[Faye of the Doorstep] Chapter 14 - Lawfully

Faye slid sideways into the Null because she needed to speak to Frances.

She did not arrive in the ruins this time. She arrived on the porch.

The boards were gray. The swing still hung from chains that disappeared into nothing above. The rail still held the long drop of unmade space. But the rest was gone. There was no house behind it. No warm kitchen. No sound of a cupboard closing. No voice saying her name, half fond and half impatient.

There was no Frances.

Faye sat on the porch step with her hands folded, like a child trying to be good in a world that no longer rewarded goodness.

For a long time she listened.

There was no wind here. No birds. No creak of wood.

How do you slay a dragon?

Lawfully, she thought, bitter.

The word felt ridiculous and she almost laughed, then it caught in her mind.

Lawfully.

Not obediently, not politely, and not as virtue but as method. The dragon had been fighting through language. It slipped phrases into bills the way a thief slipped fingers into pockets. It adjusted definitions. It rearranged clauses. It buried hooks in paragraphs no one outside a committee room would ever read.

It did not need to roar or burn villages. It only had to make the rules slightly truer for itself and slightly less true for everyone else. That was how it fed. That was how it hid. If that was its terrain, then it would be hers.

She rose from the porch and stepped back into the human world with the word still in her mouth. Lawfully. Not as surrender but as leverage.

She went to the library.

The lamps were lit. The stacks were unlocked. The building smelled like paper and dust and wiring old enough to remember better decades. It felt like a place built for endurance.

They were waiting. Faye had summoned them, and they came.

They had brought files, notes and numbers and wore faces that had been tired for years and were tired still.

“We’ve been thinking,” the labor lawyer said. His voice carried the weight of decades spent arguing for protections that were always treated as negotiable. “If you want to starve it, you have to change the way money sits still.”

“Pools of inactive capital,” the congresswoman said, tapping her page. “That phrase keeps appearing because it describes the hoard without naming it.”

“Then name it,” Faye said.

“If we name it,” the border representative replied, “it dies in committee. Or it passes and becomes the opposite of what we meant. We have all seen it happen.”

The labor lawyer slid a different sheet forward.

“We need something boring enough to survive.”

“Debt,” the congresswoman said.

Faye frowned. “Debt is lack.”

“For you,” the congresswoman replied gently. “For them, it is leverage.”

And instead of charts, they told her stories.

They said suppose Maribel needs a car. Not a new one. Just something that starts in winter. She borrows at a punishing rate because she has no savings and no time. Each late payment stacks fees on top of interest on top of principal. Her credit score dips. The next loan costs more. Her debt narrows her world. It cages her choices.

Then there is the man with three companies and a vineyard who wants an eight-million-dollar house.

He does not sell his stock. Selling would trigger capital gains taxes. Selling would shrink the pile.

He borrows against it.

Because he is very wealthy, he receives very low interest and flexible terms. Sometimes he pays only interest. Sometimes the interest rolls into the loan. His assets remain untouched and continue to grow. No capital gains tax is triggered because nothing was sold. The debt proves his assets are valuable. The borrowed money buys property, influence, time.

His debt multiplies him.

“Maribel’s debt cages her,” Faye said.

“His debt multiplies him,” the lawyer replied.

“And when he borrows,” the border representative added, “that money is backed by systems taxpayers rescue when they fail. Public guarantees. Stabilized markets. Bailouts when necessary. The risk is socialized. The reward is private.”

Faye sat very still.

The dragon did not care about debt.

It cared about principal.

Debt was just the pipe that let the lake be used without draining it.

“So taxing debt…” Faye began.

“…forces motion,” the lawyer said.

The congresswoman nodded. “At the top, debt is strategy. We tax extreme leverage. High threshold. Clear exemptions. We do not tax ordinary mortgages if it is their only home. We do not tax student loans. We do not tax medical debt. We look only at debt of two million dollars and up.”

“Which makes it harder to demonize,” the lawyer said.

“And boring,” the border representative added. “Most people do not think of debt as a benefit. They will assume it does not concern them.”

Faye felt something settle inside her. Not triumph. Alignment.

“So the dragon won’t see it.”

“It will see it,” the congresswoman said. “But it will misunderstand it. It thinks in terms of ownership. It does not respect debt as power, even though its thralls use that sort of debt constantly.”

Faye opened her notebook.

The paper felt thin and fragile but the idea did not.

“Then we write it carefully,” she said. “Thresholds. Exemptions. Enforcement. We write it so it cannot be flipped with a comma.” She looked up at them, steady now.

“Let’s write the tax code,” she said. “Let’s make the lake of stagnant money leak.”

And for the first time since she had been dragged across a polished floor by a boot, she felt she was standing on ground that might hold.

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