A Battle Unseen

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Offices at Wood House, Duchy of Vrassa, 3:20pm, January 18

"Your Imperial Majesty, here is the report from Lady Michelle's Office in Dulnerstaad," said the Empress' Private Secretary Lady Marian Southern.  She handed a sealed manilla envelope to the Empress and asked, "Will you be needing anything else for the day, Your Imperial Majesty?"

"No Lady Southern, that's all for now.  Tomorrow when you come in, we'd like to speak with IBSI.  Things are firing up in Kundrati again and we want to stay on top of that."

"Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.  7:30?"

"Make it 7:45.  We may go snowshoeing to the hot spring for a bath before breakfast and could be back late.  Also before you go, could you arrange for the forest service's cat to come back up here and plow again this evening?  The idea that they wouldn't be on top of that is rather irritating."

"Aye Madame." the Secretary said.  She bowed her head respectfully and backed out of the room.

As the door closed, the Empress took out her knife and opened the top of the envelope.  "Confidential report-  House Assets" was the title.  The Empress had requested an private, eyes only audit of the House Financial situation.  Her aunt, who was known for her conservative investments, had contracted a confidential CPA firm in Dulnerstaad not connected with House Ananto or Miramar finances, to conduct the audit.  These were the results.

She read the executive summary.  Conducted the audit between July and December over books with seven year look back. yadda yadda, best practices, yadda yadda...  Financial Management consistent with best practices of public corporations, and high standards of banking and finance industry... yadda yadda... all contributions from known sources attributable... yadda yadda... internal fraud control measures robust and in place... so on so on... Lady Michelle and her army of bean counters, accountants, and lawyers in Dulnerstaad were all doing excellent work, Mary thought... This House will be in much better financial shape than when she took it over under Lady Michelle's very careful and conservative financial management...

Net Ballance of assets:  ₭821,356,755,856 "Good grief," the Empress muttered. House Ananto has so much money, if it tried to spend money, it just ended up making more money. "There are only so many yachts a person can buy," she thought. And this wasn't even including Miramar's holdings, which were believed to be another couple hundred billion. The list of assets was exhaustive: Houses, land holdings, jewelry, bank accounts all over the place. House Ananto had about a dozen royals on pension, and even with expense accounts totaling almost a quarter billion rubles a year, that didn't even put a small dent in the assets, and most of that money was returned directly to the House because it wasn't spent. Overall, The Empress was worth more than a trillion Imperial Rubles. All her profligacy and gaudy opulence so far had done nothing to change that.

"These Brethrenists live like church mice," she said. But she was no better. She herself could never figure out what to do with her pension from House Ananto. She lived extravagantly and prolifically, but she also lived relatively austerely. What was she to do with 50 million rubles a year? There isn't enough stuff to buy for that money.

As she was going through the numbers and the sheets that offered advice in trimming some of the more wasteful outlays, and closing some gaps that were allowing leakage, she turned the page and saw a simple pie chart with some figures on it.

This was the Gem Vault Inventory.

The numbers of the gem vault were astonishing to her. She knew there were a lot of stones in there. The vault was composed of 8 hallways essentially arranged one next to another around a square corridor. Each hallway was about 8 feet wide, 12 feet tall, and twenty feet long, and the pathway down the center was surrounded on each side with drawers and crates and wooden boxes full of gemstones of all types. Based on these results someone went in there and weighed all the boxes with these precious stones, got a general idea of grade, and valuated them. The value they came up with was just shy of fifty billion rubles worth of six different kind of gems. The value of the materials just in that room took her a second to fathom, and it didn't include the thousands of pounds of pure gold and silver ingots that were also stored there.



"This is all so overwhelming," thought the Empress. "I really should do something with all that stuff. If nobody even knows its there, how could they possibly appreciate it. I wonder if I can hire someone to build something out of it..." Maybe the Imperial Seat could stand a bit more opulence. "What would my father think about that..." she asked herself. "or my grandmother..." Could Nicolette know what she had passed down? Could Emperor William, or Emperor Fredrick I have possibly known, all those centuries ago?

She quickly gathered the audit reports, put them back into the manilla envelope that they had come in, and locked the report in the safe, almost afraid in some ways that the report would be made public. After thinking, she pressed a button on an intercom on her desk, and within a minute, Lady Southern re-entered the room. She had her coat on and was clearly just about to leave. She entered with bowed head and walked toward the desk.

"Marian, after speaking with IBSI in the morning, we are going back to Kaliburg."

Lady Southern, her eyes still averted to the floor said "Aye Madame. Is there anything wrong?"

The Empress shook her head, "It's too cold up here this time of year. And we need to meet with Mr. Koenig at any rate. Will you arrange that before going for the evening?"

Lady Southern said "Aye Ma'am. Shall I be travelling with Her Imperial Majesty?"

The Empress said "Indeed. We have a lot of work to do, and can't do it from here."

Lady Southern took that as her cue to leave, and backed out of the room. The winter break had been short, but now that Davostag had issued the ultimatum, there was a war on. She was needed in the capital.