The cleanup of the attempted coup was lucrative. Ragnar sat in the Great Hall, staring at a ledger that Gyda had placed in front of him. The "Liquidation" of Jern Einar and his conspirators had yielded unexpected dividends.
"Forty thousand silver pennies," Gyda recited, tapping the page with her quill. "Ten tons of raw iron stockpiled in Einar's secret barn. And, interestingly, a hidden cache of Mercian gold that Father Wilfrid had been using to pay the mercenaries."
Ragnar whistled. "That covers the cost of the siege. And the wedding."
"It covers the fiscal year," Gyda corrected. "If we don't spend it on something stupid."
Ragnar looked at the pile of wealth. In his previous life, he knew that the Soviet Union and other regimes had consolidated power by seizing the assets of the old nobility. He was doing the same, but with less ideology and more accounting.
