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beatrice-otter · 9 months

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Planning a Peaceful Campaign

And here is the other yuletide fic I wrote! This one was for Quasar, a pinch-hitter who was not signed up and so wouldn't receive anything without treats. They were the only one of the pinch hitters I could write for. This was my only treat this year; other writing projects got in the way. (Including my late pinch hit for sedoretuex which was fun but did take a lot of time). I knew I wasn't going to have much time for treating given how much stuff I signed up for this year.

This was quick to write but I enjoyed it; and it's always fun to use bits of history trivia I already know. In this case, "spending a lot of time at a particular noble's house to force them to entertain the entire Royal Court (and thus spend a shitton of money) so they won't have the funds to cause future trouble, but also can't complain about their impoverishment" was a common tactic of late medieval/early modern royalty in England. And also, in the medieval period, if someone is abruptly a major player in politics and neither they nor their parents had that kind of power/position/money before, and it's not a case of "the monarch just happened to love this person," and you wonder how come they're such an important/rich person all of a sudden? The answer is usually "tax fraud," which was a booming industry in late medieval England at all social levels.

Title: Planning a Peaceful Campaign Author: Beatrice_Otter Fandom: Curse of Chalion Length: 1424 words Rating: Gen Written for: quasar in yuletide 2023

At AO3. On Squidgeworld. On dreamwidth. On Pillowfort.

It was a good thing, Iselle reflected as she watched her Chancellor and his wife lay out their luncheon, that all four of them were known as excellent riders with a love of speed and the skill to accomplish it safely. Days like this, when they'd managed to outride the rest of the court and find a place to picnic by themselves, were the only truly private speech they'd had for months.

"You know, this isn't going to work for too much longer," Bergon said. It was his turn to walk the horses to cool them down, and Iselle turned to watch him. The light sheen of sweat from exercise on a warm summer day gave him a very appealing glow, pleasantly reminding her of other things they might be doing to work up a sweat. "We're giving them too much practice, and I know for a fact that dy Garnez has sent for his younger brother, who I'm told is one of the best horsemen in Almesca, to attend us."

"There are other ways of slipping off alone," Iselle said.

"None as enjoyable as this one, though," Betriz said.

"Speak for yourself," Iselle said, ogling her husband. Betriz laughed.

"And eventually we'll be back in Cardegoss for the winter," Caz pointed out. "There, all the spyholes and things are under our control, and the servants loyal to us."

"And then next spring we get to start this whole circus all over again," Iselle said with a sigh. "You know, if you'd told me as a child that I would grow tired of travelling and wish to stay home, I would have declared you more mad than Mother." Who, of course, had not been mad at all, but only seemed that way.

"It isn't the travel, though," Bergon said. "It's being constantly on show."

"Well, that and the fact that we can't stay anywhere we actually like for too long," Iselle pointed out. Hosting the entire court was an immense honor … and also a great expense that could not be refused. Feasts, revels, all the sorts of entertainments a royal court might expect, redecorating the Royina and Roya's bedchambers in the latest fashions, and other costs piled up into a tidy sum. It was a delicate balance: staying just long enough with their supporters that they received the honor but were not too badly impacted, and then overstaying their welcome with the less honorable and loyal nobles without making it obvious that they were simply there to drain their coffers to lessen the trouble they could make.

"When you get pregnant, that'll be an excellent excuse to stay in Cardegoss or Valenda," Betriz pointed out. She sat back and admired the spread that had come out of their saddle bags. "There! Isn't that nice."

"It is, thank you," Iselle said, taking a seat on the blanket next to her friend.

Bergon tied off the horses to a bush—the only tree in the meadow was the one they were sitting under—and joined them. Caz said a blessing over their meal; when he'd first become her tutor, back in Valenda, such things had often been omitted or done by rote. No longer.

For a few minutes things were quiet as they all worked their way through the excellent spread of cold meats, cheeses, and pasties.

"So," Iselle said as they sated the initial appetite the ride had given them, "we leave the castle of Gipendio in two days to head to Irebar, where dy Rubanco has his primary seat. Is there anything we need to wrap up here?"

"No, madam," Caz said.

"I'll be sorry to leave," Bergon said wistfully. "Dy Lopeira is such good company." The two of them were well on their way to becoming fast friends.

"Well, he's invited to Cardegoss for the winter, and he'll probably come," Betriz pointed out. An invitation from Bergon and Iselle was not quite a command, but few would refuse without an overwhelming reason.

"Best soak up the camaraderie with him now," Caz said. "There'll be little enough of it in dy Rubanco's household."

Bergon grimaced, and Iselle sighed. dy Rubanco had not been involved in dy Jironal's wild march across Cardegoss to capture her and Bergon, but he had been a friend and loyal follower of the previous Chancellor. He'd been as close as dy Jironal had allowed anyone who wasn't family. dy Rubanco had, of course, professed all proper allegiance and disavowed his former master, but there were rumblings and rumors that Caz didn't like. In particular, there was a great deal of hostility to Ibra circulating in Irebar, with just enough plausible deniability for dy Rubanco that they couldn't do anything about it.

"How long do you think we'll have to stay?" she asked Caz.

Caz shrugged. "He's got deep pockets. On the other hand, part of that may be because of favors dy Jironal did for him. In particular, my clerks have turned up some discrepancies in the tax records for the area. By quite a substantial margin. In particular, a number of grain mills and smaller manors seem to have quietly vanished from the Chancellery's records over the course of Orico's reign."

"Can we get him to repay some of what he should have been paying all along?" Betriz asked.

"Probably not," Bergon said. "With dy Jironal dead, all he has to do is say that he paid his taxes through in-kind gifts we now can't trace."

"Or that there were a series of bad harvests, and it was only supposed to be a temporary reprieve, and he had no idea the Chancellor altered the records," Iselle pointed out. 'I had no idea the Chancellor's actions weren't legal or legitimate' was, unfortunately, a very popular defense in Chalion these days.

Betriz opened her mouth, probably to outline how to get enough proof of collusion to be worth doing something about, and then slumped with a sigh. "And if we went after him for it all, that would spoil the new beginning we're trying to create. Too bad. We could use the money."

"We could indeed," Caz said, making a face.

Iselle hummed agreement through a mouthful of pastie. Between wars they'd lost, tax breaks for his relatives, and funds diverted to those relatives and allies in one way or another, the treasury was rather threadbare. And the fact that Orico never traveled, staying at Cardegoss where the Roya's purse funded all the feasting and entertainment, didn't help. The roads were in a terrible state, major aqueducts and bridges that should be maintained by the Roya were in a state of disrepair, and there were so many neglected areas of the country where a small amount of attention and money would bring things into greater prosperity and stability.

"Still, getting the tax rolls properly updated will make a difference going forward," Caz said. "And mean that he has fewer funds to make trouble with."

Bergon sighed and took a swig of watered wine from his flask. "And we won't have a moment's peace or privacy while there for however long it takes to get everything straightened out and drain his current coffers."

"He's known for his elaborate spectacles," Betriz pointed out. "I've heard he has a court playwright who is rather good."

"And he'll be kind enough to loan us servants who will be happy to sleep at the foot of our beds so they can be attentive to our whims day or night," Iselle said. "And report everything to him, no doubt." Including not just her conversations and her visitors, but also the state of her menses, no doubt. She made a face.

"Well, we'll just have to deal with it," Bergon said pragmatically. "If nothing else, our enthusiastic marital intimacies will be better gossip than the things he's spreading around now."

Iselle made a face. Being known to be devoted to her husband and, er, enthusiastically trying for an heir was definitely better than the alternative; she still would rather not have people gossiping about her at all. But that was too much for a royina to ask for. "Months of no privacy, on display like an animal in a cage. Well, it's certainly a less expensive method of bringing him to heel than any other I can think of; it has that advantage."

"Less expensive for us, that is," Betriz said.

"No point letting tomorrow's problems spoil this lovely day, though," Bergon said.

"Hear, hear," Iselle said, saluting him with her flask. "And it is such a lovely day."

#fanfic #fanfiction #lois mcmaster bujold #the curse of chalion

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