And one by one, the women drift toward the Retiring Room.
They go in walking heavily, their purses weighing down their belts, their pockets bulging with “spare” jewelry.
They come out walking lightly. They come out smiling.
I watch as Gerhardt’s assistants scurry back and forth from the tent to the Vault entrance, carrying innocuous-looking laundry baskets that clink heavily with the sound of gold.
Across the courtyard, near the smoking braziers of the men’s tent, I spot Kenric. He is not drinking. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Duke Jellema, their heads bent in quiet conversation.
I tune my hearing, filtering out the music and the gossip.
"The King grows more unstable, Hedde," I hear Kenric say, his voice low and serious. "And Víl?’s safety is tied to my standing. A Viscount is easily brushed aside. An Earl is not."
Jellema swirls his wine, watching Oskar laugh at a crude joke. "True. And with Aart Lindeman... absent... there is a gap in the peerage. But an Earldom is earned, Kenric, not just requested."
"Look around you," Kenric counters, gesturing to the tents, the gold, and the order I have brought to the chaos. "I brought you the Fey. I secured the trade deal. And I am the only one keeping the King from declaring war on a superior power. Is that not earned?"
Jellema looks at Kenric, really looks at him, then nods slowly. "We will discuss the particulars of the your estates later. Keep managing your wife, Kenric. And I will manage the King."
I smile into my wine glass. My husband is learning.
Near the roast pig, King Oskar laughs at something Duke Kiempe says.
“Look at them,” Oskar sneers, gesturing with his wine goblet toward the line of women waiting for the tent. “Fussing over their hair. Fixing their makeup. Women cannot go an hour without a mirror.”
“Let them preen,” Kiempe laughs. “Keeps them out of our hair while we discuss the hunt.”
I sip my wine, watching the wealth of Centis flow like a river out of the pockets of the patriarchy and into my iron vault.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I think, watching Elsa emerge from the tent with an empty purse and a straight spine. “Let them fix their makeup. They are just putting on their war paint.”
I sit going over the ledgers after the party. The Garden Party was a triumph of distraction. The Duchesses are placated, their purses lighter, and my vault heavier. Oskar is happily eating off his blue plates, unaware that half his court is now hiding assets from him in my vault.
But as I review the ledgers, I am dissatisfied. There are far to few entries in this for it bring the kind of change that needs to happen.
“Gold,” I mutter, tapping a page. “It is heavy. It is powerful, but there are not enough rows.”
Melina looks up from her mending. “You have half the nobility on the books, My Lady. Is that not enough?”
“Nobles are fickle, Melina,” I say, standing up and pacing. “They spend. They gamble. They lose favor. Real economic stability does not come from fifty whales. It comes from five million minnows.”
I look out the window toward the lower city, where the smoke from the laundry fires and bakeries rises into the grey sky.
“The washerwomen,” I decide. “The fishwives. The seamstresses. The women who count coppers to buy turnips. That is where the real power is.”
“But, My Lady,” Melina hesitates. “They will not come to the Embassy. The guards scare them. The marble scares them. And they do not have gold to deposit.”
“Then we shall go to them,” I announce. “And we shall not ask for gold. We will ask for copper.”
I will have to talk to Jan Vermeersch about opening an auxillary in that part of the city.
The next morning, we are standing in the center of the Lower Market. It is a chaotic, smelly place, far removed from the perfumed air of the palace gardens. I am dressed simply in a sturdy wool dress and a heavy cloak while standing behind a makeshift table.
On the table, I have stacked crates of “seconds” from the Potters’ Guild, the bowls and cups of Oskar Blue glaze that had slight bubbles or uneven rims, which Albrecht was going to destroy until I stopped him .
They still look like treasures to the women walking by.
“Free basin with every new account!” Melina calls out, though her voice is a bit thin for a street hawker.
A group of washerwomen pauses. They have red, chapped hands and suspicious eyes. One of them, a broad-shouldered woman with gray hair escaping her scarf, steps forward.
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“An account?” she asks, eyeing the blue bowls. “With the Fey bank? What does a Princess want with my laundry money? Is this a new tax?”
“It is the opposite of a tax,” I say, stepping forward. “What is your name?”
“Magda.”
“Magda,” I say. “Where do you keep your savings? The coppers you hide from your husband so he doesn't drink them?”
The other women gasp. Magda narrows her eyes. “I didn't say I had any.”
“But you do,” I smile. “Any woman with her wits about her has them. Maybe in a sock. Maybe under a loose brick near the hearth. But it is dangerous there, isn't it? If he finds it... it's gone.”
Magda crosses her arms and stares at me, but she doesn't deny it.
“I am offering you a Vault,” I say. “Iron walls. Fey guards. No man, not your husband, not the tax collector, not even the King, can touch what is inside without your mark.”
“For coppers?” Magda scoffs. “Banks are for gold.”
“Money is money,” I state. “And here is the magic, Magda. If you put ten coppers in a sock, in a year, you have ten coppers. If you put ten coppers with me... In a year, you have eleven.”
“Magic?” she asks suspiciously.
“Interest,” I correct. “I pay you to hold your money. It grows. Like yeast.”
I pick up one of the heavy, deep blue bowls.
“Open an account with two coppers today,” I say, holding the bowl out. “And you get this. Solid stoneware. Perfect for dough. Or soaking clothes. Or throwing at a man who asks where your money went.”
Magda looks at the bowl. It is beautiful, far better than the cracked wood she likely uses and probably more hygienic. She looks at me. She looks at the ledger Melina is holding.
“And he can't get at it?” she whispers. “My man?”
"The account requires a signature or a mark,” I explain. “I will record yours. If anyone else tries to inquire about the account or withdraw anything, the Royal Fey Bank guards will... discuss the matter with them.”
Magda reaches into her bodice. She pulls out a small, knotted rag. She undoes it, revealing three dull copper coins.
“Three coppers,” she says, slapping them on the table. “And I want the big bowl.”
“Done,” I say.
Melina quickly writes down Magda of the River District in the ledger. I hand Magda a small, iron token, the one thing that ties her to this account and Magda makes her mark in the book.
Magda walks away, clutching the bowl like a shield. The other women watch her go. They see the beautiful blue glaze. They see the empty rag where the dangerous money used to be.
Then, the dam breaks.
“I have two coppers!” a fishwife shouts, pushing forward.
“I have a silver groat!” a seamstress calls out.
For the rest of the afternoon, I do not deal in the heavy gold of Duchesses. I deal in sweat-stained copper, bent silver, and coins that smell of fish and lye. By the time the sun sets, the crates of pottery are empty, and the ledger has two hundred new names.
We walk back to the Embassy, Melina carrying a heavy sack of small change.
“It is not much wealth, My Lady,” she notes. “Maybe fifty gold pieces in total.”
“It is not about the amount, Melina,” I say, watching the lights of the city flicker on. “It is about the dependency. Today, two hundred women realized they don't have to be afraid of their husbands finding their stash. It will be about the others that they tell. They are now loyal to the Bank. And by extension... to me.”
I smile. “Once word spreads, the resurrection machine will truly start to work. All that dead money will start coming back to life.”
The rumor mill in Centis does not run on water or wind. Apparently, it runs on the whispers of washerwomen.
It takes exactly two days for the news to spread from the Lower Market to the Tanner’s District, and from there to the Slums. The story, as it travels, becomes almost mythical: The Fey Princess is giving away magic bowls. If you put your copper in her iron house, your husband cannot see it, cannot touch it, and cannot drink it.
On the third morning, I wake up to the low, buzzing hum of a crowd.
“My Lady,” Melina says, pulling back the curtains. “You should look outside.”
I look out the window of the guest wing.
The line stretches from the heavy iron doors of the Bank, winds through the courtyard, snakes out the main gate, and disappears down the cobbled street toward the river. It is not a line of carriages and silk. It is a line of wool shawls, aprons, and muddy boots.
There are hundreds of them.
“It seems Magda has a big mouth,” I note with satisfaction.
“There are too many,” Melina worries. “We don't have enough clerks. Or enough bowls.”
“Then we open the overflow counters,” I order, dressing quickly. “And tell Albrecht to fire the kilns. I don't care about quality anymore. I want five hundred bowls a day. Rough clay, single dip in the blue glaze. Just make them blue.”
By midday, the Great Hall of the Bank, usually a place of hushed whispers and scratching quills, is a chaotic marketplace of finance.
We have set up trestle tables near the entrance for the “Small Accounts.” The air smells of wet wool, onions, and desperation. So much desperation.
I stand on the balcony overlooking the floor, watching the transactions. It is simple, brutal, and efficient.
A woman steps up. She hands over a handful of copper or a single silver coin. The clerk weighs it, scribbles in a ledger, and hands her a small iron token and a blue bowl. The woman clutches the bowl like it is the Holy Grail and hurries out, usually hiding the token in her shoe.
“It looks like a soup kitchen,” a voice sneers from behind me.
I turn to find King Oskar standing there. He is dressed in his hunting leathers, looking down at the crowd with undisguised disgust.
“Look at them,” he laughs, gesturing with his gloves. “ The 'Great Fey Bank.' I thought you were catering to the elite, Princess? This looks like you are handing out alms to beggars.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, Your Majesty,” I say calmly.
“What do they have? Two coppers? A button?” Oskar shakes his head. “You are clogging up the courtyard with riffraff for the sake of... what? A few bags of pennies?”
He leans on the railing, watching a fishwife argue with a clerk about the exchange rate of a foreign coin.
“It is embarrassing,” he decides. “My nobles will not want to walk through a crowd of fishwives to deposit their gold.”
“We have a separate entrance for the nobility, Your Majesty,” I remind him. “The 'Gold Door.' They never have to smell the onions.”
“Still,” Oskar sniffs. “It looks desperate. Like you are scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
I smile. He sees a mob of poor women. I see the foundation of his kingdom crumbling beneath his feet.
“Perhaps,” I agree pleasantly. “But the poor need safety too, Your Majesty. It is a charitable endeavor. A way to... clean up the streets.”
“Well, get them processed quickly,” Oskar commands, turning away. “I have the Duke Webbe of Vupis arriving this afternoon, and I do not want him thinking I am running a shelter for runaway wives.”
He leaves, chuckling at his own wit.
I turn back to the floor. He is wrong. It is not a shelter. It is a fortress.
Every woman down there who hides a copper from her husband is buying a stake in my protection. If Oskar tries to close the Bank now, he won't just anger twenty Dukes. He will anger five thousand housewives. As any man knows, you can survive a war with a Duke. You cannot survive a war with the woman who cooks your dinner.
“Keep the line moving!” I call down to the clerks. “And bring out more bowls! The King wants the streets cleared!”
The Royal Fey Bank just became the most solvent institution in this whole kingdom.
I had way too much fun writing this one. The “Menagerie Carpet” is officially the most unhinged diplomatic maneuver the MC has attempted so far, and considering her track record, that’s saying something.Master Wulf deserves hazard pay. Elsa deserves her own spinoff. And the King absolutely does not deserve this carpet but he’s getting it anyway.
The party arc is now well underway, and next chapter we’ll see what happens when an entire noble class suddenly realizes the Princess has invented the Fey equivalent of a private offshore account that takes deposits from women. Spoiler: panic, scheming, and possibly someone tripping over their own wealth.
As always, thanks for reading, commenting, and theorizing! You all keep this story alive and delightfully feral.
Your turn:
- Do you think the men will ever catch on?
Let me know your answer in the comments.