Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms 4)

Magnus held up his hand. “The goddess does not currently have a seat on this council.”

o;Indeed. Lord Kurtis has been teaching me how to handle a bow and arrow this last week,” Cleo explained to the councilmen. “He’s an excellent tutor.”

“And you are an excellent student,” Kurtis replied. “Soon you’ll be winning competitions, just as your sister did, if that’s your goal.”

Oh yes, Magnus thought wryly. I’m sure that’s exactly why she wants to learn how to send sharp arrows directly and precisely into a target.

Magnus decided to imagine Kurtis’s right eye socket as his own personal target.

“Your highness, perhaps it would be interesting to get the princess’s take on the problem at hand?” Kurtis suggested.

This sounded very much like a challenge.

“Yes,” Magnus agreed. “It would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“How absolutely ludicrous,” the high priest said under his breath.

“What was that?” Magnus asked sharply. “Did you say something?”

The priest smiled weakly. “No, your highness. I was just clearing my throat. I look forward to hearing your wife’s thoughts.”

Magnus slid the financial document in front of Cleo. She scanned it quickly, her expression turning serious. “This is a great deal of money,” she said. “To whom is it owed?”

“King Gaius has an agreement with the moneylenders in Veneas,” Kurtis replied. “They expect to be repaid without extensive delay.”

“And so you’re taxing all of the Limerian people to these great extents?” She looked sharply at each of the council members. “What about the rich?”

“What about them, your grace?” asked Lord Loggis.

“According to this document, these financial issues are due to the decisions of the rich. Why wouldn’t they be expected to contribute the lion’s share of this debt? To clean up their own mess?”

“That’s quite a sentiment for an Auranian royal to have,” Loggis countered. “Then again, Auranos’s poor would be the equivalent of our rich, wouldn’t they?”

“Thank you for your opinion about my homeland, but you didn’t answer my question,” Cleo said with a patient smile. “Should I take your insult to mean that you’re trying to avoid this matter? Or that you’re not sure why your taxes are structured as they are?”

Magnus watched her with barely concealed amusement. Cleo certainly wasn’t winning many allies in this room, but he found her ability to stand up for herself deeply admirable.

Not that he’d ever admit this out loud, of course.

“Well?” Cleo prompted, glancing next at Lord Kurtis.

Kurtis spread his hands in the air before him. “We can only hope that your husband will come up with a solution that benefits everyone. He is, after all, currently in command here.”

Now Magnus pictured another arrow entering Kurtis’s left eye socket. Slowly. Again and again.

“Well,” Magnus said after a tense silence, “what might you suggest, princess?”

Cleo met his gaze, the first time she’d looked at him so directly since their last private talk. “You really want to know?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask.”

She regarded him for another moment before speaking again. “My father never had trouble with debt.”

“How lovely for your father,” Lord Loggis mumbled.

She gave the lord a sharp look, then turned back to address the rest of the group. “In fact, it was just the opposite. Auranos was and is very wealthy. My father would often lend money to other kingdoms, just as those in Veneas are known to do.”

“And?” Magnus prompted after the table fell silent. “How does this recollection of the past help the current situation? Auranian finances are included as part of this document—part of Mytica as a whole. And they, too, have recently been depleted in an attempt to pay off part of this debt.”