Harry Turtledove - Rulers of the Darkness

And so, wishing the worst to those who seemed happy under an Algarvian puppet king, Talsu set down a dozen names and then, after a little thought, three or four more. He passed his list back to the constabulary captain. "These are the ones I can think of."

"Let's see what we've got." The captain compared the sheet he'd got from Talsu to the one he'd waved. Maybe Gailisa really had given him a list. Maybe he wasn't such a dreadful actor after all. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Isn't that interesting?" he murmured. "There are some matches. I must admit I'm a little surprised. You took a long time coming to your senses, Talsu son of Traku, but I'm glad you've finally seen who has the strength in this new and greater Jelgava."

"That's pretty plain," Talsu said, which wasn't altogether untrue: had things been the other way round, men who served redheaded King Mainardo could never had laid hands on Gailisa.

"We shall have to do some more investigating- aye, indeed we shall," the captain said, at least half to himself. "Powers above only know what may have been going on right under our noses. Well, if it was, we'll put a stop to it. Aye, we will."

"What about me?" Talsu demanded. "I've given you what you wanted." He sounded like a girl who'd just let a seducer have his way with her. He felt like that, too. He'd yielded, but the constabulary captain wasn't doing anything for him.

The captain tapped the list with a fingernail. "What about you? I don't know yet. We'll find out. If you've done us some good, we'll do you some good. If you haven't…" He tapped it again. "If you haven't, you'll be sorry you tried to get clever with us." He nodded to the guards. "Take him back to his cell."

Back Talsu went. The guards didn't work him over. That was something. He returned to his place in time for supper. That was something, too. Routine returned. He wondered when it would end again… when, and how.

Pybba the pottery magnate was about fifty, with energy enough to wear down any three men half his age. He certainly left Ealstan panting. "Don't complain," he boomed. "Don't carp. Just do the work, young fellow. As long as you do the work, everything will be fine. That's why I sacked the bookkeeper I had before you: he couldn't keep up. Couldn't come close to keeping up. I need someone who will attend. If you will, I'll pay you. If you won't, I'll boot you out on your arse. Is that plain enough?"

He'd been standing much too close to Ealstan, and all but bellowing in his ear. With his most innocent expression, Ealstan looked up from the accounts he'd been casting and said, "No, sir. I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about."

Pybba stared. "Wha-at?" he rumbled. Then he realized Ealstan was pulling his leg. He rumbled again, this time with laughter. "You've got spunk, young fellow, I'll say that for you. But have you got staying power? -and I don't want to hear what your wife thinks."

That made Ealstan laugh, too, if a little uncomfortably. "I'm managing so far. And you pay well enough."

"Do the work and you earn the money. That's only fair," Pybba said. "Do the work. If you don't do the work, the powers below are welcome to you- and I'll give 'em horseradish and capers to eat you with."

Ealstan could have done the work better and faster if Pybba hadn't hovered there haranguing him. But Pybba, as best he could see, harangued everybody about everything. He also worked harder than any of his employees. As far as Ealstan was concerned, his example was a lot more persuasive than his lectures.

Eventually, Pybba went off to yell at someone else: the kilnmaster, as Ealstan- and everyone else within earshot- soon realized. Not paying attention to Pybba when he wasn't talking to them was a skill a lot of people who worked for him had acquired. Ealstan hadn't, not yet, but he was learning.

He was also learning a demon of a lot about bookkeeping. Nobody back in Gromheort ran a business a quarter the size of Pybba's. Ethelhelm had made almost as much money, but his accounts were straightforward by comparison. With Pybba, it wasn't just the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. A lot of his fingers hadn't been introduced to one another.

"Well, what do you think this is?" he demanded when Ealstan asked him about an incidental expense.

"It looks like a bribe to keep the Algarvians sweet," Ealstan answered.

Pybba beamed at him. "Ah, good. You're not a blind man. Have to stay in business, you know."

"Aye," Ealstan said. Pybba was a full-blooded Forthwegian; he had to pay out less than Ethelhelm had to stay in business. The Algarvians couldn't seize him merely for existing, as they could with the half-breed band leader. After some thought, Ealstan shook his head. The Algarvians could do that if they wanted to badly enough; they could do anything if they wanted to badly enough. But they had far less reason to want to than they did with Ethelhelm.

Because the Algarvians didn't force his bribes to rise out of the range of ordinary thievery, Pybba was making money almost faster than he knew what to do with it. "And he should be making even more than he is," Ealstan said to Vanai one evening over supper. "I don't quite know where some of it's going."

"Well, you said he pays his people well," she answered around one of a long series of yawns. "He's paying you well, that's certain. And he hired you just about full-time soon enough."

"Oh, he does," Ealstan agreed. "And he is, and he did. But that's all in the open- all in the books. Somewhere, money's leaking out of things. Not a whole lot, mind you, but it is."

"Is somebody stealing from Pybba?" Vanai asked. "Or is that what he's paying Mezentio's men so they won't bother him?" She knew how the redheads operated.

"It's not bribes," Ealstan said. "Those are on the books, too, though that's not what they're called. Someone stealing? I don't know. It wouldn't be easy, and you're right- he pays well enough, you'd have to be a greedy fool to want more."

"Plenty of people are greedy fools," Vanai pointed out. Ealstan couldn't disagree with that.

He still had clients other than Pybba, though the pottery magnate swallowed more and more of his hours. He kept trying to find out how and why Pybba wasn't making quite so much money as he should have. He kept trying, and kept failing. He imagined his father looking over his shoulder and making disapproving noises. As far as Hestan was concerned, numbers were as transparent as glass. Ealstan had thought they were, too, but all he found here was opacity.

At last, baffled, he brought the matter to Pybba's notice, saying, "I think you have a thief, but I'm cursed if I can see where. Whoever's doing this is more clever than I am. Maybe you ought to have him casting your accounts instead of me."

"A thief?" Pybba's hard face darkened with anger. "You'd better show me what you've found, lad. If I can figure out who the son of a whore is, I'll break him in half." He didn't sound as if he were joking.

"I hope you can figure it out, because I can't," Ealstan answered. "And I have to tell you, I haven't really found anything. All I've noticed is that something is lost, and I'm not even sure where."

"Let me have a look," Pybba said.

Ealstan guided him through it, showing how things didn't quite add up. He said, "I've been looking back through the books, too, trying to find out how long this has been going on. I'm sure it was happening while your last bookkeeper before me was here. The other thing I'm sure of is that he didn't even notice."

"Him? He wouldn't have noticed a naked woman if she got into bed with him, he wouldn't." Pybba snorted in fine contempt. The finger he used to mark his place darted now here, now there, as he followed the track Ealstan set out for him. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Well, well, young fellow. Isn't that interesting?"