Adventures in Heroland

Eighteen

"For the treasure tax," Harriet said, just to be clear. To be clear that she wasn't here to audit this shop, and that today she was only looking for tax-cheating heroes.

"Well then," the pawnbroker said, and put his vial of hand-cleaning lotion away. "I'm sure we'd be glad to help in any way we can."

Harriet smiled. "Oh, I'm sure you will."

The treasure tax was a tax on found metals. Or actually, a temporary levy imposed during a time of ongoing uncertainty caused by unresolved legal action. That was what it said on the memos Harriet received, anyway. It was a levy on precious metals. Metals found in the ground. In the ground, in the Northern Marches, which were full of dragon hordes and treasure troves and buried brigand stashes.

So mostly, the treasure tax was an unreasonable government impost on hard-working mercenary captains, according to the mercenary captains, and also an ongoing nuisance for Harriet, far more than the tax officials in any other province, because most of the trouble it caused happened in the North, and not anywhere else.

The treasure tax was considered unfair because it had come about in a complicated and slightly silly way. By ancient law, unrefined precious metal ores buried in the ground belonged to the government, and always had. This meant that mines needed licences to operate, and until recently, very little else. Mostly, the laws concerning buried metals passed unnoticed by everyone who wasn't a gold-miner, including the imperial tax office.

Mostly.

But then someone in the capital had got clever.

The empire was short of money. The empire was always short of money. There were wars and coronations and marriages and jubilee gala years. There was a constant pressure on the imperial tax office to collect more money, and it was always a good career move, for the ambitious junior officials in the capital, to invent clever new ways to tax people.

And recently, someone had.

Harriet didn't know who, but it was obviously what had happened. Recently, and quite suddenly, the imperial tax office had begun to creatively interpret the buried ores laws, and had begun to emphasise the metals aspect of the law, rather than whether the metal had been refined. Suddenly, gold and silver found in the ground were to be treated as imperial property, the capital had decided, regardless of how the metals had actually got there. So gold bullion and coinage and everything else that was usually found in buried dragon hordes was suddenly to be treated in exactly the same way as raw, unrefined ores, in a mine. And all such found metals were to be turned over to the government, as it's property, without argument, immediately. Unless the finder held a valid government mining licence.

This ruling had obviously upset a lot of people.