“They’re the Hands of Justice,” Caleb told her. “They claim to speak for their god.”
“So they’re a kind of religious police,” Emily reasoned.
“I think so,” Caleb said. “They’ve been growing in popularity lately, particularly in the Lower Depths. The Hands have actually been patrolling the streets beside the City Guard, just to try to make the area a little bit safer.”
Emily winced as she put the pamphlet in her pocket. She knew, from Earth, the Faustian bargain communities made with the religious policemen. On one hand, the religious police started out by meaning well; on the other, they wouldn’t hesitate to crack down on anyone who dared to be a little bit different. It wouldn’t be long before the Hands of Justice either mellowed out or turned into a nightmare. Privately, she would have bet on the latter. Human nature tended to enjoy pushing the weak and helpless around.
Caleb kept talking as they walked down the street and stopped outside the bank. Markus had to have started with a major investment, Emily noted; the bank was larger than several of the guildhouses or temples she’d seen along the way. A stream of men and women headed in and out, lining up outside a set of cashiers, while a number of armed guards watched them carefully. Again, a number of women seemed to be completely alone.
“There’s no law against freeborn women owning property here,” Caleb said, when she asked him. “And I suppose there isn’t any rule against them putting money in the bank too.”
“And a good thing too,” Emily said. It made a pleasant change; outside magical society, it was rare for women to be anything other than second-class citizens. They might have informal influence, but no legal power. Alassa was going to have to fight to make herself heard and respected once she took her throne. “Shall we go in?”
The interior of the bank - the Bank of Silence, according to a large engraving in the wall - was drenched in privacy wards. Faint blurs surrounded the cashiers, making it impossible for her to hear their words or even read their lips. She glanced around until she saw a guard and strode over to him, standing close enough to allow him to hear her. She’d never seen so many privacy wards in one place before.
“I’m here to see the manager,” she said. “My name is Emily. I believe he’s expecting me.”
“He’ll be down in a moment,” the guard said. “Please stand to one side and wait.”
He must have signaled, somehow, because Markus was down within five minutes, wearing a long grey robe that looked surprisingly respectable. He’d let his hair grow out a little, Emily noted as they shook hands; he smiled, cheerfully, as he welcomed them to the bank and led them through a heavily-warded door. A handful of patrons stared as they left. Clearly, Markus had become both important and famous within a year.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, once they were in a small room. Melissa sat at the table, reading a healing textbook. “Can I get you anything?”
“Kava would be nice,” Emily said, as she sat down. Melissa looked happy, at least; she’d have spent the night with her husband while Emily had shared a room with Lady Barb. It made Emily wonder what sharing a room with Caleb would be like. “I see you’ve made a splash.”
“Definitely,” Markus said. “You know the definition of a good idea? That everyone thinks it was so obvious that they try to steal it at once? There are four other banks in the city now and two more planned.”
Emily had to smile. “Is there room for all of them?”
“I don’t know,” Markus said. “But we’ve had quite a few depositors coming in from all over the Allied Lands, so...”
He shrugged, expressively, as he poured the drinks. “We’ve also had a great many complaints about tax evasion,” he added. “But we’ve been ignoring them, as per your suggestion.”
Melissa looked up. “Do you think there’s room for seven banks in Beneficence?”
“It would depend, I think,” Emily said. She could name five or six banks on Earth, but they’d all existed on a far more advanced world. “How does the system work?”
“Cleverly,” Markus said. He pulled a money pouch out of his robe and dropped it on the table, opening it up to reveal a handful of gold, silver and bronze coins. “As you can see” - he picked up a gold coin and passed it to Emily - “there’s a rune carved into the coin. If someone tries to clip it, the rune will turn black and the coin will be devalued.”
Caleb frowned. “What’s to stop someone selling the raw gold?”
“There isn’t any, beyond a tiny layer of gold leaf,” Markus said. “The coin itself is worthless as anything other than a medium of exchange, backed by the gold in the vaults. You could melt it down into a puddle and it would still be useless. Our system of crowns, coronets and cents actually stabilizes the currency, as we have discovered over the past year. We’ve shared many of our innovations with the other bankers.”
“I see,” Emily said. “Who actually produces the money?”
“We do,” Markus said. “We’ve actually had inquiries from several kingdoms about setting up a local currency - and I believe that a number will do it, with or without us - but we haven’t expanded that far yet.”
He pulled a sheet of parchment out of his robes and held it out for inspection. “This is a blood-linked parchment, based on the ones your friend Aloha designed. We hand them out to each of our customers, allowing them to monitor their balances and transfer money from one vault to another. It isn’t as flexible a system as I would like, but combined with the checkbooks and money drafts it allows people to pay others without exchanging gold and silver.”
“So if I had a check,” Caleb said, thoughtfully, “what could I do with it?”
“Bring it here and we’d exchange it for money,” Markus said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“It strikes me that the system must be easy to fool,” Caleb said.
“Not as easy as you’d think,” Markus said. “The checkbooks are based on blood magic - no one but you could write out a check on your account. A faked check wouldn’t fool our cashiers. We’re catching glitches in the system from time to time, but we actually pay a reward for anyone who finds one; I’ve got a couple of young magicians working for me who cracked holes in one of our previous systems.”
He looked back at Emily. “We’ve also been offering microloans, as you suggested,” he said, carefully. “The results have been mixed. Some businesses have taken off; others have run into trouble and we’ve had to call in the loans. Enforcing this outside Beneficence has not been easy.”
“As long as we’re fueling a world of change,” Emily said.
“We are,” Markus said. “But we’re also causing other problems. Some of the new businesses are upsetting noblemen to the south, others are costing them tax revenue when their taxpayers start moving to the cities. Swanhaven in particular is experiencing a crackdown on new ideas, pushed by the competing lords. It’s turning into a botched potion, Emily. It won’t be long before it explodes.”
“There will be other problems,” Emily said. “You’ll need to set up exchange rates between different kingdoms.”
She shook her head. No matter what she did, a great many problems would only become apparent when they exploded. Making the transition from a makeshift currency to a floating one would be tricky; there’d be bubbles when stock prices rose beyond anything the market could support and investors lost everything they’d put into the business. It hadn’t been that long since the Dot Com Boom on Earth. But, to Markus, that was so far away it might as well have been imaginary.
But we need this, she thought. A floating currency would spur investment and development, making it impossible for the old guard to put the genie back in the bottle. The entire world needs this.
“We’re working on it,” Markus said. He smiled, rather tiredly. “Would you like a tour of the vaults?”
Emily glanced at Caleb. “Coming?”
Caleb smiled. “Anything that interests you interests me.”
Markus rose and
led them through a set of long stone corridors and down a flight of stairs. Emily was rather disappointed that there weren’t any mining carts, let alone a dragon at the bottom, but there simply wasn’t room for anything more than powerful wards and a series of increasingly unpleasant traps. A handful of vaults were used to store goods, Markus noted; the Bank of Silence took them into custody and kept them, as long as the fees were paid. So far, no one had tried to take anything from the bank.
“The guilds have been quick to take advantage of our services,” Markus explained, as they made their way back to the surface. “I don’t think they’d allow the city’s taxmen to raid our premises, even if we were aiding and abetting tax evasion. But anyone who doesn’t pay taxes, if they happen to live in the city, can be exiled - or enslaved. It’s the tax collectors outside the city who have a real problem.”
“But they could just forbid people from putting their money in your bank,” Caleb said. “It wouldn’t be that hard, would it?”
“The people they want to tax are the ones who might leave, as their skills can be used anywhere,” Markus said. “Locking a few of them up to discourage the others is always possible, but that would merely create an incentive for the remainder to flee.”
Emily nodded. Farmers could be taxed in kind; a farmer might be expected to hand over a set number of crops, eggs, and live animals each year. But the taxmen would want money, something that could be exchanged for something else; they’d be desperate to strike a balance between collecting vast sums of money and accidentally killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. She actually expected, as the new money spread, for farmers to be taxed in money too. They’d have to sell more of their wares to make the payments...
And if they get it wrong, there will be famine, she thought. She’d seen farmers in the Cairngorms hiding some of their produce from the taxmen, but it would be harder to hide the fact they had money. Farmers will be unable to produce and the rest of the population will starve.
They chatted briefly about nothing as they walked back to the surface, then Emily shook hands with Markus and wished him luck. Melissa waved them both goodbye as she held Markus’s arm; Emily felt a stab of sympathy as she left, realizing that Melissa had literally no one in her life but Markus. Maybe she’d be able to make more friends in Beneficence...
“That was odd,” Caleb said. He looked down at one of the coins Markus had given them. “How is this worth more than its weight in gold?”
“It isn’t,” Emily said. “It just serves as a medium of exchange.”
Caleb frowned. “It sounds like madness to me.”
“It isn’t,” Emily assured him. “If you were a shoemaker, you could make shoes for the blacksmith in exchange for knives or...or whatever else a blacksmith makes. But that depends on the blacksmith actually needing a pair of shoes. If he doesn’t want any, you don’t have anything to trade with him.”
“Which would be bad if you needed a set of knives,” Caleb noted.
“Precisely,” Emily said. “That’s why people invented money in the first place. A gold coin is largely worthless without an agreed rate of exchange.”
“Gold isn’t worthless,” Caleb objected.
“You can’t eat gold,” Emily said. “The point is, money serves as the middleman between two different people. The blacksmith no longer has to barter his services to the shoemaker to get shoes - in this sense, money is nothing more than an acknowledgement of favors owed, but it’s a favor that can be redeemed by anyone. There’s nothing stopping the blacksmith from taking your coins, going to the tailor and ordering a new set of robes.”
“Or go to a magician and order new charms for his workplace,” Caleb said. He smiled as he studied the coin. “I think I see your point.”
“Exactly,” Emily said. She smiled back at him. “You would no longer need to barter your goods and services in exchange for his.”
She took the coin and held it up in front of her. “The real problem with the current monetary system is that the value of the coins keeps changing. It’s impossible to say what any given gold coin is worth without weighing it carefully. Value doesn’t lie in the coin itself, but in the metal used to produce it. A sudden influx of gold onto the market, perhaps when a new gold mine is discovered, lowers the value of everyone else’s gold.”
“Because there’s suddenly more of it,” Caleb said.
“Exactly,” Emily said. “But with these coins, the value is fixed; the currency system remains stable, no matter what happens to the market. Everyone can use it. And there’s more to it than that. Everyone will be using the same system of measurements, everywhere. There will be an economic boom in the next five years as more and more money spreads through the country.”
“And people won’t have to haul a chest of gold with them, wherever they go,” Caleb said, mischievously. “We’ll see how it works in practice.”
He glanced up at the sun. “We do have an hour or so left until we’re expected for lunch. Do you want to explore a little more?”
Emily smiled at him. “Why not?”
They walked through the Shopping Road to Fishing Plaice, where the fishermen beached their boats and sold their wares to eager buyers. Emily silently admired the harbor, encircled protectively by great walls of rock that kept out the worst of the storms; Caleb chatted happily about how pilots from Beneficence were the only ones skilled enough to navigate through the rocks and shoals that lay below the water, a deadly menace to unprepared shipping. The city made a tidy profit just hiring out pilots to incoming vessels.
“You can buy anything here,” Caleb told her. “If you want spices from the other side of the world, you can place an order and get them six months later. Or if you happen to want to outfit a trading mission, you can do that here too. The necromancers aren’t such a threat on the waters.”
Emily nodded, slowly. “Do you think your father’s right?”
“He wants to defeat the necromancers permanently,” Caleb said. His voice darkened. “Shadye worried a lot of magicians when he invaded Whitehall, but not everyone takes the threat seriously. The Craggy Mountains are a long way away.”
“Not by magic,” Emily said.
“No,” Caleb agreed.
Emily glanced at him, sharply. “What do you think about this?”
Caleb looked doubtful. “My father may believe that you could be useful to him,” he said. He caught Emily’s hand, just for a second. “Having your support might help him make his case for launching an invasion of the Blighted Lands.”
“It wouldn’t be easy,” Emily said. Sergeant Miles had made her study terrain during her second year of Martial Magic; she’d learned that moving an army down a well-built road was considerably easier than moving one over a desert. “I’ve seen the Blighted Lands.”
“So has he,” Caleb said. “He was on campaign when he met my mother. They did their best, but they couldn’t stop the necromancers from walking off with thousands of captives and devastating an entire country. I think he’d do whatever it took to keep them from winning another skirmish in the endless war, even dragging you into the mix.”
He frowned. “Don’t let him talk you into anything unless you actually want to do it.”
“I won’t,” Emily promised, sincerely. She liked General Pollack rather more than she liked his wife. “But he’s right about one thing. They do have to be defeated.”
Caleb nodded. “I love my father dearly, Emily, but he can be incredibly overbearing at times,” he said. “And I don’t want you to get hurt. Don’t let him talk you into anything, please.”
Chapter Ten
DESPITE HERSELF, EMILY WAS ALMOST DISAPPOINTED when they had to leave Beneficence and head southeast to Swanhaven. two days of spending time with caleb’s family had convinced her they weren’t quite as bad as he’d painted them, although Casper had tendered his apologies and returned to his master on the second day. Emily wasn’t sure if he’d wanted to remain or had merely looked for an excuse to leave. Lad
y Barb made no comment, other than to remind Emily to be sure she packed everything before they said their goodbyes, drove across the bridge and headed for the portal.
“You’ll be traveling incognito until you reach the castle,” Lady Barb reminded Emily, once they were over the bridge. “Make sure you don’t do anything that might give you away.”
“Understood,” Emily said. Caleb had offered to come with them, but his parents had asked him to remain behind. He’d meet them in Alexis. “Do we just keep on with the traveling magicians pose?”
“It will do,” Lady Barb said. “What did King Randor say to you?”
Emily shrugged. She’d read the four-page letter he’d sent, but when she’d worked her way through the various excessive compliments and observations there had been a shortage of real orders. Alassa had been right. All she was being asked to do was visit Swanhaven, have a look around, exchange a few words with the claimants and then head to Alexis. She wasn’t sure how much she was expected to see - Swanhaven was about the same size as Wales - but she’d be sure to keep her eyes open.
“He wasn’t specific,” she said. “Why doesn’t anyone speak plainly here?”
“I assure you that the proctors who mark your exams will be more than plain,” Lady Barb said, dryly. “But in his case, I imagine he wanted to give you orders without actually giving you orders. You know just how imprecise some written instructions can be.”
“So I get blamed if anything goes wrong,” Emily muttered. Sergeant Miles had told her about orders that were nothing more than wishy-washy wishful thinking. The higher-ups would claim credit, if everything went well, and pass the blame to their subordinates if something went spectacularly wrong. “How... charming.”
“Randor is walking a tightrope,” Lady Barb commented. “His position is not as stable as he might wish.”
Emily shot her a questioning look, but Lady Barb said nothing else as they passed through the portal - Emily felt the same headache for long seconds after transition - and drove towards Swanhaven City. Unlike Beneficence, it sprawled out for miles past the city walls; she couldn’t help noticing that the outer edge of the city was almost entirely composed of slums. She winced as she saw children who were almost painfully thin, running past beggars who’d lost their arms or legs in accidents. Behind them, a handful of women washed their clothes obsessively in slimy water, while older men sat around drinking. The stench was appalling.
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