“I wanted to see the books before making my final decision,” Emily told him. “He refused to allow me to inspect them. Accordingly, I told him that I wouldn’t invest any money in his project. The rumors have no basis in fact.”
And yet, someone might have started the rumors to stave off disaster for a few more weeks, she thought, grimly. Vesperian could certainly have lied to his other investors…
Jalil looked grim. “What did you make of the project?”
Emily hesitated. “I didn’t see the books.” She wasn’t sure she should answer the question. “All I have to go on is…is my gut feeling. And my gut feeling is that Vesperian tried to move forward far too fast. I didn’t think he had any reasonable hope of paying off his investors before it was too late.”
Shock ran through the room. “I’ve invested thousands,” a guildmaster breathed. “I…”
“You weren’t the only one,” Jalil said.
“My guildsmen have invested too,” Guildmaster Merriam said. He was pale. “What will happen to them? Who owns the track now?”
Good question, Emily thought.
Jalil slammed the table. “We have to remain calm. We don’t even know the scale of the disaster…”
“Vesperian owed my guild thousands of crowns,” Guildmaster Merriam said. “If that isn’t paid within the next few weeks, we won’t be able to make our own payments! We might not even be able to resell the iron rails, wooden ties and other railway truck items we produced for him, if we repossess them…”
“Which we can’t, until we have a formal determination of who is owed what,” another guildmaster said. “This would never have happened on my watch!”
“This isn’t the time for gloating, Harman,” Jalil snarled.
“No,” Guildmaster Harman agreed. “But if Vesperian had hired a proper set of accountants, we might not be in this mess.”
“You lost most of your business because you were taking advantage of your customers,” Merriam pointed out. “And now you expect us to trust you?”
“I expect you to face the facts,” Harman said. “And the facts are that two-thirds of our entire population invested in the track. Some people invested a few crowns, others gave Vesperian their life savings. When it sinks in that all the money has vanished…what then?”
Sienna nudged Emily. “Harman lost the post of Grand Guildmaster when the Accountants Guild took a hit,” she muttered, as the guildmasters began to squabble. “It was sheer luck he managed to keep his seat on the council. Being right isn’t always a good thing.”
Emily nodded in agreement. The Accountants Guild had been corrupt – something that had only become evident when the New Learning had arrived, introducing the world to the joys of Arabic numbers and double-entry bookkeeping. And yes, it had been a brake on progress, ensuring that the money supply remained limited. But it had also made it impossible for Ponzi schemes to work. Vesperian would never have been able to attract so many investors before the Accountants Guild had collapsed.
She looked back at Sienna. “What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Sienna whispered. “I don’t think they know either.”
General Pollack cleared his throat. “You need to decide how to proceed.” He stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “You have asked me to take command of the City Guard, but I don’t have the manpower to control the streets if all hell breaks loose. Even with the Hands of Justice backing us, Guildmasters, I cannot even guarantee to protect this building.”
Emily frowned. The Hands of Justice were backing the City Guard…?
“Declare martial law,” Merriam snapped. “Tell the population to stay in their homes, or else.”
General Pollack snorted. “Or else what? We don’t have the manpower to enforce that, sir.”
“The investors want their money back,” a tired-looking man said. He was so colorless, his grey face matching his grey robes, that Emily wondered if he was ill. “But it will take years to calculate how much is actually owed, let alone to whom.”
“Nonsense,” Merriam said. “Give the bastards their money.”
The grey man shook his head. “Over the last twenty hours, my office has received over two hundred demands for immediate repayment and statements of claims on Vesperian’s estate. We lack even the basic data we need to calculate who is owed what. I don’t know if he kept an accurate register of who invested – and what notes they were given – but the notes have been swapped around so much that it will probably be worthless. This is not a simple assessment, Guildmaster.”
“And we’re running out of time,” General Pollack said. “How many people believe their notes will come due in--” he made a show of checking his watch “--seventeen hours?”
“There are already lines forming outside his offices, demanding repayment,” Harman said, wryly. He sounded amused. “And what will happen when the notes are not repaid?”
“Chaos,” Emily blurted.
“Which we will be unable to control,” General Pollack said. He glanced at Emily, then back at Harman. “Right now, the sole thing standing between us and rioting is the belief that those notes will be repaid.”
“And they can’t be repaid,” the grey man said. “Even if the paperwork is in order, it will take months to sort everything out…”
“We don’t have months.” Harman nodded to General Pollack. “We have seventeen hours.”
Merriam looked as if he wanted to panic. “Then tell them…tell them…”
Jalil snorted. “Tell them what?”
“Tell them that we are assessing the situation,” Harman said. “I can put together a team of accountants and take them to Vesperian’s offices. We can study his paperwork and put together a list of investors and debtors, then calculate the precise value of Vesperian’s assets.”
“Confiscate his mansion,” a guildmaster suggested.
“It doesn’t belong to him,” Merriam snapped. “He rented it.”
“It isn’t uncommon for a freeze in payments to take place after someone’s death,” Harman continued. “Tell the investors that we will begin paying out once we know what is actually owed.”