Eager to move on, Vespasian looked at Gracchus. “I will now read the latest treasury report,” he ordered.
Gracchus signaled to a skeen who rushed down the aisle and toward his side. After the cleric gave the skeen a large diptych, the servant hurried down to the Aedifficium floor. Reaching Vespasian’s chair, he went down on one knee, bowed his head, and reverently handed the gold and beeswax book up to his emperor. After taking it, Vespasian waved the skeen away.
While the council waited, Vespasian read the report. The gold tally had deteriorated to a level that was worse than he had expected. Gracchus was right, he realized. The treasury situation was indeed dire. Would there be enough to finance his new plan? he wondered.
Rustannica’s pecuniary troubles had started more than one century ago, during the reign of one of Vespasian’s predecessors. It had been his desire to greatly widen the war, hoping to finally bring it to an end. By a narrow vote, the Suffragat had agreed. But in their rush toward final victory, they had grossly underestimated the financial costs to the empire. In a way, Rustannica was a victim of her own military successes against Shashida. The Suffragat was painfully aware that the war was only one part of the problem. The far greater threat was the nation’s dwindling gold supply.
As was the case in Shashida, gold was the Rustannican currency. By law, the treasury was supposed to hold a reserve of gold that was at least equal to the value of the gold coins circulating the nation. Unknown by the populace, the law was being wantonly violated by the same Suffragat members who had sworn to uphold it, providing yet another reason to heavily censor the session reports. When an inordinate amount of the treasury reserves were used to intensify the war, the Suffragat’s gamble had won out-but not in the way that they had hoped. As the pace and scope of Rustannica’s war against Shashida was stepped up, great tracts of Shashidan territory were won. But soon the campaign became a hollow victory, for the spoils taken from those lands were disappointing.
In truth, the Suffragat did not know whether the reputed Shashidan gold hoards had been only rumor, or whether they had existed and had been hurriedly moved to safety ahead of the advancing Rustannican legions. The Suffragat suspected the latter. Worse, they also guessed that the Shashidan military had been forewarned of the new offensive by a spy in their midst, giving the Shashidans time to move their gold. The traitor had never been found.
Because of her greatly accelerated campaign, Rustannica had overextended herself. Soon the cost of maintaining the war was proving too great even for the mighty empire to sustain. But the Suffragat dared not abandon the new lands that she had conquered, for Shashidan cohorts would quickly overrun the area and reclaim the empire’s newest source of slaves and added taxation.
Ninety years ago, a change from gold coins to parchment script had been ordered in a try to prop up the treasury, but the experiment was short-lived. The paper script was quickly rejected by the populace and angry mobs literally burned the new money in the streets. Rustannicans liked the sound of coins jingling in their pockets, and only gold’s heavy weight and unique texture sustained the people’s confidence in the economy’s well- being.
For a time, thePon Q’tar, had tried to augment the gold supply by way of the craft. But that project also failed, because even the revered mystics could not conjure gold in sufficient quantities to make an appreciable difference. The empire had tried reducing the amount of gold in the coins, but the public soon caught on and another outcry arose. Worse yet, the Rustannican gold mines were nearing exhaustion and no new deposits had been unearthed for decades. For the first time in the history of Rustannica, her gold supply was nearing a finite amount.
The Suffragat briefly considered stripping all the gold from the public buildings to augment the treasury, but they quickly realized that such a brazen move would only confirm the public’s growing suspicions. Moreover, as the population grew, so did the needs of the goldsmiths. Melted and crafted into jewelry, yet more irreplaceable gold was being worn as adornments and buried with the dead that would never find its way back into circulation. For a time the Suffragat actually flirted with the prospect of grave robbing, but the idea was eventually dismissed as too risky and unworkable. While the public worried and wondered, the smell of revolt drifted into the air. Something had to be done to placate the masses while an answer could still be found.
And so, seventy years ago, for better or worse, the great coliseum had been built to distract the mob from Rustannica’s constantly rising inflation, ongoing war, and ever-increasing tax rates. But soon the massive costs associated with the grisly theater of death had brought the reverse effect and made matters worse.
Like Rustannica’s offensive campaign, the coliseum had been wildly successful on the surface, but it soon created more problems than it solved. The games had become an institution and millions of people now relied on them to make a living. The spectacle employed countless centurions, horse breeders, chariot and wagon builders, animal trainers, slave traders, architects, surgeons, armorers, and untold other types of laborers. Shippers, contractors, and other businessmen also relied heavily on the games.
Not to be outdone, a high percentage of Ellistium’s prostitutes counted on the debauchery of the games to supply them with drunken customers who might not otherwise use their services. The men’s and women’s incomes were heavily taxed by special bands of roving centurions. This unique taxation source had grown more important by the year and would be sorely missed if it stopped flowing.
Indeed, abolishing the games would now mean throwing so many people out of work that the Suffragat feared that it would result in the final collapse of the economy. In short, the games had become more than a diversion. They were the needed drug that numbed the populace to the nation’s many problems, allowing the Suffragat to operate as it wished and its dwindling treasury to go largely unnoticed. In an attempt to alleviate the crushing costs of the games, the Suffragat raised the price of attendance, but that did little to help the massive problem.
Soon the coliseum in Ellistium had become so renowned that similar structures dedicated to the same purpose had been erected in other Rustannican cities, further compounding the nation’s troubles. And the continual influx of captured skeens and their offspring into the Rustannican society was taking menial jobs away from the hard- pressed phrygian class. Unemployment among the phrygians was nearly rampant. In many ways, the more conquests Rustannica won, the poorer she became.
If the people rioted, Vespasian knew that the Suffragat would surely lose control of the nation. Because of the ever-present war, there were rarely enough legions stationed in the capital to overcome a mass uprising. Vespasian and Lucius secretly suspected that if all the legions were ordered home, even their combined forces would not be able to maintain order for long. And if so many troops were taken away from the front, all would be lost in any event.
Not since thePon Q’tar had stolen the Vagaries flame from Shashida and declared Rustannican independence had the nation’s future been in such peril, and Vespasian knew it. Only a mass infusion of gold would solve the empire’s many problems, allow the war to continue in strength, and help ensure the defeat of the Vigors. Ironically, the only way to get more gold was to wage ever-costlier campaigns. And so the dangerous spiral went round and round, threatening to engulf the nation once and for all.
Vespasian lowered the treasury report to the floor, then looked around the chamber. The people sitting before him were the most gifted and dedicated that Rustannica had to offer. Even so, the burden of finding a solution rested largely on his own shoulders. A plan to see his nation through her troubles had been forming in his mind for some time. It was risky, and it could easily mean the end of the empire should it fail. But if it worked, victory might finally be at hand.
As the Suffragat waited, Vespasian rose from his chair and started pacing. The room was silent save for the sound of the emperor’s sandals on the polished turquoise floor. Because today’s games would start soon, he was attired much the same as yesterday, as were the others.
As was often his habit, Vespasian drew his sword and he placed the flat side of its blade behind his neck and across his shoulders. In one hand he held the hilt, while the sword point balanced delicately against the fingertips of his other hand. Finally he stopped pacing and turned to look at Lucius and Persephone. Then he regarded the entire Suffragat.
“The treasury report is indeed distressing,” he said. “We have tried everything we could think of to increase the treasury count, but all our ideas have failed. If we raise taxes again I fear an outright revolt-one that our home legions won’t be able to put down. Therefore I have a question for thePon Q’tar, and you clerics must be sure of your answer. The future of our empire might hinge on it.” As Vespasian looked directly at Gracchus, the lead cleric calmly returned his emperor’s stare.
