Chapter 351 --351
The amounts collected, the frequency, what happened when villages could not meet the collection, and where the collected goods and money are currently located."
Silence.
She waited.
She was good at waiting.
"Your Majesty," he said, in the tone of a man attempting to shift the ground of a conversation to somewhere more comfortable, "perhaps this would be better discussed in a more formal setting, where the full administrative context—"
"The men of Tarven village who are standing behind my guards," she said, "include one whose leg will not heal correctly because of what happened during your last collection. He walked four miles through forest terrain to be here today." She looked at Harwick steadily. "I think the current setting is adequate."
Harwick looked at the Tarven men. His jaw tightened.
"The accounting records for this garrison," she continued, "will be reviewed by imperial auditors who will arrive within the week. The chain of reporting above this garrison — Commander Solt’s district administration — will be reviewed simultaneously." She watched his face when she said Solt’s name and she saw what she had expected to see. "In the interim, I am issuing the following instructions."
She turned to Arek. He produced the document she had written in the carriage during the first four hours of the journey — not this document specifically, but the form of it, the imperial instruction template she had brought because she had learned to bring the tools for decisions she hadn’t made yet. She had filled it in during the three minutes she had waited at the treeline.
"All collection activity in this corridor is suspended, effective immediately," she said. "Any goods currently held in this garrison that were obtained through supplementary procurement in the past eight months are to be inventoried and held pending the audit. The garrison’s current food and material stores — the garrison’s own operational stores — are to be made available for transfer to the three affected villages in amounts sufficient to address the immediate shortfall, which the imperial auditors will calculate against the village records."
She looked at the thirty-seven soldiers.
"The soldiers of this garrison are doing their duty to the empire," she said. "The actions that have been taken in this corridor were taken under command, and command is where the responsibility sits. This is not directed at you." She looked back at Harwick. "It is directed at Commander Harwick, who will remain in this garrison under the supervision of the shadow unit currently positioned throughout this installation—"