Taking Flight

“Taxes?” This conversation was, in Kelder’s opinion, becoming very strange indeed. He wondered if Irith were teasing him somehow, but that didn’t seem likely. He didn’t think she could lie that well. “Do bandits pay taxes?” he asked.

“In Angarossa, they do,” Irith explained, “if they don’t want the king’s men to hunt them down and kill them.”

“They pay taxes?” The concept still didn’t seem to make sense.

“One-eighth of everything they steal,” Irith assured him.

“But…” He groped for an intelligent response, and found none.

“Pretty rotten, isn’t it?” Irith said, with a grin.

“It’s … it’s…” It was plain that there were wonders in the World that had nothing to do with mysteries or magic, and were nothing he’d care to brag about seeing when he got home. He struggled for something to say.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Irith said, smiling.

Kelder stopped trying to find words to express his appalled amazement, and Irith explained.

“King Caren’s greedy,” she said. “I guess most kings are. Anyway, when he came to the throne, the kingdom was broke, so he tried to raise money. Angarossa hasn’t got a lot going for it-it’s not good farmland, the weather’s pretty bad, there’s nothing worth mining, and the army didn’t amount to much. About the only thing in the kingdom that’s worth anything is the Great Highway, so King Caren tried to impose tolls.”

Kelder needed a moment to remember the word “toll,” but did eventually figure it out. “That makes sense,” he admitted.

“Yes,” Irith agreed, “but only if people pay the tolls. The merchants wouldn’t pay. They all traveled in big caravans, like the one up ahead, and when two or three guards tried to stop them at the border and collect a toll, the merchants would just laugh and march right on past, and if the soldiers tried to stop them, the caravan’s own guards would beat the toll collectors to pulp. So King Caren threatened to march his entire army out to the highway to collect the tolls.”

“What happened?”

“The merchants sent a delegation to Castle Angarossa to negotiate, and told King Caren that they’d never paid any tolls here before and didn’t want to now, and they didn’t pay any tolls in Yondra or Amramion or Sinodita, and why couldn’t he make his money by taxing the innkeepers and farmers, like everybody else? And besides, at the time there was this bandit named Telar the Red who was causing trouble, and the merchants said that if they had to pay to use the highway, at the very least the king ought to make it safer to use, and get rid of Telar.”

The story was not particularly fascinating, but watching Irith was, and listening to her voice was, as well. Kelder nodded encouragement, and Irith continued.

“So King Caren got an agreement from the merchants that if he captured or killed Telar the Red, and got rid of his bandits, then the merchants would pay a toll, a small one. And he sent out his army, and they tracked down Telar and caught him-and Telar offered them money to let him go again.”

“Did they take it?” Kelder asked, since she seemed to expect a reaction.

“No,” Irith said. “They were too scared of the king, because everybody knew he had a really nasty temper, and if the story got out he would probably have them all disemboweled. Instead they took Telar back to the king, and Telar offered King Caren the money-and the king thought about it, and saw that the money was more than he’d get in a year of collecting tolls from merchants, and that Telar was a lot easier to deal with than the merchants, so he took it. And other bandits heard about this, and it looked like a good deal.” Irith shrugged, fingers spread. “So there still aren’t any tolls in Angarossa, but there are plenty of bandits.”

Kelder thought this over for a moment, then said, “That’s ridiculous. Why do the merchants put up with it?”

“Well, some of them don’t want to,” Irith admitted. “They’ve been talking about building a new highway, south of Angarossa, through Shimillion and Omanon. It would be a lot longer, though, and so far most people settle for hiring guards, or bringing magicians along.”

“Couldn’t they offer to pay tolls, if King Caren would get rid of the bandits?”

Irith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

They walked on silently as Kelder considered the notion of a king who could be corrupted so easily by mere money. Kings were supposed to protect their people, weren’t they?

But then, the merchants weren’t really King Caren’s people, were they? They were foreigners passing through, while the bandits lived in the country. Did that mean that other kings were actually betraying their people by stamping out banditry?

No, that was silly-but why was it silly?

He struggled with the whole question for some time, mulling it over as the afternoon wore on and the sun descended to the west, and he finally worked it out.