Adrian Vale arrived at the Imperial Security Office the next morning with a plan.
It was a very simple plan.
He would perform his new duties with such unremarkable efficiency that nobody would find him interesting.
He would not make deductions unless asked.
He would not volunteer observations.
He would not investigate suspicious documents.
Most importantly, he would never again discover six irregularities in three hours.
Six was an unacceptable number.
One minor clerical error might be forgiven.
Two might be overlooked.
Six apparently constituted a threat to the stability of the empire.
Adrian intended to remain comfortably below that threshold.
He entered the office, bowed to the duty officer, and presented his appointment letter.
The duty officer read it.
Then he read it again.
“Acting Records Liaison?”
“Yes.”
“While retaining responsibility for inner palace gate security?”
“Yes.”
The officer looked at Adrian's face as though searching for an explanation.
Adrian offered none.
“Commander Ashford is waiting for you.”
Of course she was.
Adrian followed him down the corridor.
Commander Mirelle Ashford stood over a table covered in seized documents. Two clerks were sorting bundles of paper into separate piles, while an officer copied names into a ledger.
She looked up when Adrian entered.
“Good. You're here.”
“I was instructed to report at eight, Commander.”
“It is seven fifty-eight.”
“I prefer to arrive early.”
“An admirable habit.”
Adrian immediately regretted admitting it.
Mirelle indicated a chair.
“Sit. We have a problem.”
Adrian remained standing.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“Three officials have failed to report for questioning. One has requested medical leave. Another claims to be attending a funeral. The third has submitted a resignation letter.”
Adrian considered this.
“Perhaps they are all having a difficult week.”
Mirelle stared at him.
“Vale.”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Sit down.”
He sat.
She pushed a document toward him.
“Yesterday, you identified discrepancies in the eastern wing records. Our preliminary investigation has confirmed that two maintenance entries were falsified. We have also established that an unauthorised key was issued using a forged approval.”
“That is concerning.”
“The key opened a storage room adjacent to the prince's quarters.”
“That is more concerning.”
“The room contained correspondence belonging to three junior officials. Some of the letters are missing.”
Adrian nodded.
He did not ask why.
He did not speculate.
He did not point out that someone who could forge key approvals and access private correspondence might be attempting to manipulate the imperial administration.
He simply waited.
Mirelle observed him for several seconds.
“You have nothing to add?”
“No, Commander.”
“You have no theories?”
“I have several, but none supported by sufficient evidence.”
“Would you share them if they were supported?”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
She handed him a second document.
“Review this list of payments.”
Adrian looked at the page.
It contained names, dates, and sums transferred from a maintenance fund.
The amounts were not large.
A few silver crowns here. A handful of gold there.
Nothing that would attract the attention of the imperial treasury.
He began reading.
At the bottom of the page, a familiar name appeared.
Martin Pell.
The servant detained the previous afternoon.
Adrian checked the date.
The payment had been issued three weeks earlier.
He examined the next entry.
Another payment had been made to a different servant.
Then another.
The recipients worked in separate departments, but all had received money from the same maintenance fund.
Adrian placed the page on the table.
“Commander, may I ask whether these payments were authorised?”
“They were approved by the maintenance office.”
“That was not quite my question.”
Mirelle's eyes sharpened.
“Explain.”
“The payments may have been authorised administratively. But were the underlying expenses verified?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I cannot determine whether they are fraudulent.”
“Can you determine what should be checked?”
Adrian looked at the list again.
He had been asked a direct question.
He could answer it.
That did not mean he had to enjoy answering it.
“The recipients should be compared with the duty rosters. The dates should be checked against the maintenance schedules. The original receipts should be matched against the amounts paid.”
“Anything else?”
“Who requested each payment? Who approved it? And who physically released the money?”
Mirelle nodded.
“Excellent.”
Adrian stared at her.
He had just described a standard financial audit.
There was nothing exceptional about it.
Why did she look pleased?
“Have the treasury clerks prepare the relevant records,” she ordered. “I want every payment traced to its authorising officer.”
A clerk hurried away.
Adrian sat quietly.
He had not uncovered anything.
He had merely explained how to check whether money had been properly accounted for.
He decided not to speak again.
It was a promising start to the day.
Then the door burst open.
A young officer entered carrying a leather case.
“Commander! We have a problem at the treasury.”
Mirelle turned.
“What happened?”
“Someone attempted to withdraw the remaining balance of the eastern maintenance fund.”
“Who?”
“Deputy Treasurer Halbrecht.”
The commander frowned.
“Halbrecht was ordered to remain available for questioning.”
“He claims he received an emergency authorisation from the Ministry of Finance.”
“Produce it.”
The officer opened the leather case and removed a document.
Mirelle examined the seal.
Then the signature.
Then the date.
Her expression became cold.
“This authorisation is genuine.”
Adrian felt a small flicker of relief.
Perhaps the situation was simple after all.
Then Mirelle continued.
“The seal is genuine. The signature is genuine. The date is genuine.”
She placed the document on the table.
“The authorisation number, however, belongs to a requisition issued last month.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
He had hoped for a quiet morning.
Apparently, the empire had other plans.
Deputy Treasurer Halbrecht was arrested at the treasury before he could leave the building.
He did not resist.
He demanded to see the emperor.
He demanded that everyone involved be punished for humiliating a senior imperial official.
He did not explain why he had attempted to withdraw funds from an account already under investigation.
By midday, the Imperial Security Office had discovered that the maintenance fund was connected to a much larger network of questionable transactions.
The payments were small enough to escape routine review.
The recipients were numerous enough to make individual investigation difficult.
The records were spread across three offices.
And the same handful of authorising officers appeared repeatedly.
The money had not vanished into a single nobleman's pocket.
It had been divided, disguised as maintenance expenses, and distributed through ordinary administrative channels.
Some of the recipients might have knowingly participated.
Others might have received legitimate payments without understanding where the money originated.
The distinction mattered.
Commander Ashford refused to permit indiscriminate arrests.
“Separate the recipients from the authorising officers,” she instructed. “We will establish what each person knew before deciding what action to take.”
Adrian approved of this.
It was sensible.
It was fair.
And it required a considerable amount of paperwork.
He was beginning to suspect that every virtue in the imperial administration had been designed to generate documents.
A clerk approached him with another stack.
“Commander Ashford asked you to review these.”
Adrian looked at the stack.
“How many?”
“Two hundred and twelve.”
“Is there a reason?”
“The commander believes you may notice inconsistencies.”
Adrian looked toward Mirelle.
She was speaking with a treasury officer.
He lowered his voice.
“I am not particularly good at noticing inconsistencies.”
The clerk smiled politely.
“Of course, sir.”
The clerk left.
Adrian looked at the papers.
He considered throwing them out of the window.
Then he noticed that the window was barred.
The security office was a thoroughly unpleasant place.
By the third hour, Adrian had developed a method.
He did not search for crimes.
He searched for transactions that could not be explained by the documents supporting them.
Each payment needed a request.
Each request needed an approval.
Each approval needed a budget allocation.
Each payment needed a receipt or other evidence that the stated expense had actually occurred.
He marked discrepancies in the margin.
He did not accuse anyone.
He did not guess at motives.
He simply recorded what the documents did and did not establish.
Most entries were ordinary.
Some were incomplete.
A few were inconsistent.
Then he found a pattern.
A maintenance contractor had received payment for repairs to four separate buildings.
The payments were recorded on different dates, but the amounts were nearly identical.
That alone meant little.
Standard repairs often cost similar amounts.
However, the accompanying reports described different work.
One concerned a damaged lock.
Another concerned replacement hinges.
A third described repairs to a drainage channel.
The fourth involved a section of the eastern service passage.
Adrian compared the dates with the maintenance schedules.
The contractor had supposedly completed two jobs on the same afternoon, in buildings on opposite sides of the palace.
The work reports bore different signatures.
Yet the signatures were almost identical.
He checked the contractor's registration.
The company was listed as active.
He checked the address.
It belonged to a warehouse that had been closed six months earlier.
He checked the tax record.
The company's payments had been routed through an intermediary merchant.
Adrian stopped.
This was no longer a collection of incomplete receipts.
It was a chain of discrepancies that pointed in the same direction.
He wrote a careful summary.
The listed contractor appears to have billed for work that cannot be verified. Several work reports may have been signed by the same individual. Payment records route funds through an intermediary. Recommend independent verification before any conclusion is reached.
He handed it to Mirelle.
She read the note.
Then she read the supporting documents.
“Who is the intermediary merchant?”
“Darius Merrow Trading House.”
Mirelle's expression changed.
“Are you certain?”
“The name appears on the treasury transfers. I have not established whether the merchant knew the payments were irregular.”
She took the papers.
“Stay here.”
She crossed the room and spoke quietly to the senior investigator.
Within minutes, several officers were preparing to leave.
Adrian watched them go.
He had not discovered a grand conspiracy.
He had discovered a contractor with suspicious invoices.
That was all.
He returned to his paperwork.
Unfortunately, the contractor had been one of the main channels through which money was diverted from the imperial maintenance fund.
And the intermediary merchant was connected to several supply contracts used by the palace and the Royal Guard.
The discovery would eventually expose a corruption ring involving treasury officers, maintenance supervisors, and a group of contractors who had been charging the empire for work that had never been completed.
But the investigation would take weeks.
Some suspects would be convicted.
Others would be cleared.
Several honest workers would discover that their wages had been delayed because their supervisors had falsified completion reports.
The palace would recover part of the stolen money, though not all of it.
And the imperial administration would be forced to introduce a new verification system for maintenance payments.
Adrian did not know any of this.
He was trying to determine whether a missing receipt had ever existed.
At four in the afternoon, Commander Ashford summoned him.
“Vale, how did you identify the contractor?”
“I compared the work reports with the maintenance schedules.”
“Did you recognise the merchant's name?”
“No, Commander.”
“Have you ever met anyone from the company?”
“No.”
“Did anyone tell you to investigate it?”
“No.”
“Then explain why you continued checking the payments after finding the first discrepancy.”
Adrian considered the question.
“Because the documents were related.”
“That is all?”
“Yes.”
Mirelle folded her arms.
“You realise the contractor has been receiving payments from the imperial treasury for nearly a year?”
“I was not aware of that.”
“The preliminary evidence suggests that a significant portion of the work was never performed.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“Your findings may help us recover the money.”
“I hope the investigation succeeds.”
She watched him.
“Most people would be pleased to receive credit for a discovery of this scale.”
Adrian was silent.
“I will ensure your contribution is recorded.”
“Commander, I would prefer that the report focus on the evidence rather than on me.”
“Why?”
“Because the evidence is more important.”
For a moment, Mirelle said nothing.
Then she nodded.
“That is the correct answer.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
Adrian relaxed slightly.
Perhaps he had finally said something that would not be interpreted as evidence of hidden genius.
Mirelle opened a drawer and removed a small document.
“Your salary adjustment has been approved.”
Adrian's shoulders stiffened.
“My salary adjustment?”
“You have been assigned additional responsibilities. The regulations provide for a supplementary allowance.”
“How much?”
She told him.
Adrian was silent for several seconds.
It was not a fortune.
It was not enough to purchase a noble estate.
But it was enough to make a difference to an ordinary man's life.
He could save the money.
He could rent a better room.
He could begin building the modest, peaceful future he had wanted.
For the first time since entering the Royal Guard, the consequences of his unwanted usefulness appeared to include something genuinely beneficial.
“Thank you, Commander,” he said.
“You earned it.”
Adrian accepted the document.
He would not pretend otherwise.
He had done the work.
The findings were real.
And if the investigation recovered money that had been stolen from the empire, the result would matter to people who had never heard his name.
That was a good thing.
It was also precisely the sort of good thing that made it difficult to resign without feeling guilty.
Adrian disliked that most of all.
The emperor received the preliminary report that evening.
Lucien read the summary in silence.
“An apparent corruption ring,” he said.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Mirelle replied. “The evidence is preliminary, but the financial records are consistent with deliberate fraud.”
“How much money?”
“We do not yet know the total. The initial transactions are substantial enough to justify a full audit.”
“Who discovered the contractor?”
“Adrian Vale identified the discrepancies.”
Lucien set the report down.
“The recruit.”
“Yes.”
“He has been here for two days.”
“Approximately.”
“And in those two days, he has disrupted an assassination attempt, helped preserve evidence of a palace security breach, and identified a possible corruption network.”
Mirelle chose her words carefully.
“He has not solved any of those matters alone, Your Majesty. His contributions have been useful, but the investigations are being conducted by trained personnel.”
“An important distinction.”
“The evidence is doing the work. Vale has been careful not to claim more than he can establish.”
Lucien looked again at the report.
“Then let the evidence speak.”
He signed the order authorising a broader audit.
“And keep his name out of public announcements until we know whether the people involved have associates who might retaliate against him.”
“As you command.”
The emperor turned to the window.
Beyond it, the capital glowed beneath the evening sky.
Aurelia was vast, prosperous, and full of people who believed the empire's institutions would protect them.
Some of those institutions were functioning exactly as they should.
Others had been quietly compromised.
Lucien had spent years trying to identify the fractures in his administration.
Now a reluctant young guard had stumbled upon several of them.
The emperor did not believe in destiny.
He believed in evidence, incentives, and the consequences of decisions.
But he had begun to suspect that Adrian Vale possessed one quality that was rarer than brilliance.
He was willing to do an unglamorous task properly, even when nobody was watching.
That made him useful.
And usefulness, in an empire approaching a crisis, could become dangerous.
Adrian returned to his quarters carrying his salary adjustment and a small loaf of bread he had purchased on the way.
He placed both on the table.
Then he sat down and calculated his expenses.
With the additional allowance, he could save a respectable amount each month.
Perhaps he could eventually purchase a small cottage outside the capital.
A garden.
A sturdy roof.
A few fruit trees.
No court politics.
No assassins.
No royal princes appearing at the gate.
He imagined a peaceful life in which his greatest concern was whether it would rain before he harvested his vegetables.
For several minutes, he was happy.
Then someone knocked.
Adrian opened the door.
A Royal Guard officer stood outside.
“Recruit Vale?”
“Yes?”
“You are ordered to attend tomorrow's morning briefing.”
“May I ask why?”
The officer handed him a notice.
“Your Majesty has authorised a review of the Royal Guard's internal security procedures. Commander Ashford has requested your attendance.”
Adrian looked at the paper.
His name appeared beneath the heading.
CONTRIBUTING PERSONNEL — SECURITY REVIEW
He lowered the notice.
“I am a recruit.”
“Yes.”
“I have been in service for two days.”
“Yes.”
“I am not an expert in security procedures.”
“The commander is aware of that.”
“Then why am I attending?”
The officer considered this.
“Apparently, because you follow them.”
Adrian closed the door.
He stood in the middle of his room, holding the notice in one hand and his salary adjustment in the other.
The salary was good.
The cottage was possible.
The garden was still within reach.
But the empire had begun to notice that doing small things correctly could produce large consequences.
And the empire had a terrible habit of rewarding such behaviour with more work.
Adrian placed the notice beside his bed.
Tomorrow, he would attend the briefing.
He would speak only when asked.
He would avoid making recommendations.
He would not identify any more corruption rings.
And if anyone asked him to review another four hundred pages of documents, he would politely request a transfer to a remote gatehouse.
Preferably one with no windows.
Preferably one outside the capital.
Preferably one in a different empire.
He lay down.
Outside, the bells of Aurelia marked the hour.
Far across the city, in a private room above a shuttered warehouse, a merchant examined a list of suspended payments.
Several of his accounts had been frozen.
Two contractors had vanished.
A treasury officer had been detained.
Someone had begun tracing the money.
The merchant set the list on the table.
“Who started the audit?” he asked.
His associate answered quietly.
“An imperial security commander. But the original discrepancies were identified by a Royal Guard recruit.”
“What is his name?”
“Adrian Vale.”
The merchant's fingers stopped moving.
For a moment, the room was silent.
Then he gave a thin smile.
“Find out whether he is acting alone.”
“And if he is?”
“Then we have a minor inconvenience.”
The merchant folded the list.
“But if someone is using him to expose our operations, we have a much larger problem.”
He looked toward the darkened window.
“Either way, I want to know how a man with no authority managed to make three ministries afraid of their own paperwork.”