I agree with the general sentiment that those who steal small amount will also steal large amounts, and it's certainly something to usually be wary about, but it's a relative low priority given that we decided quite some time ago to focus on the bigger possible problems.
I'm sure there's a handful of individuals that are willing to embezzle some money - there's always one - but they'd have to be individuals who are willing to do so under the eye of the former Steward and Spymaster of an entire province (who built up this company on the bones of the Stirlandian League, which they decimated), both of which have only become scarier with time.
I think it has more to do with the fact that Mathilde was barely getting paid a wage despite being Spymistress of Stirland. And despite being Spymistress of Stirland immediately from the start of her Journeying in a province where the single greatest recurring threat to the Empire within its borders reigns, she was still expected to repay her student debt in a timely manner.
She wasn't embezzling to get rich, she was embezzling a small amount (for her position) to avoid getting debt collectors hunting her down while she was scrambling to try and prevent Stirland (and herself) from falling apart/prey to necromancers.
When the spymistress for an entire province (especially a province with a historical "subversion by vampires" problem) enjoys such accomodations as "a small, musty room with a shitty bed" and assets as "literally fucking nothing, not even the documents, records, and feudal contract we kind of need to keep the province running", with such immediate tasks as "find those stolen documents before everyone finds out that we're up shit creek without a paddle", "figure out what the fuck your predecessor did, what they left behind, and what his name even was", "start building the utter basics of an intelligence network from thin air on a shoestring budget", and "oh yeah, there's a massive crime syndicate gutting our economy and not paying any taxes", 35 gold crowns per six months is a fucking
pittance.
Mathilde basically got thrown into the equivalent of a job where, on a provincial level, she had to build up a state military from
literally fucking nothing on a shoestring budget ASAP, and that would just be her second priority because someone stole the Runefang and no one had a clue where it was or who had taken it, and it really needed to be found before anyone noticed that the Elector Count didn't have the symbol of his office. Oh, and go and find some random, shitty room with a crappy bed to sleep in.
That's the kind of job you shouldn't feel comfortable saddling a mere Magister with, given how high the stakes would be, let alone a brand-spanking-new Journeywoman whose only armament is a single knife.
I think it's really funny, following in this pattern, that Mathilde's first act immediately after being promoted to Lady Magister was saving a bunch of dwarves from certain death by risking her own and followed that up by an expedition to Hell's Backyard, which had a lot of stress of its own.
A less-informed individual might think she actually has some sort of complex where she has to do her best at all times or DIE TRYING.
I think it's less a quirk and more of how the extreme stress, pressure, and high-stakes Journeying she got forced on her put her in a literal do-or-you-and-lots-of-other-people-die situation for years on end. She struggled and scrambled and was in so far over her head for so long that she developed a deeply skewed sense of normality and expectations.
And while De Verezzo's execution was fully justified, the sheer suddenness and shock of it all probably contributed to this. The dire situation Stirland was in throughout her entire time as Spymistress also hammered home the sense that she
couldn't just do "good enough", because the buck stopped with her on such a huge scale that countless people would suffer if she didn't do
great. And then the Purge of the Haunted Hills and the campaign against Drakenhoff traumatically hammered home how going way above and beyond for her job was not just important, but life and death on a way that would echo throughout history.
But wait, there's more! Remember when she called on the Colleges for help in the campaign against Drakenhoff, and got help from a Light Magister, the Amethyst Patriarch, and two Amethyst Battle Wizards? And how when the big battle came, the Light Magister miscasted so badly that he
blew himself and a quarter of the city up? And how the Patriarch disappeared to do his own thing somewhere else, got killed, and then his two Battle Mages disappeared with his corpse, basically contributing literally fucking nothing, including providing desperately needed healing? And then Kasmir, despite being capable and trying his best twice, couldn't get a healing miracle to work on Abelhelm? How when she and Abelhelm charged with what should have been the entire army at her back, everyone else completely failed to follow behind them?
She couldn't rely on
anyone else to get the job done. She had to take command when even Gustav had lost heart. She had to be the only dispel/counterspelling available when assaulting Castle Drakenhof because she was the only one that was left. Even Kasmir had stayed behind in Drakenhof, broken and having a crisis of faith. The dwarves were seriously worried that Mathilde was basically going to go Slayer.
It's no wonder that she approaches tasks with such an overachieving, overwhelming, over-prepared manner. Her Journeying brutally etched into her the notion--explicit and implicit--that
failure is not an option, and that anything less than great success and overwhelming resources/might brought to bear for a given task is sufficient because people will fail you when you need them most.
The entire Alkharad affair shows the flipside of this: she didn't just figure out what Alkharad was doing, how he was doing it, and then run to Altdorf to bring in enough might to reliably take on whatever Alkharad could muster. She personally got so mad about a vampire necromancer making weekly assassination attempts against the daughter of Abehlem that she went
Doom Slayer on his ass, murdering his entire College of Necromancy one by one and then murdering Alkharad himself, before taking the key documents and burning all the rest. She then delivered his fucking skull to Roswita, along with Alkharad's trade ledgers, then flew to Altdorf to call in the cavalry to help Roswita exterminate the remaining vampires in Sylvania with extreme prejudice.
I think the reason she handles stuff like that so much better than the stuff she did as Spymistress is because she is so much more at ease with problems that you can just hunt and kill (academic tasks she has always found really interesting, though). When Mathilde had speedrun the extermination of all enemies within Karak Eight Peaks (with another million greenskins from Karak Drazh, as an encore), Belegar had to find things for her to do because typical Grey Wizard stuff isn't really useful in a Karak and Mathilde hates typical Grey Wizard stuff anyway.
