All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 172: Liquid Gold

Arthur watched as the god left his tent. Part of him - a part that he was much too afraid to voice - couldn't help but worry about what the little troublemaker would uncover next. Well, maybe it was smart not to voice that. Perhaps calling a deity a "little troublemaker" would get him smited.

It wasn't that he was ungrateful for the embezzling scheme being brought to light. It was good to deal with corruption wherever he could, of course. But the case here wasn't so simple.

Things like this were to be expected in any unit, and most commanders actually encouraged them or looked the other way. It helped to make sure that they had a firm grasp of their underlings' loyalty, even above the loyalty they held to the crown itself. This wasn't a practice Arthur took part in, of course, but rooting it out might cause problems of its own. Problems he wasn't sure he could really afford right now.

Looking at the paper, he couldn't believe that anyone would have noticed this for a very long time. It wouldn't have been till year-end reports that things might not have lined up. A normal person would have just added the numbers together and said it was fine. He certainly had when he was going over them. But all in all, this sort of thing added up over time. Here it was only a few hundred golds, but to many people, that sum amounted to years' worth of work.

Arthur sighed. He got up and stretched before putting his head out of the tent and calling his aide. He could track down each of the people responsible personally, but he had people for that, people who he could trust far beyond these small matters. Not too many, honestly, and one of his primary ones was a prime suspect in this case. But he should have enough to handle it.

Honestly, he didn't believe this was the Quartermaster's doing. The man was too dedicated to his job and too precise. Things like this would have probably even harmed his class progression, and Arthur had never met a non-combat class that was so obsessed with leveling. That the man had also served for over a decade under Arthur's personal command without even an insinuation of wrongdoing also helped matters. No, Arthur probably held some responsibility for this. The man had been asking for assistants recently. Something might have happened…

The aide returned a short time later; ducking under one of the tent flaps, he held it open and motioned for a grizzled man in leather armor to follow.

"General Arthur," Lieutenant Jericho said, coming to a halt and snapping a salute. As the aide left the tent, Arthur waved to his old friend to set him at ease.

Leaning back in his chair, Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and tossed the papers toward the other side of his small table. At a gesture, Jericho sat down and rifled through the papers. "What is this, sir?"

To many people, having a friend call them "sir" feel awkward, but Arthur knew better than to try and correct Jericho. When they were not on a campaign, at home drinking with their families on leave, Jericho might call him Arthur. But otherwise, he was always "sir."

"Check the units." It's all he had to say. A few moments later, Jericho frowned.

"That's a right mess, sir. Any idea how long this has been going on?" The man rubbed his clean-shaven cheeks in thought.

"No, but it has to have started sometime this year." Arthur said grimly. "Got to be someone here in camp. This report was too new and anything older would have been left behind. Embezzling like this is risky. Someone would have to be watching, maybe even doctoring the regular reports. This isn't the kind of retail record we carry with us obviously."

"There aren't that many people who have had access to this." Jericho said with a thoughtful voice. No doubt he was compiling the list even as they spoke.

"I know. I just need you to bring them in." Arthur said. Jericho nodded and pulled out a piece of parchment from his breast pocket, then scrawled down a few notes before saluting and leaving again.

Arthur stood up and paced a couple of times in the small confines of his tent. There was no doubt in his mind that Jericho would soon have his suspects lined up. Likely he would even already know who did this. The man was really good at his job. Arthur wished he had been able to convince him to take a more prominent role, but it was a fool's errand. He was always told there was no point in having a secret police that everyone knew about.

Still, the arrangement never really made sense as the police were not a well-kept secret, but military affairs was a very complicated jurisdiction. The commander had ultimate authority while in the field, kind of like a captain on a ship, but the King hated having so little oversight. Arthur didn't blame him. A rogue general with an army more loyal to him than the King was how this Kingdom got started, after all. So officers like Jericho were put in to make sure that things stayed under control.

It wasn't very effective in most cases. Very, very few of the agents were as competent as his old friend, and they were easily sussed out. Plus, he knew that many of the competent ones were great friends with their commanders and had a similar relationship as he and Jericho did. But it was possible that that was entirely intentional. After all, those people were the most loyal generals Arthur was aware of.

Wrapping up the reports only took an hour. When he was done, there was a message waiting for him that Jericho had rounded up all the suspects and potential witnesses. They were being held in a tent near the outskirts of the camp. After reading the message, Arthur gestured for a couple of guards to follow him as he made his way over.

***

The three men and a woman sitting in the tent looked nervous. Jericho and a few of his lackeys, by comparison, were perfectly composed as usual.

None of the suspects should have known why they were called in, but none of them were idiots, so it wasn't like they didn't have some idea. Arthur scanned their faces, looking for some especially telling signs of guilt. Not finding any of them, he sighed.

Planning battlefield tactics was one thing. It was something he enjoyed for the most part. Plus, commanding on a battlefield was something that he was good at. He knew how long men could hold a defensive formation for, when and where the enemy would break, that kind of thing.

This knowledge of people and their nature, his gift for strategy, should have transferred over into interrogations easily. And it did. Sort of. While he wasn't bad at them, he didn't have the same flair as with his other talents. He needed to stop and think at points, his instincts staying worryingly silent.

Jericho told him that the same silence made him terrifying, but Arthur wasn't so sure. He had met plenty of much more effective questioners who were much more willing to get their hands dirty.

What Arthur was trying to figure out right now was how much he should give away. If he told them nothing, then it would be impossible to get to the point. If he told them too much, they would be able to craft a much better lie. A natural at this would have just started talking, and a web of traps would just spin out of their words.

Well, he would work with what he had, he supposed. "Something has gone wrong with some of the books. Ones you all have touched or had access to. Is there anyone else who might have had access to any sensitive work that you've been involved with?"

The question wasn't really a trap, even though some might have called it that. If there were any other suspects here, he needed to know. There would obviously be incentives to give them up. They would lose their position if they were found to have compromised information security, but it was better than being accused of it themselves or risking being caught aiding a foreign spy.

Silently each one shook their heads. The Quartermaster opened his mouth with a questioning look on his face, but before he could get his question out, someone burst into the tent.

"Commander! Something is happening, I think you need to come see this!"

What now, Arthur thought to himself. He turned and hurried out of the tent toward the next emergency.

—-

I wasn't able to sense oil anywhere from Arthur's tent, so I left to go look around more thoroughly. With a quick tour of the camp, I was able to account for most of the valid allotments, but I found no massive hidden cache of oil that someone had misplaced or stored away.

The closest thing I found was in the kitchens, and upon closer inspection, I found that it was a different kind of oil. So I moved out of the more central locations and started exploring the rest of camp.

As I moved through the soldiers' camps, I found lots of smaller amounts of liquids other than water stashed away. A few times, I found a few gallons hidden away in personal packs and saddle bags, but it wasn't nearly viscous enough to be the missing oil, either.

Among the resident tents, I did find the rest of the properly allocated oil, though. It was aliquoted in smaller amounts and put to good use. I continued my search for a long while, but try as I might, I didn't find any hint of the stolen stuff. I also checked people's souls in case that gave me some clue of where to go, but it wasn't very useful for finding objects.

I really hoped that Arthur would be able to track it down. As embarrassing as it was to admit it, I may have been getting a little too cocky recently. Perhaps it was just arrogance talking, but with all my newfound power, I just felt like I could help and teach these humans so much more now. Maybe I was a bit too far out of my areas of expertise, though.

If I couldn't find something as simple as a huge amount of missing oil, then was I really in any position to talk?

In a last fit of inspiration, I did a last sweep through the camp to see if anyone had buried it in the ground. To my surprise, I found a lot of liquid not too far below us. A lot of liquid. Way more than I was looking for.

I couldn't quite tell how viscous it was at its depth. Also, it was deep enough that I highly doubted someone was able to put it there recently. At least, not without some advanced digging skills. Which I suppose could have been a possibility, but I think I would have noticed something like that happening.

Well, I might not be able to find the missing oil, but maybe I could replace it. I just had to figure out how to get the liquid out of the ground. Unfortunately, it was far enough away that I couldn't be sure what it actually was. It did feel hot and under pressure. Perhaps I could use that pressure to help get it out?

I ran through my list of skills and mutations but didn't find anything that would be immediately useful. If I could get my mop close enough, I could start a siphon effect, but it was much too far down to reach. I could dig down part of the way, but that would cause a rather large disturbance in the middle of the camp.

Finally, I had an idea. I had only ever been able to slightly affect things with my domain intentionally, but I hadn't truly tested its limits. What if I was able to move the underground rock structure a little bit to align the grains more? Maybe I could do it in such a way that the liquid could escape upward more. Maybe then I could get it from there?

I went right over the hidden reservoir, which happened to be in the center of camp, then I got to work. This was a great idea.