Sadly Sings Destiny

3

Vixen stood outside of the oak door as she waited for her master, Queen Nikki Andretti the Silver. Vixen was in a sweat as she waited for the woman to leave her room. The day was supposed to be a joyous one, the tenth anniversary of Andretti's coronation. But, today was not a day to celebrate, Vixen had bad news for the Silver Queen. When the oak door finally opened, it opened with such suddenness that Vixen nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Good morning, master," Vixen said shakily.

"Good morning Vixen, what do you have for me this morning?" Andretti asked as she began leading the way to her study.

"Nothing good master," Vixen said before clearing her throat, "In Albion, there was some unrest. Apparently, the people found out that some of the ministers of the Welfare Agency were embezzling money, you know, signing people for benefits without their knowledge and keeping the money."

"Again? Well, we'll have them arrested and tried and all that." Andretti said, rubbing her temples. It was the fourth time in recent memory that Agents had been caught in fraudulent activity, and it seemed that everywhere she looked, there was more.

"Well, we can't do that. They were caught and lynched by a group of displeased citizens." Vixen said, looking over the notes that she carried with her.

"Maybe there's some good in that." Andretti sighed, feeling defeated, "Maybe it'll discourage others from doing the same thing."

"I'm more worried about it encouraging people, your highness. The leader of the group that lynched the Agents is a bit of a well known radical according to our reports from Albion. There is a possibility of more violence."

"Right, I'll discuss it with my advisors and have it taken care of. Could you get them ready for a meeting after breakfast? Excellent, thank you, Vixen." Andretti said as she entered her study. She took a moment to recompose herself. Things were not going the way she wanted. Recently it seemed like she was getting a report of fraud every day, but it had only been four times in a month. It was a disturbing trend, and it was something Valerian had warned her about. His own country had tried vast social programs a hundred years ago and was still recovering from the adverse effects and replacing them with the libertarian free-market they had become.

She sighed. This was the first time there had been violence against her government officials in retaliation for crimes. There had been isolated cases in the past, but this was the first time that there had been a clear motive for government officials to be attacked by a group of extremists. She looked over her desk, trying to push the matter out of her mind. For the time being, at least, just long enough to eat breakfast was all she wanted to have free of worries. An envelope caught her eye, it was from Valerian Tretyakov, and she could see the writing on the envelope was done in hand, which meant it came from him personally and not on behalf of Sabbistahn. She couldn't help but smile. Over the years, her personal relationship with Valerian had become quite strong, and if she was any other woman, she would have likely bought a one-way ticket to Yastern and pursued it.

Her smile held as she opened the letter and read what he had written to her. It was indeed a personal letter, and she was happy to see his pages of endless rambling about his love for flying. It was idle chatter and an insight into a life that not even the wealthiest people of Tylmath could dream of. The second half of his letter was in response to a personal letter she had sent him and carried on with the conversation that the two had been cultivating over the last four years. When she finished reading it, her breakfast came, and she wrote him back while she took her time enjoying the meal. When the meal was finished, she sealed and addressed the letter and passed it to Vixen as she went on her way to the meeting room to speak with her cabinet about the unrest in Albion.

The meeting did not go as well as she wanted. Her advisers had mixed opinions on how she should handle the situation, and she was even led to believe, in the darkest parts of her mind, that at least one of her advisors was committing the same frauds her Agents had been killed for. After a meeting that failed to answer and questions, and that raised even more, she pulled her top general aside and asked the woman to investigate the two chief agents to see if they were involved in anything less than legal. The general nodded, understanding the fear the Silver Queen felt.

"Vixen," Andretti said as she walked down the deserted passageway after her clandestine meeting with the general, "do you think I'm a good queen?"

"Nikki," Vixen said with a touch of pain in her voice at the question, "I've known you for years, I've known you since you were a princess. History might see this corruption and this incident, but I can promise you that it will remember your intentions."

"Thank you, Vixen, sometimes I think you're the only one who's still sane," Andretti said with a soft smile, a smile that infected the wyvern in a wry, teasing way.

"If you're worried about how history will judge you, then you should be more worried about your strange style." the half-blood said, getting a slight laugh in response. Andretti's pale hand with black nail polish reached up to touch the hardened metal in her hair.

"History already knows why I do it, it's like the old Tylmath Angel warriors, you know that." the Queen said as the duo returned to her study. Andretti was able to work through her day in the typical fashion, but through all of the long hours, she couldn't help but wonder what an investigation would find. During the day she sent a crow to the corporate offices of the Grand Credit Union in the city proper and asked for a secret meeting. The Chief Executive Officer of the Lotheranian branch of the bank was soon in Andretti's office, taking off the hood of a cloak that had been charmed to hide the banker's face. The Banker was a Sabbistahni woman with a round face framed by molten copper hair with bright blue eyes and a soft voice.

The first thing Andretti did was swear the Banker, Vera Petrovich, to secrecy regarding the nature of the meeting. Vera was more than willing to comply, and Andretti knew she could trust the other woman. Sabbistahnians may be cold and devoid of any visible soul or personality that isn't dictated by money, but they were honest people, and she knew that a Sabbistahnian would find financial fraud a detestable crime, especially when taxed gold is involved. Andretti started to explain her fears about the upper echelon of her Welfare Agents and of the recent troubles in Albion with corruption.

"I think I know what to do about this, but it will take time," Vera said when Andretti finished. The Silver Queen couldn't help but appreciate that Vera's language skills were far superior to Valerian's, almost entirely natural, "I can get a task force from the homeland of accounting detectives. If you give me permission and write the right letter to the Defense Chief, then you could get them to operate outside of the law, and then they can look into other banks too."

"Whatever you need, Vera, but for the love of everything that's holy, I can't have word get out about this," Andretti said, leaning over the desk from dramatic effect.

"On my honor as a banker," Vera said, raising a hand with two outstretched fingers, a Sabbistahni display of loyalty and secrecy. Andretti nodded and dismissed the Banker, who surprised her by returning a couple of hours later as the Queen was eating her mid-day meal.

"Vera?" Andretti asked, raising a silver eyebrow, "You can't possibly have results now, could you?"

"No, I just brought you the proper forms to fill out to launch a true investigation, regardless of if it's just me or if we bring in the accounting detectives." the other woman said, producing a valise and pulling a stack of papers from the bag. Andretti couldn't help but smile, even in the face of the fears that she was beginning to feel welling inside of her, she found it amusing that she could count on Sabbistahn to be perfectly bureaucratic.

"Of course, I'm not well versed in Sabbistahni or your paperwork customs. Could you assist me?" the Queen replied, pushing her half-emptied plate to the side.

"For a consultation fee, of course," Vera said, sitting on the opposite side of the desk from the Queen. Andretti rolled her eyes, but accepted. Vera walked the Queen through the proper ways to fill out the forms to best meet the Queen's needs and handled most of the writing on the forms as well. After an hour had passed, Vera was pulling the hood up on her cloak to cover her face and placing the papers in her valise and leaving the castle.

Andretti couldn't help but smile. She knew that she had problems in her life and that the worst of it was still on the horizon, but now there was action being taken. Andretti knew that if word got out that corruption was running rampant in the government, be it at high or lower levels, she would lose the trust and support that she needed to maintain her social programs and to keep her subjects paying taxes. If people found that the money they had been surrendering to the crown had been used to pad the accounts of her agents, she could only imagine the damage that would cause. All people of Tylmath, Lotheranian or Elsiderian, had a strong love for the eon gone Tylmathri Empire, and one of the causes of the fall of that storied nation was rampant fraud and embezzlement in the tax accounts.

The days passed, and the anxiety mounted as there were more reports of unrest in Albion and no word from her general or from the Sabbistahni bankers on who she should be quietly disposing of. She was thankful, however, that the word she had received from Albion was only that one outspoken extremist was passing out literature that highlighted some of the issues in the current system that Andretti managed. This was accompanied by word from the Governess of Albion, a rather proper woman whom Nikki held in high respect, saying that she would have any pamphlets analyzed and any gathering infiltrated by a spy. Andretti dispatched a message thanking the Governess for her assistance in the matter.

For the weeks following the initial report of the violence in Albion, things seemed to be in a stalemate. There were no further reports of violence, and all the reports she received showed an increase in the number of people using the benefits her government offered. During this time, the investigators arrived from Sabbistahn, giving their official reason for their visit as an audit of the Lotheranian branch of the bank. Andretti welcomed them in secret and had a meeting in which she described in detail what she wanted them to look for across the entire nation. The investigators were all more than willing to do as she wished, and many of them took the crime personally. Andretti was excited to see the enthusiasm these accountants had for their work and for their mission. The night after she had that meeting, she slept in peace for the first time since the unrest in Albion was reported.

She waited anxiously as the days went by, and soon she had her report back from her general whom she had tasked on a similar mission. The general had been unable to find anything that would be incriminating enough in a fair trial when it came to the lives of the top Welfare Agents. Queen Andretti thanked the general for her time and work and assured the woman that the proper measures were being taken to ensure that the crown could no longer be blamed for financial crimes. Andretti couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw the general flinch slightly at that promise. That small, perceived movement troubled Andretti almost as much as the confirmed violence in Albion. Andretti held another secret meeting with one of the investigating accountants where she revealed this fear, and the Sabbistahnian confirmed that it was likely paranoia, but promised to look into the general nonetheless.

A week after the Sabbistahni investigators began their search for the possible financial criminals, they started reporting names of government officials who were profiting without any apparent source for the flow of gold into their accounts. Andretti nodded when she received this news, and she formulated a plan to deal with the corrupt individuals. On the next night, Andretti removed her makeup and the gallium in her hair earlier than usual and snuck out of the castle unseen with the help of the ever-faithful Vixen. Nikki walked the city in a hooded cloak that hid her identity as she worked her way to the slums of Rachedale. There were several taverns in this area of the city that were known access points to the underground societies of the nation, and Andretti knew of every one of them. The Queen had been briefed by her secret police on the ongoings of the dark side of Rachedale in the event the Queen wanted to dispose of the criminals, but Andretti let the dark individuals continue in their lives in the event that she should ever require their services.

In the bar, Andretti did not attract much attention from her place in her black cloak with the voluminous hood that hid most of the details of a face that was rendered unrecognizable by its lack of gallium augmentation. She covertly asked around until she found the person she was looking for. Sitting at the bar was a woman who would blend in anywhere in Lotherania. A girl of average height, with long brown hair and a freckle spattered face and wide brown eyes. Andretti sat next to the woman, not removing the hood she used to hide her identity.

"Are you the one they call Butterfly?" Andretti asked in a soft voice, not turning to look at the woman on her left.

"Who wants to know?" the other girl asked, not bothering to look over at the intruder.

"Someone with a large amount of Sabbistahni gold and who will have a lot of work for you over the coming months." Andretti replied, "Someone looking for a supplier of the type of services you offer."

"Who are the marks?" the Butterfly replied, looking at her new companion for the first time. The assassin had not expected to be able to identify the other person, and she was less than surprised to see that nothing was visible.

"I will have an ever growing list for you, and I will pay handsomely to keep you on a retainer. The people I want you to kill deserve to be punished and their crimes could be very embarrassing to the crown. They're Welfare Agents around the city, the type that are more interested in their own welfare than helping the people who need it." the apprehension Andretti had been feeling about meeting with a known assassin was washed away by the cold iron of anger as she described the situation with as few details as she could manage.

"If you're serious, I'll need a thousand crowns now and a thousand more for each target I kill." the Butterfly said. Andretti nodded, a gesture that was unseen, and she reached into her pocket to pull out a slip of paper with a handful of names and a small pouch of Sabbistahni full mark coins, each coin double the amount specified when exchanged for Lotheranian crowns. It was far more money than the assassin would need for her work, and Andretti hoped it would buy the girl's loyalty. What Andretti did not know was that her actions would set motion to changes with consequences beyond her greatest fears.