Chapter 71 - The Other Side of Victory

Chapter 71: 71 - The Other Side of Victory

The city looked different when there wasn’t an army occupying half of it.

Adrien had been here before, but his previous visit had been buried beneath Crown soldiers, sealed streets and officials running from one building to another while House Arquenay collapsed around them. There hadn’t been much opportunity to notice the city itself.

Now there was.

The gates stood open, carts rolled through in both directions, merchants shouted prices from crowded stalls and workers pushed through the streets as though the fall of a Great House had been an inconvenience rather than the end of the world.

Adrien rode beside Evelyne with six Clairmont guards following at a respectful distance. They had intentionally kept the escort small. Turning up with a hundred armed men behind them would have made the wrong statement, especially when plenty of people inside these walls still remembered exactly whose banners had hung above the gates a month earlier.

Unfortunately, six guards didn’t stop people from staring.

Absolute Mana Sense spread around Adrien almost without thought, catching hundreds of mana signatures moving through shops, homes and side streets. His enhanced hearing did the rest, carrying fragments of conversations that were probably never meant to reach him.

"That’s the Clairmont family, right?" a woman whispered somewhere to his right. Another voice answered more cautiously, "The son. He’s the one who inherited everything."

A man farther back wasn’t nearly as careful. "Inherited? His family took it."

An older voice answered him before Adrien could even turn his head. "Gaspard lost it. There’s a difference."

"Could both of you shut up before somebody hears you?" a third person muttered.

Adrien kept riding.

’Bit late for that.’

The reactions weren’t all hostile. Some people bowed when he passed, others gave him cautious nods, and plenty simply watched because something interesting was finally happening on their street.

Others made no effort to hide their resentment.

An elderly woman stood outside her home with her arms folded and stared at Adrien as though he had personally knocked down the Arquenay banners. A merchant beside his cart stopped talking entirely when Adrien looked in his direction.

Evelyne watched the street without turning her head toward any particular person. "Don’t try to decide whether they like you from one afternoon. Half of them probably haven’t decided themselves."

Adrien glanced toward her. "Gaspard wasn’t exactly beloved."

"He didn’t have to be." Evelyne’s tone stayed calm as their horses moved through the crowd. "For many of these people, Arquenay governed this city before they were born. Their parents paid taxes to that house, their grandparents probably did the same. Familiar doesn’t always mean loved, but people are comfortable with what they understand."

"So I’m the stranger who owns their city."

"At the moment, yes." Evelyne finally looked at him. "Give them reasons to think differently. Or give them reasons not to. That’s the part you control."

Adrien was still considering that when a small figure suddenly ran out from beside a bakery.

One of the guards reacted immediately, pulling his horse sideways, but Adrien raised a hand before anyone could shout. The boy stopped in the middle of the road and looked up at him with the kind of confidence only a child could have when he had absolutely no idea how nervous everyone around him had suddenly become.

He couldn’t have been older than seven.

"Are you the new lord?" the boy asked.

Adrien looked down at him. "Yes, but I’m still getting used to it."

The boy accepted that answer with surprising seriousness before pointing at him. "My father says you killed Lord Gaspard."

A woman standing outside the bakery went completely pale.

Adrien noticed Evelyne looking toward him, but she remained silent and let him answer for himself.

"I didn’t kill him," Adrien said. "Your father heard the story wrong."

The boy frowned as though this had created a problem he now needed to solve. "Then where is he?"

"With the Crown."

That seemed good enough for him. His attention shifted almost immediately to something more important.

"Are you taking our bakery?"

Adrien stared at him for a second. "Why would I take your bakery?"

"Because everything is yours now."

There was a brutal simplicity to the logic.

Adrien leaned slightly forward in the saddle. "I’m going to leave the bakery where it is. It seems more useful that way."

The boy nodded, visibly relieved. "That is good. My mother makes the best sweet bread here."

The woman finally recovered enough to hurry into the road and grab him by the shoulders. "My lord, forgive him. He doesn’t understand what he should and shouldn’t ask."

Adrien glanced from her to the boy. "I’d rather he ask than spend the next month believing I’m coming for his bread."

The boy smiled immediately, while his mother looked as though she wasn’t sure whether she was allowed to.

They continued on before the situation could become stranger.

Evelyne waited until the bakery was several buildings behind them before speaking. "You handled that better than I expected."

Adrien gave her a wounded look. "Your confidence in me is inspiring."

"My confidence is fine. Your ability to say the first thing that enters your head is what concerns me."

Evelyne’s expression remained composed, but Adrien caught the smallest hint of amusement before she looked forward again.

The administrative building stood near the centre of the city. Arquenay banners had disappeared from its balconies, replaced by Clairmont colours that still looked strangely new against the old stone.

Several officials were waiting inside.

The chief administrator stepped forward first. He was older, thin and dressed neatly enough that Adrien suspected he’d spent more time preparing for this meeting than Adrien had.

"Lord Clairmont. Lady Evelyne. We’ve prepared the records you requested." He gestured toward the corridor beyond them. "Harvest estimates, city expenditure, guard salaries, trade revenue and the current tax ledgers are all ready."

Evelyne removed her gloves as they walked. "We’ll begin with food reserves and wages. I want to know what’s actually in the warehouses, not what someone wrote down three months ago. After that, we’ll look at the city guard and the roads."

The administrator glanced toward Adrien for barely a moment.

Adrien noticed immediately.

"You don’t need to check my face every time my mother tells you something," he said. "She handles the administration. If she asks for records, give her the records. If she changes something, assume I’ve approved it unless you hear otherwise from me."

The man’s posture loosened slightly. "That makes things considerably clearer, my lord. Thank you."

They spent the next hour buried in information.

Adrien listened more than he spoke. Grain reserves were lower than Evelyne wanted but not dangerously low. Several road repairs had been delayed, the city guard had received two late payments under Gaspard, and one warehouse apparently contained considerably less material than its paperwork claimed.

Evelyne didn’t react dramatically to any of it. She simply asked another question each time, marked something in the margin and moved on.

Eventually, they reached taxes.

The administrator pulled another ledger across the table. "We’ve kept the existing collections unchanged during the transition. I assumed changing them before House Clairmont reviewed the system would create more problems than it solved."

Adrien looked over. "What exactly are they paying?"

Evelyne had already started reading. "Village maintenance levy, northern road surcharge, seasonal defence contribution, emergency infrastructure fund..." She turned another page, her expression becoming slightly colder. "Some of these overlap."

"They were introduced at different times under Duke Gaspard," the administrator explained carefully. "Several have existed for years."

Adrien leaned forward. "And you’ve still been collecting all of them this month?"

"Yes. I didn’t think I had the authority to remove them without approval."

"Then remove them now."

Evelyne didn’t raise her voice. "No."

Adrien turned toward her. "You just said some of them overlap."

"I said some appear to overlap." Evelyne rested one hand on the ledger. "If one of these pays the people repairing the northern road and you cancel it this afternoon, those workers don’t get paid because Gaspard may have stolen part of the money."

"So people keep paying while we investigate whether they should be paying at all?"

"For a very short time, yes." Her tone remained patient rather than argumentative. "Good intentions don’t repair bridges, Adrien. We check where the money goes first, then remove whatever shouldn’t exist."

Adrien looked back down at the ledger and exhaled.

’Winning the city was definitely easier.’

"Alright. Nothing new gets added and nothing gets increased until you’ve reviewed the entire thing." He tapped the page once. "Anything that was genuinely paying for something stays until we replace it properly. Anything Gaspard created to put money in his own pocket disappears."

Evelyne nodded once. "That’s a decision I can actually implement."

The chief administrator looked relieved, though only briefly. His attention shifted toward the door, and something about the movement caught Adrien’s notice.

"There’s any other problem?"

The man hesitated before answering. "Not exactly a problem. There are people who have been asking to meet you since word arrived that you were coming. I’ve delayed them because I thought you should see the accounts first."

Evelyne closed the tax ledger. "Who?"

Before he could answer, voices sounded outside the room.

The officials around the table changed almost immediately. One straightened his back. Another quietly moved several documents out of the way. Even the chief administrator looked less comfortable than he had while discussing missing money.

Adrien noticed all of it.

The door opened without anyone inside giving permission.

A well-dressed older man stepped through first, followed by several others dressed with the same expensive restraint. He didn’t look nervous, and unlike nearly everyone Adrien had met since entering the city, he didn’t appear uncertain about whether he belonged in the room.

The chief administrator rose.

Adrien looked from him to the newcomer and understood something immediately.

Gaspard might have ruled the territory.

But this was the man who had been running the city.