Jack walked behind the Duke as he led the way out of his townhouse to the

  administration building. He whistled softly as they went.

  “What is it with the whistling?,” asked Josie. “I don’t remember you doing that before

  you went into the Army.”

  “Don’t be jealous because you’re not the only one who knows music,” said Jack. He

  grinned at her.

  “I don’t think the theme from Spongebob Squarepants counts as music,” said Josie.

  “Of course it does,” said Jack. “What else could it be?”

  “That’s like saying Nickleback is better than the Beatles,” said Josie.

  “Aren’t they?,” asked Jack.

  “You know better than that,” said Josie. She shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re

  talking about this.”

  “I can’t either,” said the Duke. “And I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Even the screwheads don’t get you,” said Josie.

  “I’m a simple man,” said Jack. “And I like to keep things I do simple too.”

  “That’s something I can agree with at least,” said Josie.

  “The archives for the treasury is down below the main building,” said the Duke. “I

  don’t know how to find what you are looking for. I’ll know what it means if we can

  find anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “Josie can find the right files. The next step will be finding

  out the names. Then we’ll have to decide how to stop things from continuing. You

  don’t want corruption undermining your leadership. The King is said to be heavy

  handed with people who don’t run things effectively.”

  “Hawk Ridge isn’t quite as important as it used to be, but there are still things made

  here that we ship out to the rest of the dominion,” said the Duke.

  “Like what?,” asked Josie.

  “Furniture, music instruments, alchemical formulas,” said the Duke. “I just saw the

  outlook prospectus yesterday when I took office.”

  “Do they make guitars here?,” asked Jack. He knew that Josie had magicked one up,

  but maybe they could get more without hard work.

  “I don’t know,” said the Duke. “I was solely interested in what they owed, and how

  much business they expected to do for the year. The King demands those reports for

  his own forecasting.”

  “I imagine,” said Jack. If the King was keeping track of things, and he thought you

  weren’t keeping up the revenue stream for his own coffers, what would he do? How

  many people wanted to find out?

  Jack wouldn’t want to be at the end of that attention even if he had a magic watch that

  let him get away with a lot of stuff that no one else would dare try.

  The Duke waved at a guard to open the vault for them to enter. He stood out of the

  way as they took in the shelves of ledgers reaching back as far as they could see.

  “It’s a lot neater than the tax archive,” said Jack.

  “That’s regularly used by the Court and Administration to figure out rulings,” said the

  Duke. “These books are only for what the Treasury collects and pays out.”

  “What if someone cooked the books?,” asked Jack.

  “I don’t understand,” said the Duke.

  “He means what if someone were entering fraudulent sums,” said Josie. She frowned

  at her partner.

  “There’s an audit every six months,” said the Duke. “The King’s auditors and the

  Duchy’s auditors go over each heading for the last six months.”

  “So if someone wanted to defraud the kingdom, he would have to be able to make

  everything look kosher to two sets of eyes,” said Jack. “Unless they were in it

  together.”

  “I am going to say yes,” said the Duke. “I am not sure what kosher is, but the context

  seems right.”

  “You can’t be thinking what I think you are thinking,” said Josie.

  “I just don’t trust anybody who works for this city,” said Jack. He grinned at the

  Duke. “I think if you use your scry spells on these books, you should look for the

  orders and bonuses for the shadow board, and then look to see if someone was

  skimming off what was taken from the city.”

  “All right,” said Josie. “There might be overlap.”

  “That will make things easier for us if there is,” said Jack. “Now chop-chop, you have

  to meet the adventurers in a few hours, and you are surly without your sleep.”

  “I’ll show you surly,” said Josie. She frowned at his grin. “Let me dump what I need

  on the desk. Are there empty ledgers around, Your Grace?”

  Hent looked around the workspace. He produced an empty book and placed it on the

  counter.

  “Let’s see how many commissions were put out there,” said Josie. “Then we can see

  if any of that extra money went into the official coffers.”

  She became Zatanna. Small birds of fire erupted from her, searching the shelves.

  Entries wrote themselves in the empty ledger. Commissions were in red ink, false

  entries were in blue. The Duke stepped back from the flipping pages.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack. He indicated they should wait by the door. “This part is

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  harmless for us. She’s just putting down all the information we might have to sort

  through. When she gets done with that, then things might be a little bit more

  harmful.”

  A thought struck him.

  “Can you find Lord Cilt’s case,” said Jack. “He said his land was taken in a tax deal

  like ours.”

  A fire bird broke off. It found a shelf and writing appeared on a page by itself in the

  ledger.

  “Thanks,” said Jack. “That will give me a leg up in getting his land back for him.”

  “I assume that he was evicted and his land seized through this scheme,” said the

  Duke.

  “It looks like,” said Jack. “I wonder how much land was stolen through this.”

  “What about my uncle’s mansion?,” asked the Duke.

  “Destroyed it and the slave pens underneath it,” said Jack. “Don’t worry, if this pans

  out, I will build you a bigger house on land you didn’t own because it was stolen.”

  “Can you really do that?,” asked the Duke.

  “It will show up like magic,” said Jack. He grinned at the official. “I’ll just need some

  supplies. Would you like wood, or brick?”

  “Brick would be nice,” said the Duke. “Maybe some big windows.”

  “I’ll put a model together for you,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t put it on the site of your

  uncle’s old place. I put a curse out there to keep people away.”

  “Of course you did,” said the Duke.

  “It looks like I have gathered everything I can,” said Josie. “Let’s see what we have,

  and how we can use it.”

  “May I?,” said Jack. He called on Mister Fantastic. He flipped through the pages and

  memorized everything he saw. “It appears that most of the commissions were given

  out by a Magistrate Lewn. I don’t know if he survived the Hent House Massacre, but

  his name is on ninety five percent of the extra jobs filed, ours and Cilt’s among them.

  And it looks like there is some skimming going on. I can’t actually tell who is doing

  it, but some of the commissions aren’t going to the public coffers. Maybe all the

  receivers and the Chancellor are in on it.”

  Jack showed the Duke the entries where the funds had been diverted with no path out

  of the offices.

  “How much has been stolen?,” said the Duke.

  “I am going to say millions of gold pieces in monies and property,” said Jack. He

  put the ledger down and reverted back to his normal form. “You might want to get

  someone not connected to the books to audit everything. Thanks to you, we know

  who signed the order for our brick of gold and Lord Cilt’s land seizure.”

  “Guin’s tax bill?,” asked Josie.

  “It’s high, but not higher than what I would expect,” said Jack. “Someone might

  still be trying to line their pockets from his profits.”

  “I need an independent auditor to go through this,” said the Duke.

  “I would say a team,” said Jack. “Maybe Guin knows someone. I’ll call him and ask

  for a recommendation for someone that doesn’t work for him.”

  “I should have expected this to be happening,” said the Duke. “Uncle had so many

  flaws. Now that I have to take over for him, I can see that he was causing problems

  for the land out of corruption.”

  “Better to find it on your own at your takeover, than the King to find it at the next

  audit,” said Jack. “I heard that he likes to use the axe whenever he has a problem.”

  “What is our next move?,” said Josie. She had let her persona go as soon as the spells

  were done. “Do we get an auditor team in here to go through the books to back up

  what my magic found? Do we talk to this Magistrate? It doesn’t help with our tax bill

  as far as I can see.”

  “But it does,” said Jack. He took on a Perry Mason before a judge stance. “We know

  that this judge is signing false orders for seizures. That means that we have someone

  who can vacate the charge against us, and return Lord Cilt’s land. All we need for him

  to do is sign the order and make sure the Royal Authority has those orders which we

  can easily do. Now if he is taking a kickback, he is also defrauding the Duchy. Now

  if we can arrange for a confession in front of the Duke, then we can have him

  removed and put away for charges akin to obstructing justice and corruption.”

  “It won’t stop other judges from doing the same thing,” said Josie.

  “Are you really considering putting down every judge in the territory?,” asked Jack.

  He shook his head. “You have one syndicate that you are taking apart. There will be

  other judges and nobles for you to set on fire.”

  “You have killed more nobles than I have,” said Josie.

  “I didn’t know we were having a contest,” said Jack. “Do you want to turn this into

  a race to see how many nobles and crooked judges we can kill? I mean we could do

  that. It would change the way things work here, but I don’t have a problem if you

  don’t have a problem.”

  “Can I interject?,” said the Duke.

  “Go ahead, Your Grace,” said Josie. “What would you like to say?”

  “I think that you should not kill everyone you come across,” said the Duke. “And

  I think that removing people as part of a game is not good.”

  “You have a point,” said Josie. “Doesn’t he, Jack?”

  “I guess so,” said Jack. He put on his smile. “I would have won, but we can’t just

  massacre every enemy we come across. It would make us look bad.”

  “As it is, I have a quest to take apart the tattooed men,” said Josie. “I can’t put that

  aside just because some of them are well born. Some of the nobility will have to go,

  no matter what.”

  “I will try to avoid any conflict with you as far as that goes,” said the Duke. “Why are

  you looking for tattooed men?”

  “They steal girls and women and send them to be used as slaves,” said Josie. “And

  since they picked the fight with me first, they all have to go.”

  “I can see that was a bad decision,” said the Duke.

  “Do you have anybody, Your Grace?,” asked Josie.

  “No,” said the Duke. “I haven’t had time to look around for someone, and most of

  my family are distant.”

  “Then you don’t have to worry about it except as violation of the laws against

  slavery,” said Josie.

  “I think we should talk to this magistrate next,” said Jack. “What do you want to do

  about this tax fraud stuff?”

  “I think I will have a talk with the Captain, and the Chancellor,” said the Duke. “I will

  hire someone from the old companies to look at the books.”

  “We are going to talk to this Magister Lewn and see about this order being rescinded

  and the order for Lord Cilt,” said Jack. “This could be the start of a beautiful

  friendship.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the Duke. “But there are a lot of things that are out of order

  that need to be righted. I think I will start with the things I can touch first.”

  “If’ you’re trying to do the right thing, we will help you,” said Josie. “In return, we

  are going to need your help to straighten things out.”

  “You can be our Alfred,” said Jack. He glanced at Josie. She covered her face.

  “I think he means our Gordon,” said Josie. “Don’t worry. We’ll let the guards know

  that we’re not going to kill them for this shadowboard business like we did the other

  tax collectors. We will let them go with a warning.”

  “I don’t know what I can do with these malefactors, but something might turn up,”

  said the Duke. “Good night. I will look at this in the morning and see what I can do.”

  “We’ll be glad to help out where we can,” said Jack. He smiled. “Uprooting bad guys

  is part of the mission statement.”

  “One more thing, Your Grace,” said Josie. “We have been asked to track down a

  vicious killer named Sawtooth. Could you spread the word around that we are

  interested in any weird deaths? They will look like monster attacks where there

  shouldn’t be monsters.”

  “I will have my staff put together a query for you,” said the Duke. “Can I go back to

  bed? I foresee a busy day when I wake in the morning.”

  “Would you like an assist over to your quarters?,” asked Jack. “It’s the least we can

  do.”

  The Duke picked up the annotated ledger.

  “I will walk,” said the noble. He left the treasury, book under his arm.

  “I hope we did the right thing there,” said Jack. “Let’s go talk to this Lewn and get

  our tax problem straightened out. Then we can get ready for tomorrow.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know what his uncle did as part of the Montrose, but he knew that

  his uncle was doing things that he shouldn’t,” said Josie.

  “And he avoided it to stay out of trouble,” said Jack. “He might be smarter than he

  looks.”

  “I wish I could say the same for you,” said Josie.

  “Trust me,” said Jack. “I’m so smart that I might have two brains working up in my

  cranium.”

  “I doubt that.”