Sadly Sings Destiny

15

"Verona, Verona, wake up.” Martha’s voice came cutting through the morning air with the same uncomfortable grating of broken glass into a bare foot. Verona groaned and rolled in her bed, not ready to deal with the world yet, not ready to be reminded that an entire nation depended on her.

“Unless Valerian and his panzerkampfwaggen division are in the square, I don’t care,” the Queen said, waving a hand as if to swat Martha away as she rolled over to face the wall.

“Well, I bet he will be when he hears about what happened,” Martha said in a dead-serious tone, “The Sabbistahni Credit Union branch here in Rachedale was robbed and burned to the ground in the night, there’s not even a copper left in the ashes. Early reports say the guards who were on site all died.” Verona was sitting ramrod straight before Martha had finished.

“You can’t be serious, the... Was it the regional or the city bank?” she asked, throwing herself out of bed and beginning to change out of her night clothes and into her usual dress.

“In Rachedale, they’re both the same bank.” Martha replied, “Early estimates say that around ten thousand tons of gold have been stolen by the mobs that attacked.”

“There was ten thousand tons?” Verona said, stopping in shock, “In Lotherania?”

“Yes, it was the head of the bank in our country, it was the basis for all of the bank operations they do here, not all of that money was Valerian’s either, most of it was money that belonged to people and businesses in Lotherania. This isn’t just one of those things where Valerian is going to come down on us, this is going to be a huge issue with every single woman, man, business… just with everything within two hundred miles. Even other branches of the bank, even other banks. You know those damned Icemen have their hands in every pocket they can find.” as Martha went on Verona could hear the panic growing in her friend’s voice, “When Valerian finds out about this, we are going to have a lot of difficult questions to answer, and we don’t have any answers to give him.”

“Look, you need to rouse the cabinet, get them and the ambassador to Sabbistahn together, get all of them in the cabinet room, and we’ll make a plan on how to deal with this mess. I’m going to try and find something to eat, and I’ll meet you all there.” Verona said as she went for the door. Martha nodded and took off at a run to gather the people she needed from their beds. Verona took a moment to find the kitchens and grab a small amount of food to unceremoniously shove in her face as she ran to the cabinet room. By the time she had eaten and had settled into her seat, her advisors began to file into the room one by one, starting with the Sabbistahni ambassador who was doing her best to hide the burning rage she felt until everyone had gathered.

Verona watched the ambassador pace the room. She could almost imagine the woman bristling like a cornered wolf, ready to bite anyone who came too close. Verona waited patiently as the other members of her cabinet slowly came into the room, half of them still not dressed, but that didn’t surprise her, the sun still wasn’t up yet. After Martha and the Defense Minister came into the room and took their seats, the ambassador flew into a rage and verbal tirade that was barely understandable due to her accent, thickened by unchecked rage and fear of what was going to happen to her. Verona let the woman rant for as long as she needed, the Queen understood what she was feeling. Not a single person in the room was worried about the gold that was missing. None of them were that heartless in the face of the fifty-three deaths that were reported along with the burning of the building.

What horrified everyone in that room was the fact that Valerian Tretyakov the Fourth had just lost ten thousand tons of gold, gold that belonged to both him and to thousands of Lotheranian people and businesses. There were few things that incensed Sabbistahni bankers, and one of them was the theft of other people’s hard-earned property. When Yastern found out that their bank had been raised, the entire city would be crawling with Sabbistahni soldiers and investigators and accountants interrogating every single person until they could start to bring the guilty parties to justice, and until Valerian and his accountants were satisfied that every single copper mark was accounted for, then he would control Rachedale in a locked-down police state. Verona simply didn’t have the military power to argue with him, and the cultural love of banks in that distant country would give its people more than enough cause to go to war if prompted.

“Verona, what in the ten are we going to do?” Ambassador Victoria Kozlov said, finally collapsing into her chair after she had yelled at no one in particular for forty-five minutes straight, “Best case scenario they’ll send me back to Rasternady and fire me.” she sighed, “Maybe even banishment. I can tell you this, whoever they put in my place will be stubborn as an ass and won’t care about anything but trying not to embarrass the bank again.”

“I know, I know,” Verona said. Victoria hadn’t given any new information in her rant, and it was a waste of time in truth, but it did give her time to start working on a response that would come from her throne. “Look. Just send your wireless or whatever you call it to Valerian, there’s no point in trying to hide anything. He knows what the situation is here, and we do have insurance for this very thing. Tell him to send a small detachment of investigators, but remind him this was on Lothernian ground, and we will handle it.”

“You will now?” replied a dejected ambassador, her tone summing up all the emotions in the room. When Verona gave a determined nod, Victoria slunk out of the room like a kicked dog. Verona slowly started to explain her plan to the room, and while none of the advisors seemed to particularly believe in her course of action, but it was the safest thing they could do. It would be the only way they could keep control of the city in the short term future.

Within the following few days, and with the help of Victoria and her wireless device, Verona was able to work with Valerian across the vast distance between the two nations to avoid an international scene. Valerian was slow to accept the terms that Verona laid out, but in the end, he was forced to agree that there was nothing in particular that would prevent him from going ahead with her plan on a legal level. Under Verona’s guidance, Valerian selected a small group of people to travel to Rachedale and assist Verona’s Enforcers in the investigation into the raising of the bank.

During the time that came before his men arrived, life in the city took a noticeable turn for the worse. With forty percent of the people in the city finding that their lives’ savings had been ransacked by an unknown mob, the crime levels in the city began to rise. People turned to doing what they had to to survive. The people who had lost their gold turned to stealing to survive, and many of those thefts escalated to assaults and, in some cases, murders. When the men from Sabbistahn arrived, Verona was not shocked to see that along with five accountants and three experienced soldiers, there were two Stalker soldiers. Highly trained non-humans that were Valerian’s right had in much the same way the Butterfly had served Queen Andretti years before. Verona was quick to introduce them to the men that she had selected to lead the investigation, then leave the matter to them alone.

“What fire am I putting out next?” Verona asked Martha as the two of them left the office that she had given over to the matter of investigating the attack.

“This is one that you should find quite promising actually,” Martha replied, handing the Queen a letter that had already been opened and read. “There’s a girl who’s claiming to be the elected governor of the refugee camps in Elsideria. She wants to start working with you to help and return people back to their homes here in Lotherania.”

“That’s good that someone wants to come back,” Verona said, taking the letter, “I’ll deal with this, you go… I don’t know, go do something.” Martha bowed and left at the casual dismissal. Verona read over the letter in full when she returned to her office. She smiled as she read it. The woman writing her seemed to be a classical Lotheranian woman of some learning. Someone who knew that the wheels of politics turned slowly and often needed help turning. Verona was quick to pick up her quill and write a letter in response to the other woman. Verona was more than pleased as she replied, telling this Heather girl that she was looking forward to working with her to bring the displaced people home. When she had sealed the envelope and sent it, she felt like there was a sliver of hope on the horizon. Things would be better, maybe not soon, but they would be better.