Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Vhalar 10, Arc 717

“I think that my subjects still don’t like me a lot“, Tristan complained to Lianne, his bodyguard who had also occasionally shared his bed. They were currently sitting in the garden, enjoying the last warm rays of the sun. Ayla, Tristan’s daughter was playing on a blanket that he had placed on the ground. She wasn’t even an arc old yet, but she had already started to walk, and she was also talking a lot even though most of the things she said didn’t make any sense yet. “The museum was a good start, but I need to do more, or they’ll finally bring out those assassins and decide that they need to get rid of me!”

“I don’t want them to get rid of me!”

“I suppose I could marry one of their women”, he continued. “A Thorn or maybe a Raglan to prove that I’m one of them, but I really don’t want to marry a woman I don’t love. There’s only one woman in all of Idalos that I want to marry, and she’s not here.” He looked at Lianne who looked back at him. Lianne wasn’t mad at all that he didn’t want to marry her. She’d never wanted to become a duchess anyway. What she was doing now was much more fun!

“They’ll probably like me a lot better if I marry an Immortal, but it will take a while before I manage to persuade Ilaren to say ‘yes’. I think … I think I’ll help the poor for now”, he decided. “Helping the poor is always a good idea. Faith helps the poor, and everybody likes her. What do you think the poor need, Lianne?” he asked.

“Food? Houses? Clothes? Medicine? An education?” Lianne guessed and shrugged her shoulders, and Tristan’s eyes immediately lit up. “And in order to buy food and houses and clothes and medicine and go to school and university and such they need money. I’ll donate all the money I make this season to the poor of Oakleigh. I have no idea how much money I’ll actually get this season though”, he realized and let out a sigh.

Tristan was rich. He’d grown up rich, and he’d never had to concern himself with financial matters before. Since he had so much money, he’d never bothered finding out how much he actually made as a duke. By Zanik, if he really decided to go through with this, he would have to concern himself with maths and economics and such. He absolutely hated maths. It was evil and complicated and boring, and he wasn’t sure why it had been invented!

“I think I need to take a look at the books”, he murmured somewhat dejectedly. With another deep sigh he picked up Ayla and carried her inside. He wanted to have her nearby when he worked. There was something about the little girl that instantly brightened his mood. Maybe her presence would make all those unpleasant things at least somewhat bearable.

He also hoped that Cassander would appreciate the sacrifices he made for him and for the kingdom!

While Ayla happily played with her toys Tristan sat behind his desk and felt as if he were about to get a really bad headache. In front of him were a thick leather bound book and a calendar.

“This system is really weird!” he complained to Ayla and looked up from the page he had just been reading. “Apparently your wage differs from month to month, depending on how many trials said month has. So you usually make a fortune in Vhalar while you barely make ends meet in Saun. I wonder who came up with that! It’s really inefficient and requires a lot of bureaucracy. I hate bureaucracy!”

Ayla stared at her father for a moment, confused, and then she went back to playing with her toys. That didn’t deter Tristan in the least though. He continued, as if his little daughter were listening to him with rapt attention, “There are probably a few thousand people just tasked with calculating everybody’s wages. Who exactly is responsible for calculating people’s wages anyway? Do we have a Ministry of Finance? I should really ask Cassander when I see him next.” He paused and took a sip from his glass (fruit juice because he didn’t drink alcohol when Ayla was nearby), and then he frowned.

“And your wage apparently also depends on how long you have been in your current job and how much training you have had. I mean, it kind of makes sense, but why does it have to be so complicated. And why …” He rubbed his eyes and did a double take. “Why do I make so little when I’m a duke and thus one of the most powerful men in Rynmere? I made a lot more money when I was just a sculptor and a playwright. This isn’t right! A duke should make more! Maybe the calculations are wrong?”

He took a pen and a piece of paper and started scribbling – furiously at first and then more and more slowly because he really wasn’t very good at maths and had to think hard. No matter what he did, the result stayed the same. Tristan Venora, Duke of Oakleigh would earn all of 1.599 nels during the seasons of Vhalar. And that was before taxes! 1.599 nels wouldn’t help the poor a lot. He decided there and then that he would donate some of the money he made as a sculptor as well. A thousand nels maybe. That seemed like a decent sum to him.

Now he just needed to find out who the poor were and where they lived because he didn’t have any idea!

He was just about to look for Lianne or one of his many advisors when Ayla let out a yawn. He abruptly realized that all that talk about money and poor people probably hadn’t been appropriate for a small child. “I know”, he apologized and took her in his arms. “This was a bit too much. I’ll take you to your room right away so that you can sleep a bit.” He sniffed and made a face. “And your diaper needs to be changed as well! You smell, Ayla!”

After he had told a servant to change Ayla’s diaper (which was the one thing that he refused to do himself – Ayla’s diapers smelled so foul that they could probably be turned into a weapon of mass destruction with the help of a little alchemy) and taken her to her bed, he read a story to her. He wasn’t sure how much his daughter actually understood – while she was a Mortalborn, she was still quite small – but she seemed to like the sound of his voice, and she always fell asleep very quickly when he read a story to her.

Once Ayla had closed her eyes, he gently kissed her cheek, and then he snuck into his office to work some more even though he really didn’t want to. He had decided that he would donate a lot of money to the poor so that his subjects would hopefully like him better, but he had realized that he had no idea who the poor were and where they actually lived!

He knew that a lot of slaves were poor. Faith had led a pretty miserable life before he had bought her. She had worn rags, slept in a room full of dead bodies and eaten from the floor. A lot of people in Rynmere liked slavery though, and thus helping slaves or freed slaves might be too controversial, at least for the time being. A moment later he remembered that Faith had also told him that she had grown up without her parents.

She had been a slave nearly from birth.

Maybe … maybe he would donate some of the money to an orphanage so that the orphans would get good food, better clothes and an education! That sounded like a good idea to him. In fact it was a fantastic idea, and it made him feel like a really good and noble person!

1.000 nels would go to an orphanage, he decided, and he would just ask his advisors to distribute the rest of the money to whoever they thought needed it the most. They would not secretly keep the money or give it to their friends instead of the poor, would they?

He pondered the question for a few moments because he wasn’t sure how much he could actually trust the people in Oakleigh sometimes, and then he decided to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being. He didn’t want to mistrust his own employees!

A life where you couldn’t trust anybody was unbearable in his opinion!

There was only one thing that was left for him to do. He took a few pieces of paper and started writing. Normally he really enjoyed writing, especially plays or short stories, but what he did now was slightly boring. It was necessary though. The risk of something going wrong would be smaller if everybody had clear instructions, from the banker over his advisors to whoever actually went to the poor people and gave them the money.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally put his pen down, put the pieces of paper into envelopes, sealed them and called for a servant, and then ...

… and then he went back into his room, watched Ayla for a bit while she slept and imagined that Ilaren was sitting next to him and that she was his wife and loved the little girl just as much as he did even though her real mother was probably an evil Immortal.