The Fire Queen

Chapter 18

PART 2

The syndicate leaders were rounded up by Uraia and Clara and taken into custody. Nearly all of their militia had been killed. Alfred Winthrup was found in a cell in the palace dungeon and set free along with others that had been imprisoned by the queen and VanBilt. The palace guards that Uther and his men had subdued were given a choice: swear fealty to the new queen or be imprisoned. All swore fealty.

The operation over, I had everybody gather at the palace. The person I thanked first was the one person without whom none of this would have been possible. Chief Kendor had traveled with the Okwari warriors but had not participated in the raid on the city. He entered the city only after we had taken control of it and I had him brought straight to the palace. The chief was now an old man and his age was placing limitations upon him. Making this journey to Glendale was a lot for him at his age, but he did it to support me and because he believed that I would be victorious.

"I told you when you came back with that wolf that you were special," he said to me.

"I don't know how I'll ever be able repay you for this," I responded emotionally.

"Just be a good queen, rule with compassion and good judgment."

"Anything that you ever need or want for your people, all you have to do is ask."

The chief left to return to the Northlands, and took most of his men with him. I'd asked Uraia to select some Okwari soldiers to stay behind with us in the city to help with security. Two hundred men remained behind of the roughly twelve hundred that the chief had assembled and brought to the city.

"Lock down the city, I don't want word of the queen's ouster to reach the nobles," I said to Uther.

My first priority was to deal with the nobles, and to deal with them in a decisive manner, unlike the king had done. To accomplish this I needed VanBilt, which was why I had given precise orders to Uther that he was to captured alive. I put Clara in charge of reorganizing and leading the City Patrol, and of course Uraia assumed her role as Captain of the Royal Guard; both were made up of a collection of bandits, paladins and Okwari. Uther's job of reforming the military was much more difficult and could only begin once the nobles had been gotten out of the way, until then I told him to advise and supervise Uraia and Clara, and once he was done with that he was to travel to the capital city of Erst and find Boris and bring him back to Glendale.

The first person I met with from outside my circle was Alfred Winthrup. I gave him a week to rest and recuperate after his release then had him meet with me at the palace to discuss the kingdom's finances. I spent no time in the throne room, I preferred to manage affairs from either the Great Hall or a small study that I had appropriated for myself because of the view it afforded me of the gardens that I had set aside for Myra and her chicks.

I met Alfred in the study. He was looking much better but he still had a ways to go before he was fully recovered from the effects of his imprisonment. The picture that he painted of the kingdom's finances was grim. The queen had authorized the accumulation of enormous amounts of debt to make up for the decline in tax revenues. The nobles, in exchange for taking over the responsibility of governing the states, had gotten the queen to grant them exemption from taxation. The debt was owed to various kingdoms, but the majority of it, around sixty percent of it, was owed to Volstaff and Dranii. This was no coincidence. The kingdom of Dranii bordered our kingdom to the west, and Volstaff bordered Dranii to the west. For Volstaff to have carried out their plan to cripple the kingdom they would have needed Dranii's help. The debt, though, wasn't the worst of our financial problems. According to Alfred, the queen had allowed for Volstaff currency to be accepted in Aseron as legal tender. Ever since the quantity of Volstaff coins in circulation had steadily increased while the quantity of Aseron coins in circulation had decreased. The danger of this, Alfred explained, was that it severely compromised our ability to conduct economic policy. If their currency became the primary medium of exchange in our kingdom it would leave us at the mercy of their economic policies, including tariffs, currency fluctuations and interest rates. Having your economy taken over by a foreign currency, then, was almost the same as losing a war. Alfred had some ideas for how we might mitigate these issues; I told him to put his ideas down on paper in detail and to bring them to me when he was done.

After learning from Alfred about the extensive cooperation between Volstaff and Dranii, I had to consult with Uther about the situation. Uther's assessment was that Dranii had most likely granted Volstaff free passage through their kingdom in exchange for the opportunity to also profit from our kingdom's downfall.

"If that's true, then it means that Dranii has a much smaller interest in our state of affairs than Volstaff does," I mused.

"That's something that you should discuss with Boris," Uther responded.

"Militarily, is Dranii a threat?"

"The state that our military is in, everybody's a threat."

"When word gets out that the queen's been dethroned and Volstaff's plan has been scuppered, what then?"

"My guess is that Volstaff will look to take advantage of the fact that we're still weak and seek to bring about the completion of their plan by launching an invasion."

"Will Dranii help them?"

"I'm sure they'll grant their forces passage through their kingdom; as to whether they'll commit troops of their own, that I can't say."

"Even if they don't, we still won't have enough to repel a full scale invasion."

"No, we won't, which is why it's imperative that we keep the news of queen Esmeralda's dethroning quiet."

"I want you to go and retrieve Boris now, I need to know how Dranii will react in the event of a Volstaff invasion. Tell Uraia to give you two teewahs, one for you and one for him, I want him brought back here as quickly as possible."