Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,64
was taken from the treasury account, but there’s no corresponding entry to say it was paid out to anyone at all.”
The council members hummed and tsked, and several of them clicked their tongues disapprovingly.
“When Lars asked for a report into the missing stipends, Gunther knew he wouldn’t be able to hide his theft for any longer,” Calarian continued, “and that’s why he tried to arrest us.”
“It’s true,” Lars said. “Instead of redistributing wealth to the people, he was a dirty capitalist.”
And then he shot a proud look at Benji, whose heart melted a little because not only was Lars soft and sweet and a total lumberjack in bed, he also listened to Benji’s political rants.
“Hmm,” said the commander of the guard. “That’s all well and good, but I don’t think the issue here is Gunther’s theft. I think we can all agree that justice was served on that account.” He blinked rapidly. “Not that I’m advocating summary execution for theft, of course! But, you know, the thing with the kid.” He made a strangling gesture with his hands, choking an imaginary child. “I mean, that was a dire situation, and Benji’s quick actions saved that boy’s life.”
Benji preened a little, and then glanced out the window to see if the cows had progressed in any direction on the hillside. They hadn’t.
“The issue,” the commander continued, “is that you installed a fake duke in Tournel, and really, that’s just not on.” He shook his head. “It’s just not on.”
“That is indeed the difficulty,” Helga said, her cinnamon bun hair rolls bouncing as she nodded. “We are dukeless. How is Tournel to function without a duke?”
Everyone at the table sank into silence.
Benji groaned, and leapt to his feet. “Like this!”
“Excuse me?” Helga asked.
“Like this,” Benji repeated, gesturing at the table. “You’re doing it! You don’t need a duke! Nobody needs dukes or kings or princes! You could be autonomous! You could rule yourselves! Long live the revolution!”
Someone down the end of the table gasped. Everyone else stared at Benji as though he’d lost his mind. Stupid humans! There was a time when Benji would have rolled his eyes and stalked away muttering about how he hated everything and wished everyone was dead, but now he drew a deep breath instead, and pulled his shoulders back.
“Or,” he said carefully, “maybe you could, I don’t know, choose your own duke, and then rule as a council with their oversight?” Revolution was well and good, but sometimes you had to ease into these things.
The commander raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. “So we’d... elect someone?”
Helga put a hand to her bosom. “Elect a duke? But what if we made the wrong decision?”
“You could...” Benji swiped his tongue over his lower lip, wondering if his next suggestion would be a step too far for these simple humans. “You could elect them for a fixed period of time. That way, if everyone agrees they’re doing a terrible job, you could try somebody new the next time.”
Helga nodded slowly. “Oh, I see! I mean, I think that could work?”
Benji exchanged a raised-eyebrow glance with Calarian. Had he just accidentally made Tournel a quasi-socialist-semi-democracy? It was a heady idea— that just maybe, political change didn’t need to begin with burning stuff down after all, and maybe sometimes it only took a sneeze to set everything in motion. And if that wasn’t quite exciting enough to soothe Benji’s revolutionary instincts, then he could at least take some comfort in the fact that he had killed an oppressor and an enemy of the people after all, right? Gunther might not have been a duke or a king, but he’d most certainly been and enemy of the common people, and an absolute arsehole to boot. Benji was pretty sure that made him a hero, actually.
He preened again.
“It would take a lot of paperwork,” a councillor down the table worried.
“I’m excellent at paperwork,” Calarian volunteered. “I’ve memorised all the Houses and Humans rules, and there are four volumes of those.”
“Who would be the candidates?” the commander asked.
“Anyone who had the duke as a father, which really, could be anyone in Tournel, or anyone who thinks they'd be fit for the job, really,” Benji said.
“We’re not going to make it compulsory to be in the running though, are we?” The commander asked worriedly, running a hand through his own thatch of thick blond hair.
Calarian shook his head. “Nobody should be enshackled with the weight of a position they don’t want.”