Chapter 212 Three Men, One Play

Felix Fairfax saw the King had called on him by name. He stepped forward and reported:

"Your Majesty: today the six ministries all had men at the Crown Granary, helping tally the tribute and see the birth-tribute into store. And in the birth-tribute presented by Joss Wray, acting director of the Office of Stores, fifty-six chests of bad coin were come upon. The matter is grave; it must be probed to the very bottom.

The officials on the ground, with one voice, chose Lincoln Slate, director of the King's Bench, to take charge of Director Joss, the King's Bench and the Justiciary concurring; and the escort men who tried to bolt out of the city have been taken every man. As for the course of the questioning — I beg the King's Bench's Director Slate report it in full."

The King looked to Lincoln Slate. He reported:

"The escorts are all Joss Wray's own retainers. Under questioning they testified that this birth-tribute was raised and packed entire by Goldwater, magistrate of Isfeld — value a full million florins. Of that, five thousand six hundred florins in copper coin — and every coin of it bad."

Isfeld? Now where had the King heard that name? Why — wasn't that the very county the Princess's new style had just come from? What a coincidence.

"Five thousand six hundred florins?"

The King let his breath out inside. The new copper minted in a year, these days, ran under ten furnace-charges; under a hundred thousand florins of new coin thrown onto the market you wouldn't hear it land. Bad coin in circulation eased the ache of the copper famine too.

Only five thousand six hundred — these people were making a mountain out of a molehill.

"Your Majesty, five thousand six hundred florins is no great sum. And the late King published an edict: 'Whatever coin is not iron, tin, or copper, not worn thin, not holed, not pierced — all is permitted to pass.' I ask you — the six ministries, on the King's Birth-Feast of all days, blowing a small matter up large — isn't that a stone set under your saddle on purpose?"

Voss watched the King's face and dropped the words in his ear, right on his cue.

Then Felix Fairfax stepped forward:

"Your Majesty, if this were common iron-lead-tin copper, we would not have panicked. But this batch is the chicken-eye coin that in the second year of Your Majesty's own reign, You ordered the metropolitan counties to collect in. Coin of that rotten grade, laundered clean through the Crown Granary and let loose among the people once more — five thousand six hundred florins though it be, it would cut the Crown's good name to the bone."

Roland stepped forward too: "Your Majesty: coin that was collected in in the second year of Your Majesty's reign and burned under the Silver Shield's own charge — how does it walk the earth again? And who dared try to slip this rotten stuff into the Crown Granary itself? Turn that over once; it runs the blood cold."

Voss and Wyse traded one look. Voss had not looked for this: a single fire out of the War Office, and the history of that money had burned its way right onto the Silver Shield.

Joss Wray is my man — the King himself knows it. Could it be old Wyse, stabbing me in the back?

Back when the bad coin went up in flames, both the Left and the Right Silver Shield had men in on the burning. Had Wyse cooked something then — quietly pocketed a share of the coin — and now, by Joss Wray's hand, meant to haul me into the bog?

Wyse, across the floor, was turning the very same thought. Only, with him it turned at once to alarm:

Voss has wanted me out of the way all along. When the burning went on, the Left Silver Shield had its men in too. Could he have turned mine — so that the moment the King tries the case, the mud comes sloshing down on my head?

It had broken too sudden. The air in the great hall went strange.

Fairfax added: "Your Majesty, when the thing broke, a good number of foreign envoys were present in the hall. If it cannot be made clean, I fear it will eat into the Aurelian's good name abroad as well. I beg Your Majesty think three times."

An official-page copy was made without the author's permission; the chapter where they publish it supports their work.

In that great hall, besides the King seated on the throne, one man below was seated also — Leon, in his wheelchair.

When he and Josiah Waite had laid their plans, they had not thought about the different grades of bad coin. It was Waite who put him in mind of it: the bad coin gathered back out of Southmarch was private-minted stuff — cheap metal, iron and lead and tin, mixed into the copper.

Bad coin it was; but the government looked through its fingers at it, and had long since passed it about as standard copper.

Only if you went gathering the truly wretched grade — coin the government had banned outright, like chicken-eye coin so light it would float on water — only that was a crime that cost your head.

The chicken-eye coin had been called in once, some years back — two true coppers for one chicken-eye, that was the rate — and a fair batch was taken in. But among the common folk there are always gamblers at heart, holding their little hoards against the day the government raises the rate.

There was one other place that would take chicken-eye coin in: the smithies.

Leon had taken Waite's counsel — gather it in driblets, bit by bit — and it had kindled an idea in him besides: to hang the frame-up round the Silver Shield's neck. And it was not till that hot-pot supper that he had laid his three-birds-with-one-arrow scheme before them all.

The Exchequer was sticking to its teeth: it was that very batch.

For the Silver Shield to wash its hands, it would have to cut Joss Wray loose.

At this hour Joss Wray had not yet treated his royal brother's illness; he was still no more than Voss's confidant. The King would surely make a lesson of him — kill Joss Wray, and read Voss a page of caution.

For the birth-tribute was Joss Wray's own presentment — Goldwater would die too, as was right. But Goldwater was a shrimp of a magistrate; there was no back in him to carry the crime of stealing burned coin by stealth, trying to launder it into the very Crown Granary — striking at the Crown's credit, deceiving the King.

But now... Leon had changed his mind. He meant to save Joss Wray.

Fairfax and Roland had had their little notes before ever they walked into the hall. What had come off today they did not know either; but Roland, on the instant, did as Leon had set it and sent a man to tell Askar Corin.

The King on his throne felt his humiliation curdling into rage. A few thousand florins of bad coin — and Voss's people would not let even that go. They had meant to slip it into his own private treasury under cover of a birth-tribute. Hearts like that wanted the axe!

He said, cold: "Lincoln Slate — the King's Bench takes this over entire. Bad coin aimed at the Crown Granary, and the men and the goods both taken in hand: Goldwater, magistrate of Isfeld — his whole kin attainted. As for Joss Wray, acting director of the Office of Stores..."

"Your Majesty — Your Majesty! Your servant is wronged! Goldwater is of my own hometown — he volunteered, he said, to raise my birth-tribute for me. How the man's greed got the better of his wits, passing bad for good and packing bad coin in among the tribute — your servant never knew.

Give me ten times the courage, I'd not dare such a thing..."

Joss Wray went down on his knees to plead his own cause. At the first he had not been afraid. In a million florins of gifts, five thousand six hundred gone wrong, and none of it ever through his own hands — that was a thing easy enough to wash off.

What he had not looked for was the coin's origin, magnifying his error out of all size — and the crux of it: pulling in Grand Marshal Voss, captain of the Right Silver Shield, as a party to the case.

Wyse, captain of the Left Silver Shield, no friend of his, would not only scrub himself clean — he would set his boot down good and hard on the other man.

That was a board Joss Wray had never seen coming. He and Voss were on good terms — but he believed all the same that if Voss meant to keep his own skirts clean, he would cut the tie between them.

"Witnesses and goods both in hand — what is left you to argue? A petty magistrate, daring to frame a man before Us? Or is there someone at his back, pulling his strings?" The King smiled cold and passed the ball to Voss.

Joss Wray pressed, quick: "Investigate Goldwater! His tribute had to come from somewhere. Five thousand florins in copper might well have been gathered up from below — nothing to do with the burned coin."

"You mean my Exchequer has it wrong? Set the Silver Shield up on purpose?" Lionel Lockwood, the Exchequer's minister — piloted there by Fairfax — had long since made up his mind.

Voss had already resolved to let Joss Wray go. He knew the King had just shown what he wanted: no digging into the past — the matter closed and nailed down on Joss Wray's head. How would Voss now back the man's own investigation?

For that matter — had Wyse bought over his own subordinates? That was a wager he dared not lay. He barked out, on the spot:

"Joss Wray — none of your free tongue! Don't go setting the Silver Shield at the Royal Council's throat!"

The King was about to speak. From the floor a voice got in first:

"Your Majesty — your brother has a word."

"Speak."

And out of the row came Leon, pushing his own wheels.