Non-Humans and the Poll Tax (3)
Back in the office, I sank into the chair at my desk, clutching my head and grinding my teeth.
Have these people lost their minds?
I had demanded interest rates I'd set entirely on my own whim. On top of that, I hadn't even been polite about it — I'd spent the entire time sneering at them and treating them like dirt.
So why, for what possible reason, would they be happy about any of that?
Was everyone completely insane?
Twelve copper coins isn't some children's game…!
For a commoner, twelve copper coins a month per person wasn't, frankly speaking, a crushing sum. But dust piled high becomes a mountain. For the non-human races, who lived in tribal units, every poll tax payment meant handing over silver coins at minimum.
One hundred copper coins made one silver coin, and a single silver coin was a typical commoner family's living expenses for an entire week. That was by no means a small amount. So of course the non-humans hated the poll tax and found it oppressive. They had to pay a large sum all at once.
So how had things ended up like this?
Damn it all…!
I pulled out the resignation letter I'd been carefully folding and keeping in my coat, and tore it to shreds.
There was something I didn't know. There had to be. Otherwise none of this made any sense.
You dare interfere with my resignation?
I would find it. I would track down the cause no matter what, and chew it to pieces.
Rage surging all the way to the top of my skull, I clenched my fists and pulled out every document related to the incident, reviewing the case from the very beginning.
Meanwhile, Rhea finished cleaning up and returned to the office.
"Whew! Tax Collector, sir! I've collected every last overdue poll tax payment and processed them all. And as you instructed, I distributed a portion of the additional interest as a hardship bonus to the garrison troops."
My insides were burning black, and there she was, smiling brightly with an expression of pure relief. Well — she had finished her assigned work perfectly, so of course she was in a good mood.
It was enough to drive a man completely mad.
"Good work. Sit down and rest a bit."
I nodded toward her as curtly as I could, burying every scrap of emotion, then shoved my face back into the documents and focused.
"I think we really pulled off something big this time. Honestly, when we marched into the Tax Bureau carrying all that collected poll tax money, the clerk in charge went completely white and nearly jumped out of his skin!"
"What did you just say…?"
"Heheh! I guess anything involving the non-human races is a real headache even for the Tax Bureau."
That was when Rhea casually dropped something rather significant. Being startled I could understand — but going deathly pale? Shouldn't he have been happy that a troublesome problem had been resolved?
Ordinarily I might have let it slide. But in my current razor-edged state, her words landed differently.
"This clerk you mentioned. Who is he?"
"Ah. You mean Mr. Wilson?"
"Wilson?"
"Yes. This case was originally assigned to Wilson, a Grade Six Tax Collector."
"Grade Six — so a Junior Clerk? No, more importantly, why is a tax collector sitting in an office? At this hour he should be out collecting taxes."
"Ah. Well, unless they're assigned to nobles, tax collectors usually collect through contractors, so…"
"Contractors?"
A Grade One Administrator like me was out there running himself ragged on foot. And some Grade Six nobody of a Junior Clerk was farming the work out to contractors so he could lounge comfortably in an office?
Wow. The Ministry of Finance was really running smoothly.
I sucked in a breath of pure disbelief. But only for a moment. The fact that other tax collectors subcontracted their work to contractors made the pieces of the puzzle start clicking into place one by one.
Subcontracting can't be cheap. It has to cost more than a few coins.
It wasn't that subcontracting itself was strange. There was a mountain of tax to collect and nowhere near enough tax collectors, so of course farming it out was more efficient. The real question was whether the arrangement made any financial sense from the contractors' point of view.
Surely even among people who made their living as tax-collection contractors, competition existed. The Ministry of Finance would want to hire the cheapest operators with the best results. That meant the contractors had to hire more people, collect more tax faster, and prove their usefulness.
And there was the contradiction. To keep getting work, they had to charge less than everyone else — while also needing more employees. Anyone could see it was a losing business.
And yet they make a living as tax-collection contractors? That doesn't add up.
In a way, tax-collection contracting was just another business. These people weren't volunteers. Why would they deliberately take losses to keep working?
There was only one answer.
They were skimming money out the back door to turn a profit. And if the method was squeezing extra fees however they pleased during the collection process itself?
Everything fit. This entire absurd situation suddenly made perfect sense.
Haa. Just how much have they been bleeding people dry…
I pressed my fingers to my forehead and let out a long sigh. I couldn't justify what they'd done, but that didn't mean I couldn't understand it either. To put it bluntly, this wasn't only on them — the Ministry of Finance and the Imperial Court shared some of the blame. If the people at the top had identified the structural problems and fixed them early, none of this would have happened. Instead they'd looked the other way and done nothing, and thanks to that, my perfect plan had gone up in smoke.
I've never wanted to chew someone up and spit them out more in my life.
If you're going to line your pockets, at least do it in moderation. These bastards dared to block my resignation?
"Bring that Wilson to my office. Right now."
In the end, with fury boiling all the way to the crown of my head, I decided to start by tearing into this Wilson character.
Had only the contractors been taking kickbacks?
No. My conclusion said otherwise. If anything ever went wrong, the tax collectors responsible for supervising them would face punishment too. The collectors who handled the day-to-day work closest to the contractors couldn't possibly have been unaware. In other words, this Wilson almost certainly knew what the contractors were doing and looked the other way. And in exchange, he would have been taking his own cut of the backdoor money.
That was why I had decided to start by hauling Wilson in and wringing him dry.
"How much did you take?"
"W-what… what do you mean by that all of a sudden…?"
Sure enough. The moment I fired the question at Wilson the instant he walked into the office with Rhea, cold sweat poured down his face as he watched me for cues.
"Grade Six Junior Clerk Wilson. Are you aware that I come from the Intelligence Bureau?"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"I am not a particularly patient man."
"……"
"And the thing I hate most in this world is wasting time."
Wilson kept playing dumb. I narrowed my eyes and spoke again.
"I will ask one last time. How much did you take?"
"Th-that's…"
His eyes darted left and right. He couldn't move forward and he couldn't retreat. I could practically hear the gears grinding inside his skull.
"Senior Secretariat Rhea. Contact the Imperial Inspectorate under my name and tell them to send people."
"Th-the Inspectorate!"
"If you've done nothing wrong, there shouldn't be a problem, should there?"
When I finally shook my head in disgust and dropped the word Inspectorate, Wilson's face twisted in pure horror and he dropped to his knees on the floor.
"P-please spare me! I-I'm truly being wronged here!"
"Wronged? Right. That's what every criminal always says. Even the Coalition's spies, when we catch them, always start by insisting they're innocent Imperial citizens and how unfair it all is."
"I-I really…"
"But do you know what Intelligence Bureau agents do when they catch a spy? Their job is to turn 'I'm being wronged' into 'please spare me.'"
"H-hiiik!!"
"So wouldn't the Inspectorate be the better option? There. I've shown you mercy. That means you should give me something in return, don't you think?"
Wilson squeezed his eyes shut. Then he bit down hard on his lip, slammed his forehead against the floor, and began confessing his crimes in a trembling voice.
"I-I only took a few coins per job as a fee for assigning them the work. A-and even that was because I had no choice…!"
"No choice?"
"It's true! It's not just me — everyone takes a little on the side! If I were the only one who refused, what do you think would happen to me?! And those contractor bastards — you have no idea how vicious they are!"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Those animals act all respectful on ordinary days — 'Tax Collector, sir, Tax Collector, sir' — but the second something goes wrong, they don't care if you're a noble or a civil servant. They just start stabbing!"
"Are you joking with me right now?"
"W-why would I joke in front of someone like you?! Those men have nothing left to lose!"
A man who called himself a tax collector of the Ministry of Finance, putting on a performance like this. Wasn't he even embarrassed? How much of a pack of idiots did you have to be to get pushed around by a bunch of lowlife thugs like that?
No. Maybe these bastards were all in it together. Right. There was no point ranking who was worse. They were all the same kind of scum.
I had no intention of going easy on any of them anyway.
"Rhea. Hand this one over to the Inspectorate, and bring me every file on every tax collector and contractor attached to the Tax Bureau."
I rose from my seat and looked down at Wilson as he begged and pleaded, speaking with calm precision.
"Even if it hurts — a rotten part has to be cut out."