine hundred copper’ then it gets to the end, they show their man the books, he does the count to ‘confirm’ and then pockets the difference to split with the rest of the ring-o-thieves.” Vanysa snorted and crossed her arms in front of her ample bosom, “Damn fool didn’t know how to use his mouth for anythin but talkin. An that’s how come he stopped bein a regular and started bein dead. But if’n he hadn’t?” She shrugged.

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  “Does this’n go out on all yer trips?” She pointed to the one who traveled in the little train of wagons.

  “No… just the ones every month that start from where this one began, which is about once a month.” The Paladin put his hand on the hilt of his sword when the accountants inched away.

  “I’ll betcha we got more gold in them boxes than whats in them books right now. And I’ll also betcha that all his final deposits are a wee bit less than a bunch of others. Nothin too big so nobody who knows will notice. Like one coin in ten different. And I’ll also betcha that the counting house in Kami Miyako recognizes his face right good. Take’m there in chains an I’ll betcha they sing like horny birds. He probably goes right over there right after stop’n off at the temple, or maybe right before, if he can manage it.”

  “Why would the counting houses help him do this?” The paladin asked as he drew out his sword.

  “They likely don’t know. Used to have a counting house manager come to me, ‘fore his wife found out… then he came by less. But he liked me on ‘account’ of me not talkin. All business. Sometimes he’d complain a little bout customers who wanted to chat. Them on the other side, hate it. They hate listenin to rich folk talk bout how they made money. Come in, give a name, a number, and hand over the coin. That’s all they want…minds me… gonna have to have my savins sent to Kami Miyako too…” Vanysa tapped her cheek thoughtfully as she made a mental note.

  “And they’d…” he tilted his head toward the nervous eyed bookkeepers whose darting gazes sought a place to hide, where none existed. “They’d have that much patience?” The Commander finished.

  “‘Countants are pretty smart, they gotta be, to do what they do. So aye, they’re patient, what’s a few weeks, especially to avoid suspicion? Either he puts the money into accounts for them, or he gives em their share on the way home when stopping off. Either way, they get their money eventually.” Vanysa finished with a shrug, “That’s how I seen it go. They probably been at it fer years. Eventually they leave, quit, then go pick up enough money to live like kings fer life.”

  “Seize them!” The paladin snapped and leveled his finger at the two accountants, who fell into a cacophony of protests and denials as the holy warriors surrounded them.

  “You three,” he pointed to two of his warriors, “Open those boxes, count out every copper!” The soldiers worked with surprising swiftness while the crowd of travelers paused in their usual doings to come and watch.

  “Sometimes counts are a little off…”

  “Nobody is perfect, we do our best…”

  Protests of that sort came from both bookkeepers, and they were in the minds of both the Paladin Officer and those who were doing the recount themselves, as good as confessions. Much like the wiggling that went on as the two men of numbers found that ropes and chains could bind men to their fates as well as any ink.

  As the number continued to climb, the desperation and excuses were joined by endless drops of sweat.

  The commander looked at both their books, and then at the rising pile of coins that the paladin sergeants-at-arms were tallying up… and watched the number go past what was written in ink.

  ‘A one percent difference from every stop, all total. A dozen stops, total… that’s a lot of money…even if not every place is involved…’ He shivered just to think of that much money being pilfered from the tithes over the years, what it could have been used for, and what it went toward instead.

  “It was his idea!” The confession came from the traveling accountant, “I didn’t want anything to do with it, they made me!” He whined, his spindly neck strained as he fell forward and stretched it out as if the probability of being believed increased when he was lower to the ground and closer to the commander’s boot.

  The paladin turned his attention away from the count and the pathetic thieves and toward the unexpectedly useful prostitute, she was looking remarkably smug, either in spite of or because of her trade. One hand on her hips, feet shoulder width apart, her other hand up where she blew on her curled fingers as if to cast off the dust from her fingernails after a job well done. She then wiped her nails ‘clean’ on her cloak and asked, “C’n I assume there’s a reward fer this?”

  The Paladin Commander saw the light of promotion looming large overhead as he ‘uncovered’ the embezzlement of who knew how much wealth, and he went from gruff and savage, to smiling like a puppy tasting meat for the first time.

  “Lady-” He paused.

  “Vanysa.” She said.

  “Lady Vanysa, I’m not the smartest of my brethren, never have been, but I’m smart enough and honest enough to know when somebody’s done me a good turn, and done the temple a good turn too… I think I can promise you a marvelous reward. Say… three to five percent of whatever we recover from the counting houses.”

  The accountants' protests were muffled when their mouths were stuffed with rags after the sergeants-at-arms finished putting the coins back into place, but it did not really stop the captives from ‘trying’ to object further.

  “That’ll be good. But ye know,” she pointed out, “ye really should do kind of a general audit, check out what all them number guys got in their accounts. This is just one route, why can’t it be a bunch of em? I don’t gamble, but if’n I did, I’d say it’s right likely that a whole buncha count’n houses got some awful rich numbers guys who don’t got aaaaaany reason why they oughta have a prince’s ransom while get’n paid a guard’s bar tab.”

  “I’ll… I’ll do that, I’ll make that recommendation as soon as we get there.” The Commander inclined his head to her again, “Remain with my soldiers, you’re under their protection, my protection, personally, for the rest of our journey to Kami Miyako. If anyone so much as speaks to you above a whisper and you don’t like it, their tongue will be added to the stewpot and fed to them at dinner.” He hadn’t looked at Vanysa when he said that, but rather at the watching, curious mob of her fellow travelers.

  ‘What a profitable trip.’ She thought with delight, ‘That should kill any interest in me until after we get out of here, and there’s a tidy reward waiting for me to boot. My lucky day.’ She cast a prayer to the gods for the deceased clever blabbermouth who taught her all about how to rob employers blind, and smiled contentedly for the rest of the day.

  Sergeant-at-arms Auren felt the single gold coin in the interior of his glove. Palming that one gold coin out of the box was easy, it was the only gold coin of the lot, and between the pretty girl, the loudmouth thieves protesting their innocence, and the long explanation being given on how the embezzlement worked that was distracting the commander… he couldn’t have asked for a better chance in his life. He recalled his thoughts so vividly that he didn’t imagine they would ever leave his head…

  ‘Gold. I’ve never had gold before, not gold anything… they were getting away with it for years probably, why shouldn’t I get something… anything, for all I do… just one coin. I haven’t completed my tally yet, Selji is slow at counting his and is focused on his box…’ Then he’d done it. Reaching into the collection box, he thumbed the lone gold coin into the gap between his glove and his hand. Then it was over.

  Thus when Selji counted the same coins minutes later, the count ‘matched’ and Auren was now one gold coin richer.

  ‘All I have to do is not get caught with it. That should be easy.’ He told himself when it was all over and the boxes filled with precious metals were clinking around back in their places on the wagon.

  ‘Why is everybody looking at me funny?’ He wondered as he straightened up and tried not to show anything on his face.

  ‘They know. They know what you did. Everybody knows… it’s all over your ugly, guilty face…’ He heard the voice in his head, and shifted uncomfortably on his feet, trying and failing to silence the horrific thought that pierced him to his core.