Seated in a room within the district hall, Rita was mediating citizen disputes, a task to which she was hardly accustomed. This kind of work was usually reserved for the staff of the royal government, but as they had disappeared, leaving no one behind, she had no other choice.
The room was needlessly large. Warm air streamed through the open windows together with the faint afternoon sunlight.
On the other side of the desk stood two middle-aged women engaged in a shouting match. One was abnormally thin with an oversized chest and somehow brought the words “vulgar figure” to Rita’s mind. The other was short and chubby, with frightfully greasy long hair. Although the two bore no resemblance to each other, apparently they were sisters. The chubby older sister fired spit into the air as she launched another offensive.
“I’m telling you, you lost all claim to ownership the moment you left town! You abandoned the house. It should be only natural that I inherit it now.”
“You left first!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You should hear yourself! You just upped and left us behind, the first chance you had.”
“It’s not like I was leaving you!”
“But you did. Didn’t spare us a single thought. Just left us stranded.”
“I was thinking of you. Dad said we had to go, that’s all.”
“Uh huh, sure.”
“It’s true. I looked after him! Stayed with him all the way to the end, even had to see what I did.”
“How do I know that’s not just another lie? For all I know, you could have sacrificed his life to save your own. Left him to die. Did you?”
“Why, you─”
“Ahem. Excuse me, ladies.”
Having listened thus far, Rita saw that she needed to intercede. Amanda was at her side taking down everything that was being said, but that was all she would do to help; she’d been keeping her eyes down and acting as though the whole thing had nothing to do with her.
Rita cleared her throat, then spoke to the two sisters.
“Okay, let me see if I can get this straight. You, the younger sister, were living with your father. You, the older sister, had married and moved away from home. When the evacuation began, you, the younger, left Quinta with your father. Is that right so far?”
“Yes, leaving us behind,” hissed the short and chubby older sister.
By “us” Rita assumed the woman was referring to herself, her husband, and their children.
The thin younger sister snapped her head around and began to argue back. “Didn’t I just tell you that’s not what happened? What else could we have done? Make the trip to your place? In the midst of all that chaos? Our house was a mess.”
“I’m not surprised, the way you tried to grab anything remotely valuable.”
“That was Dad’s─”
“Please. If you could try to stay calm. During the evacuation, you and your father were attacked by Titans…”
“Yes, but I came back. Our wagon was destroyed, I lost everything. And Dad was killed!”
That was it. Their father had been attacked by a Titan. No doubt, he’d been eaten alive. While the surviving younger sister hadn’t gone into the details, she must have witnessed the entire thing. A Garrison soldier had rescued her, and she’d barely made it back to Quinta with her life.
It wouldn’t have been surprising if she were in shock. Instead, she was locked in a fierce battle, with her older sister who had remained in Quinta, over the ownership of those of her father’s belongings that still remained at home.
Such greed. Such spirit. Rita was repelled and impressed in equal measure.
And yet it seemed the situation wasn’t so clear-cut. Tears began to form in the thin younger woman’s eyes, and her face crinkled. She bawled at the top of her lungs, “After what I had to go through! To be left with nothing… How, how, how could anyone just expect me to accept that?”
The woman, essentially, wanted compensation─some material benefit to give meaning to the horror and desperation she’d had to experience. Or perhaps, to fill the hole rendered in her heart. It appeared that she had been single her entire life. Having devoted herself to her father, perhaps she had never owned anything of value that she could say was truly hers.
Yet that was not the issue for the older sister. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have run away. You could have let Dad go and stayed behind by yourself!”
“Do you really think I could do something like that?! Don’t say you wouldn’t have gone if you’d had the chance. You’d have left both of us to die!”
“What kind of trumped-up accusation is that?!”
Rita’s head was pounding. She wished from the bottom of her heart to stay out of it.
What did the law say on all of this? She’d had the trainee Duccio make a search of the building, but he’d failed to turn up anything of relevance. Of course, even if he’d found something, Rita had no faith in her own ability to understand the contents.
“I’m really not made out for this,” she muttered quietly to herself, and sighed.
Physical work she could handle. How easy it’d be for her if this were like suppressing a rioting mob. Her work over the last few days had been nothing of the sort. She’d been subjected to petition after petition: There aren’t enough doctors. There aren’t enough teachers. You need to get the cobbles fixed on the streets.
Yet, none of the staff she needed were around. Not only that, they seemed to have raided the vaults and storehouses of the district hall during the evacuation and taken everything with them. Rita was bereft of means to respond to the residents’ demands. She also lacked the personnel she needed to bring in more personnel or to collect taxes. The fact that Quinta’s total population had fallen by more than half further limited the resources she could muster.
She was just about managing to run things with the help of the trainees and civilian volunteers. Even so, she had to admit the situation was dire. She hadn’t had a wink of sleep in two days, and she probably wouldn’t again that night.
“Well? What do you say? The house belongs to my husband and me. Yes?”
“Your husband? That squanderer?” the thin younger sister howled, her eyes bloodshot. “I’d rather have it all thrown away if it’s going to him!”
“Well, go on then!”
It seemed to Rita that the two sisters were about to start physically wrestling. Under more peaceful circumstances, they might not have gotten into such an ugly argument. As things stood, Quinta was isolated, and the cost of necessities like water and food was skyrocketing. The older sister was, in her own way, desperate too. So much so that she couldn’t even mourn her father’s death.
Rita remembered then─the whole of Quinta was in crisis. While she sympathized with the women’s plight, she couldn’t spend all her time dealing with private matters.
“Ladies. I will now hand you my decision as the Garrison’s acting commander,” Rita hardened her tone a little as she addressed them. “The decision is only for the interim, until a suitable official is appointed by the royal government. Understood?”
“What?”
“If it’s a fair decision, I guess.”
They faced Rita─the elder first, then the younger─and fixed her with defiant stares. At least they seemed willing to listen. Perhaps the title of “acting commander” had had some effect. And maybe the blades that hung around her waist. Word of a whirlwind of a young acting commander silencing a mob a few days ago had already made its way throughout the district.
Rita took a deep breath to gather her thoughts, then opened her mouth to speak. “For now, I request that you maintain the status quo. You, the younger sister, will look after all assets left behind by your father. Their value will be calculated when my replacement arrives, so don’t go and sell any of it please. Once the assets have been valued, we’ll start proceedings to divide them between you two.”
She was, she realized, simply passing the real decision-making on to government staff, but she had no knowledge of or experience in such affairs. It was all she could do.
“You’ll assign someone to keep watch, I assume?” the elder sister cautioned straight away.
“To keep watch?”