Military Augmentation - 1
It was two days before Richelle would all but beg Leo for armaments, and one day before she was to meet Cecil. Richelle had returned to the audience chamber to meet David Bloomfield once more. This time she had completed every preparation for a formal audience, right down to the splendid ceremonial robes, and she waited for him at the precise appointed hour. There was still time before they turned to serious matters, so they could afford a few moments of light conversation.
Richelle asked how old he was. David Bloomfield was a Jihan—an old one, already more than two centuries hardened. Many of his kind had lived far longer, yet among Jihans as a whole he ranked among the elderly. In particular, he was the oldest Jihan in all of Zylan.
“Then you must have known a great many ‘queens’ like me,” Richelle said.
The remark came without warning. She had summoned a man drowning in the affairs of banks and trading houses, brought him to the audience chamber, asked his age, and then inquired whether he knew many queens in the same predicament. For a moment David’s face showed open puzzlement. But when he studied Richelle’s grave expression, he quickly caught the drift of her thoughts.
“That is correct, Your Majesty.”
“Hmph.” Richelle fixed him with a menacing stare. The deceptively youthful old Jihan showed no trace of fear; he merely lowered his head in accordance with etiquette, averting his eyes. The gesture only infuriated her further.
“Had I known you understood that, I would have been spared considerable trouble at our last meeting.”
“But you would have been far more embarrassed instead. Is that not so?”
David was right. Richelle let out a sigh. “You are correct.”
“Then may I ask why Your Majesty has summoned me?”
True to his Jihan nature, David steered the conversation straight toward practical business. Richelle gave a faint smile.
“I have always liked that pragmatic attitude of yours.”
David responded with nothing more than a formal bow of thanks. Richelle gave a short, dry laugh and continued.
“Two weeks ago I met a man named Daniel, son of Samuel.”
“Is he also a Jihan?”
Richelle nodded. “He was working as a spy for House Malong. He stood behind the peasant uprising two weeks ago. Daniel claimed he was also in collusion with the parliament. Do you know anything about this affair?”
Since the matter involved a Jihan, she had wondered whether another Jihan might have heard something. David’s answer was less than illuminating.
“I have heard nothing of it.”
“He boasted that in three hundred years of life he has impregnated more than a hundred humans. Are Jihans who live that long so uncommon?”
At the mention of three centuries David’s expression sharpened with surprise. “Indeed they are. But impregnation? What circumstances could have prompted him to say such a thing? Surely he did not mean that he had—”
Dark rumors were swirling through the streets. They whispered that a Jihan had orchestrated the peasant rebellion two weeks earlier, the one that had required thousands of royal troops and filled the night with terror. Worse, the gossip claimed Queen Richelle had been violated by the very Jihan who pulled the strings and now carried his child.
David, naturally, put no stock in such tales. A Jihan inciting and leading a peasant revolt? The idea was preposterous. Jihans did not behave that way. Yet if a human noble stood behind the Jihan, the equation changed. Both races acted to satisfy greed, but the shape of that greed differed. A Jihan’s desire was immediate, concrete; they did not exert themselves for things inherently beyond their reach—land, power, titles. Money, however, or the credit that bought money, better clients, an employer’s trust—those they would pursue. And if a Jihan were hired by a human who craved land, power, or honor, then the creature could certainly be made to chase those ends.
Moreover, if the queen herself vouched for any part of the story, the picture shifted again. At minimum, the claim that a Jihan had stirred up the rebellion had to be treated as fact. If one piece was true, others might be as well. With that in mind, David studied Richelle’s complexion.
She met his gaze with open incredulity. She knew the rumors, of course, but saw no need to crush them with particular force. The truth would surface soon enough, and the truth was brutally simple. She answered with a crooked smile.
“Surely you are not going to tell me you believe them too?”
“Of course not. Yet there is always the possibility, however remote. According to the laws of succession—”
On the surface, Zylan’s rules of royal succession were straightforward: the monarch must be a descendant of one of Great Queen Chloris I’s sisters, and must be female. But even Zylan was not exempt from canon law, and marriage alliances beyond the kingdom required observance of continental custom. One particularly relevant statute held that any woman who had borne a Jihan’s child was to be treated as a Jihan herself.
Jihans could not own land; the very earth rejected them. A noble title was the right to rule land, and the throne was simply the highest expression of that right. In other words, if Richelle had truly been raped by a Jihan and now carried its child, she could no longer hold the crown of Zylan.
Yet she sat there utterly unconcerned. David could not fathom it. A single misstep in handling these rumors could cost her the throne she had paid so dearly to claim.
Richelle read the thought on his face and gave another wry smile. “David.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Set your mind at ease. The rumor is false.”
“But how can I be certain?”
Richelle lifted the hem of her skirt just enough to make her point. “We are currently menstruating.”
“Ahem. Ahem.”
With those four words every suspicion in David’s mind evaporated. He should have realized the moment he saw her in a skirt that the pregnancy rumor was impossible. He might even have guessed it when she first asked his age. There had been any number of clues.
David studied her expression with flustered eyes and a tense brow, afraid he had just proven himself incapable of the simplest deduction. That could easily revive the earlier spy allegations. If it did, there would be no escape. It was not as though he had failed to plant a single informant inside Venterum Castle, and no one could withstand torture forever.
“Even a Jihan can be flustered, I see.”
Fortunately Richelle seemed disinclined to press the point. David pressed a hand to his chest in relief and answered in a small voice, “Forgive my rudeness. I asked an unnecessary question.”
“It is of no consequence. Commoners do love their gossip, don’t they? I can hardly rip out every tongue that spreads a rumor, nor can I hang my sanitary cloths outside the city gates with a sign reading ‘We are not with child.’”
“Ahem. Ahem.”
“Why do you keep clearing your throat?”
“F-forgive me, Your Majesty…”
Richelle decided she had teased the old Jihan enough. It was time for real business.
“In any case, let us speak of the actual matter at hand.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
David waited, heart beating faster, for her command. What came from her lips, however, was not what he had expected.
“Investigate Malong’s military strength.”
==========
David stared at her in confusion. “Pardon?”
Richelle repeated, louder, “The County of Malong. I want a full accounting of their military scale and fiscal condition.”
“But why issue such an order so suddenly, Your Majesty?”
“Because you bear the duty of managing the Jihans of my kingdom in my stead, do you not?”
David’s face stiffened. After a hesitant pause he asked, “Did Your Majesty not grant me the position of representative for the Jihans within the realm?”
“I did. Yet the patent clearly reads not ‘representative of the Jihans’ but ‘manager of the Jihans, delegated by the queen.’ Correct?”
Whether titled representative or delegated manager, David held unlimited administrative authority over Jihan affairs inside the kingdom. The difference lay in accountability. As representative he would answer to the Jihans; as the queen’s delegated manager he answered to her alone.
It was not that David was stupid or incompetent. The error sprang simply from the fact that he was a Jihan. Had he been a human merchant who had ever participated in electing a guild or civic representative, he would never have made so elementary a mistake. If he had truly wished for management rights over the Jihans, he should have narrowed his claim to the city of Milehaven alone and insisted on the title of representative rather than delegated manager.
But the moment had passed, and there was no undoing it. The only path left was to serve diligently as delegated manager, earn trust, and continually signal that he had not abandoned his ambition to become the true representative. That was the sole route to what he desired.
“I did not expect Your Majesty to resort to such underhanded tactics.”
“My apologies. Yet both parliament and chancellor oppose it with one voice. My hands were tied.”
“I understand. Then what is the deadline?”
“Would one week suffice?”
David performed a swift mental calculation. “It will not require that long. Four days at the outside; three if all goes well.”
“So quickly? How precise can your estimate be?”
“I can forecast standing forces, reserves, and maximum mobilization capacity within a margin of five hundred men.”
Richelle’s eyes widened. “That accurately?”
“Malong is a region of advanced commerce. Closed nations such as Derim or Yedinia, however, make such estimates far more difficult.”
“Very well. Then three or four days from now… four days should guarantee the figures are complete, yes?”
At Richelle’s faintly skeptical question, David gave a confident nod. “Without question, Your Majesty.”
“Good. Four days hence, present your findings in my private office.”
David faltered. “Your office, Your Majesty? Not the audience chamber?”
“Correct. You now serve in my government. You will therefore deliver your report before the privy council like any other official.”
“The privy council…! To a Jihan such as myself?”
Jihans were not human. They possessed no souls and were accursed. They held no rights, only such protections as earthly force could grant livestock regarded as property. Yet now one of them was to attend the privy council of one of the continent’s foremost powers. Even David’s cold Jihan heart trembled.
“Why so startled? You are the man to whom I have delegated oversight of every Jihan in Zylan. You are no ordinary Jihan. Take pride in it.”
“Th-thank you, Your Majesty.”
“As you have no doubt guessed, I intend to declare war on Malong shortly. I wish you to assist with military procurement inside my government.”
David bowed, visibly pleased. “I expected as much, Your Majesty. I shall gladly shoulder this heavy responsibility.”
Richelle smiled awkwardly and went on. “The official justification will likely be that Malong ‘incited rebellion through a Jihan.’ Therefore, regrettable though it is, I cannot grant a Jihan any formal title.”
Disappointment flashed openly across David’s face, yet he kept it from his voice. With studied calm he answered, “I… see. Then it cannot be helped.”
“Ah, and one final matter.” Richelle delivered her last instruction. “You must collect taxes from the Jihans.”
“Taxes?”
The suggestion was outrageous. David felt an urge to leap from his chair. Taxes required a recognized representative. Of course Jihans paid duties—customs, bridge tolls, liquor taxes—but those were human levies imposed upon them. Never in history had Jihans voluntarily sent a representative to consent to and pay a tax of their own.
“Yes. Taxes. Are you not, in practice, their representative?”
Just as he feared, the conversation had circled back to this. David protested.
“Your Majesty, this is unreasonable.”
“In what way?”
“I am given obligations but no authority. Legally I am merely a manager delegated by the crown, not a representative. I possess no political rights whatsoever. Yet I am required to fulfill the duty of managing the Jihans for Your Majesty, which in practice means representing them and extracting taxes from my own kind. The logic is inconsistent!”
By the end he had sprung to his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs. Royal guards burst through the doors. Richelle waved them away.
She wore a relaxed smile. She had anticipated exactly this reaction and knew how the old Jihan would interpret her expression. It was rather entertaining to watch such a calculating creature lose his composure.
“Sit down, Mr. Bloomfield. You are overly excited.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty. Please pardon my rudeness.”
David’s tone held not the slightest trace of genuine remorse, yet Richelle forgave him with royal magnanimity.
“I understand your position. I am not suggesting we levy arbitrary taxes. To be precise, the arrangement must be neither tax nor loan, which is why I chose that word.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
Richelle paused to order her thoughts. Even she was not certain how best to describe what she was about to propose. She began.
“Legally it cannot be a tax. We cannot levy taxes on Jihans. Yet financially it cannot be a loan. Our borrowing has already reached its limit. At least until Prince Philip’s ransom negotiations conclude, we can take no more loans. Therefore we require a new pretext under which to secure war funds.”
David listened to the grave explanation, pondered for a moment, then answered with a refreshed expression.
“It is simple.”
“Simple, you say?”