Page 41 of Dancing for the Minotaur

She made three piles–bills to pay, invoices to collect, and government paperwork.

Then the government pile became four piles because apparently importing goods from other planets involved several different agencies, none of which seemed capable of communicating with each other.

Terra spent the next hour sorting the bewildering mountain of paperwork into categories, and the more she worked, the more she understood why Taurex had looked so harried when he'd opened the door to her that morning.

There were customs forms mixed in with agricultural inspection reports, medical approvals shoved into folders with trade permits, tax documents tucked beneath planetary-origin certifications and entire stacks of papers that seemed to have no logical relationship to one another at all. Apparently moving merchandise between planets was complicated enough, but once the goods reached Earth, they entered a whole new layer of bureaucracy that Taurex clearly found incomprehensible.

Terra, on the other hand, found herself strangely energized by it. She began making piles, then folders, then carefully labeling each folder in her neat handwriting until the chaos slowly started turning into something that resembled an actual filing system.

Taurex watched her from the other side of the conference table, his golden eyes following her as she shifted papers from one pile to another.

“You understand all of this?” he asked at last.

“Not all of it,” Terra admitted. “But I understand enough to figure out what goes where, and once everything is organized, I can start finding the mistakes.”

“You believe there are mistakes?”

“Oh, I know there are.” She held up one of the forms she'd been studying and pointed to a string of numbers near the bottom. “Take this one. This shipment was classified under the wrong commodity code.”

Taurex frowned.

“The shipment was already inspected.”

“I know it was, but inspection and classification aren't the same thing.” Terra glanced over the form again, doing the math in her head before reaching for the calculator on the table to confirm it. “Whoever filled this out used a code with a higher import duty attached to it, which means you paid more than you should have.”

His eyes narrowed.

“How much more?”

“About six thousand dollars.”

For a moment, Taurex went completely still. Then his nostrils flared slightly, and his large hands curled into fists at his sides.

“They took six thousand dollars that I did not owe them?”

“Looks that way.”

The expression on his face made Terra suddenly picture him marching into some downtown government office, ducking his enormous horns beneath the doorway and demanding his money back while a room full of terrified federal employees dove beneath their desks. She almost smiled at the image, but the look in his golden eyes told her he was considerably more irritated than amused.

“Don't go try to fix it,” she warned. “You can’t solve these things with violence or intimidation. They’ll just throw you in jail.”

Taurex looked at her.

“I was not going anywhere.”

“You were thinking about it.”

His mouth tightened.

“I dislike being cheated.”

“So do I, which is why we're not going to let them keep the money. We'll file a correction and request a refund.”

“Will they return it?”

“They should.”

“And if they do not?”