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Chapter Text

“Welcome home, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you, August. It’s good to be back,” Zeref said. And for once, he actually meant it.

Usually, it was the chains of doubt and dread which hauled him back to his empire – the gnawing, pervasive fear that his almighty weapon might have rusted in his absence; that each passing day without his supervision only increased the chance that he would return to find Alvarez a decaying husk. Soon would come the war to end all things, and he could not risk losing the weapon with which he had chosen to fight it.

Not this time. He’d been so bored over in Fiore. When the Fairy Sphere had trapped most of Fairy Tail outside time, it seemed to have trapped fate with it, and now nothing remotely exciting had happened over there for years.

Sometimes, he liked the peace and quiet. Sometimes, it made him restless, rousing the part of him that had trespassed in the domain of the gods of magic. Even after they cast him down, he had carved out for himself a kingdom on their earth, a reminder that he could do so much more than wander through the wilderness.

And he wanted to do more. To take on the challenges that had crushed lesser men beneath the heel of reality. To hone the edge of his empire, his blade, until it could sever the cruel fate that bound him and open a path to the only potential escape he had found in four hundred years. To be not a long-lost villain of history, not a recluse who studied magic because he had nothing else, not a name whispered to scare those who didn’t really believe he still existed… but to be glorious.

His palace glittered before him like perfectly sculpted onyx. Each facet caught the light of infinite dawns, while its heart was that of coal: industrious, pragmatic, and packed with energy waiting to be unleashed. He’d built this nation. Him. He had much to be proud of, and much still to do.

The guards bowed as they opened the doors to let him and August, who had come to greet him as always, enter the palace – the place that felt closer to the future than anywhere else on the planet.

Yes, this was going to be a productive trip. He could feel it in his bones.

(The fact that these were the same bones that had once felt taking on the God of Life and Death was a good idea had apparently slipped his mind.)

“So, what I have missed?” Zeref prompted. “Give me the headlines.”

If there was the slightest pause before August responded, Zeref did not register it. “Well… there’s good news and bad news.”

“Such is the duality of life,” Zeref agreed amiably. “Go on.”

“The good news is that we’ve found a potential new candidate for the Spriggan Twelve.”

“Hmm, excellent. It is promising indeed to see powerful mages taking an interest in-”

Zeref stopped in his tracks. Did a quick count on his fingers. Frowned. “I wasn’t aware that I was short a member of the Spriggan Twelve.”

“Yes. Well. That’s the bad news.”

There was a pause.

“What? How? It’s only been three weeks since I last called you! How on earth have things-” He cut his own tirade off with a sharp inhale, shoving the plug back in the bathtub before all his good mood could drain out. “Never mind. We will get to that in time, I’m sure. Let us focus on the positives. Tell me more about this new candidate. Where are they? When can I meet them?”

“As it happens, he’s actually… under arrest.”

Zeref blinked. “On what charge?”

“I was worried you were going to ask that.” August gave a heavy sigh, like he was determined to drag his emperor’s unusually high spirits back down to where they belonged. “Initially, he was charged with manslaughter-”

“Manslaughter!” Not a foreign subject for Zeref, naturally. But not generally a sought-after quality in the twelve official representatives of his empire. He had that more than covered in the team.

…Come to think of it, he had remembered to return Bloodman to book form before he left Alvarez last time, hadn’t he?

“Initially, yes,” August continued doggedly. “But then he started quoting the Offences Against The Person Act X701 at us, and the unclear definition of ‘person’ implicit within it, combined with some recent court ruling on the extent to which the Interpretation Act can technically be applied to pre-X725 enactments… and, long story short, none of us are sure if he’s actually committed a crime or not. Counsel’s Office are looking into it, but no one’s heard from them in three days, so we’re not hopeful.”

“Oh, great, a lawyer,” he muttered. “Don’t you have to let him go if you’re not going to charge him?”

“We tried to let him go. He wouldn’t leave. I think it’s some kind of protest. He wants to be arrested, so that we can’t brush what happened under the rug, but apparently he draws the line at being charged under the wrong Act. His solicitor couldn’t make sense of it either, and quit. So now he’s representing himself-”

“Please stop talking.” Now Zeref remembered why he didn’t usually bother with optimism: life sucked. “Look, is there any chance you can pretend you’ve not seen me, and I can just sneak off back to Fiore?”

August gave him a reproachful look.

On second thoughts, maybe this was why he came to greet Zeref every time he returned to the empire. He was hailing the return of the one person in the world to whom he could escalate the issues he didn’t want to deal with – all while making sure he couldn’t slip away again.

Once again, Zeref remembered why he didn’t normally look forward to returning to Vistarion: it was full of people, and people sucked. Even the best of them. Oh, for the exquisite solitude of his enchanted island. Curse that meddling Fairy Sphere for stealing his haven away and tricking him into thinking Alvarez wasn’t that bad after all…

“Fine. Fine! I’ll deal with it. Heaven knows why I ever thought it could be otherwise. Just tell me this, August. Is there anything, just one thing, that I have to look forward to while I’m here?”

August considered this for far too long.

“That depends. How do you feel about a tax on capital gains?”

“It’s a terrible idea,” came Zeref’s immediate response. “There’s a reason why we don’t have one in Alvarez.”

“Then, no, I can’t think of anything.”

Zeref was never, ever coming back to Alvarez of his own volition again.

One week earlier…

It began with a perfectly innocent comment during a routine meeting of the Spriggan Twelve.

For the last order of business, August had handed, to each of the six other members who had bothered to turn up, a manila folder stamped CONFIDENTIAL. Each one contained a copy of the formal proposals for the three shortlisted magic-focussed development projects, including construction timelines, budgetary forecasts, and return on investment calculations. The ask was simple: all they had to do was familiarize themselves with the content ahead of the next meeting.

At least, it would have been a simple ask, had it gone to the Treasury, or the Department of Business, or literally any other faction of the government. Instead, because all the proposals were magic-related, approval had to be given by the Spriggan Twelve, who were officially the custodians of magic in the empire.

August loved his colleagues, really he did, and there was no one he would rather have watching his back in battle… but he did feel a bit sorry for the empire, sometimes.

The requirement for the Spriggan Twelve to be anything more than a council of military advisers should have been long confined to the history books. Alas, on the few occasions that His Majesty was present in his own capital city, his mind was ever preoccupied with the war he was adamant lay just over the horizon, and he had no time to spare for streamlining the decades-old statutory process for allocating funding to major magical infrastructure projects.

Dimaria was flicking through her folder with a complete lack of enthusiasm. Brandish was wearing the same expression she might have worn had she been handed a dead rat rather than some formal documents, as though being expected to actually do some work was the greatest insult of all. Ajeel’s eyes had started spinning as soon as he’d noticed that the pages continued numbers. Wall, meanwhile… was actually taking notes. Huh. That was – no, wait, his notes had too many numbers in. The odds of those equations relating to net present value calculations and not fancy new ways of making things explode were negligible.

August rubbed at his temples tiredly. He wished there was someone else to chair these meetings in His Majesty’s absence. Unfortunately, Jaquila, the sixth member of the Twelve in attendance, was having none of it. The current Chief of Staff, she was less than a year away from retirement and milking it for all it was worth. So many people wanted so much from her before she went that she could pick and choose her duties with impunity – and, astonishingly, she hadn’t chosen this one.

Not that August could blame her. She had been a bastion of His Majesty’s government for the best part of thirty years. An adequate mage, but an exceptional politician, Jaquila represented a dying breed amongst the Spriggan Twelve: it had been over ten years since His Majesty had last appointed a member other than for their combat prowess. Sometimes, August thought it was a good thing that this cataclysmic war was supposedly imminent. Give it a few more years, and the Spriggan Administration wouldn’t be capable of doing anything else.

Not that anything in their nation’s nebulous future was going to help him survive this goddamn meeting.

“I fail to see the point in option number one,” pointed out the seventh and final attendee at the meeting, in the slow rumble of his voice. “Developing a first-of-its-kind meta-polaric ethernano imaging scanner for Vistarion Central Hospital, to improve early diagnosis of corruptions of the magical core? They’re all going to die anyway. Why spend an obscene amount of money creating a device that just puts off the inevitable for another year or two?”

Right. Bloodman was a headache for a completely different reason to the rest of August’s colleagues. At least they had a vague idea of how society should be governed, by virtue of the fact that they were living in it. Bloodman, however, was a demon, an artificial creation of His Majesty’s Living Magic, intended to be a weapon of war and nothing more. Usually, His Majesty returned him to book form when he left Vistarion, given that they weren’t currently at war and all. He would bring the demon out only when he was needed to put down a rebellion or strike terror into the hearts of his enemies.

However, since His Majesty hadn’t chosen to do so last time (August would never accuse his emperor of something so mundane as forgetting)… well, Bloodman was a member of the Spriggan Twelve, even if such a thing would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago, and thus he was entitled to come to the meetings. Even if he did look a little out of place, trying to cram the hulking dark shadow of his existence on the physical plane into one of the little wooden chairs that ringed the table.

Typical, that the only one of them who showed any interest in reading the reports was the only one whom August really didn't care if they did it or not.

“If you’re going to be that pessimistic, we can write all of them off right now,” Dimaria drawled. “Why bother building anything ever? We might as well just lie down and wait to die.”

“Exactly.” Bloodman nodded gravely, having entirely missed the sarcasm.

“Seconded,” said Brandish, who had heard the sarcasm loud and clear but would take any excuse to get out of doing work.

“Just read the proposals, and come to our next meeting prepared to discuss which one of the three should receive government funding,” August sighed.

So far, so… unsurprising. That should have been the end of it, and all would have been well.

But then, in a deceptively innocent move, Brandish raised her hand. “Question.”

“…Yes?”

“Why are we bothering with this?”

“Because, contrary to popular opinion, death is not the purpose of life and the world isn’t going to end tomorrow,” August explained patiently. “Therefore, we should make some token effort to invest in our nation’s future.”

“No, I mean – it’s His Majesty who will make the final decision, isn’t it? So why should I give up my evening reading these proposals when my views won’t make a difference?”

August frowned. The true answer was an increasingly clear pattern in His Majesty’s behaviour: in recent years, he had been so busy overseeing the training of the military and the development of war technology that he rarely had time for domestic matters like this during his brief trips to Vistarion. August had his secret suspicions as to why that was – that, for His Majesty, there was more to this coming war than the mere expansion of the empire into Ishgar – but it wasn’t his place to question it.

However, while the trend was as clear as day to him, he knew that for the newer members of the Twelve, this was all they had ever known. They took it for granted, just as most of the empire took his eventual conquest of Ishgar for granted, not stopping to wonder if his end goal was not what they all thought it was. There was a good chance that His Majesty would simply rubber-stamp whatever recommendation they put to him on his way to yet another military strategy meeting, and thus they had to at least look like they were undertaking a proper evaluation process.

But he could hardly say that to her, so he went with, “You know His Majesty values your views.” A slight distortion of the truth, perhaps, but for a good cause. “Therefore, I expect you – all of you – to treat this assignment with due care and attention. Is that understood?”

Apparently, it was not understood.

“Let’s fund ‘em all,” Wall advocated, without looking up from his scribbles.

“Ooh, good idea!” Brandish piped up. “His Majesty gets his recommendation, we get our evenings back, and Ajeel doesn’t have to pretend he understands compound interest.”

“Hey!” Ajeel yelped.

Flatly, August corrected, “No, it’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?” Brandish countered, enthusiastic now that the prospect of a night off was back on the table. “New magi-medical technology, a prototype levitating train to run between Vistarion and Saltport, and sponsoring magical academies in some of the remoter regions of the empire – all three are worthy causes. Why shouldn’t we do them all?”

Dimaria sniggered. “Because you shouldn’t take business strategy advice from the person who bankrupted his own department in less than a month, perhaps?”

“It was a month and a half,” Wall corrected, still scribbling. “And never has there been such a period of ingenuity, of earth-shaking creativity! Wonders were born that will never again be known! We drowned in inspiration and caffeine and found a whole new world at the bottom of the sea! Materials with paradoxical properties. Brave, experimental weaponry. A thousand glorious ways of blowing something up-”

“In short,” August overrode him loudly, “we can’t afford to do them all.”

There was a pause. Then Brandish raised her hand again. “This might be a stupid question…”

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” he encouraged her, unaware that she was about to send them tumbling deeper into the rabbit hole.

“Have you met Randi?” Dimaria sniggered.

Brandish ignored this, probably because rising above it took less effort than arguing. “How does a literal empire not have enough money to do everything it wants?”

“We can only spend what we raise through taxes or by borrowing. His Majesty is already uncomfortable with the level of borrowing, so that’s unlikely to increase any time soon. However, we’ve raised less in tax revenues than expected over the last couple of years, so compromises have to be made.”

“Why are we receiving less tax than expected?”

Dimaria let out a groan. “Randi, I swear, if the outcome of this meeting is all of us having to pay more tax because you decided to take an interest in this of all things…”

“Taking an interest in the workings of the economy is commendable,” August corrected. Though, personally, he missed the days when it had been compulsory. “The minutiae of tax collection is a little outside my sphere, though. Jaquila, I don’t suppose you could shed any light?”

“I have a joint meeting on the topic with the Treasury and Revenue Service later, so I do actually have some data to hand.” The Chief of Staff rummaged through one of the many files tucked against her hip. “Here’s a headline stat. I assume you know the Duke of Balfour?”

“Not personally, but yes,” Brandish shrugged.

“Obviously not personally,” Dimaria chipped in, “or she’d be mooching off of him rather than doing honest work here with us.”

“Well, this year, he paid a grand total of… no tax. Same the year before that.”

Ajeel looked up sharply. One didn’t have to be a genius with numbers to understand that something was very wrong with that picture. “How does one of the richest men in the empire get away with not paying his taxes? Someone should do something about it!”

Clapping him on the back, Brandish said, “Well volunteered, Ajeel.”

“Wait- hang on- you can’t send me; I’ve… I’ve got all these funding proposals to study!” he argued, entirely unconvincingly, with a pleading look at August.

Hmm. It was a low blow, but if threatening them with even-less-attractive work could get them to focus on their actual jobs…

“No need,” said a gravelly voice. “I shall deal with the Duke of Balfour.”

Silence followed this proclamation.

Every single person in the room, including those whose attention up to this point had been whimsical at best, was now staring at the demon who had risen from his chair, ragged cloak billowing around him though no wind blew through the chamber.

August cleared his throat. In a valiant attempt to steer his tone between the impolitic pitfalls of astonishment and horror, he asked, “You, Bloodman?”

“Who better? Do death and taxes not walk hand in hand?”

“Uh… do they?”

“Surely you know the saying.” The demon’s eyes glowed red as hellfire behind his grinning mask. “Nothing is certain in life except this: if you don’t pay your taxes… you die.”

“That’s not how the saying goes,” Dimaria sighed.

“Nor is it the empire’s policy to leap straight to capital punishment without any form of investigation or trial,” August was swift to add. “While your enthusiasm is appreciated – heaven knows this room could do with more of it – this is not an appropriate matter to be passed into your hands, Bloodman. Kindly sit back down.”

If a demonic embodiment of death could sit down sullenly, then that’s what this one did.

“I presume,” the demon said, his voice a mournful whisper of wind between gravestones, “that you will not let this insult to the empire go unchallenged?”

This time, Jaquila took pity on the beleaguered leader of the Spriggan Twelve and answered for him. (August didn’t want to think about what he’d do when she retired. Why, oh why, hadn’t he called it a day himself when he’d first hit state pension age? He could be on an island cruise right now. Promises to serve until death shouldn’t be given lightly in a country with a healthcare system this good.)

“I’ve got just the man for this,” Jaquila was saying. “He’s currently on secondment to my department from Counsel’s Office.”

“He’s a lawyer?” August wondered.

“His background is in law. He wrote some sort of thesis on tax law at university, though, so I daresay he’s qualified.”

“Oh, was that for his dissertation?”

“No – for fun, I think.”

Brandish made a spluttering sound.

“Interviewing him was an experience,” Jaquila added wryly.

“I’ll bet,” Ajeel muttered, patting out the tiny fires which had started on the table, courtesy of the sparks flying from Brandish’s ears as her brain struggled to compute this concept.

“You’ll recognize him, actually,” Jaquila mentioned to August. “He’s the one you asked me about the other day.”

“Oh?” August was intrigued. He had, in fact, asked her about a mysterious man he’d come across in the palace. The working wing was full of staffers maintaining the hugely complex mechanisms of government, far more of them than anyone could possibly remember, and though August made more of an effort with names and faces than most, it wasn’t unusual for even him to encounter someone he didn’t know.

However, it was unusual indeed for someone he didn't know to have magic like this.

It wasn’t that he had a vast and vocal magical presence. All the Twelve, and many more besides, answered to that description. Rather, it was that he had almost no magical presence at all. Not a single person could sense it. Well, other than August, of course; the stranger’s magic had reached out to him as he’d passed, as magic always did, but it had fought the pull to do so right up until the end. Never before had August encountered someone with such disciplined magic.

And it had been a great many years since anyone – other than His Majesty, in one of his moods – had dared to glower at him the way that man did in response. It was rare indeed for anyone to be sensitive to the way magic flowed around August, and rarer still that they would express irritation towards the leader of the Spriggan Twelve for any reason.

That man had huge magical potential. Even if he was, apparently, going out of his way to hide it.

Trying not to sound too interested, he inquired, “Did you get a chance to ask him?” After learning that the man was currently assigned to the Chief of Staff’s office, August had tasked her with finding out if he wanted to be considered for the Spriggan Twelve the next time a vacancy arose.

“I did,” she frowned. “He told me somewhat frostily that he wasn’t aware people from outside of Vistarion were eligible.”

“That’s nonsense. Most of the current Twelve may be from Vistarion, but that’s just because that’s where the best candidates-” or at least, those with the strongest magical potential, he caveated silently “-happen to be from, which is hardly a surprise in the capital city of magic. Clearly, he hadn’t done his research.”

“Which is odd, because his knowledge about everything else in government has been infallible…”

Impatiently, August pressed, “I presume you set him straight.”

“I did. He said he wasn’t interested. He was here to do a proper job.”

Brandish let out a low whistle. “If these endless meetings and reports we’re expected to read in our own time isn’t a proper job, I’d hate to see what is.”

“Still, I think he’d be perfect to investigate this matter,” Jaquila continued, pretending Brandish hadn’t spoken. Which was often the only way anything got done in these sessions. “I’ll ask him to attend our next meeting to report his findings. Is that acceptable?”

“Anything that doesn’t involve me interrogating a very rich and powerful man about his tax return is acceptable,” Ajeel agreed, and the others nodded in solidarity.

Except for Bloodman, whose expression, as always, was hidden behind his frightful mask. The shadows beneath his chair whispered with words not meant to be heard by the living.

“Bloodman?” August prompted.

“The executioner shall wait until he is called,” Bloodman conceded solemnly.

“Huzzah,” Brandish remarked, as she stood up and turned to the door. “An excellent outcome all round. Well, folks, it’s been a pleasure as always, but some of us have-”

“Brandish,” August interrupted tiredly, pointing to the manila folder she had left lying on the table, not at all accidentally.

“But I don’t need to!” she pouted. “I can already tell you how this is going to end. We’re going to make the Duke of Balfour pay up and then fund all the projects with his missing tax money, so why do I have to waste my evening looking at them?”

“Because I told you to,” he said flatly. “You are a servant of the empire, and you will do what the empire asks of you.”

“Why can’t the empire ever ask me to drink daiquiris on a beach somewhere?” But she picked up the papers, as, reluctantly, did the others, and they shuffled out of the room.

Honestly. It shouldn’t be this difficult. Fighting the enemies of the empire was nothing compared to wrangling its most loyal servants.

Chapter Text

August should have been surprised and/or disappointed when the first person to turn up at the next meeting of the Spriggan Twelve was not in fact a member of the Spriggan Twelve, but he had met his colleagues before, so he was fully expecting them to be late. Better that than never, which was already a far too common occurrence for his liking.

The young man who was currently on secondment to work for the Chief of Staff, however, was standing outside the meeting room five minutes early. He had the pale skin and blue-grey hair common to natives of the mountainous Kamranthian region, still a rare sight around the capital, even though the territory had been amalgamated into the empire some fifty years ago. August wouldn’t be so rude as to ask him outright where he was from if that information wasn’t offered, but if his observations were accurate, this man was a very long way from home.

Back straight, eyes piercing everything like sunlight through a lens of ice, it would have been easy to mistake him for a guard, or perhaps a general. Yet the field on which he did battle was one of crinkled parchment marred by sword-strokes of ink, commencing not with a gunshot but the perfectly punctual start of a scheduled briefing.

His almost-invisible magical presence flickered briefly into visibility as the warmth of August’s own approached, before he was able to reassert his control and it all but vanished back into obedience. The annoyance upon the man’s face was a little slower to smooth over. Yes, he definitely had potential as a mage. And if he wasn’t interested in joining the Spriggan Twelve… well, perhaps this was August’s chance to convince him otherwise.

“Come in,” August invited, pushing open the door to their usual meeting room. “You’re welcome to sit in on the whole meeting.”

“I think not. I am here to deliver the report with which I was tasked when I am asked for it, and nothing more. Until I am so asked, I will wait outside.”

That… was not the response August had been expecting. Who turned down the opportunity to join a meeting of the Spriggan Twelve? “There’s no need. We’re not discussing anything confidential.”

“That still doesn't make it appropriate.”

Trying not to let his bemusement show, lest it be taken the wrong way, August said, “I insist. Our meetings are usually very informal anyway, when His Majesty is away.”

The other clicked his tongue. “I suppose it would be rude not to.”

It was the first time August had ever heard that phrase as a genuine calculation of political capital rather than an excuse to do something they wanted to do anyway, but it got him into the room, so he thought no more of it. “I’m August, by the way. Leader of the Spriggan Twelve.”

For a moment, he actually thought that the other was going to berate him for wasting his time with something he obviously already knew. But all he said was, “Invel Yura.”

“Have you ever thought of joining the Spriggan Twelve, Invel?”

“It does not interest me. No offence intended to those who have chosen otherwise, of course.” This addition was made with the smoothness of habit. Every word he spoke was clipped and purposeful, like wingbeats of the world’s most efficient albatross.

“None taken. However, I truly believe you could achieve great things with magic as strong as yours.”

“I believe I can achieve great things without having to use magic at all,” Invel returned. “I have spent a vast amount of time studying the intricacies of law, and I would prefer to leave the physical brawling to those who haven’t.”

“It is true that fighting for the empire is one of our duties, but only one.”

“In the past, perhaps that was true,” Invel dismissed.

…Okay, he had a point, and it irked August a little that even someone outside the Twelve was able to see it so clearly. Nevertheless, he tried, “Perhaps being part of this meeting will change your mind.”

“Perhaps.”

But he didn’t sound convinced, and he hadn’t even met any of the others yet.

Nor did he for several minutes, as Jaquila arrived exactly on time – having power-walked here from another meeting – and the others traipsed in late and still mid-argument with Brandish. Not wanting to walk on ahead of her and forfeit the argument at least accounted for the tardiness of the others, who weren’t normally that bad. Then he heard the contents of said argument (“But that’s exactly my point, Bloodman – since they are all going to die anyway, why waste precious time and energy hastening their demise when we can all drink daiquiris and wait for nature to take its course?” “What, in fifty years’ time?” “They have a lot of different varieties of rum in the Caracol Islands. We won’t run out of cocktails to try!”) and August immediately regretted making any mental excuse on their behalf.

After a quick round of introductions, they got down to business. At least they had all, thanks to his cajoling, done the assigned reading.

“My vote is for the meta-polaric ethernano imaging scanner,” Dimaria began briskly. “The economic return may be poor, but the social benefit of being able to extend the lifespans of those who overreached and developed magical tumours while fighting in the defence of the empire, is huge – especially with a war imminent.”

“Even if they can get the technology working, it won’t be until long after our promised conquest of Ishgar is over,” Bloodman warned solemnly, causing a brief pause in the discussion as all of them, August included, mentally struggled to reconcile the calm logic with the sinister mask and the robes that constantly fluttered like the plague was trying to escape their folds.

Dimaria recovered first. “There will be other wars.”

“Indeed there will.” Bloodman sounded positively delighted by the fact.

August wasn’t so sure, from the way His Majesty spoke about this one, but that certainly was confidential, and so August kept his thoughts to himself.

“I’m also for funding the medical research,” Ajeel volunteered. “Let’s face it, it’s the only option which is likely to benefit those of us in the room – oh, don’t give me that look; you were all thinking it too! We’re the ones who will be out there taking these risks with our magic for the greater glory of the empire. Why shouldn’t we take that into account? And, whatever our motive, who is going to argue against state-funded research into an affliction that can affect anyone, from veteran soldiers to children born with mutated cores?”

“That argument, I’ll accept,” Jaquila nodded. “It would be by far the easiest option to present to the public.”

Brandish’s swift elbow to his gut deflated Ajeel’s boastful smile. “It’s cheating to get your grandfather to help with your homework, you know.”

“Shush!”

“My vote is for the new train,” Wall cut in.

“Why?” August prompted patiently – only to find, for the second time in the space of ten minutes, one of his subordinates looking at him like he’d just declared the sky was green.

“It’s a levitating train,” Wall emphasized. “It’s well cool, innit?”

“Sure,” drawled Dimaria. “Other than the part where the levitating train technology doesn’t actually exist yet. We’d basically be funding a load of stations where people can come and complain about the state of public transport while they wait for a train that never arrives.”

Wall waved this away with the same utter confidence that had bankrupted his own research team in record time (though not without producing some breathtaking explosions). “Eh, details. By the time they’ve built the tracks and the stations, which will take years, the technology will exist.”

“You’re going to invent it, are you?”

“Maybe I should!” Flames ignited in Wall’s eyes. Literally. It was always prudent to have a fire extinguisher on hand when dealing with a machias.

August cut in: “His Majesty wants you focussed on his airship technology, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, someone will invent it. Let me put it this way: if you don’t put the money into it, and pledge to build the supporting infrastructure, and give that government guarantee to help secure private investment, it won’t ever be invented, you get me?”

There was a pause.

“Did you get Gramps to help you too?” Ajeel hissed across the table.

“Don’t insult me. I’ve pitched to more grant panels than you can even name.”

“That’s not saying much,” Dimaria sniggered.

“So,” August intervened, “that’s a couple of good arguments in favour of prioritizing funding for the medical scanner, and one for the new train line. Does anyone want to speak up in favour of…” He checked his notes. “Establishing a state-sponsored programme of magical education in some of the empire’s remoter territories?”

“I’m not sure I see the point of it,” Bloodman said.

“You don’t see the point in any of them,” Dimaria sighed.

It was true. The problem with demons was that they did what they were built for, and very little else. Unfortunately, Bloodman was built for war. Catastrophe. Utter devastation. The kind of slaughter that the human heart could only comprehend in the blackest smog of war, and once it had, it would never be able to return to normality.

It wasn’t Bloodman’s fault. But the fact was that by his very nature, he couldn’t grow beyond it. If he wasn’t causing death, he was at a loose end. That was one reason why August, whose magic sang with all the melodies of life and its infinite potential for more, struggled to get on with the demon.

(The other reason was that being around him couldn’t help but remind August of the other demon in the Spriggan Twelve. Although Larcade was much better rounded than Bloodman, and an objective asset to the empire, he was prone to the most infuriating behaviour. Fortunately, when His Majesty was away, August had absolute jurisdiction over the tasks given to the Twelve – and double-fortunately, Larcade was hopeless at geography and couldn’t read a map to save his life. Thus, Larcade was currently on a special mission to track down the rumoured Iri-Sasko Saltwater Kiran Trout for His Majesty’s next banquet. Iri-Sasko was a double-landlocked city-state. He’d been gone for three months already, and hopefully many more.)

(August had considered attempting the same scheme on Bloodman when it first became clear that His Majesty had vanished without returning him to slumber. Unfortunately, Bloodman was actually quite good at geography, and had asked August politely if he was reading his notes correctly. So, that demon had been left to his own devices in Vistarion, with August keeping half an eye on him, lest a sudden inexplicable outbreak of bubonic plague sweep the city or something.)

“The point,” Jaquila was explaining to them all, “is not to build more academies as much as it is to create touchpoints with some of the more distant regions of the empire, and in particular, the young mages growing up there. It aims to provide a route to Vistarion – to the largest guilds, and perhaps even to the Twelve – to those who might otherwise see it as a lofty, hopeless dream.”

“We already recruit from all over the empire, though,” Brandish frowned. “We take the strongest. It doesn’t matter where they’re from.” As the daughter of a palace servant, she knew better than most that background was no barrier here. After spotting her potential as a child, August had taken her under his wing. Once he’d tracked down all the gold bars she’d stolen from the palace vaults to bribe the older kids to do her homework with, and bailed her out of jail, that was.

“Besides, if they don’t have the initiative to realize Vistarion is where it’s at, do we even want them?” Ajeel joked.

In the corner of his eye, August caught a small motion from the silent corner of the table, where their guest sat uncomfortably. Invel said nothing. Clearly, he wouldn’t invite himself to speak in a meeting at which he felt he didn’t belong, even if he had been told it was informal.

So, August decided to invite him. “What do you think, Invel?”

“I couldn’t possibly say,” Invel immediately shot him down. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“It’s fine. Besides, the final decision will be made by His Majesty, not us.”

Invel gave a cough that couldn’t possibly have been hiding the words thank goodness. “Nevertheless, contributing to your debate is not why I’m here.”

Curious, August might have pushed him further, but Jaquila did not. “Then perhaps now would be a good time for you to deliver the report for which you are here,” she encouraged.

“Very well.” Invel duly got to his feet. There was not a trace of nervousness in him. His discomfort earlier hadn’t come from feeling like an imposter, August realized, but of not being treated like one when protocol should have insisted that he was.

Sure, he might have been addressing some of the most powerful and influential mages in the empire, but he wasn’t about to let a trivial thing like that stop him from doing his duty. He was the perfect frozen lake; a gleaming, polished plane that would neither thaw nor crack even if a meteor should rain down upon it. Perhaps, August wondered, it was ice all the way down.

“As requested,” Invel began, back straight and words weighted, “this past week I have attended the Balfour Estate, where I have conducted a thorough audit of the Duke’s tax affairs. The full details can be found in my report, but the executive summary is simply this: last year, the Duke of Balfour paid exactly the right amount of tax.”

“He didn’t pay any tax,” Dimaria reminded him, bemused.

“That is correct, yes. None was the right amount of tax for him to pay.”

“But he’s one of the wealthiest men in the empire!”

“What has that to do with anything? Income tax is not a tax on wealth; it is a tax on income. Hence the name.”

Dimaria spluttered. Less at the wound to her pride, and more at the fact that it had been delivered by this absolute nobody in a meeting of the Spriggan Twelve. Ajeel or Brandish would have gloated about it. He said it with utter calm, like her getting it wrong was an inevitable fact of life, no more worthy of mention than a snowflake settling upon Mt Kamra’s permafrost.

Something about his confidence was intriguing – closer to sheer certainty than arrogance – even though it naturally made August’s hackles rise. Still, he prided himself on his maturity and his ability to rise above such things. (Far away, amongst a labyrinthine market that sold every kind of animal product except fish, a certain demon gave a sudden sneeze.)

Before Dimaria could kick off like the wildcat she was beneath that queenly armour, August stepped in with an innocent remark. “I find it surprising that a man of such means has no income.”

“Of course he has income,” came the brusque response. “He just has no taxable income.”

“How?”

“Balfour is one of the largest private owners of real estate in Alvarez, owning everything from blocks of flats to the Millennium Music Hall here in Vistarion. So, naturally, his estate is in receipt of a substantial amount of rental income. However, in case you have forgotten, the Balfours have also been farmers going back centuries – that’s where their money originally came from. Their huge swathes of farmland, accumulated throughout various wars as the empire itself was growing, are still an important source of the Duke’s wealth. And it hasn’t been a good year for farming. The losses in that business wiped out his property profits. Almost to the penny, in fact, once he’d finished revaluing his livestock at the year-end.”

“But how could-”

“Abnormally wet weather delayed planting,” Invel interrupted briskly, counting them off on his fingers. “Increased spread of fungal disease meant more had to be spent on fungicide and treatments to artificially re-enrich the soil. Rumours of mad cow disease, though unsubstantiated, slashed the demand for beef in the first half of the year. The national shortage of nitrates after the explosion at Crossgreen Processing Plant sent prices sky-high. And so on, and so on. It’s all in my report. Besides, any profit left in the farming operations was eaten by the annual stock write-down, like I mentioned. Done by an independent professional, of course. But it looks like that independent professional is predicting another dreadful year for Balfour’s farming endeavours – just like he has for the last forty years.”

“Sounds fishy to me,” Ajeel doubted. “Gramps dragged me along to a couple of his soirees this year, and I can assure you, Balfour is not having a dreadful year.”

“You never told me you knew the Duke of Balfour!” Brandish squawked.

“I don’t – Gramps does. They were old enemies back during the Unification Wars. Gramps only goes to drink as much free champagne as he can out of spite. And, yeah, no one whose businesses are barely breaking even overall can host a thousand-guest ball with Perinnion d’Or on tap. He’s hiding something.”

“He’s hiding nothing,” Invel dismissed. “He funded his lifestyle by selling a couple of his larger properties during the year for huge profit.”

“And that didn’t contribute to his tax bill how?”                      

“Because selling an asset generates a capital gain, and our system doesn’t tax capital gains.”

Brandish leaned forward. “What’s a capital gain, and how can I get me one of those, rather than the lunacy that is the government giving me a salary and then taking a chunk of it back?”

The brief pause was tinged with Invel’s icy disdain, though August found himself unable to say whether it was targeted at this shameless bid for help avoiding tax or the fact that she’d had to ask what a capital gain was in the first place.

“It’s the gain realized on the disposal of an asset – defined as all forms of property wherever situated, including incorporeal property and foreign currency, unless some other rule takes precedence.”

Helpfully, Jaquila added, “Think houses, antiques, expensive jewellery, and shares in companies.”

“I see.” Brandish craned her neck to look at August. “Can I be paid in jewellery, please?”

“Inadvisable,” he sighed. Even he knew that much. “It’s still earnings, so you’d still owe income tax on it. Only, you won’t have any money with which to pay the tax. You’d have to sell the jewellery to raise the cash, and you’d be in exactly the same position as before, less the jewellery broker’s fees.”

Jaquila followed up, “But if you met the tax liability some other way, kept hold of the jewellery, and later sold it for more than it was worth when you acquired it, that gain wouldn’t be subject to tax. That, I gather, is what the Duke of Balfour has been doing – albeit on a much larger scale, with prime real estate rather than a few trinkets.”

“Right.” Needless to say, Brandish did not sound convinced. “So, would anyone care to explain why we’re not taxing these things?”

Everyone in the room turned to look at Invel, whose eyebrow twitched. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who makes policy decisions, am I?”

“Oh, so you don’t know the reason?” Dimaria asked pleasantly.

August smothered a smile. Dimaria was only pleasant when she wasn’t being at all. And from the ghost of annoyance that flickered across Invel’s face in response to her words, she had the measure of him already.

“I can speculate on the reasons His Majesty might give if you asked him,” said Invel stiffly. “Firstly, why should the personal chattels and belongings enjoyed by people in good faith in their homes be subject to tax? By way of example, say I work hard at my job and earn, after paying tax, 10,000 emerats, which I spend on a painting to hang above my mantelpiece. In two years’ time, my partner moves in and isn’t fond of that painting, so I sell it and buy another. Only, by now, it’s worth 20,000 emerats. Why should the government get a slice of that, when it is merely an application of earnings on which I have already paid tax? Not to mention, in this example, I have sold a painting worth 20,000 emerats, but I can only replace it with one worth 18,000 emerats once the taxman has helped himself – how is that justified? It’s seen as a form of double taxation.

“Plus, a lot of the gain in value of such an item isn’t truly value at all, but the mere effect of inflation. Those who see their savings, in whatever form, increasing at exactly the rate at which the currency is being depreciated will still have to meet the gains tax and thus lose part of their capital. It feels underhanded, a tax by stealth.”

Invel raised a second finger before any of them could get a word in edgeways. “Secondly. What is the most expensive capital asset a person is likely to own?”

“The Mk-II Uranium-Fuelled Inferno Cannon?” Wall hazarded.

There was a moment’s pause, and then Invel turned to the rest of them. “Would anyone else like a guess?”

“Their home,” August answered, just to put them all out of their misery.

“Exactly. A capital gains tax would cripple the property market overnight. If the government takes a slice of the proceeds for selling your house, no one would be able to afford to move – whether that’s relocating for a job, or getting that extra bedroom with which to start a family. The damage to the economy and to society would be immense. And the harm is dealt predominantly to the lower classes, who don’t have other sources of wealth or savings they can cash in when looking for their next property.”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Brandish remarked. Invel gave her an unimpressed look; clearly he hadn’t yet realized that she didn’t think about most things unless she absolutely had to, or he wouldn’t have wasted the effort.

He continued. “Thirdly, capital is what is invested to create jobs and prosperity. By investing into small businesses, it stimulates growth in the economy; by redeveloping derelict properties into something that can be leased out and used again, it helps meet the demand for housing and strengthens the nation. But the more you tax it, the less of it you have. A capital gains tax is an attack on the free enterprise system and the individual, and it is the growth industries and innovation in this country which will suffer most.

“Fourthly, there is the matter of risk. Take your salary. There’s no risk in how you earn that. You turn up to work, you do your job, and you know exactly what you will be receiving at the end of the month, no matter what.”

“There’s always risk in Brandish’s case,” Dimaria sniggered. “The risk that someone will actually make her do some work, and she’ll have an aneurysm.”

“Rude,” Brandish commented. Without actually denying it.

Somehow, Invel didn’t roll his eyes. There was more professionalism in one perfectly unmoving strand of his hair than in the entire rest of the room, August thought, begrudgingly impressed by how unfazed he was by the doodling machias or intently listening grim reaper.

“By contrast,” Invel continued, “investing with your own capital involves great risk. If the business fails, it’s not just that you won’t make money, but that you won’t even get your own money back. The tax-free gain helps to compensate for that risk and encourage investment into the economy – especially into small startups which would have no chance of realizing their innovations without external funding.”

“…Huh,” Ajeel ruminated. “That kinda makes sense.”

That was a testimony to Invel’s ability to explain things if August had ever heard one. But, as someone who knew a little more about the topic than his younger, wilder colleagues, he was also more aware of how one-sided that explanation had been. “Of course,” he pointed out neutrally, “in order to invest in a growing business, or spend tens of thousands on a painting, one must have a lot of income in the first place.”

“Aha!” Ajeel pointed a finger accusatorily, clearly forgetting that Invel, as a mere employee on secondment from Counsel’s Office, had absolutely no say in whatever taxes His Majesty had decided to enact decades before he had been born. Though, it sounded like Invel would have been all for it at the time, so perhaps the personal aggression wasn’t entirely unwarranted. “So, what you’re saying is that it’s basically just a tax break for the rich.”

“Wrong.” Invel’s expression was perfectly controlled, but his disdain must have run deep indeed, for the sting of it to still hang in the atmosphere after so many layers of ice. “It is a tax break for anyone who is smart enough to understand the rules and plan their affairs accordingly.”

Doubtfully, Jaquila frowned, “And you’re saying the Duke of Balfour has the time to do all this in between running his property empire and his allegedly misfortune-struck farm?”

“Not to mention all his party planning,” Ajeel added.

“No, I’m saying he’s savvy enough to have the largest tax advisory firm in the country on retainer. Someone who could suggest that he snap up real estate rather than gold or oil commodities after the Unifying Wars and hold onto it through years of extreme price rises. Someone to run the numbers and advise him to let half his buildings stand empty, because the untaxed appreciation in value over the years will exceed any income from renting it out once income tax, maintenance expenditure, and problematic tenants are factored in. Someone to help structure his leases so that the bulk of the money is received upfront, as tax-free capital consideration for the part-disposal of property rights on the commencement of the lease rather than as ongoing rental income, which would naturally be caught by income tax.”

“That,” said August severely, “is starting to sound like tax avoidance.”

“So? There’s nothing illegal about tax avoidance.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Brandish interrupted. “What do you mean, tax avoidance isn’t illegal? Are you telling me I’ve been paying my taxes like a fool all these years, when I could have just… not done it?”

Invel’s eyebrow twitched. “Tax evasion is illegal. That means deliberately not paying tax which is due, for example by lying about your amount of income to the authorities. Tax avoidance, which involves interpreting the law in a way that perhaps wasn’t intended when it was written, but isn’t prohibited by the wording of the legislation, is not illegal – literally by definition.”

“…Hmm.” Everyone in the room who knew her could sense Brandish internally weighing up how much effort that would involve.

Invel, who had better things to do, continued. “The Duke of Balfour has not committed fraud. He has not understated his income or misrepresented his affairs. The underlying facts hold up to scrutiny, and the case law precedents bear out all the legal interpretations he has taken. There are no irregularities in his books. He was extremely gracious and open in providing me with documentary evidence to support his tax affairs – which, by the way, he was under no legal obligation to do, since no formal enquiry has been opened into his tax affairs under the appropriate statutory mechanism. As I’m not an officer of the Revenue Service, I had no power to do such a thing.”

This time, they could see the sneer imprinted upon the ice. “Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. So ruled Lord Tomlin, in the case of Duke of Westminster v CIR. And so has Balfour done. He has structured his affairs to reduce the tax liability that legally arises. He has done nothing wrong.”

The subsequent silence was the same one that settled upon the earth every year: the hush of animals gone underground, the bones of trees waiting for warmth to free them, the glaring white snow that fell like a blanket and smothered like a shroud. The weight made it feel pointless to break, too hard to lift.

August, who had lived through a great many winters, felt his voice becoming cooler than he liked to use around his colleagues. “He has done nothing illegal,” he corrected. “I would not say he has done nothing wrong. He is a very wealthy man who has gone out of his way to ensure he does not pay his fair share.”

“Fair?” Invel scoffed. “What has fairness to do with it? You think the right amount of tax that he should pay is the amount that you, sat here in this room, feel is fair? No. The right amount of tax to pay is no more and no less than the amount the law dictates. Everyone has that right to certainty; to know the rules under which they will be judged. As soon as you start imposing entirely subjective measures based on your own fickle morality, you shake the confidence of every investor, and thus the foundations of the very economy. No, your personal sense of right and wrong has no place in this discussion.”

“But-” August tried to object.

“No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so as to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores. Lord Clyde, delivering the judgement of the court in Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services & Ritchie v CIR. Go ahead; take your argument about fair shares to the Tax and Chancery Chamber. The Judge will laugh you out of court.”

While a roomful of very important mages stared at him in astonishment, Invel swept his papers up into his arms. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I told the Duke I would return his financial records to him by the end of the day. If you have any further questions, you can find the answers in my report. Good day.”

Then he was gone, with the door slamming closed behind him.

Dimaria gave a low whistle, taking flight over the thawing scene. “Been a while since anyone talked to you like that, old man,” she remarked, patting August’s shoulder affectionately.

“Yes, thank you, Dimaria,” he said crisply, though there was no edge to it, for he knew her point was valid.

“Gotta love talking to non-mages. If they can’t sense your magical presence, they don’t know to be terrified of you!”

“Oh, no, he’s definitely a mage.”

“Really?” she blinked. “I couldn’t sense any magic from him!”

“I could, but only just. I’ve never seen anyone with such a level of control over so much magic,” August agreed.

She blew out a breath. “Then I correct my earlier statement. He has nerves of steel.”

“He’s just rude.” Brandish didn’t sound impressed. (She never did; the inflection it required of her voice was too much effort.) “Please tell me he won’t be around for much longer.”

“His secondment in my office is almost over,” Jaquila answered factually. And then, with the slightest slip of her professional nature amongst friends: “And I doubt he’ll be here for much longer after that. I gather that the top law firms like their applicants to have some experience on the side of the lawmakers before moving into private practice. So he’s been working in Counsel’s Office here, until they foisted him off on me for a month, can’t imagine why. At least it’s nearly over. Though,” she added, with the faintest trace of a smile, visible only to those who had known her for so long, “I had heard August was considering recruiting him for the Twelve…”

As several horrified pairs of eyes turned to him, August said blandly, “It is being swiftly reconsidered.”

Before any of them could do anything as unprofessional as cheer, they were disturbed by the screech of a chair being pushed back. But while the other chairs slid quite nicely, wood on polished wood, Bloodman’s wailed like nails on a chalkboard; and when he stood, robes fluttering like there was no physical shape beneath them, the frosty silence that had felt so immutable in Invel’s presence was a cacophony of half-heard things, the scratching of shadows and the chattering of chill souls.

For a moment, the rest of them stared blankly at the looming demon.

“Wait, you didn’t tell me this meeting was over!” Brandish yelped, in utter outrage at the implication that August had managed to trick ten seconds of overtime out of her.

“It isn’t,” he told her crossly. “Are you going somewhere, Bloodman?”

“Duty calls,” spoke the demon, and a thousand lost voices echoed the words. “When the law fails us, the executioner must step in.”

“…Okay, you really couldn’t have got that more wrong,” August sighed. “Outside times of war, your services as executioner are only required in the very, very narrow circumstances where the law explicitly permits such a thing.”

“I disagree,” Bloodman rumbled. “The Duke of Balfour is making a mockery of my master’s empire with his tax avoidance, and he must be punished.” A dying breath rattled behind his mask. “Surely you know the saying. Nothing is certain in life except this: if you die, you don’t have to pay your taxes.”

“That’s still not how the saying goes,” Dimaria sighed.

“Also, what about inheritance tax?” Ajeel pointed out. “That’s a tax you only have to pay when you die.”

“Oh?” Hellfire gleamed in the demon’s eyes. “Perhaps enforcing a collection of inheritance tax is the best way to recoup the empire’s losses…”

“Absolutely not,” August asserted. “You’re not murdering a man just because we disagree over how much tax he should have paid!”

“You can murder Invel, though,” Brandish offered.

“No, you can’t!”

“I could scare the Duke a little without killing him,” Bloodman reasoned. “Send him a message…”

“No. This will be dealt with through the appropriate channels.” Granted, August didn’t know exactly what those channels were, given that Invel had been adamant that the courts would support the Duke and the only other option anyone had suggested was murder. But he’d think of something. Maybe if he wished hard enough, he could turn back time to the blissful era when the Duke of Balfour’s tax affairs were someone else’s problem.

“Your loyalty to His Majesty is commendable, Bloodman, but your common sense needs work,” he sighed.

Danger flickered silently in those unearthly eyes. August stared back, not because he was confident in his strength or his authority, but because he was genuinely too tired to care.

Then, without a word, the demon sat back down. The chair splintered horribly, but didn’t fall apart, leaving the room just a little more on edge as they waited for the inevitable collapse.

The only thing that did collapse, though, was August’s mental fortitude, as he glanced around a room of people who had sat through one more tax lecture today than they’d ever wanted to in their lives, himself included. “Alright, let’s leave it there for today. While it is certainly good for all of us to learn a little bit more about the empire and its vital administrative systems, such as the collection of the tax revenues upon which public services and your own salaries depend, this meeting has got a little… sidetracked. We’ll pick up again tomorrow and resume putting together a recommendation on these three projects for His Majesty…”

He didn’t know why he’d bothered trying to justify it. Brandish was out of the room before he’d finished the first sentence, and the others weren’t far behind, off to the training grounds or some other more fitting use of their abilities. The only person who stayed to the end of his speech was Jaquila, who gave him a sympathetic smile. Which he almost appreciated, before remembering she was abandoning him in a few months for crosswords and slippers.

“I’d keep an eye on Bloodman, if I were you,” she warned.

“Surely you don’t think he’ll do something rash?” Say what you like about demons – including that they weren’t best-suited for attending discussions about the empire’s fiscal strategy – but their loyalty to their creator was unimpeachable. Hence why Larcade was into his fourth month of doggedly searching for a non-existent fish after being told His Majesty really wanted to try it.

The Chief of Staff shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll see it as rash. Any enemy of the emperor is fair game, no?”

“The Duke of Balfour isn’t an enemy of the emperor!” August cried in exasperation. “I doubt the emperor even knows who he is, let alone gives a damn about his personal finances! And I genuinely don’t understand why we’ve all decided we care, either! Since when has tax been within our remit?”

Patting his hand, Jaquila remarked, “Aren’t all the problems of the empire within our remit when the emperor isn’t here?”

He gave her a despairing look, but only because he couldn’t contest it. His heart had taken on that burden a long time ago, even if his head would never have signed such a grossly unfair employment contract.

As far as August was concerned, there was nothing good about the war that lurked beyond the horizon of the future – the war that would make or break His Majesty, save him or condemn him, with his nation and his people trapped somewhere in between. But at times like these, August could see why His Majesty increasingly chose to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else: the ‘everything else’ was infuriating, frustrating, and too damn difficult.

“Fine,” he groaned. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Chapter Text

Until this point, the Duke of Balfour had been having a good day.

In fact, it was fair to say he’d been having a good life. He’d started out with a lot of money, and was on track to end up with an awful lot of it, having enjoyed, along the way, the benefits of having friends in high places, more exquisite banquets than he could recall, and as much confirmation of his own importance as money could buy.

He reckoned he’d played the game of life very well indeed. Granted, it was hard to lose when one was dealt four aces, but it still took skill to clean up as thoroughly as he had. And he’d done it all while remaining a man of unimpeachable character.

He’d never cheated anyone in business (not that he had to, with leverage like his). He hadn’t made his fortunes in the arms trade, like some of his peers (he’d seen which way the wind was blowing towards the end of the Unifying Wars and rapidly switched his family’s holdings into real estate instead). And he’d never had a complaint from a tenant that wasn’t able to be settled out of court (because whatever they said about rights and justice, all they really wanted was money, the same as everyone else; why should he be ashamed of the fact that he had it and they did not?).

He hadn’t even hidden any money offshore, as was all the rage amongst his aristocratic friends. Rather, he paid an awful lot of money to Anders & Co to ensure that all his tax planning was squeaky-clean. Nothing to see here but the rules operating exactly as they had been written.

That was why, when the polite if standoffish young gentleman had come to his estate a week ago, emphasizing that this was not a formal tax enquiry and he had no legal obligation to turn over his financial records, the Duke had done so anyway. Gleefully, in fact. He had nothing to hide – and much to show off.

He had followed the rules to the letter, and he looked forward to seeing their expressions when they discovered that they couldn’t pin a single thing on him.

So, he was rather surprised that evening to find a hulking apparition on his doorstep, who introduced himself as His Majesty’s Collector of Taxes before promptly trying to take his head off with a scythe.

“What the blazes is this?” the Duke bellowed, red-faced, though the fact that he was simultaneously scrambling backwards down the hallway undermined the challenge somewhat. “Guards! Guards!”

Having decided that the tiny sliver of their employer’s wealth they were allocated wasn’t worth facing death to protect the rest of it, no guards materialized.

Lights flickered and dimmed as the apparition approached. One moment he loomed, as if so close to a candle that he threw a monstrous shadow, and the next he seemed to fade into the pools of black and guttering yellow that pushed once-familiar corridors outside the realms of sanity. His ragged cape, drawn from darkness, stretched from the shadows to him, a web severing and re-weaving itself as he prowled forwards.

The scythe that flowed through his hands came from the same fluid nightmare that made up the rest of him, darker than the night had ever been. No moon, no stars, and no promise of a dawn.

“W-w-what are you doing in my house?” Balfour blustered.

“I hear that you have not been paying your dues to the emperor.” His voice was the buzz of insects whose flight was made low and laborious by the blood on which they’d gorged.

“That’s – that’s not true! I have paid exactly what I owed, and not a penny less!”

“Oh, is that so?” Silent were the demon’s footsteps, the silence of the grave freshly dug and waiting, but the wind shrieked where his scythe cut it open; the walls groaned and floors listed as they tried to flee.

“Yes! Just check my tax returns! Everything is properly accounted for in accordance with the laws set down by the emperor! Whoever you are – whatever you are – you have no right to do this!”

Balfour’s declaration might have rung out boldly, had he not hedged his bets by simultaneously sprinting for the safety of the drawing room.

He slammed the door shut behind him. Turned the key in the lock with a clunk. There had to be some guards still in this place, who would do the jobs they were being paid for!

No guards in the drawing room. But there were faces. Pale reflections of them in the dark corners of the room, oddly elongated from where they had stretched as they’d been wrenched from their mortal bodies. Their eyes and mouths were black circles of terror.

“Then why does your heart quail?” the dead accused him. “If you have truly done what you believe to be right and fair, what have you to fear?”

The Duke took a step backwards – and hit something. Something that was solid in the way a swarm was solid, sheer angry pressure battering him back, crawling sickness upon his skin, a buzzing like water in his ears.

Slowly, dreadfully, he craned his neck back. The executioner’s mask gazed down at him, its frozen grin the last sight so many damned men had seen.

“That’s alright,” the demon purred. “If you are so determined to cling to your earthly wealth, you can pay with your soul instead.”

Screaming, Balfour tore away from him. He fumbled with the key and got the door unlocked again, stumbling down the hallway like a drunkard.

Death followed, unhurried. The Duke was almost at the front door when he tripped – like it had been inevitable, like the night had waited for him to get so close to freedom before turning to syrup around his legs.

“Surely you know the saying.” The demon raised his scythe. “Nothing is certain in life except this: death doesn’t have to be… taxing.”

But the sound that followed wasn’t the swish of a blade against life’s thread. Or even the terrified shriek of its owner.

It was a perfectly ordinary voice, laden with disbelief to an extraordinary degree. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Executioner and victim looked up as one.

There in the open doorway stood the young man who had so politely investigated the Duke’s financial affairs. His arms were wrapped around a cardboard box full of ledgers and bank statements, ready to be returned to their owner. He did not look upon death with horror, but with the exasperation of a man who couldn’t believe he had to deal with this.

“Is this truly how members of His Majesty’s government behave?” Invel snapped. “Someone acts in a way they don’t like, so they skip due process and plunge straight for murdering their own citizens as a response? I knew things were bad at the top, but I didn’t realize the Spriggan Twelve were this reprehensible.”

“I am His Majesty’s executioner,” the demon rasped. “It is my right to dispose of criminals in any way I see fit.”

“No, it isn’t,” Invel huffed. “No one’s rights exceed what is granted to them by law!”

“Natural law.” Bloodman ran a clawed finger along the night-black edge of his scythe; darkness spilled from it like blood before reforming into a vaguely finger-like shape. “Which has placed me at the top.”

Pale blue eyes narrowed, the only flash of colour in this nightmare. The light trapped within that ice was one that would not be so easily extinguished. “Firstly, this man is not a criminal. Even if he had broken any laws, the Revenue Service pursue violations exclusively under civil law, except in the very worst cases of fraud or money laundering – neither of which there is any indication that the Duke has committed. And secondly, weren’t you listening to a single thing I said earlier? He has done nothing wrong! The day you punish a man for literally following your own laws is the day all order and decency breaks down! The only threat to the empire here is you!”

“The empire belongs to my master, and I shall slay all who seek to cheat him out of what he is owed, be that through legal shenanigans or otherwise. Such disloyalty will not be tolerated. And if you try to stop me… you will not be tolerated, either.”

“Fine,” Invel said contemptuously. He put the box of ledgers down, stepped forwards, and rolled up his sleeves. “I cannot believe I have to do this.”

The demon raised his scythe of starless void, and it occurred to the Duke of Balfour that he probably should have made the most of that distraction, and run for it. Now he was dependent on this irate administrator being able to hold his own against the literal personification of death…

But the demon’s strike never came. Blinking upwards, the Duke realized that the ever-shifting visage of death in its many secret forms was gone. Instead, there was a perfectly static statue carved from ice.

A single tongue of white smoke curled up from the back of Invel’s outstretched hand, like breath on a frosty morning.

Huh. The Duke had never pursued the art of magic himself – earning a living through magecraft took a lot more effort than, say, paying other people a tiny share of the profits to farm his vast swathes of land for him – but what he’d seen of mages had led him to believe that they were uncouth, showy, and destructive. This man was so briskly efficient that the Duke had to double-check that there wasn’t anyone else around who could have invoked that spell.

Having learnt his lesson the first time, Balfour took the opportunity to edge away from the iced-over demon. “I say,” he gasped to his saviour, “that was quite a-”

“Be silent,” Invel snapped.

The Duke recoiled. Never had he been spoken to like that in his own home, and he had already drawn himself up to his full height to retaliate when the splintering of ice resounded through the room. He whipped round to see the demon emerging from the broken shell of ice, entirely unharmed.

If anything, the grin of the demon’s mask had broadened. “Oho, so you are a mage after all. That will make this more fun.” He hissed the words, and the shadows hissed with him. Reaching, grabbing, the spectral hands of the damned came to spread the same misfortune that had taken them to their unquiet graves. “Now, you shall-”

Invel snapped his fingers. Once again, the demon was encased in ice, this time twice as thick. Nor did it stop there – the walls, the ceiling, even the Duke’s poor furniture was smothered by it. Shadows writhed within their prison of ice.

Balfour wrapped his arms tightly around his shivering form. Through that sudden, wintry discomfort, he watched his extremely expensive paintings shrivel and custom-made furniture bow beneath the force of the ice, and he mentally retracted what he had said earlier about this man not being destructive – seemingly without having realized he was the only thing in the room to which no ice had stuck, or the exquisite control that that indicated on Invel’s part.

The inevitable cracking sound came again. Invel clicked his tongue. As the icy shell fell away once more, he made a slight gesture with his hand, and two spear-like icicles grew from the walls to punch straight through the demon’s body.

Darkness scattered – and then re-formed. Unkillable as the mist that haunted the graveyard. Unstoppable as the force that populated it. Shadows swirled, devouring the ice and corrupting the magic that had created it.

Yet the ice in Invel’s eyes seared with fierce cold. Perhaps he had noticed that the darkness was flowing more sluggishly than before. Or the new stiffness to the demon’s movements – expected from a still-thawing flesh and blood beast, but illogical in one crafted from fear and unspeakable power…

Unholy glee rattled in the demon’s voice. “So. For all your talk of laws and righteousness, in the end, you’re just like me. You know that power is all that matters. The strongest of us will get his way.”

“I am nothing like you,” Invel spat. “And there’s one very good reason why.”

“Yes: that you will lose and I will win. Your cold cannot harm me.”

“No, it seems not,” Invel agreed grimly. “It looks like it does a number on the flow of your curse power, though.”

“…What?”

Invel extended one hand towards him. This time, the blizzard did not howl. The air had not the energy for it. It was already sinking, fading, condensing around his feet, nature succumbing to a death far graver than that the executioner brought. “Shall we see how cold it has to go before the foul energy that fuels you congeals completely?”

When August hadn’t been able to locate Bloodman in the palace, he had let his bad feeling lead him swiftly to the Balfour Estate, after only the briefest of pauses to count the similarities between being the leader of the empire’s elite mages these days and being a kindergarten teacher, or perhaps a zookeeper, with an errant charge. Once he was close enough to sense the acrid aftermath of an immense magical discharge, he hadn’t paused at all. He burst into the house ready to face any danger.

There was none. In the centre of the hall, suspended in mid-air by the icicle that had risen from the ground to impale it, was a desiccated husk identifiable only by the ragged cape that fluttered forlornly in the snowflake-sprinkled breeze.

Remarkable. It was no easy task to kill a demon.

(Not that August had ever tried it, of course. If His Majesty wanted to have demons amongst his staff, even extremely annoying ones, then such was his right. August’s research into the matter had been mere intellectual curiosity. But even he had never considered approaching the completely hypothetical problem by starving one of the curse power that drove it.)

The man he assumed was the Duke of Balfour was staring stunned but unharmed at the corpse of the demon in the dim light. Invel was standing straight as usual, though August had a feeling he’d been leaning exhaustedly against the wall a moment earlier. Judging by how depleted his magical presence felt, August couldn’t blame him.

Not that it stopped Invel from fixing the leader of the Spriggan Twelve with a glare as cold as the ice that pinned the demon’s body. “About time. Do your duty, and arrest me.”

Well, it wasn’t like August had been expecting a warm welcome, but that threw him completely. “What for?”

Invel gestured brusquely over his shoulder to the impaled demon.

“…I’m fairly sure that will have been self-defence,” August sighed.

“You are sure of nothing,” Invel retorted. “You’ve only just arrived; you weren’t even a witness. If I enter such a plea, it will be for the jury to decide.”

August rubbed at his temples. Already he could feel his headache returning. “So, just to be absolutely clear, you want me to arrest you?”

The look he received in return came closer to freezing him solid than any magic ever had. “Am I the only person in this whole empire who does not consider himself above the law?”

“…Right. Fine. Whatever.”

“Fear not,” said the Duke of Balfour, inserting himself importantly into their conversation. He clapped Invel on the shoulder, seemingly oblivious to the way the young man winced. “No friend of mine shall languish in jail. I shall see to it that you have the best defence lawyers money can buy!”

Invel slapped his hand away. “I don’t want your filthy money,” he spat. “Nor would I besmirch myself with the dishonour of being your friend.”

It wasn’t clear which of the Duke or August was more astonished at this. Both stared at Invel as though he’d announced he was running off to join the circus. Or worse, a mage guild.

“You found a loophole in the rules and you milked it for all it was worth,” Invel continued, lip curling. “You were born into more wealth than most men can dream of, and you made it your life’s mission to increase that wealth as much as possible, structuring your businesses, private life, and personal habits to sneak between the jaws of a poorly written tax code, without a thought for the responsibilities that those who have known good fortune bear towards those who have not been so lucky.”

“B-B-B-B-But-” the Duke stammered.

“You are an odious man and I despise you,” Invel stated, with the coolness that had frozen death in its tracks. “Regrettably, there is no law against being odious – nor against anything else you have done. And the difference between me and him-” he added, gesturing towards the impaled demon “-is that until the moment there is, I will defend to the death your right to do it. But I don’t have to like you for it.”

He turned away in vicious finality. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am returning to Vistarion to be charged properly.”

He marched off. August and the Duke of Balfour stared at each other, neither knowing quite how to follow that. In the end, August gave a somewhat apologetic shrug and hurried after Invel, leaving the Duke to deal with the slowly melting ice. He had a feeling he wasn’t about to lodge any complaints about the damage.

August caught up with Invel halfway down the drive. It wasn’t hard; spite was the only thing keeping the ice mage on his feet. August offered him a hand, which he promptly ignored, trudging doggedly on.

There was one thing that he was sure Invel wouldn’t ignore, though. “You accused him of exploiting the empire’s lack of a capital gains tax,” August remarked. “But I thought you believed a capital gains tax was a bad thing.”

“Whatever made you think that?” Invel snapped back. “You never asked for my opinion. And why should you? Like I told you, I don’t make policy decisions.”

“But if you did, you would introduce such a tax?”

“Of course I would. The reasons for not doing so were sound after the Unifying Wars, but things are very different now. The nebulous distinction between income and capital has allowed those with the means to push all their earnings outside of the tax net. It is by far the most egregious and shameless form of tax avoidance, and closing it down would be the first step towards levelling the playing field.”

“I thought you said tax avoidance was perfectly legal.”

Invel gave a derisive huff. “So it is. But that doesn’t mean that when a law is being exploited in unintended ways, steps shouldn’t be taken to amend that law to close the loopholes going forward. It would stop the worst of it in an appropriate and proportionate way. What has happened, has happened, and trying to punish people for actions that were perfectly legal at the time is abhorrent, but there are still changes that can be made to improve the position for the future. And, who knows? Maybe next time your little council is presented with three worthy proposals, you’ll be able to fund all of them, and the programme to help promising mages from the remote regions feel like they could have a future pursuing magic at the highest level in Vistarion won’t be put on the back burner yet again-”

His words were cut off when he tumbled sideways. August, who had been expecting his strength to give out at any minute, caught him easily and helped him stumble onwards. This earned him a glower, but at least Invel was too tired to protest.

The silence suited August just fine. He had plenty to think about.

“…And that’s the long and short of it,” August finished explaining, as they descended towards the old dungeons below the palace.

“Right,” Zeref said balefully. “And for the absolute avoidance of doubt, do you want me to talk to him because you genuinely believe it’s for the best, or just because you’re fed up of dealing with him yourself?”

“Well…”

Zeref could count the number of times his longest-serving adviser had lied to him on one hand, and he suspected this protracted silence was August’s attempt to keep that number low.

“I do think you should have him join the Twelve, though,” August diverted hastily. “He’s certainly strong enough. And…”

“Don’t you think I have enough troublemakers already?” Zeref grumbled.

The look August gave him made it very clear that it had not escaped his notice exactly who had hired all those troublemakers in the first place – nor which of them had to deal with them more often than not, in his emperor’s frequent absences.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he sighed. August bowed, and left to have one last attempt at corralling his colleagues into finishing their recommendations for the infrastructure projects. Although the decision would be in their emperor’s hands now, the last thing he wanted was to let them think that if they procrastinated enough, their emperor would return and save them from having to do any work.

Zeref went the rest of the way down on his own. The dungeons didn’t really deserve the name, these days. They were dusty more than anything – just like any other historical relic that the modern empire had no real use for. Zeref supposed they’d had to put this troublesome ice mage somewhere, and all the proper prisons were being used for actual criminals.

Those old, rusty bars of the single occupied cell wouldn’t have stopped a child from tearing through them. Not that Invel would even need to put in that much effort. The door wasn’t locked; the key had been lost decades ago.

And yet there he was, the cause of this latest round of trouble, sat cross-legged on the ground like this was the most normal thing in the world. Granted, he did stand and bow with perfect poise when he noticed his emperor’s approach, but it would take a lot more than that to redeem him in Zeref’s eyes.

“How long, exactly, do you plan to continue this farce?” Zeref demanded, by way of a greeting.

To his credit, the pale blue shards of Invel’s eyes neither thawed nor wavered. “Until such time as I have been properly held accountable under the law for my actions.”

“Right. Unfortunately for all involved, you haven’t actually done anything we can charge you for. The Duke isn’t pressing charges for the damage to his property.”

“But-”

“Putting aside the question of whether an artificial life form like a demon can constitute a ‘person’ for the purposes of the Offences Against The Person Act, it’s almost impossible to kill a demon with conventional magic,” Zeref interrupted. “While, admittedly, you had a very good go at it, you did nothing that is not reversible. As soon as I get the chance, in between solving everyone else’s problems, I shall reverse it.”

Then he reconsidered. “Actually, in light of recent events, I think I might reverse it on the eve of war and not before. That would be safer for all concerned. So, you’ve done me a favour, really.”

“I doubt any of your advisers would agree with that,” Invel said coolly.

That adamant hostility – so civil, so cold, and so rarely found in the empire he’d built for himself – intrigued Zeref. Or, rather, it intrigued the part of him that had thought voluntarily returning to Alvarez was a good idea (a part of him which, apparently, all the other parts of him were still failing to beat into submission).

“Shows what you know,” Zeref returned, with equal coolness, just to see if it would faze him. (It didn’t. Now he was even more intrigued.) “August thinks I should hire you.”

A tiny crease appeared in Invel’s forehead. “I already work for you. Counsel’s Office.”

“He meant I should hire you for the Spriggan Twelve.”

“I have absolutely no intention of joining the Spriggan Twelve.”

They eyed each other for a moment, through rusted bars which served little purpose beyond the obligatory symbolism.

“Why not?” Zeref asked lightly.

“I am a highly qualified lawyer, not an… an enforcer. I cannot think of a bigger waste of my years of law school.”

“Ah. So it is for purely professional reasons, then. And not for any kind of… personal grudge.”

That threw Invel a little. Zeref suspected he was the kind of man who never made mistakes, and was now realizing that being a little too open with August during his period of magical exhaustion was more of one than he’d thought. Clearly he hadn’t known that August would tell Zeref everything, or that Zeref would use as much or as little of it against him as he felt like.

But all Invel said was, “A few days ago, I had to stand in a room full of your most trusted advisers and explain to them the difference between income and capital. I couldn’t possibly join the Twelve. I’d go mad within a week.”

“That bothers you more than the one who tried to murder you?”

“I think it’s clear that the people with whom you seek to surround yourself these days are not my kind of people.” Softly cutting, as brutal and ruthless and polite as anything he had levelled at Bloodman, or at the members of the Spriggan Twelve who had failed to impress him. “In fact, I cannot think for the life of me why you would want to take me on as your adviser.”

“Ah. Just to be clear, I don’t. It’s August who wants me to hire you. I am far from sold on the matter.”

That seemed to irritate Invel more than anything else Zeref had said, but his response only drove home the point he’d been trying to make: he ignored the hit to his pride and remained silent, unlike pretty much any other member of the current Twelve would have done.

“But I am curious,” Zeref continued, voice deceptively mild, “as to why you think it’s so clear that I’m looking for… how did you put it? A different kind of person to you.”

He was expecting some kind of insult towards the capabilities of the Twelve… but only, in retrospect, because he had been a little slower to grasp the measure of this man than August or even Dimaria had.

It caught him off-guard when this ice-cool stranger looked directly at him and remarked, “Because the war is all you care about.”

A flash of startled silence.

Zeref forced a laugh. “Only a foolish ruler would not prioritize a war he knows is coming-”

“I didn’t say prioritize,” Invel corrected. “I said it was the only thing you cared about.”

“…I beg your pardon?”

Level words, though inside, Zeref was reeling. The war wasn’t a secret. Not internally, at least. They’d been building up their military for a long time, and that sort of thing couldn’t be hidden. Conquering Ishgar was the shared ambition that motivated and unified the empire, a noble and worthy goal.

But own goal was neither noble nor worthy. And once he reached it, he would care not one bit what became of Alvarez, like a retired warrior with no more need of his sword.

He’d gone to such lengths to conceal it, to speak of the inevitable coming war with none but those who could be trusted not to pry, to never give away just how much rested on this or how little the rest of the empire mattered in comparison… Because if they knew, if they knew, then all those who were loyal only to the empire’s glory, not to him, would turn from him when he needed them the most.

And if this absolute nobody from Counsel’s Office had somehow seen the truth…

“One doesn’t have to go back far to see that the Spriggan Twelve used to be very different to how they are today,” Invel told him, sounding so dismissive that he couldn’t possibly have been aware of the effect his words were having. “When I was young and looking for role models, statesmen and stateswomen like Yajeel, Jaquila, and August were the norm. But these days?”

He shook his head at his own question. Not a single strand of ashen blue hair slipped out of place. “I’m sure they’re perfectly good people, and I know for a fact that they are mighty on the battlefield. But it’s clear that that’s the only reason why you’ve hired them. The only thing you expect from them. Your priorities have shifted, and nowhere is that more obvious than amongst your council. Having seen it up close the last few days, I wondered at first how you couldn’t see August struggling to hold everything together – especially with your Chief of Staff’s pending retirement – but then I realized that you just don’t care. We’re going to war soon, and nothing after that matters to you. Things don’t have to be held together for much longer.”

A dangerous, dangerous moment. “It is no concern of yours how I choose to run my empire.”

“Then what’s the point of continuing with this façade of a council, when you care nothing for anyone’s opinions save your own?” Invel shot back. “Yet another reason why I am loath to waste my time and energy in a pointless role. But that is easy to avoid, by keeping to my current career path. The impact your mindset is having on the wider empire and its economy, however, touches us all.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that you don’t think much of my fiscal strategy.”

“Such as it is,” Invel sniffed.

“Oh? You have something to say?” Whether it was dislike or simply stubbornness holding Invel’s tongue, Zeref couldn’t say, but he was in the mood to push this man to confrontation. “I hear you spend a lot of time complaining about the fact that you do not make policy decisions. Well, for the first – and likely last – time in your life, you have the attention of the man who does. Are you going to waste it?”

“Your fiscal strategy is fine,” Invel said shortly. “It’s… it’s adequate. It used to be revolutionary, driving the empire out of the Unifying Wars and towards the future at a breakneck pace. But society has changed since then, and fiscal policy just hasn’t kept up. And why would it? It is adequate, to see you through to the invasion of Ishgar. The inexorable long-term decline doesn’t matter as long as it remains sufficient for your short-term goals.”

With a shake of his head, he continued, “I’d always thought Alvarez had been so successful throughout history precisely because of its immortal emperor – a man who understands the importance of the long game, building solid foundations rather than pursuing fleeting glory. But even that, it seems, could not last.”

A chill streaked down Zeref’s spine, reminding him once again of the fragility of his façade.

“And I suppose you’d fix it by introducing a tax on capital gains,” Zeref said, and it came out much more sardonic than he had expected – but there was safety in such a feeling, in defensiveness and buying time as he tried to work out how to deal with this without losing everything.

“It would be a start,” came the cool response, from the man who heard the emotion but didn’t understand what lay beneath it.

“There are good reasons why I never implemented one.”

“And they were valid – twenty years ago. No one could have foreseen how property values would explode. Now, we know better. Perhaps you’ve not been paying attention, but certain landowners have made obscene amounts of money since the Unifying Wars by doing nothing at all. And yet the empire’s revenues have to come from somewhere. How can you ask more of wage-earners when they can see with their own eyes vast fortunes being made, which not only do not have a very moral connotation in themselves, but also are not taxed? The system rewards those with wealth and fails those whose only assets are effort and hard work. A vicious circle indeed.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“And that’s to say nothing of the flagrant tax avoidance that the current system encourages. Choosing not to tax genuine capital has some merit. Some. But when the exemption is abused time and time again by those recharacterizing taxable income or rents as tax-free gains, something must be done.”

“You can’t stop people from avoiding tax. Believe me, I’ve tried. Close one loophole, they’ll find another.”

“Then you close that one, too. And the next. Don’t leave gaping holes that anyone with an ounce of common sense can spot in their sleep – make them and their tax advisers work for every penny they save. Every time you make it that little bit harder, you send out the message that has wasted away in your stagnant system: the message that this behaviour is not, in fact, encouraged. And don’t forget – every time a loophole closes, the tax take increases, because fewer and fewer people have the means or the risk appetite to pursue a new one. The battle is one worth fighting, but it seems you gave up long ago.”

That stung more than Zeref had expected. “In theory, it will increase the empire’s revenues. In reality, you have forgotten one very important fact. A capital gains tax is a tax on capital disposals. The moment you implement it, people stop selling their assets.”

Invel simply shook his head. “They will stop selling for a year. Maybe two. Then life moves on, and people get on with it. Human beings have a knee-jerk dislike of change, but the truth is, their memories are short and their capacity for adapting to change is greater than they think. Give it a couple of years, and they will have accepted it as a fact of life, no longer letting it drive their actions.”

And then, mercilessly, Invel added, “Once again, you are letting your bias towards the short term and its war overrule your objective judgement.”

“That is a bold accusation.”

“An observation borne out by the facts,” Invel dismissed.

Zeref waited for the fear, the anger, to swell up again. For some reason, it did not.

In its absence, he said, “How about this for a long-term view? You speak of avoidance using land and property, fine, but you overlook the fact that a tax on capital gains is also a tax on entrepreneurs, on innovators, on those who build a business up from nothing. Those are the people who drive long-term growth in the economy. And yet you seek to drive them away.”

“All the developed economies in Ishgar have introduced a capital gains tax, and there is absolutely no evidence that it hinders entrepreneurship. No one comes up with a novel business idea and thinks, no, I’m not going to bother pursuing this, because if it does well and I sell my business one day for a huge profit, the government will take a portion of it. Grants and access to start-up finance are the biggest factors in encouraging entrepreneurship – and guess how you fund those? Tax revenues.”

“Even if the data supports that, and even if there is an appropriate comparison to be drawn between the much smaller individual economies in Ishgar and our own – the average person won’t know that. How this looks to the general public matters.”

There was so much impatience in the ice mage’s eyes that Zeref wondered how he’d ever managed to sit behind the rusted corpse of some bars for so long. He was the briskness of a bright winter morning – the chill air invigorating, the stillness waiting to be filled with purpose, the colours far clearer now that summer’s clutter had been removed.

“If it concerns you that much, then build in exemptions,” Invel argued. “Tax the gains on selling a business which a person has worked in at a lower rate than a passive investor selling their shares. Allow those who sell business assets and equipment to roll the gains over into new business assets and equipment, so that the tax liability doesn’t crystallize until they retire from their business ventures altogether. Build in deferrals of gains on business assets given away, so that parents can take their children into partnership or pass a successful family business on without having to break it up just to pay the tax bill. Put an exemption in for the sale of a person’s primary residence. Need I go on?”

“Having so many specific exemptions will produce an unworkably complex system,” Zeref warned.

“The tax system needs to be complex,” Invel returned. “Things are different to how they were twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago. People have built entire careers out of exploiting weaknesses in the rules, thanks in no small part to the vast growth in wealth disparity, which means that people stand to gain enough from avoiding tax that they can afford to give huge chunks of those savings away to their tax advisers. These people are smart. Capable. Well-versed in the law and the workings of the courts. And most of them are just doing their jobs, finding legal ways to save tax; if you build complex exemptions in, then they will be the ones ensuring entrepreneurs know how to claim them! You don’t have to see them as the enemy – play your cards right, and you can manoeuvre them into being the supporters and guards of the system. If there is money to be made in helping people navigate the rules, they don’t need to take the risk of helping others circumvent them entirely.”

Before Zeref could get a word in, he continued, “To be effective, the legislation must be complex. It must be robust. It must be written slowly, carefully, by experts of law working in conjunction with experts in the relevant field. With all due respect, the empire needs better than what you can cobble together in a free afternoon!”

Did he realize that saying ‘all due respect’ counted for nothing when he clearly believed no respect was due? Zeref almost laughed. Of course he did. This was a man who believed what he believed, and wouldn’t censor it for anyone, be they a mocking colleague, a murderous demon, or the emperor himself. This was a man whose respect had to be earned.

“You make an excellent point,” Zeref mused. “That’s it. You’re hired.”

It was worth it just for the look of abject horror on Invel’s face. “What? No! I refuse! Haven’t I made it very clear that I don’t want to work for you?”

“Ah, well, the thing about me being the emperor is that you don’t really get to refuse.”

Invel drew himself up to his full height. “Well, we’ll have to see what an Employment Tribunal says about-”

“Do you know when it was that August decided he wanted me to hire you?” Zeref interrupted.

“No, of course not. How could I?”

“It was when you showed him that you were a man of principle. When you stuck to your beliefs even though it meant defending a man you despised – even putting your own life on the line to do it. August is a sucker for that sort of thing. Me, not so much.”

Zeref drummed his fingers upon the bars, then quickly stopped as they began to crumble. “Do you know when I decided I wanted to hire you?”

“No,” Invel huffed.

“When you changed my mind.”

“What do you mean…?”

“I’ll give you three months, the assistance of two experienced draftsmen, and the funding and resources for a public consultation. Draft me a capital gains tax code, and I’ll consider enacting it.”

The silence swayed almost dizzily, not knowing where it would fall.

“Two consultations,” Invel bartered. “One at concept stage, and one at technical drafting. And I want funding for a fact-finding trip to Ishgar. Most of their kingdoms have been through the process of implementing a tax on capital gains in the last couple of decades. There is much we could learn from their successes and failures.”

“Done,” Zeref agreed.

There was another pause. Invel, he thought, wasn’t accustomed to not arguing. Having him around was definitely going to change the dynamic that had settled over the palace in recent years.

That thought should have scared him, but… but the part of him that had chosen to come back to Alvarez and didn’t regret it even now was too excited for that.

Invel ventured, “And if I am able to produce a draft bill that is to your satisfaction, what then?”

“Well, by that point, Jaquila will have retired, so you can have her spot on the Spriggan Twelve,” Zeref breezed.

“I don’t want to join the Spriggan Twelve!”

“But you do want to reform the tax code. So, this way, we both get something out of the arrangement.”

Invel’s eyes flashed with hidden light. “I’m pretty sure you’re benefitting from both ends of that arrangement. I win and lose. You win twice.”

“Just like you’re wanting to tax my personal income twice, hmm?”

“Oh, come off it. You’re the emperor; you don’t even pay tax.”

“Quite,” Zeref said. And then: “You make a better point than you know. They say that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes, so as an immortal Head of State, you can imagine that certainties are in very short supply in my life – even before one factors in the Curse of Contradiction. But some things must happen. The war is one of them. I will not tell you why, not yet, but it must. And so I have set myself on a course that cannot be averted. I put events in motion that are beyond my power to stop again; I surrounded myself with people chosen for a purpose, who – by intent or mere subconscious influence – will nudge me back towards that goal should I ever stray.

“But, as you noticed, even though I had not considered it in that way – that goal is a short-term one. The people and systems which are helping me to achieve it are likewise focussed on the immediate future, such as the war and the troubles we face today… not the Alvarez that will stand on the other side of that war, come what may. It is… imbalanced. It is flawed. Those whose purpose is solely to accompany me into war do not stop and question me the way you did.”

Once Jaquila retired, there would only be August left of the old guard – the true statesmen and stateswomen to which Invel had previously referred. And although he depended on August’s loyalty and power and wisdom, three areas in which he had never let Zeref down, he rarely challenged his emperor, either. Rarely offered a different perspective. Would never in a million years argue with him until he changed his mind.

Invel Yura had done it on their very first meeting.

Yes, he was a man whose respect had to be earned, but it was also increasingly clear that earning it would be worthwhile. He had the political acumen to see things differently, and the certainty of belief that wouldn’t let him back down from a fight over it, be that against hell’s executioner or his own emperor.

Someone to keep an eye on the horizon for him.

Someone in whose hands the empire’s future would be safe.

Alvarez was only a weapon, and soon Zeref would need and want it no longer… but just like that retired warrior contemplating his old and faithful blade, it was oddly pleasing to think that its legacy could be passed on rather than simply discarded.

He wasn’t allowed to care about it. It was as simple as that. But, in the event that everything he was working towards went wrong, surely he could choose to pass it to someone who did care.

“Come work for me,” Zeref said bluntly. “Be the counterpoint I need in my council. Fight the war with me, but do it not for victory, but as a step towards Alvarez’s brighter future.”

Invel gave a heavy sigh. It was a far cry from the jubilation that a personal invitation from the emperor usually received, but it was such a step up from earlier in their conversation that Zeref was not about to complain.

“You know, this really isn’t how I saw my career going,” Invel reflected.

“Joining Anders & Co will make you very rich,” Zeref mused. “No doubt you will also find it a stimulating intellectual challenge. But if you want to actually make a difference – whether that’s in modernizing the tax system to ensure its fairness, or standing up to inspire children in our remote territories that they too can rise through the ranks of the empire with magic or law or both – then you have to do that here.”

“For the record, before your insinuations disparage me any further,” Invel interrupted, “it is not a personal grudge that I hold against the Spriggan Twelve. I made it to Vistarion anyway, thanks to my hard work at the study of law, after my tutors insisted that I had no chance of getting out of Kamranthian on the basis of magical ability alone. The grudge I carry is on behalf of my fellow mages back home, who succumbed to the pressure and turned away from such lofty goals as seeking their fortune in Vistarion.”

Zeref shrugged. “I care nothing for your personal crusade. However, I will offer you one piece of advice: the fastest way to change the empire is by changing my mind. It won’t always be this easy for you… but I get the feeling you’d be bored if it was.”

Invel paced to one side of the self-imposed cell. Then back. Almost like he was trying to find a way out. But just as he’d been determined to get himself held legally accountable for his actions when everyone else just wanted to brush them under the carpet, it was his own hopes and aspirations and principles that left him with only one route to pursue.

“Just three months to draft an entirely new body of tax legislation, ready for inclusion in the next Finance Bill, should you approve it?” Invel checked.

“If you think you’re up to the challenge,” Zeref confirmed lightly.

Invel scoffed. “I’ll do it in two.”