Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 827

Chapter 827: The crown’s trade(3)

Alpheo couldn’t help but snicker at the thought. The irony of it all: the one clause Sorza had been least bothered by at the peace conference , the banner exemption, would be the very thing to bleed him of the most silverii.

Well, the second, Alpheo corrected himself with private amusement, since the mine was already gone.

It had been, he thought with no small measure of satisfaction, a very bad couple of years for Sorza.

The tolls had always been one of the most lucrative incomes for a lord, aside from the annual harvest. Five to ten percent of a caravan’s cargo, sometimes more, depending on how greedy the gate-guards were. Or, in some cases, a simple bribe of coin slipped into a mailed fist. Either way, merchants paid dearly to cross walls and into safety. And because of that, most of them tried their damnedest never to stop at towns unless forced.

Now, all that steady flow of silverii into Oizenian purses was about to dry up. Alpheo imagined Sorza gnawing at his nails when he realized how thoroughly he had been fooled, and the thought almost made him laugh aloud.

But when his eyes swept the chamber, his amusement faltered. His companions did not share his mirth. Their faces were not lit with the triumph he expected. Instead, they looked uncertain?

It was Shahab who spoke for everyone.

“The terms of the treaty say any caravan bearing the royal banner cannot be taxed. If you mean to sell this privilege…” His dark eyes narrowed. “Does that mean dozens of cheese-sellers and wine-peddlers will parade through Oizen with the banner of Yarzat? Is that not too great a slight? Who will take us seriously when our flacon is pinned to the carts of butter merchants?”

The rebuke hit like a splash of cold water.

Alpheo leaned back, fingers tapping against the polished wood of the table. Personally, he did not care one whit what image others conjured when they thought of Yarzat. But politically… he could not dismiss Shahab’s point so lightly. Perception mattered. Legitimacy mattered.

Well, what are we to do then?

His mind worked quickly, turning over words, clauses, the letter of the treaty. And then he found it a crack wide enough to march an army through.

“The terms did not specify what kind of banner must be carried,” Alpheo said at last “It could be a military standard or a rag on a stick for all it matters. So here is what I propose: we issue small banners ,modest in size, not the grand flacons of state. Each marked with a phrase, something like ‘Protected by the Crown of Yarzat.’ In that way, we both respect the treaty and guard our dignity. To Oizen, these are no more than tokens of protection, not proclamations of royal kinship.”

His lips curved faintly. “Thus, we profit, we weaken the guild, and we lose no face in the process.”

There was a moment’s pause, then Shahab inclined his head in grudging agreement. “I suppose that could be done,” he said. “It is an explanation the courts and the streets alike would accept.”

“And how much do we charge for such privilege?” Jasmine’s voice cut in. Her hands, folded neatly in her lap, now tightened just a little on the fabric of her gown. If the first hurdle had been honor, the next was the more pressing concern: coin.

This part Alpheo however had already considered.

“For the first year, a fixed amount,” he said, lifting his empty cup and studying its polished rim as though calculating. “Later, once the practice is rooted, we shift to a levy based on the value of their cargoes. That way, the more they earn under our banner, the more the crown earns in turn.” He set the cup down with a gentle thud. “But even from the start, there must be a minimum , no less than seventy silverii. We do not want beggars from villages strapping our sigil to carts of onions. This privilege must be seen as worth something, even before it is worth everything.”

He let the words hang, his gaze moving across the chamber.

“How are we going to keep track of that?” Jarza finally rumbled, bringing up a problem that his contemporary had never found a way to solve. After all one would be a fool to think that it could be possible to take track of every single merchant passing through, which would be required by Alpheo’s standards.

He tilted his head toward him, as though conceding the point. “A fair question. Obviously, we cannot spare an official to go running after every caravan, weighing sacks of barley and sniffing bolts of cloth to see what’s been sold.” He let the table share a ripple of faint chuckle before continuing, “So we will not. Instead, the merchant must come to us.”

He leaned forward, one hand resting on the bundle of papers beside him. “The mercantile banners will remain here in the court, under lock and seal. When a merchant subscribes, I mean pay the levy, he must declare where he intends to travel, what kind of goods he carries, and with how many wagons. He cannot receive his banner until his caravan is made ready. At that point, our clerks will record the details , the cargo, the men, the beasts , so we have a ledger of what leaves Yarzat under our protection.”

Jarza’s brows knit together. “And you think this will not be too troublesome? Records, declarations, measurements… I do not dare to think how many papers there will be. Merchants will cheat where they can. There will be trouble with the compiling, I promise you that.”

Alpheo raised a hand in calm dismissal, his voice steady, confident. “Do not trouble yourself. The number of subscribers will be self-limiting. Seventy silverii as a minimum will cut the swarms of petty peddlers at the root. Only those with real capital will come forward. At first, I suspect the banners will be few , no more than a handful a season. We also have way to store documents with minimal issues.”

He allowed himself a small, thin smile. “Besides, merchants are not as clever as they believe themselves to be. Their profits are made in the open, wagons laden, ships moored, warehouses filled. We will have ways of checking against their claims, if only by watching the volume of goods that flow into the city.”

“Well, I suppose you are right,” Jarza finally said after a pause, leaning back in his chair. His heavy jaw clenched, but there was nothing more he could add

But the silence did not last.

“Do you think there will be many to take up the offer?” Asag asked, breaking it with his usual bluntness. He sat with one arm resting on the table, the other tracing absently along the scarred side of his face.

“I do not know how much coin is to be made in Oizenia these days. The majority of the merchants who went south did so to buy the iron bars from the mines and resell them to the neighbors. Now that the mines are ours, I doubt many will find reason to travel there. Perhaps a brief stop, nothing more, before heading farther east to Habadia, Ezvania, and those other princes east of the Zauern. But now?”

He leaned forward, scar catching the torchlight as his lips twisted. “Now with our border pressing directly against Ezvania, even that stop is meaningless. Merchants will prefer our roads , especially through the bridge-land we’ve taken. It’s shorter, safer, and soon to be free of bandits.

We have a name for ourselves after all regarding cleansing the land from bandit infestations.

That, at least, is what I see.” His sharp eyes darted up to meet Alpheo’s, as if asking: Did I miss something?

Alpheo’s jaw tightened. He had not missed anything, Asag was in fact more than correct. And yet, as the thought turned in his mind, it revealed the next, inevitable step. A step he had kept buried until now, knowing how it would be received, but that really he believed it was time to use.

After all, the centralisation of the state had to begin somewhere didn’t it?

Suppose the Oizenian route is diminished, he thought. Then what I planned must be brought forward and… be made larger.

He set his empty cup down with deliberate care, wishing the dregs had been wine instead of water. His throat was dry when he spoke.

“I think the offer must be extended beyond Oizenia then.”

For a moment, confusion flickered in the chamber.

Alpheo let the silence stretch, drawing in what little calm he could muster, then dropped the blade.

“We are going to extend the banners to Yarzat itself. More than that” his voice hardened, carrying across the council table like the ring of steel dropped on a pavement floor, as he knew the meaning of what he was about to say “we are going to ban the tolls in every city held under our crown.”

The chamber did not merely murmur in response. It erupted.

And Alpheo suddenly wished for his cup to have been filled with wine.