I Reincarnated As A Minor Villainess and I Survived Past My Death Scene

Arc I, Chapter 6

Dear Heero...

"You have letters from the provincial capital, Your Grace."

Heero tensed briefly, looking over at the opening of his tent where the messenger waited. The young man flinched at the sight of his eyes, passing over his burden to Trowa and beating a hasty retreat once the commander excused him.

"It's because you were glaring, Your Grace," Quatre explained candidly, understanding Heero's confused expression over the messenger's harried exit.

Heero frowned. "I wasn't glaring," he muttered. I think.

Quatre made a noncommittal noise that was both supportive and dismissive. Sometimes Heero hated his friends.

"It's from Howard," Trowa spoke up, dropping the letters on Heero's desk. "And the Duchess."

Gah.

"You're glaring again."

"Shut up, Quatre."

Procrastinating reading Duo's letter by reading Howard's letter first, Heero scanned the contents once. Then twice. Then a third time, just to be sure, but when the information didn't change – Heero stood from his seat, moving to the back of the tent where he kept his previous letters from Howard stashed.

"Bad news?" Trowa asked.

"They reorganized the provincial budget," Heero stated. "Under the orders of the Duchess."

"They what?" Wufei hissed in outrage.

Pulling out the last few letters from Howard that detailed the cash flow of the estate and the duchy, Heero returned to his desk to run the numbers. It wasn't long – he'd been crunching these numbers since he was 15 and there hadn't been much change – but the result he got was surprising.

To be sure, he passed it to Quatre to look over.

"...he reduced his own allowance?" was Quatre's verdict, sounding as confused as Heero felt.

"He separated the amount needed to pay the capital tax," Heero explained. "Then allocated the leftover funds to the Yuy dukedom or provincial development."

The 'Yuy dukedom' looked to be an account for the maintenance of the Yuy estate and the personal wealth of the Yuy family. They had their hands in some businesses both in and out of the province, so these funds were sent to this account.

The 'provincial development' account was more surprising; it was funded by the taxes collected from the Yuy fief, but seemed to be reserved exclusively for the fief itself. There were budgeting reports – Howard had kindly boiled them down to simple stats – for infrastructure support (roads that were cleared and maintained to ease travel between cities and towns), development of human services (clinics in areas of high-need being built), and economic development (this was much more vague, but Howard had written something about a "steam engine"???).

The personal allowance of the Duchess had also been vastly reduced, back to its original number when they had first been married.

"Oh, this is really well-organized," Quatre gasped, looking over Howard's more detailed accounting of the provincial budget. "The Duchess did this?"

Heero moved on to the second page of Howard's letter. "That's what Howard implied," he said. The others traded disbelieving glances; Heero whole-heartedly agreed. He couldn't see Duo sitting down long enough to even read the full account of the provincial budget, much less reform it.