Chapter 6: Banished to the Budget Hole

The royal summons arrived at dawn, which Miles considered rude on several levels, not least because dawn was the only time of day when the capital smelled less like horse arguments and boiling pastry.

He had slept for approximately two hours in the back room of Madam Brioche’s bakery, curled between sacks of flour while the city outside recovered from what historians would later call the Croissant Panic. Someone had thrown a cream horn through a stained-glass window of the Merchant Exchange. The Bakers’ Guild had occupied three bridges and declared them sovereign confectionery zones. A mob of nobles, drunk on the intoxicating idea of paying less than full price for almond tarts, had overturned a carriage after discovering their coupons had expired at midnight.

Miles had tried to explain that scarcity, consumer psychology, and poorly structured redemption clauses were all predictable factors. The city guard had explained that if he said the word “liability” one more time, they were going to stuff him into a proofing oven.

So when the gold-sealed scroll came sliding under the bakery door accompanied by the sharp rap of a spear butt, Miles was already awake, staring at the ceiling beams while a mouse negotiated with a raisin.

Madam Brioche appeared in the doorway wearing a nightcap, an apron, and the expression of a woman who had seen empire rise and fall inside a mixing bowl.

“Is it the guild?” she whispered.

“If it is,” Miles said, sitting up and brushing flour from his hair, “tell them I died of gluten.”

The spear butt struck the door again.

“By order of His Radiant Majesty King Alaric Aurelius the Third,” called a voice from outside, “Miles Finch, summoned outsider and alleged hero, is to present himself before the royal court immediately.”

Madam Brioche’s eyes narrowed. “Alleged?”

“Honestly, that’s fair.”

He picked up the scroll. It was heavy parchment, scented faintly of lavender and panic. The royal seal had been pressed so hard into the wax that the lion rampant looked as if it were trying to escape.

Miles broke it open and read.

ROYAL DIRECTIVE 811-B: SPECIAL DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENT

By the wisdom of His Radiant Majesty, and in recognition of your unique talents, disruptive initiative, and recent contribution to urban unrest, you are hereby appointed Special Envoy for Cross-Border Fiscal Harmonization and Peaceful Frontier Engagement.

Departure: Immediate.

Destination: Demon Frontier.

Duration: Until further notice, successful peace, or confirmed devouring.

Miles stared at the last line.

Madam Brioche leaned over his shoulder. Her lips moved as she read. Then her face softened with maternal concern.

“Oh, dear.”

“They wrote ‘confirmed devouring’ in an official appointment letter.”

“At least they are being transparent.”

“That’s not transparency. That’s premeditated outsourcing.”

The bakery door opened before Miles could compose an objection, and two royal guards stepped inside. They wore polished breastplates and the strained cheer of men instructed to be polite while removing a contagious goat.

Between them stood Sir Cedric Dawnspear, the kingdom’s golden hero, blessed by at least three minor deities and probably moisturized by a fourth. His blond hair fell in immaculate waves over his shoulders. His armor gleamed despite the hour. He smelled faintly of sandalwood, fresh steel, and narrative importance.

“Miles,” Cedric said warmly.

“Cedric,” Miles said. “Did they make you come because you’re noble, or because if anyone else escorted me, I’d file an appeal?”

Cedric’s smile twitched. “His Majesty thought a familiar face might ease the transition.”

“Ah. So both.”

Madam Brioche stepped in front of Miles with a rolling pin clutched like a holy relic. “He helped my bakery.”

Behind her, three shelves sagged beneath unsold pastries stamped with coupon marks, and a handwritten sign read: NO MORE DISCOUNTS. ASK AGAIN AND LOSE A FINGER.

“Eventually,” she added.

Cedric bowed. “Madam, no one questions Master Finch’s intentions.”

“They should,” Miles muttered. “I question them constantly.”

One of the guards coughed into his gauntlet. “The court awaits.”

Miles looked down at himself. He wore the same white shirt and brown trousers he had arrived in six days earlier, now augmented with flour, scorch marks, and a mysterious purple stain from a potion vendor’s aggressive loyalty program. His loafers had survived death, dragon treasure, and a pastry riot, but the left one made a wet squelch when he stood.

“Can I at least wash up?”

Sir Cedric’s expression grew sympathetic in the way people looked at condemned prisoners who asked for a nicer rope.

“The carriage has towels.”

It did not.

The carriage had three armed guards, a box of travel biscuits, and a stack of documents tied with red ribbon thick enough to restrain a bull. Miles was wedged between Sir Cedric and a clerk whose nose was so sharp it looked optimized for puncturing excuses. The clerk introduced himself as Undersecretary Pindlewick of the Office of Border Affairs, Emergency Assignments, and Other Unpleasant Necessities.

“That’s a real office?” Miles asked as the carriage jolted over cobblestones still sticky with apricot glaze.

“A proud office,” Pindlewick said, clutching the document stack to his chest. “Founded during the Third Goblin Misunderstanding.”

“What happened during the first two?”

“We do not discuss them.”

Outside, the capital of Aurelia limped into morning. Sunlight spilled over white towers and gilded rooftops, turning the city into a vision from a holy painting, provided one ignored the baker barricades, the shattered windows, and a fountain clogged with custard. A squad of city guards marched past carrying confiscated baguettes like spears. A noblewoman in a pearl veil argued with a lamppost about the validity of a buy-one-get-one scone voucher.

Miles watched it all through the carriage window and felt the familiar accountant’s ache settle behind his eyes.

Numbers hovered wherever he looked.

CAPITAL MORALE: 41/100 and falling

PASTRY INVENTORY: 287% of sustainable demand

PROBABILITY OF SECOND RIOT IF “HALF-OFF” IS SPOKEN ALOUD: 63%

PUBLIC OPINION OF MILES FINCH: Chaotic Variable

He blinked the system message away. It never truly vanished. His legendary skill, Absolute Optimization, lived behind his sight like a second set of eyelids, peeling back the polite fiction of reality to expose inputs, outputs, inefficiencies, risks, ratios, hidden costs, morale penalties, production multipliers, and the exact financial impact of every bad decision made by people with crowns.

It had been interesting for the first hour after his death.

By day six, it had become exhausting.

At the palace gates, the carriage rolled past statues of heroic kings slaying monsters, lifting swords, or pointing toward destiny with frankly impractical shoulder capes. Miles noticed none of the statues depicted kings reviewing balance sheets or negotiating supply chains.

That explained a lot.

The royal court had assembled in the Sun Hall, a chamber designed by someone who believed intimidation could be achieved through gold leaf and uncomfortable acoustics. Pillars shaped like blooming lilies held up a ceiling painted with angels pouring sunlight from urns. The floor was polished white marble veined with gold, so glossy Miles could see his own sleep-deprived reflection staring up at him like a cautionary tale.

King Alaric Aurelius III sat on a throne beneath a canopy of sapphire silk. He was handsome in the distant, official way of coins: square jaw, silver-blond beard, blue eyes trained to look benevolent at balcony range. Beside him stood Queen Marielle, serene and unreadable, and below the dais clustered ministers in robes color-coded by department, which Miles found both helpful and depressing.

The red robes appeared to be military. Green, treasury. Violet, magical affairs. Gray, those who had personally suffered paperwork.

The goddess’s priestess, Liora, stood near the throne with her hands folded. She had summoned Miles from Earth expecting a legendary hero who could defeat the Demon Lord. She had received a man who could identify inventory shrinkage at thirty paces and had once defeated a dragon by proving its hoard had negative liquidity due to poor asset diversification.

She avoided his eyes.

“Miles Finch,” proclaimed the royal herald, “summoned champion of the Goddess Aurelia, subduer of Vermithrax the Emerald, innovator of commercial incentive systems, and temporary cause of civil pastry disturbance.”

Miles raised a hand. “I’d like ‘temporary’ entered into the official minutes.”

A minister in gray groaned softly and wrote something down.

King Alaric leaned forward. His smile had the brittle polish of a porcelain plate being forced to serve soup.

“Master Finch. We are grateful for your swift attendance.”

“Armed men collected me before breakfast, Your Majesty. Swift was implied.”

A ripple passed through the court. Cedric stepped subtly on Miles’s foot.

Miles smiled. “Honored to be here.”

“The kingdom,” the king continued, “finds itself at a delicate moment. Your arrival has brought many unexpected developments.”

“Some of them positive,” Liora said quickly.

One of the merchant ministers made a strangled sound.

“Yes,” said the king. “Positive. A dragon pacified. A bakery briefly successful. New commercial concepts introduced.”

“And weaponized by the middle class,” muttered the treasury minister, a narrow woman with silver spectacles and the haunted eyes of someone who had seen projections after midnight.

“Minister Vale,” the king said.

She pressed her lips together.

Miles turned toward her. “For what it’s worth, the coupon structure only collapsed because your guild system creates artificial scarcity, your anti-collusion laws appear to be decorative, and nobody here understands redemption caps.”

The treasury minister’s eyes flashed. For half a second, Miles thought she might hug him or have him executed.

“Exactly,” she hissed.

The king cleared his throat with royal force.

“Master Finch, while we value your insight, it has become clear that your talents are too… vigorous for the capital’s present equilibrium.”

“You mean I’m being banished.”

“No,” said the king, at the same moment three ministers said, “Yes.”

A silence dropped like a dropped chandelier.

Queen Marielle lifted her teacup to hide the smallest smile.

King Alaric’s jaw flexed. “You are being appointed to a position of immense diplomatic importance.”

“In the Demon Frontier.”

“Yes.”

“Which everyone here describes as cursed, doomed, and full of monsters.”

“A regrettable stereotype,” said a violet-robed mage.

“You wrote ‘confirmed devouring’ in the appointment letter.”

Undersecretary Pindlewick, who had somehow materialized near the dais, turned the color of old parchment. “That was legacy language.”

“From what legacy? Lunch?”

Cedric coughed. Liora stared very hard at the floor.

The king spread his hands. “The Demon Frontier has long been a source of tension along our eastern borders. Raids, disputes, unauthorized haunting, tariff evasion—”

“Tariff evasion?” Miles said.

Minister Vale’s spectacles glinted. “Demons are notorious for moving cursed artifacts across borders without declaration.”

“That’s not a demon problem. That’s a customs problem.”

“He understands,” Vale murmured, almost reverently.

King Alaric pressed on. “We believe your unique perspective may succeed where traditional diplomacy has struggled.”

“By which you mean traditional diplomats keep being eaten.”

“Only three,” said Pindlewick.

“In how many attempts?”

Pindlewick consulted a sheet. “Three.”

Miles looked at Cedric.

Cedric looked like he wanted to apologize but had been trained since childhood to do so heroically, which was not useful.

“Master Finch,” said Liora, stepping forward. Her white-and-gold robes whispered over the marble. “The goddess brought you here for a reason.”

“She brought me here because she thought my resume said ‘heroic swordsman’ and not ‘senior tax associate.’”

A faint flush rose in Liora’s cheeks. “Divine summoning is an interpretive art.”

“So is fraud.”

Another ripple through the court. The gray-robed ministers began writing faster.

King Alaric lifted one hand. “Enough. Master Finch, you will depart today as envoy. You will carry gifts, treaty drafts, and our sincere hope for peaceful engagement with Demon Lord Seraphina.”

At the name, the court’s warmth vanished.

Even the sunlight seemed to grow thin.

Miles had heard the name whispered in taverns and shouted by preachers. Seraphina of the Ashen Crown. Queen of Night Banners. Breaker of Seven Fortresses. The Demon Lord whose armies had once darkened the eastern sky with winged shadows and whose fortress sat beyond the Black Thorn Marches, where maps became vague and cartographers developed urgent religious vocations.

Miles’s system responded before his fear had finished booting up.

KNOWN ENTITY: SERAPHINA, DEMON LORD

PUBLIC REPUTATION: Catastrophic

Confirmed Data: Insufficient

Rumor Inflation: 312%

Advised Strategy: Acquire primary source information before screaming

That is disturbingly reasonable advice from a hallucinated spreadsheet.

“What exactly am I authorized to negotiate?” Miles asked.

The king smiled again. “Peace.”

“Peace is not a deliverable. It is a category heading.”

Minister Vale made a tiny sound of approval.

“You will have broad discretionary authority,” King Alaric said.

“Define broad.”

Pindlewick stepped forward eagerly, holding out the red-ribboned document stack. “We have prepared a complete envoy packet containing your credentials, travel warrants, ceremonial instructions, border protocols, emergency wills, and the current draft framework for demon frontier stabilization.”

Miles took the packet. It was heavy enough to concuss a mule.

“And if I refuse?”

The king’s smile did not move. “The capital remains in a fragile state. Several guilds have filed claims against you. The Church is receiving questions about why their summoned champion destabilized breakfast. The nobility demands restitution for pastry-related injuries. It would be politically difficult to guarantee your safety.”

“So my choices are monsters or litigants.”

Minister Vale grimaced. “Choose monsters.”

Miles looked around the hall. He saw polished armor, silk robes, sacred jewels, divine murals, and the soft faces of people who had never cleaned up after one of their own policies. He saw Cedric, guilt-ridden and helpless. Liora, ashamed but hopeful. Vale, furious at incompetence but trapped inside it. The king, not cruel exactly, but accustomed to moving inconvenient pieces off the board and calling it strategy.

Numbers shimmered over them all.

COURT DESIRE FOR MILES TO ACCEPT: 94%

COURT BELIEF MILES WILL SURVIVE: 18%

COURT BELIEF THIS SOLVES THEIR PROBLEM: 71%

ACTUAL PROBABILITY THIS SOLVES THEIR PROBLEM: 6%

Miles rubbed his temple.

“Fine.”

A sigh of relief swept the court so strong it almost ruffled banners.

“I’ll go,” Miles said. “But I want copies of all frontier budgets, military expense ledgers, subsidy registers, treaty records, customs receipts, and incident reports for the last ten years.”

The relief died.

Minister Vale’s head snapped up.

King Alaric blinked. “Why?”

“Because if I’m walking into what may be either a diplomatic mission or a buffet, I’d like to know who’s been paying for the table.”

Pindlewick hugged the packet tighter. “Those records are extensive.”

“Great. I’ll read on the road.”

“Some are classified.”

“So is my expected devouring, apparently.”

Minister Vale turned to the king. “Your Majesty, if he is empowered as special envoy, he is legally entitled to relevant fiscal records under the War Powers Reconciliation Act.”

The king gave her a look that said betrayal came in many colors and today it wore treasury green.

“Very well,” he said.

Miles nodded. “Also a horse.”

“Granted.”

“A horse that doesn’t hate accountants.”

Cedric winced. “That may be difficult to certify.”

“Then a carriage.”

“Granted,” said the king.

“With suspension.”

“Do not push your luck, Master Finch.”

By noon, Miles stood in the palace’s eastern courtyard beside a black-lacquered carriage that had clearly been chosen for its ability to look dignified from a funeral distance. Four horses stamped at the traces, snorting steam into the autumn air. Their harness bells chimed softly beneath the shouts of stablehands loading crates.

The “diplomatic gifts” included three barrels of salted fish, a chest of ceremonial daggers, six bolts of silver cloth, two casks of wine, one enchanted mirror “for goodwill,” and a fruit basket wrapped in gold ribbon. The fruit basket had a label reading: To Demon Lord Seraphina, In Friendship And Mutual Non-Aggression.

Miles inspected the pears. One had a bruise shaped like a skull.

“Symbolically unfortunate,” he said.

“They’re seasonal,” said Pindlewick, who would accompany him as far as the border to ensure the documents were handed over and, Miles suspected, to verify whether screaming occurred.

Sir Cedric approached carrying a travel cloak of blue wool.

“For the road,” he said.

Miles accepted it. The fabric was thick, warm, and smelled faintly of cedar. “Thanks.”

Cedric glanced toward the palace windows, where curtains shifted with poorly concealed watchers. “I’m sorry.”

“For the cloak?”

“For this.”

Miles tied the cloak around his shoulders. “You’re not the one banishing me.”

“I should have argued harder.”

“Would it have worked?”

Cedric’s silence answered.

“Then you optimized your energy expenditure,” Miles said. “Questionable emotionally, but efficient.”

Cedric studied him. “Are you frightened?”

“I died from overwork, woke up in a world with health bars, got yelled at by a goddess, audited a dragon, and accidentally invented pastry-based class warfare. My fear response has become more of a rotating suggestion box.”

The hero laughed despite himself. Then his expression sobered. “The Demon Lord is dangerous.”

“So are kings.”

Cedric looked toward the Sun Hall. His voice dropped. “Seraphina killed my uncle during the Ash Campaign.”

Miles paused.

For once, no joke arrived on schedule.

Cedric’s hand rested on the pommel of his sword. “Or that is what I was told. He rode east with six hundred men. Twenty-three returned. They said the sky turned black and fire walked like wolves.”

Beyond them, the horses shifted. Harness leather creaked. Somewhere in the city, a bell tolled noon over streets still dusted in flour and anger.

“I’ll be careful,” Miles said.

“No,” Cedric said. “Be yourself.”

Miles blinked. “That seems like precisely what caused this problem.”

“Yes. But it also solved the dragon.” Cedric smiled crookedly. “And Madam Brioche did say revenues improved before the riot.”

“Briefly.”

“A heroic amount of briefly.”

Miles snorted.

Liora arrived just as Pindlewick began fussing over departure seals. The priestess carried a small white charm on a gold chain, shaped like a sunburst.

“A blessing,” she said.

“Is it tax deductible?”

Her mouth tightened. “It protects against minor curses, venomous fog, and despair.”

“Minor despair or regular despair?”

“Miles.”

He sighed and lowered his head so she could place it around his neck. The charm was warm against his skin, pulsing once like a tiny heartbeat.

Liora’s fingers lingered at the clasp. “The goddess is not angry with you.”

“She has an interesting way of showing it.”

“She is… confused.”

“Good. We have that in common.”

Liora looked up at him, eyes bright with a sincerity that made him uncomfortable. “I think there is more to your summoning than any of us understand.”

“That’s usually what people say before an invoice triples.”

She almost smiled. “Survive the frontier. Please.”

Miles touched the charm. The system obligingly produced a line of text.

BLESSED SUN CHARM

Curse Resistance +12%

Despair Mitigation +7%

Emotional Burden From Priestess Guilt: +19%

Helpful and uncalled for.

He climbed into the carriage.

The capital gates opened before him with a groan of chains. Beyond them, the eastern road unrolled through golden fields and low hills, toward a horizon bruised purple by distant mountains. Miles looked back once. The city glittered in sunlight, beautiful from far away, like most expensive mistakes.

Then the driver cracked the reins, and Aurelia began to recede behind him.

For the first hour, Pindlewick attempted polite conversation.

“Have you ever served as an envoy before?”

“I once mediated a dispute between audit and payroll over who stole the good stapler.”

“Was peace achieved?”

“No survivors.”

Pindlewick stopped attempting polite conversation.

Miles opened the first folder from the envoy packet.

He had expected medieval vagueness. Perhaps some wax-sealed declarations, a few dramatic maps with skulls in the margins, troop counts rounded to the nearest prophecy. Instead he found forms. Endless forms. Aurelia loved forms with the helpless passion of a kingdom that had discovered bureaucracy and mistaken it for civilization.

There were border toll reports, garrison maintenance logs, emergency requisitions, clerical summaries, casualty reimbursements, ward-stone depreciation schedules, monster incursion response matrices, and a table titled Miscellaneous Demon-Adjacent Expenditures, which immediately earned his full attention.

The carriage rattled eastward. Sunlight flickered through the window as trees lined the road, their leaves turning copper and red. Villages passed in bursts of chimney smoke, barking dogs, and children who ran after the carriage until they saw the royal seal and remembered better hobbies.

Miles read.

At first, the numbers behaved like numbers. Garrisons cost money. Roads needed repairs. Border farms received compensation when raids burned barns or carried off livestock. Magical wards required mana crystals, which apparently had a market price fluctuating with lunar phases and wizard egos.

Then the categories began to blur.

A demon attack on a grain village had been filed under Crop Loss Stabilization.

A goblin raid disrupting a cabbage harvest appeared as Soil Renewal Incentive.

A winged horror carrying away six cows and one tax assessor had been classified as Livestock Mobility Assistance.

Miles sat up.

“Pindlewick.”

The undersecretary flinched awake, spectacles crooked. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was reviewing internally.”

“Why are demon invasions filed as agricultural subsidies?”

Pindlewick went very still.

The carriage wheels clattered over a stone bridge. Water flashed below, bright and innocent.

“Which demon invasions?” Pindlewick asked.

Miles slowly lifted the folder.

“All of them.”

Pindlewick swallowed.

Miles flipped pages. “Here. ‘Eastern Border Incursion, ash imps, seven barns burned, sixteen sheep cursed into reciting poetry.’ Filed as Pastoral Arts Grant.”

“The sheep did become more expressive.”

“Here. ‘Night raid by horned cavalry, three watchtowers destroyed.’ Filed as Rural Vertical Infrastructure Modernization.”

“They were rebuilt taller.”

“Here. ‘Demon Lord’s lieutenant briefly occupied mill, demanded tribute, left after complaining about flour quality.’ Filed as Small Business Consultation.”

Pindlewick removed his spectacles and polished them with shaking fingers. “Master Finch, frontier accounting is… complicated.”

“No, derivative securities are complicated. This is arson with a farming hat.”

He turned another page, then another. His Absolute Optimization skill hummed behind his eyes, connecting figures, dates, categories, names. Lines of pale blue light traced patterns across the documents. Payments appeared where no payments should be. Subsidies increased after raids. Noble estates near the border reported recurring “demon damage” while improving wine cellars, buying hunting lodges, and expanding ornamental hedge mazes.

Then he found the summary table.

His mouth went dry.

ANOMALY DETECTED: FRONTIER SUBSIDY SCHEME

Total Demon Incursion Relief Paid Over 10 Years: 18,440,000 aurels

Estimated Legitimate Losses: 4,120,000 aurels

Misclassified Agricultural Subsidies: 9,870,000 aurels

Administrative Leakage: 3,200,000 aurels

Probability Of Organized Fraud: 97.4%

Probable Beneficiaries: Border Nobility, Supply Guilds, Certain Treasury Officials, Unknown Demon Counterparties

Miles stared at the last line.

“Unknown demon counterparties,” he whispered.

Pindlewick made a noise like a kettle losing hope.

“Did the kingdom,” Miles said slowly, “create a financial incentive for its own nobles to exaggerate demon attacks?”

“Not intentionally.”

“Did it then reimburse them through agricultural subsidy channels because war relief required parliamentary approval?”

Pindlewick stared at his knees.

“Possibly procedurally.”

“Did anyone consider that paying people more when demons attack might make them less enthusiastic about preventing demon attacks?”

“There were memos.”

“Were the memos filed under agriculture too?”

“One was.”