Chapter 119: A Gold Coin Under The Table

The first sign of corruption in Althoff was not a confession, a witness, or someone caught dramatically passing a purse beneath a table. It was a number written twice.

Ysabel found it while reviewing applications for three newly completed commercial spaces facing the Central Market’s eastern row.

One application claimed to have been submitted as number forty-seven, early enough to receive consideration for a prime lease. The Trade Department’s intake ledger, however, placed the same merchant at number sixty-three.

More strangely, application forty-seven already belonged to a leatherworker.

Ysabel brought both records to Raymond before breakfast and placed them beside his tea. "Either numbers have begun reproducing," she said with visible irritation, "or somebody altered an application."

Raymond put down his cup. "Please tell me we’re dealing with an incompetent clerk."

Ysabel shook her head. "I checked the handwriting. The change was deliberate."

By noon, the discrepancy had become a trail. The merchant was Caldus Renn, a trader who had arrived shortly after Golden Road and dealt in alchemical ingredients, hides, and processed monster materials.

His application for the shop had somehow moved sixteen positions forward. Two weeks earlier, one of his Beast-material purchases had also received inspection ahead of merchants whose requests had been filed first.

A warehouse allocation bearing his name had been amended from shared storage to a better secured compartment. All three changes passed through the desk of a junior Trade clerk named Merek Sol.

Raymond listened while Ysabel explained the pattern, then asked, "How much?"

Ysabel slid a small Treasury report toward him. "We searched Merek’s desk after finding the records. Thirty Gold Coins were hidden beneath the false bottom of a document chest. He earns nowhere near enough to explain them."

Merek was brought into the administrative chamber that afternoon. He looked barely older than twenty-five and had spent the winter helping register merchant permits, which made Raymond’s anger worse rather than easier.

Ysabel placed the conflicting documents before him and asked, "Would you like to explain why Merchant Renn’s application says forty-seven when you personally entered him as sixty-three?"

Merek stared at the papers for several seconds before answering, "I may have copied the number incorrectly, Mistress Merrow."

Ysabel pulled out the inspection schedule. "And this?"

Merek swallowed and claimed that Caldus’s materials had required faster inspection because they were commercially sensitive.

Ysabel produced the warehouse amendment next. "And this?"

Merek’s face lost what little color remained.

Raymond watched him carefully before saying, "Merek, if your explanation requires three unrelated mistakes that all benefited the same merchant, you need a better explanation."

The clerk’s resistance lasted less than another minute. Caldus had approached him after discovering how many merchants were competing for prime market leases.

The first payment had been ten Gold Coins to improve his position in the application queue. Another ten bought earlier inspection of a valuable Beast-material lot so Caldus could secure it before competitors committed their money elsewhere.

The final ten accompanied the warehouse alteration. Merek insisted he had never stolen government funds and had not falsified prices.

"I only changed priority, my Lord," he said desperately. "The territory still received every fee. Nobody lost Treasury money."

Raymond’s expression hardened. "You sold something that wasn’t yours to sell. Other merchants followed the rules because they believed the order meant something. You took their place in that order and sold it for thirty Gold Coins."

Caldus proved considerably less frightened when summoned. The merchant admitted paying Merek but argued that preferential arrangements were common throughout Solaria.

"I paid for speed," Caldus said, spreading his hands as though explaining an ordinary commercial expense. "Your Administration received its fees. I received no free goods, no stolen property, and no secret reduction in price. If anything, Lord Althoff, I demonstrated that your market positions are worth paying for."

Raymond stared at him. "Then you should have paid Althoff for them."

Caldus’s confident expression shifted slightly. Raymond leaned forward and continued, "If faster inspection is a service we decide to sell, the Treasury collects the fee and every merchant knows the option exists. You paid one clerk privately so other merchants wouldn’t know you were buying an advantage. That’s not enterprise. That’s corruption."

Raymond wanted to punish both men immediately, but the last few weeks had taught him to distrust decisions made while angry. More importantly, Merek’s confession exposed something larger than thirty Gold Coins.

One junior clerk had altered three commercially valuable decisions without requiring another official to confirm them.

Nobody noticed until Ysabel happened to compare two records. Raymond dismissed Merek from his Trade Department position pending prosecution before the Magistrate Court and ordered the thirty Gold Coins seized as evidence and eventual forfeiture if the case was proven.

Caldus received an immediate commercial suspension while the Administration reviewed every transaction connected to him.

His existing goods remained his property, but he could not bid on government lots, receive new leases, or obtain new commercial permits during the investigation.

Ysabel asked, "Do you want his license permanently revoked?"

Raymond considered it before shaking his head. "Let the court determine the legal penalty once we establish the offense properly. I want a major fine if he’s convicted, restitution where anyone suffered measurable loss, and suspension long enough to hurt. Permanent revocation should remain available for repeated corruption or something severe enough to justify it."

Alaric nodded approvingly. "That gives us a penalty without making every violation commercial death."

Raymond looked toward him. "I’m trying very hard not to invent laws based on how irritated I am."

Ysabel folded her arms and replied, "A useful improvement, my Lord."

Raymond gave her a flat look. "I’m glad my personal development entertains the Trade Department."

The jokes ended when they examined how the bribery had worked. Raymond ordered every Department handling money, permits, allocations, leases, inspections, or valuable government resources to review where a single employee could quietly change outcomes.

The list grew alarmingly fast. By evening, Alaric had covered half the Council table with vulnerable procedures. "We can dismiss dishonest people whenever we catch them,"

Raymond said, "but that assumes we catch them."

Alaric nodded and answered, "Honest officials are useful, my Lord. Procedures that remain safe when officials aren’t honest are better."

Raymond tapped the table once. "Exactly. Build for the clerk who might take the coin, not the clerk we hope never will."

The first reforms were simple enough to implement immediately. Valuable commercial allocations required two authorized signatures rather than one.

Government Beast-material auctions and major lease opportunities would be posted publicly at designated boards in the Central Market and Administration buildings, with posting dates recorded.

Commercial applications received numbered receipts at submission so neither merchants nor clerks could quietly change their place without creating a contradiction.

Fees and payments had to pass through Treasury-recognized collection points with receipts; officials handling applications were forbidden from personally accepting money related to those applications.

Changes to warehouse assignments, inspection priority, or lease rankings required a written reason attached to the original record.

Conflict-of-interest rules proved harder because Althoff was small enough that everyone seemed related to, indebted to, friendly with, or formerly employed by someone.

Raymond refused to create rules so strict that half the Administration became incapable of working. Instead, officials had to disclose direct financial interests, close family involvement, substantial debts, partnerships, or gifts connected to matters they controlled.

Where the conflict was significant, another official handled the decision. Gifts above trivial value from merchants seeking government business were prohibited.

Adrian Pell, hearing about the new rules through Golden Road, reportedly told Ysabel that merchants would now have to become more creative. Ysabel’s response, delivered to Raymond with absolute seriousness, was that Trade intended to become more annoying.

By the following morning, the Central Market displayed the first public notices for government commercial opportunities.

Merchants could read the same release dates, lot descriptions, application windows, and basic conditions instead of depending on private access to a clerk. It would not eliminate corruption.

Raymond was not naive enough to believe a few signatures and numbered receipts could accomplish that. People could collude. Records could still be falsified. Inspectors could be bribed.

Supervisors could become corrupt together. But every additional record created another place for lies to disagree with each other, and every divided responsibility made quiet manipulation slightly harder.

Raymond was reviewing the new procedure with Alaric when the door opened without the usual announcement. Captain Darric entered wearing his Watch uniform, his expression serious enough that Raymond immediately put down his pen.

"Please don’t tell me somebody bribed another clerk already," Raymond said.

Darric shook his head and stepped toward the desk. "No, my Lord. This is different."

Alaric turned toward him while Raymond asked, "How different?"

Darric placed a wrapped bundle on the desk and unfolded the cloth. Inside lay three polished Beast fangs and a dark horn segment carrying faint traces of mana.

Raymond had spent enough time around the Beast-material yards to recognize what should have been present on commercially cleared materials.

There were no inspection marks.

Darric rested one hand beside the bundle and explained, "My men found these hidden beneath sacks of charcoal on a wagon leaving through the western route this morning. No inspection record, no sale record, and no transport declaration."

Raymond picked up one fang and examined its base. If materials were being moved around official inspections, Althoff was losing more than fees.

Diseased parts could enter workshops, stolen government stock could disappear, hunters could conceal valuable kills, and merchants could move mana-bearing materials without anyone knowing where they came from.

He looked at Darric and asked, "Stolen?"

Darric’s expression remained grim. "We don’t know yet, my Lord. The driver claims he was paid to carry sealed sacks and didn’t know what was inside."

Raymond set the fang down. "Do you believe him?"

Darric hesitated before answering, "I believe he’s frightened. That’s not the same thing."

Alaric asked whether the wagon had been detained, and Darric nodded. "The driver, wagon, cargo, and two assistants are being held for questioning. We traced the charcoal shipment to a storage yard near the western road, but the person listed as renting the space disappeared this morning."

Raymond’s irritation from the bribery case sharpened into something colder. "Convenient."

Darric nodded once before adding, "There’s more, my Lord. One of my men recognized the packing method. He remembers seeing similar charcoal sacks leave twice last week. We didn’t inspect them because charcoal isn’t restricted cargo."

Raymond looked down at the unregistered Beast materials again. Thirty Gold Coins under a clerk’s table had shown him that growing wealth could corrupt the people administering Althoff’s rules.

The bundle in front of him revealed the next problem: other people had already begun learning how to move around those rules entirely.

He looked back at Darric. "Find out where those earlier wagons went."

Darric inclined his head and answered, "Already started, my Lord."

Raymond’s gaze returned to the unmarked fangs.

Someone was smuggling Beast materials out of Althoff.