Determination and Discovery

One word described the village: poverty.

There was a dirty 'street' down the middle of the village, where a crowd of skinny children stood around with frightened, hungry faces like stray dogs. Their eyes asked, Is this new person going to kick me? All of them wore gray shirts that came down to their knees more or less, and their dirty hair was cut short on both the boys and the girls. The dogs were as dirty as the children, and their ribs stuck out. The village was surrounded by the forest, and the houses were just huts.

Aliya started to get angry. People shouldn't be living like this! But here they were, and they'd been living this way a long time. They were surviving somehow, but their poverty was her fault. Well, it was actually the former Countess' fault, but the new countess was going to do something about it.

After looking around, Aliya got back in the carriage. Her eyes shone with such fire that Martha choked on her words mid-sentence.

"Who do I talk to here? Is there a village elder? Who's in charge of the village?"

"They're all out in the fields," Martha shrugged. "They won't be back until evening. If you want to talk to someone, there's just Old Mattie."

"Old Mattie?"

"I told you. Her husband was the Comptroller before this one. When Irk died, the master sent us Etor. Don't you remember? Your husband said—"

Aliya stopped her. "Of course, I remember all of that. I was just thinking of something else. Let's go." She wondered how old the woman was if everyone called her Old Mattie.

Martha stuck her head out the window and told the coachman to turn left while Aliya pondered the social rules that might govern paying of visits. She didn't think she could just walk in and say, "Hi, I live over that way in the castle. Have some flowers. I need your help." But if she didn't come up with anything better, that was exactly what she would do.

Her musings were interrupted by a child's cry. Aliya turned to see what had happened, and Martha called for the carriage to stop. Aliya threw open the door and managed to crawl out. Life is ten times harder when you weigh over two hundred and seventy pounds.

The children had been running around in the street, jostling each other and playing games. A carriage was something new, so they were excited. One of the children climbed up on a fence to get a better look and fell. He would have been fine, but his leg hit a sharp piece of wood that left a jagged wound. His friends saw the blood and started to scream and cry. All of this happened just a few feet away from Aliya.

Her reflexes kicked in, and she forgot about everything else—her new body, how she ended up in this new world. She knelt in the dirt by the wounded boy not as Countess Lilian Earton, brainless fool, but as Aliya Skorolenok, one of the best students at the Ryazan Medical School. Her ungainly body and the medieval conditions around her meant nothing. She was facing a person who needed help, and that was all that mattered.

Her voice was soft and calming as she spoke, "Don't worry, he's going to be fine. I can see that your friend is a brave boy, and he doesn't need to cry about a little scrape like this. It will heal over, and the scar will look good on him, won't it?"

She kept talking in a soft voice and carefully pulled the boy's hands away from the wound. At first glance, it was nothing serious. The bone wasn't broken, and no arteries had been touched. The skin was broken, and a muscle was hurt. She just needed to stitch it up and be sure to disinfect it.

"My Lady?" It was her faithful Martha. The coachman stood awkwardly nearby.

Aliya looked up at him. "You there. What's your name—Jacques?"

"Jean."

"Whatever. Take this child and carry him, let me see..."

"To my house," a friendly, deep voice interjected.

Aliya turned. "Who are you?"

"Emma Mattie, My Lady."

Aliya nodded. "Jean, take the boy to Emma's house. Hurry up. Emma, I need the finest needle you have and some silk thread. You can rip four or five of them off my dress. I'll also need strong wine, hot water, and clean rags. Can you get me those things?"

Emma nodded.

***

Aliya worked fast and confidently. After drinking a cup of strong wine, the boy was almost asleep. She washed his leg, stitched it up, and applied a bandage. It was all done quickly and neatly.

Her professors would have been proud. Less than an hour after his mishap, the child was asleep on a bench in the corner under a warm blanket. Emma promised to keep an eye on him until his parents returned from the fields. Aliya promised to come back every day to check his leg. She would have preferred to take him back to the castle, but she didn't know where she would put him, and she wasn't sure where her rights as Countess ended. Martha was already shocked by what she had seen.

As was Emma. An attractive woman about fifty years-old with bright, intelligent brown eyes, and streaks of gray in her dark hair, but her posture was straight and youthful. She was dressed as if she had known better times, but even now, her clothes were clean enough, if plain and gray. Aliya watched the woman for a few minutes, unsure how to begin, before deciding to just jump in.

"I was on my way to see you, Emma."

The widow Mattie was obviously taken aback. Aliya gave her friendliest smile. "I know my arrival here was unexpected. Let me explain. Would you rather sit outside in my carriage or here in the house? Please don't worry. I came because I heard good things about you."

"What exactly?"

Aliya saw that the woman was smart. She nodded. "Plenty. You were married to the former Comptroller. When he was in charge, the estate was run properly. Doesn't it hurt you to see everything your husband worked for going to waste?"

She saw that she had hit a nerve. With the help of two women, I'm going to make a life for myself in this new world.

She told Emma Mattie the story she had cooked up: that after she lost her baby, she couldn't keep living as she had before. For a start, she wanted to bring order to the estate, since she suspected her Comptroller was stealing. Then she would turn her attention to the villages of Earton. What Aliya learned from Emma was worth the long drive.

There were three types of coin in Ativerna. Gold crowns and silver scepters, which were named for the symbols stamped on them, and simple copper coins. One gold coin was equal to twenty silver coins, and each silver coin was equal to fifty copper coins. A chambermaid was paid twenty copper coins a month. A soldier earned one silver. A bag of turnips cost three coppers. Five coppers would buy a pile of firewood.

The Comptroller was supposed to make sure that the peasants worked the Earl's fields, but he went beyond that and charged them ten silver coins per village, to be paid each month. The peasants scrimped and saved to pay the tax, but the Comptroller turned around and cheated the Earl by skimming off the top for himself. He padded all the estate's bills and put the difference in his own pocket, and he often claimed to have bought something for the estate that could never be found in any of the storerooms.

Jess Earton might not notice, but Aliya felt bound to do something to help these people now that she was in their world. She might have gone easy on the Comptroller if Emma had not added that he taxed some families by taking their daughters and selling them to the slave traders whose ships sailed down the coast.

And because the fewer witnesses, the better, he had sent all the castle guards and some of the servants home, despite the fact that the castle was already short-staffed with just ten of each. They were told that they wouldn't be paid any longer, so they could find other jobs or go sit at home. Whenever the Earl showed up, the Comptroller told him that the guards were patrolling the coast or staking out robbers in the villages. He was a professional liar, and it never entered the Earl's mind to inspect his villages and talk to people when he could be out hunting.

Once she had the whole story, Aliya was enraged. If she had been in her own body, she knew what she would have done—make the man cry until he gave all the money back. In this new body, though, she couldn't do anything at all. Except... An evil smile crossed her lips.

"How many strong young men are there in the village?" she asked Emma. "Or maybe some of the old castle guards still live around here?"

Emma frowned and thought for a while. Then she told Aliya that there were about fifty men between the ages of twenty and forty living in the village. Two of them had served as guards at the castle. The entire population of the village numbered about three hundred.

Aliya couldn't wait. "How can I find them?"

"There are three places they'd be: the fields, the forest, or down at the river."

"I don't want to go hunting around in the forest. Should I go out to the fields or send someone to call them in? I need about ten men; the sooner, the better."

Emma studied the Countess' face and gave a slow smile. Has the time really come?

A minute later, they had found some boys outside and promised them sweets in exchange for an errand. The children ran off in all directions to find their fathers and older brothers. Meanwhile, Aliya sat with Emma and listened to more of her stories. She couldn't stop clenching her fists in anger.

The villagers had few animals left. They were forced to sell their crops for next to nothing, and they were worried about making it through the winter. Each winter, the village lost several dozen members. Old people stopped eating so the children would get enough. Instead, they ate bark, acorns, and even grass.

And all the while Lilian Earton has been eating ten-course dinners! Aliya was ashamed to have Emma's eyes on her. All that kept her from dying of shame was the knowledge that none of this was actually her fault. It may have been Lilian's body, but it was Aliya's mind. Aliya knew she had been given a second chance—both for herself and for the silly Countess.

It took at least an hour for the first group of five men to show up. Martha informed her of their arrival.

Aliya sized them up. They didn't look ready to set the world on fire. Their dirty gray clothes were patched and darned, and their shoes were wooden clogs. Their beards and hair were trimmed short. Most importantly for Aliya, their eyes telegraphed a message in giant letters: What does this woman want?

Aliya took the bull by the horns without waiting for them to speak. "Do you want to make some money?"

It took the men all of twenty seconds to think over her offer. Then the message in their eyes changed: Silver coin!

Aliya smiled. "As Countess of Earton, I am reassembling the castle's guard. I guarantee each of you three silver coins a month, as well as clothing and food while you serve. You can take extra food home with you. If you want to join up, take whatever weapons you have and follow me back to Earton Castle. We'll sign a contract, and you'll get your first payment."

"What do we need weapons for?" asked a young man with suspiciously familiar brown eyes.

Aliya grinned. "We're going to convince the Comptroller to let go of some money."

"You mean, kill him?"

"Just convince him."

Aliya, Emma, and the young man all had the same fire in their eyes. Sometimes, it takes a sharp blade to convince a man to part with his money.

"How about an ax?"

"Let me see it."

Aliya examined the weapon and nodded. "This will do for now. We'll get you a better weapon later. There must be some weapons left in the castle. He can't have taken them all!"

Judging by the looks on the men's faces, they knew exactly what she wanted and didn't mind doing it.

***

Aliya didn't get home until late evening. She was mad as a hornet, tired, and hungry, but she decided she wouldn't eat until she had finished cleaning out the corruption in her household.

The castle was quiet. She smelled burned porridge and saw dirty streaks on the floor. She snorted and headed for the kitchen. Her instincts were correct. All the servants, the Comptroller, and his wife were sitting in the kitchen. They didn't look as cheerful as they had that morning.

Aliya sailed right in. "I see you're having a nice break. Is the stable sparkling clean, or does it look as bad as the castle? If you gentlemen, and I can't remember all your names, threw some straw on the floors and thought that was good enough, then I'm here to disappoint you. You'll wish you'd never seen that straw when I'm done whipping you. Is that clear?"

Judging by the color of the grooms' faces, they understood her perfectly. Aliya smiled and added a few more expressions she had picked up from her days as an army brat. She had read somewhere that what was called foul language actually used to be magical incantations, and that would explain the magical effect her words had on the grooms, who jumped up and ran off to finish their jobs.

She turned her bright eyes to the chambermaids, who didn't even wait for her to speak before flying from the room. Last, she turned to the Comptroller with a friendly grin that bared her teeth. "I think it's time for the two of us to have a chat."

Etor's face went pale. He swallowed. Then he followed her from the kitchen.

Aliya already knew where his office was. She sat down at his desk and smiled at him again.

"Well? Let's see your reports."

"But My Lady, why would you—"

"The reports!" she growled. Her tone was so convincing that Etor gave in and opened the chest where he kept his books. Aliya suspected that it wasn't just her voice that won him over. The four young men who had come in with her—two of Emma's sons, the village elder's son, and the older brother of the boy she had stitched up, all of whom held axes in their long arms—played their role as well, as they eyed the Comptroller.

It had taken her all day to find the men she needed, agree on payment with them, get transportation back to the castle for them, and have the blacksmith fix her horses' shoes. She was looking at more long hours back in the village the next day. Aliya was too tired to be angry at that point in the evening, but she still had plenty of choice words left in her vocabulary.

However, when the Comptroller laid six big books on the table in front of her, even her favorite swear words left her.

"Tell me what this book is."

"It's a list of revenue."

"What about this one?"

"Expenses."

Aliya thumbed through the books, which were nothing but columns of numbers. "Wonderful. Now, I want you to stand over here next to me and read down each column with me—how much the estate made and on what. Give me some paper and a quill. While you read out loud, I'm going to take notes and do some adding. Then we'll look at expenses."

She had hit just the right tone with him. She could have waded through the accounts on her own, but it would have taken twice as long. Time was money, and Aliya didn't want to waste either.

Etor did his best to weasel out of the position he was in. He wheedled and pleaded and tried to confuse her with complicated terms and irrelevant information, but he was out of luck. Aliya had been raised on 21st-century television news channels, the champion liars of all time; Etor never stood a chance. Once she wrote everything out, added it up and made some comparisons, the truth was clear.

The estate Comptroller had been ripping her off. He was stealing excessively, stupidly, and far above his pay grade. She had three options, the way she saw it: she could fire him, drag him into court, or have him whipped. A man couldn't walk very far after a hundred lashes, and he couldn't very well complain to the King while holding his head in one hand. She could do whatever she wanted with the Comptroller.

On second thought, it was her husband who could do whatever he wanted. Aliya wasn't sure exactly where her authority ended, so she decided to be creative. Turning to Etor, she suggested that he return three-quarters of what he'd stolen and take the remaining one-quarter to tide him over while he looked for another job. If he didn't like that option, he could always have his head chopped off, and Aliya would hold his wife's feet to the fire to find out where he kept all his money.

Etor's opening offer was one hundred gold coins. When she countered by threatening to hang him on the spot, that amount doubled. Aliya had no intention of letting him go easily. Hold a genie over a hot frying pan, and he will give you ten times more wishes. Etor quickly doubled his offer again. After lengthy negotiations (the young men did all the negotiating, with Aliya telling them where to hit him), he doubled it once again.

In the end, Aliya got about eight hundred gold coins out of him. She had a strong suspicion that this was only half of what he had stolen, but it was plenty for what she intended to do.

She should have had him disemboweled, or at least drag him in front of a judge. Execution was too good for him, but she didn't think she could hand down a death sentence, even if she had the authority.

Etor sensed her changing mood. He crawled in front of her and whined like a puppy, nearly licking her shoes, and begged to be allowed to care for his small children and elderly parents. Aliya knew he was lying and that she would lose face by letting him go. On the other hand, she thought, no one in this world respects me anyway. She wouldn't tell anyone that she'd let him go, and she suspected that she could make the village men hold their tongues, as well.

There was always more than one way to shear a sheep. Instead of a judge and public hanging (where she suspected she'd make a fool of herself), she asked Emma's son to ride through all the villages and tell people that the Comptroller had been thrown out and would be leaving Earton in the morning with his wife. If Emma's son didn't wish to go on this errand, he could send boys to carry the news.

Then she caught the young man's eye and, smiling broadly, added, "Let the people sell him a horse if they think he deserves it."

The young man gave a wolfish grin that made Aliya shiver. She wouldn't use her own hands, but the Comptroller would get what he had coming to him. Let the people you robbed be your judges.

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