Sadly Sings Destiny

4

In a small two-room house on the outskirts of Albion, a girl sat alone in the waning twilight of the coming night. The woman was short, only five feet and three inches tall. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a healthy dusting of freckles under brown eyes. She was Verona Conroy, a lower-class girl who had grown up her whole life in the slums of Albion on the fringe of the city. When Andretti had become queen ten years ago and promised new social programs designed to help those in need, Verona and her father celebrated the news. Verona’s mother had passed when she was young from a sudden illness, leaving only her father to provide for her. For the first part of Andretti’s reign, Verona’s father was overworked, underpaid, and overtaxed without any access to the social programs that could give his daughter a better life because he was a man. When Sabbistahn suffered the Year Without a Summer, and Lotherania enjoyed its sudden economic upturn, things got better. Verona was able to go to school, and her father was able to receive help financially from the Crown.

The trouble began nine months ago, though. The monthly deposits of gold into his account with the Grand Credit Union stopped. Those in the Welfare Agency accused the humble father of lying and trying to get more than he deserved from the Crown. In response, Verona’s father had been forced to work extra shifts at the mine that employed him, and it was on one of the shifts he shouldn’t have been working, that an accident took his life when a steel cable snapped and violently ended the man. Verona was distraught, and she blamed the mining company at first, but the Chief Safety Officer of the Sabbistahn based company had been sincere when he apologized to her and had shown her the changes put in place first-hand to prevent anyone else from being placed in her situation. On top of those purely symbolic gestures, the Safety Officer had given a check to Verona that gave her two years worth of her father’s salary if she agreed not to pursue litigation against the Soaring Griffin Mining Corporation.

As expected, the money didn’t bring her father back, and it did not do anything to alleviate her mourning. What the check did do was allow her to focus on things she deemed more important than working every day. She had hired a private investigator from Sabbistahn to go through the paperwork for her father’s account in their credit union, and after three months of investigating, he found that the money for the benefits that the man was supposed to be receiving had been diverted to another account. The investigator could not legally tell her who the owner of the other account was, however, and Verona was left to handle the investigation on her own. She took a job at the Albion headquarters for the Grand Credit Union as an accountant. Her training did not take long, and she found that while she detested the math involved in her work, she was quite good at it, and her skill allowed her to view more accounts and records than some of her coworkers.

It was a week ago that Verona had uncovered a discrepancy in an account that she was able to trace back to the Chief Welfare Agent of Albion. Verona did not waste her time in bringing her finding to the direct supervisor, and instead arranged a meeting with the Executive from Sabbistahn, who was horrified at what the discrepancy implied. The Executive tasked Verona to work on a secret investigation into all of the Agents who were banking with the institution, and both of them were less than surprised to see the same discrepancies. The discrepancies hinted that the Agents had been diverting money meant for welfare benefits to accounts opened solely to hide the misappropriated funds.

Verona’s blood boiled when she went home that night. She and her father had been more than willing to work with the welfare offices through all of the problems that resulted in him not receiving the benefits he needed to put food on the table after his wages were taxed away. If the Agents had admitted their crimes when he was alive, Verona would have been able to understand and even forgive. After all, the Agents were only human, they had husbands and children of their own to take care of. If the Welfare Agency had taken action when Verona confronted them with complaints, and with her investigator’s findings, she could have let the matter pass. Justice would have been served, and while her father would still be dead, other families would not run the risk of being put in her position. What turned this perfectly reasonable girl to taking unreasonable actions, was the simple fact that the Agents and their supervisors had failed to act reasonably in the face of credible complaints and a valise full of facts.

The last vestiges of sunlight ceased their streaming through the window. Verona stood from her seat on the couch in the main room of the house. She knew who to blame for her father’s death. She knew who was responsible. It was not the callously apologetic Sabbistahnian who ran the mine, it was not the supervisor who put her father on shift, it was the Crown. Gilded Nikki Andretti and her army of Agents who promised to take money from those who had enough and assist those who struggled. Gilded Andretti, the Silver Queen. The woman who graced herself with liquid silver and who sent her Agents into the world unchecked. Andretti had to know what was happening. If the thefts had occurred in a moderately sized city like Albion, Verona could only imagine how prevalent it was in a relative metropolis like Rachedale, and those reports must have found the Silver Queen quickly.

Verona Conroy draped herself in a black cloak and tied a black cloth over her face. She stalked through the dark streets of Albion, keeping to the shadows as other cloaked figures joined Verona. There were only three others with her, and she only knew one of them in any capacity. The one who walked beside her on her left was the Executive from Sabbistahn. That man had known Verona’s story, and being a Sabbistahni born as a twentieth generation banker, he had firmly set ideas revolving around the money a person earns and what should happen to those who steal it. It was no secret that Sabbistahn was outspoken against Lotherania’s social programs and even more outspoken about the taxes other nations imposed. When cases of embezzlement involving money a Sabbistahnian considered stolen, like tax money, it would work the cold and calculating businessmen into the only emotion they ever showed.

Verona did not know who the other two who joined her, and she knew they were likely only there for added muscle. The Executive had made it abundantly clear that he was not coming with her to instigate violence but to protect her as she exacted her revenge. The four went to the now-closed welfare office in the center of the city. The hour was late, and the doors had been closed to the public, but the Agents would still be working at their desks, not suspecting the storm that was bearing down on them. As they entered the final block on their journey, the Executive took one of the queer handguns Sabbistahnians carried and passed it to Verona. She took it and concealed it in the folds of her cloak.

The hour of the storm had come. As Verona stood before the door of the Welfare Agency, she took a dagger from her belt and forced the lock. She entered flanked by her three black-clad wraiths and pulled the handgun. The gun was the type without the typical flint and fire pan, and it was more advanced than the standard revolvers the Sabbistahni military carried. Verona didn’t understand precisely how it worked, what she did know was that it was black and intimidating and it would kill, and more importantly, having it visible would keep her from having to weaken herself by using magic.

Chaos erupted as she went door to door with her drawn weapon as she searched for the three women on her list. Those she found that weren’t on her list were put to sleep with a quick spell muttered under her breath. No harm was done to them, they weren’t guilty, they hadn’t committed a crime yet. She found the three she wanted quickly and led them from the building at gunpoint. By the time Verona and her three prisoners were standing on the steps of the Welfare Agency, a crowd had gathered. The city guards had taken to holding the growing crowd back when the cloaked Sabbistahnis had produced large repeating rifles, something humble city guards couldn’t compete with. With a sharp word and a nudge from her gun, Verona convinced the three Agents to kneel in front of her facing the crowd as she removed her hood and mask.

“People of Albion,” she said with a mocking flair to her voice that made it hard not to think of a ringmaster selling his circus to an eager crowd, “I have gathered before you three Agents from our beloved Welfare Office, faithful servants of the people working under her highness, Queen Andretti the Silver.” The name dragged across Verona’s lips with a sour taste, “I am Verona Conroy, and I have no shame in what I am doing tonight. I have the courage to stand here and face you all, even the guards with their spells ready and their flintlocks drawn. Let me speak before you arrest me, let me tell you why I am here.”

Verona launched into a detailed account of her recent life, letting the emotion flow through her as she paced behind the quivering prisoners. She told of the loss of her family’s benefits and of the cost that had taken on her father and on her. She told of her father’s death and of the investigation she had paid for. She told a crowd now invested in her story of how the Welfare Agency had failed to hear her complaints when she brought them with the evidence provided by her investigator . When she reached this point in her story, the crowd jeered at the trembling Agents on the steps. Verona watched the crowd, seeing that even the city guards had a change in their body language, suggesting they were more on the side of the people than of the Crown.

Verona continued her story with her account of her work at the Grand Credit Union, and how she had discovered that the three assembled Agents had been taking the financial benefits and depositing them in their own accounts with the foreign bank that did not face the same scrutiny of financial institutions based in Lotherania.

“To the guards gathered here, beloved civil servants who keep us safe and investigate crimes in our city, I have a request.” Verona said as her speech drew to a close, “I have with me the financial details of these three accused, and I have with me a list of people who complained about not receiving their payments, and their records as well. I ask one guard to enter their offices and find me the official records of these Agents. If their records show that these people with legitimate complaints have not been paid, and if that amount of gold has gone to these three, well. I can’t be held liable for my actions or those of the people behind you. If I am mistaken and there truly is an issue on the Crown’s part, I’ll throw down my gun and surrender peacefully.”

One blonde-haired woman in the uniform of the city guard stepped forward, and Verona and her companions allowed the Guard inside with clear instructions on where to look for the evidence that Verona was sure would exist and prove her suicide mission correct. Verona paced nervously as she waited for the Guard to return. When she did return, Verona was shocked by the ferocity the guard displayed. The blonde girl stormed out of the city with a handful of crumpled papers and violently kicked one of the Agents in the back of the head, sending the unsuspecting official tumbling down the flight of stairs. Verona grabbed and held the guard back before she could strike again.

“What did you find?” Verona asked loud enough for everyone to hear. The Guard handed her the papers and revealed that the allegations Verona had made had proven to be accurate, and she couldn’t help but smile as she spoke. “Even if they are true, I think we should reveal the evidence to the crowd and see what they think. We are better than Andretti and her Agents, I think we should give a trial of sorts. They have heard my case, now let them hear the facts. Would you care to read off what you found?”

The Guard nodded and took the papers back from Verona, along with the pages of evidence that Verona had brought with her. As the guard spoke, Verona could feel the energy of the crowd shift to anger from every person who had gathered. The Guard read out the numbers and the accounts and the names involved, and one of the still masked Sabbistahni men helped explain the finer points of the accounting to the crowd. When the guard had finished, and the accountant had finished helping her, the congregation was in a rage, and the other guards had turned their attention from the black-clad hostage-takers to trying to control the group.

“Well, you know the facts now. Do what you will to these pigs.” Verona said, putting her pistol away. She had planned for this. She did not intend on personally drawing blood if she could help it, and the mob before here seemed intent on helping her make that goal. She and her companions escaped as the guards lost control of the crowd, and some of the guards even joined the mob. When the sun returned to Albion, Verona was in her home, and the bodies of the three guilty Welfare Agents were hanging from the balustrades of the granite building they had committed their crimes in.