NABC Chapter 439: Proper Definition
Chapter 439: Proper Definition
Chapter 439: Proper Definition
One of the nice things about having Severina along for the trip was how good she was at handling local bureaucracy.
Jadis kept an eye on the Seraphim as she politely talked with the mayor of Brightstone. A rather handsome half orc, half human man named Fisk, the town’s mayor was the sort of person who, while no doubt competent as his job, asked an excessively large number of somewhat repetitive questions. Jadis knew she would have had trouble being patient if she had been forced to talk with the man for more than a few minutes. Severina, however, navigated the conversation with aplomb. The paladin easily answered the mayor’s questions while also answering the questions of the rest of the prominent townsfolk who had gathered by the airship, all while keeping a calm and reserved demeanor that put the excited people at ease.
In a way, Severina was a sort of PR agent, Jadis supposed. A really sexy one, too.
“Do you know any of those people?” Jay asked Bridget as the two of them helped secure the wagon to the ground.
“Of course,” Bridget nodded. “I grew up here, so I know just about all of those faces. I still can’t believe Fisk is the mayor now, though. He’s a bloody wax pillar. He must have paid a lot of coin to get that position.”
“Wax pillar?” Jay tilted her head in confusion.
“Looks good, but melts under pressure,” Bridget half-whispered. “He’s not exactly a fighter.”
“Ah. Well, you haven’t been home in a while, right? Maybe he’s changed?”
“It hasn’t been that long,” the orc shook her head. “Two years now, maybe a little more? I don’t think he could have changed much in that amount of time.”
Jay hummed, not looking towards the man but keeping an eye on him and Sev through the gazes of her other two selves.
“You don’t think he’d have something to do with whatever is going on with your family, do you?”
Bridget frowned, shooting a glance towards the man, but slowly shook her head.
“I don’t know. Maybe? We still don’t know what that countess bitch is trying to pull. I don’t think anyone in the town would side with her on anything; no one likes her since she’s always feuding with Count Holtz.”
Brightstone, while certainly a larger place than Cold Brook, was still a relatively small community in the grand scheme of things. While disputes had to happen between the different people and families that lived in the town, Jadis was sure that the attitude would be the same here as it was just about anywhere else; namely, that the locals stuck together against outsiders. So unless someone had a major grievance against Clan Warsong, it was unlikely that anyone in Brightstone would be working with a known and reviled rival like Countess Voclain.
Jadis was still suspicious, though. Having spent a winter in Eldingholt, she had gotten a taste of just how convoluted the courtly intrigues could get. Brightstone wasn’t the capital, but that didn’t mean that people like Fisk or other social climbers couldn’t try to take advantage of a situation. It didn’t even have to necessarily be the mayor’s idea. He just had to be willing to go along with a plan someone else had approached him with. And if Fisk was, as Bridget had put it, a wax pillar, that moved him up on the list of people Jadis planned on taking a hard hand with.
Of course, that all depended on what the actual issue was. Bridget was right, after all. They still didn’t know what the countess was doing to harass Clan Warsong, just that it was some kind of legal dispute. It was entirely possible that Jadis was jumping the gun with her suspicion of the mayor. She really needed to sheath the edge to her attitude until it made sense to pull it out again.
Jadis let out three soft breaths from her varied selves. She was still wound up from her failure to protect Alex the previous night, she recognized. She’d been too casual, too carefree with her guard duty. Just because they were far from any of the frontlines of battle didn’t mean she could be so cavalier with her duties. If she was looking for an excuse, she could blame it on the fact that it had been months since she’d actually needed to stay on guard overnight, but that was a useless waste of energy. She’d made a mistake and that was the sum of it. Now she just needed to make sure she never fucked up like that again.
Jadis and her companions wrapped up securing the Behemoth after a few more minutes, then waited another five for Severina to finish her conversation with the mayor and townsfolk. When the Seraphim walked back over to join them, she rolled her cross-shaped eyes to show her frustration without being noticed by the people who were still standing around and gawking at the airship.
“I have negotiated a discounted fee for parking the Behemoth.”
Dys jolted, her face screwing up in surprised disbelief.
“He’s charging us for parking in the middle of an empty field? Really?”
“It’s town property,” Sev nodded. “That it is a field that has been left fallow for the year hardly changes the fact that it is still someone’s land.”
“That’s not unusual,” Aila added calmly. “Caravans always have to pay to shelter their wagons inside town walls. Even outside like we are, they usually charge a fee since the wagons take up space and the draft animals still eat the grass. We are outside the walls and we don’t have any animals, so the fee should be minor.”
“He is charging two oaks.”
“What!?” Aila yelped, her expression aghast. “That’s outrageous!”
“He was going to charge us four oaks,” Severina explained dryly, “for the disruption our unusual vehicle has caused as well as the burden of ‘standing special watch’ over said vehicle with the town guard. I talked him down.”
Once more, Jadis reversed her estimations. She really did need to take a hard hand with this mayor.
“Fuck that,” Bridget said. “We’ll just move the wagon to my clan’s land. We’ll have the space for it somewhere. I doubt we have any unused fields unless things have changed a lot, but we’ll figure it out.”
“That is also what I pointed out to the mayor,” Severina said. “To which he said that ‘we would be better served not parking our vehicle on disputed lands’ and further indicated that noble individuals such as ourselves should avoid entanglement with such troubles.”
“What did he say?” Bridget stared at Severina, her face turning a darker shade of green as she flushed with growing anger. “Disputed lands? What the bloody fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“From what I gathered,” the paladin started, “Countess Voclain is making a claim on territorial rights that involves the lands of your clan. He told me that—”
“Bridget! Bridget, is that you?”
“That depends on whether or not Clan Warsong rents or is a freeholding household,” Severina looked at Bridget and Bree with a question in her eyes.
“Rent,” Bridget replied first. “We’ve been making payments for the land rights, though. I think we should be freeholders in another ten years.”
“Eight years,” Bree corrected. “It’s taken generations, ever since Grand Da Morley first brought Clan Warsong to Brightstone. He made a deal with the old Count Holtz back then.”
“Hm. That means that Countess Voclain could evict them if she so chose,” Severina murmured. “At least from the land that is within her newly reclaimed territory.”
“That’s not fair,” Jay exclaimed, her sensibilities outraged at what the Seraphim was suggesting. “How does she have the right to just take the land from them?”
“It would be her land,” Severina said with a frown. “No contract was ever made between her and Clan Warsong. From a legal standpoint, they would be trespassing. Yes, it’s a clerical mistake and no fault of the farmers, but the land would still belong to the countess and she would have the right to do with it as she wishes.”
“That’s garbage,” Jay shook her head. “Absolute garbage.”
“That’s not even the real problem,” Bree spoke up.
“How’s that?”
“The countess isn’t actually trying to kick us off the land,” Bree told them as her shoulders sagged. “She’s demanding payment for back taxes as well as for the payments made towards our ownership of the land. She’s arguing that since the land was technically hers, she should have been receiving payments for that land instead of Count Holtz. He’s refusing to give her anything, of course. So now she’s demanding that Clan Warsong has to pay if Holtz won’t. She’s taking us to court over it!”
“How much is she asking for?” Jay asked as her anger at the situation continued to grow.
“Taxes and payments from all the way back to when Grand Da first took over the farm.”
“That... would be a sizeable sum,” Aila murmured.
“It would fucking bankrupt us,” Bridget cursed. “I don’t think we’d have enough coin even if we sold all our weapons and armor. That’s sixty years of taxes!”
“Does she even have the legal right to make a demand like that?” Jay pointed her question at Severina.
“I don’t think so,” the paladin said slowly as she thought the situation over. “Well, perhaps. It depends on certain interpretations of the law regarding taxation. Requesting compensation for the use of land that rightfully belongs to her is perfectly legal. The responsibility should truly be falling on Count Holtz and Duke Messer, but I could see why both would rather push that responsibility off onto another party. The cost of covering sixty years of taxes would be a blow to anyone’s budget, especially now during a demonic invasion when most duchies are going to already be spending their treasury reserves on outfitting and arming soldiers.”
Jadis let out a grown of frustration. This was starting to sound like a real headache of a situation, and not the kind that she could put to rest by using her fists. Not that she wasn’t willing to try, but she doubted that she could just threaten violence to get her way. That was a childish way of thinking, in any case. Just because she was the strongest person in the room at any given moment didn’t mean that she should use that strength to bully others. Even if some of those people were fucking assholes.
No, she needed to handle this situation diplomatically. She didn’t want to make unnecessary enemies if she could help it. That was where Severina would be crucial, Jadis was sure. Eir was the daughter of a margrave and so had training in noble matters, but Severina had been enmeshed in nobility and law far more deeply and for much longer. She was a direct aid to the Second Prince, after all. Surely, she knew how to navigate sticky situations such as this.
Honestly, Jadis was tempted to try and bring the issue up before the emperor directly, but her previous experiences told her that for a non-emergency like this dispute was, it would probably be months before the emperor saw the case, if he even agreed to see it in the first place. That was what the magistrates were for, after all. Thinking about it, Jadis had an in with the new magistrate of the capital, Vraekae. The aloof elf didn’t have jurisdiction over this land, Jadis was pretty sure, but she could probably help pull some strings with whomever the local magistrate was. But that would likely still involve a lengthy and no doubt costly legal battle. Jadis wanted to avoid going to court at all, if possible.
“Well, it sounds like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Jay sighed. “Hopefully we can get this crap resolved fast and without making any concessions to Voclain and her piece of shit cousin, Egilhard.”
“Egilhard?” Bree looked up at Jay curiously.
“Eh, we’ll explain later,” Jay told the orc. “When we talk over all this with the rest of your family.”
“He’s a bellend,” Bridget growled, her gaze heated as she stared at nothing. “And this is all his fault.”
“One question about that, actually.” Aila perked up. “Do you know the providence of the map that points out the difference in the stream? Was it something that Voclain came up with on her own, or was it perhaps something she was sent? It could have been Egilhard who provided the map.”
“I don’t know about that,” Bree shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never heard of this Egilhard before. What I heard is that a court mage from Hamarrholt found the map and sold it to Countess Voclain. Some woman named Leonore Gielgud.”
“I’m not familiar with that name,” Severina said after a few seconds of thought. “Though I admit I don’t often socialize with all of the many court mages in the various dukedoms.”
“Well, we should double check on where she got that map from,” Aila said firmly. “If this is all some ploy by Egilhard, it’s possible that the map is a forgery.”
“And if it is, I’ll be shoving that map right up that bitch Voclain’s ass,” Bridget said with absolute conviction.
“Bridget!” Bree exclaimed as she turned to look at her cousin. “You can’t say that!”
“Why not?” Bridget shot back. “I promise, I’m not joking.”
“I know, I believe you,” Bree nodded. “But she’s still a noble. Say you’ll shove the map up Countess Voclain’s ass. It’s only proper.”
“The definition of proper seems to have drifted in this part of the empire,” Severina mumbled under her breath.