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Reluctantly turning his eyes away from the gasping guilder, Sneel faced—even though his other guest had nothing resembling a “face”—the creature that occupied the horizontal Iron Maiden construction opposite him. “I shudder to find out your intentions, Mr. Tax Thing, sir.” It was no exaggeration on the magickian’s part.

An almost reptilian smile split the otherwise expressionless pale visage. “I believe, soon-to-be-retired Lord Magickian,” the Thing half-hissed, “that in producing a specified quantity of high-quality, salable, cobbled goods, not to mention a superb wagon, you have neglected to pay the war-imposed VAT tax.” Sneel shuddered at the implication. This peculiarly pernicious tax was called VAT for two reasons, one having to do with the rather severe penalty for failure to pay it. “It has required overtime for the Emperor’s scribes to calculate, but I have here the figures with me, and the total amounts to…”

“So your purse is empty now?” Marmet squinted as Sneel dumped one last coin on the table. The young man was wiping blood from the garrote’s U-shaped clamp, and from the sharpened screw-point that extended through the head rest behind it. His nose reeled at the smell of sweat and other bodily fluids. What an unappreciative guest, he mused. A real swine!

“That was it, Apprentice,” the mage moaned. “And a whole month until the payman visits next. Any suggestions?” Magick or not, the end of his rope seemed to be uncomfortably close.

“Sire,” Marmet ventured hesitantly, “if it’s any comfort, I do have all those calculations you wanted.” Sneel looked at him quizzically. “You know, Master, you wished me to figure out the net worth of all your belongings?” The wizard nodded.

“Well, Sire,” the boy read from a parchment that he pulled from his blood-stained shirt, “if you add up the value of the castle, the grounds, the furniture and the crops yet to be harvested—”

“Yes, do go on, young Marmet,” Sneel sighed, hoping for enough worth to eke out the dismal existence he foresaw for himself, his many remaining centuries lived alone in a crumbling ruin, a faded memory in the mind of the prosperous Empire he had served so well.

“—Well, Sire, it is almost enough to pay the new property taxes the Emperor has imposed, to be used for further improvements in the infrastructure and health care benefits.” Sneel’s bulging eyes stared in disbelief. “You know, Sire, the health benefits? You haven’t been reading your post documents? As an employer, you are now liable for taking care of the physicks of all the servants here.” He smiled broadly, “Including me. Isn’t that something? The Emperor cares for us all!”

It was next morning before Sneel relented and turned Marmet back from a toad into a human. “Not much of an improvement,” he said, surveying his work.

“Marmet,” the quickly-aging magickian said evenly, “We’ve got to get serious. Short of hiring ourselves out to a neighboring kingdom, or maybe traveling to far off Fu-Shang, land of the great red trees, in search of Magickal work, we are useless.” He and the apprentice were sitting in the Sanctorum, strategizing over their future. The boy had never been allowed in the place in the decade of his training, but Sneel felt there was little harm now. What secrets he had apparently weren’t worth keeping anymore, and this youngster, after all, was his sole acolyte, to whom he had intended to entrust his Ultimate Magick, namely the survival of his immortal soul.

“At this point the future looks disinviting, and the outcome certain. Poverty, disgrace, oblivion. Now you, boy, you could go to some great foreign center of thaumaturgic learning, teach what you know, earn a living wage. Or maybe be taken in as a household mage—”

“A magicker, sire, to protect lands and homes from bandits and intruders? No, Sire, I would rather throw my fate in with yours.” He fairly beamed, but his demeanor belied his outward confidence.

Dejected, Sneel conjured up a sphere of smoke, inserted his head, inhaled, and blew a puff from his cheeks. Someday, he’d have to give up the habit, but the idea of using lighted plant leaves for smoking bothered him. He coughed and wheezed, then said, “Let me see those parchments, boy, and let me re-figure out the numbers. Maybe we can hold on for a while yet. The Emperor does owe me for one more month of full pay, before I begin that miserably small pension.”

Marmet pulled out a sheaf of rolled parchment. As he handed it toward Sneel, the binding ribbons unwrapped, spilling the sheets in all directions. Sneel groaned. This was the creature who was going to protect his secrets and his soul? “Pick them up, boy. And while you do, tell me what the numbers are, so that I may know when I have to yield up the castle and grounds.”

“Sire,” the walls responded to the inquiry, uninvited, “by the proper floating of your property tax payments, and with clever marketing of the rare herbs and spices in your unharvested crops before the Emperor seizes them, you should be able to hold on to everything you own, and turn a small profit besides.”

“Ye Gods!” Marmet shouted, dropping the sheaves again. Sneel merely gasped. What hath stone walls wrought? he wondered.

Marmet continued to stare at the subtly morphing wall-mouth. “Sire, talking walls? You never mentioned—”

“After all, boy, this is my Inner Sanctorum,” the wizard said, defensively.

“What do the walls know?” Marmet asked.

“Everything,” a barely-visible fluid-stone mouth replied. “Everything that has happened. Everything that will happen. Everything that can happen.”

Sneel shouted, “I had no idea I magicked you so damned well. Walls? Why haven’t you told me all this before?”

The mouth puckered in a pout. “You never asked me.”

A long silence ensued while Marmet bit his lip, trying to keep from bursting out laughing. Being a toad, even just for overnight, was no laughing matter. And Sneel might figure a toad was easier to feed than a growing stripling. But he had a sudden inspiration. “Walls, can you help with these numbers?”

“Of course, Squire Marmet. You need only to ask.”

“You mean, I could have saved all this effort these last weeks, all my counting and numbering and adding and subtracting, everything?”

“Everything.”

Marmet fairly glowed with excitement. “Lord Sneel, can you put such Magick in a smaller stone?”

Sneel looked puzzled.

“Something, Master, such as one might carry in a purse?”

Sneel understood, a broad grin breaking out across his face. He was truly happy for the first time ever. Well, not ever; putting one of his living foes into that ugly outcropping of rock in front of the castle had been truly satisfying as well. He reached over and gently touched Marmet on the hand, a token of heartfelt thanks, the first time he had touched the boy not in anger. They looked at each other and could not contain their grins.

The Emperor was amused. “So, my good friend, and newly-appointed Economick Advisor, Baron Sneel, how do you like your new position, the perqs, the new estates?”

Baron Sneel bowed in gratitude to Cradar the Confident. “Your Excellency, everything is quite up to the highest standards. And I especially am grateful for the use of the mute, your ex-Guild Master, as my new Latrine Lord.”

Cradar shrugged with a smile, pulling out of his robes a sparkling diamond that dangled from the end of a thick golden chain. “This is quite a novelty, Sneel. And useful; why, I was even going to fire my bean-counters, but they convinced me that with these they could do all the Empire’s accounting and figuring work that really needs to be done. But by Hephaestos’ Horns, how did you ever think of making Purse Counting-Stones?”