“For a whopping price of…” Liza trailed off as she began to fumble through her binders, flipping through pages until she finally found what she was looking for. “3,000 gold upfront, and then 100 gold a week in perpetuity.”
Peters winced at those words. “That’s quite a bit of money.”
“Yeah,” Liza echoed. “Quite a bit.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But between the three of us, we can invest in the lodge together. Think about it. Permanent protection for our people from the Tradesmen. No need for any of us to ever develop a standing army.”
“Look, I’m gonna be nice about this,” Liza said, a scowl on her face, “But I’m clearly the one who’s going to be making the majority of the investment here. I know your finances are low as it is, and looking at Mr. Peters here, I am willing to assume he’s flat out broke. I’m not going to just shell out a ton of gold to pay for a mistake you made, Charles.”
“A mistake we both made,” I corrected. “Do you think that they’re just going to let you off the hook? I’ve just provided an immediate distraction that will direct their focus on me.”
Liza sighed heavily at that. “Listen, a messenger came by after you attacked the Tradesmen. They said that they are willing to work with me still, provided that after our contract is over, I go back to my old contract.”
“And you’re going to do it?” I asked.
Liza shrugged. “What other choice do I have? They’re going to annihilate you to send a message to all the other level 1 and 2 villages. I’m not in the position to defend myself from them.”
“But with us, you could be!” I said. “If we raise that lodge—”
“If I raise that lodge,” she corrected. “Look, we have the gold to afford it, but doing so would put us in a serious hole.”
“I’m not asking for charity here,” I said. “I am willing to pay for the upkeep cost in perpetuity.”
“And what can I do to help?” Peters asked. He didn’t seem to have any complaints so far, and was perhaps just happy to be included in a meeting.
“You can do the same as I intend to do, pledge to pay back a third of the cost, so that we’re all equal partners on the lodge,” I replied. “That way you’re not just providing us with charity, Liza, just a loan.”
“I can do that,” Peters said. “Although it’ll take a while to get 300 gold.”
I sighed at the young man’s inability to do math and whispered the correct number to him. His eyes widened at the prospect, but still he said he could do so. It was hard to tell if the man was loyal or just simply so tired that he went along with anything I said. Either would be useful for me.
Liza shook her head. “It’s not just about the money. The Tradies will keep escalating this.”
“And so will we,” I said. “There’s got to be a breaking point, where they realize that a few hundred gold pieces a week from you just isn’t enough to spend all of this excess capital on. They are businessmen at heart. Bullying works because it doesn’t cost much, but actually following up? It’s too expensive to keep at it. If we don’t buckle, they will eventually leave us alone.”
Liza stood from the table, collecting her binders. “I can appreciate that optimism, but I’m not inclined to test this theory. I would give you the loan, but they told me that the only way to get back into their good graces was to discontinue all business with you. When the wheat contract expires, that is it for us.”
And with that, she made her way out of the Tavern. I looked back at Peters, who merely shrugged. “I’m still in. I mean I have 60 gold and that’s it, but I’ll help however I can,” he said.
“Just have a beer and relax,” I said as I stood to follow after Liza. I wasn’t about to give up just yet. I followed her outside, to where she was preparing her horse for the journey home. Dusk was falling, turning the sky bright red.
“What will it take?” I asked.
“Leave me alone,” she replied, climbing up her horse. She went to spur the animal, but paused and looked back down at me. “It’s really nothing personal. I just have a village to look out for.”
“What was it you told me when I first met you?” I asked. “I remember, you said that your people had gotten tired of waiting for a champion and decided to just build everything yourself.”
“So?”
“I’m the champion here. I can see everything. I don’t need all those binders you have, I don’t need to calculate any numbers. I just open up the Great Picture and can see everything. The sheer amount of work you do is incredible, just incredible.”
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” Liza said.
“Oh, I’m not trying to flatter you,” I replied. “I’m just stating the facts. You spend each day working for hours upon hours doing something that I can do in seconds. You calculate all the numbers by hand, you keep track of it all. You have given your entire life over to your village and it shows. But…tell me, for all of those hundreds of hours you give every month, dedicated to making Reed a better place, are you working for your village, or for someone else?”
“My own village, of course,” she said.
“And you’re free, aren’t you? To do as you please? To direct your people as you please?”
“I am,” she replied, her voice softening a little.
“And you’re willing to hand that freedom over to the Tradesmen? All of that hard work, that dedication to building Reed into something truly phenomenal, and you just want to give all the profits to them?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“I know they asked you for reparations, didn’t they? For breaking the contract,” I pressed.
Liza slowly nodded, staring at the ground. “They want back pay for all the wheat I bought from you. It’s the only way I can get back into their good graces.”
“You are a leader, Liza. You’re Reed’s governess. Do you really want all the fruits of your labor to go to the Tradesmen? If you chose to work with them, that’s one thing, but you’re afraid of them hurting your people. That’s not a choice. That’s coercion.”
“It’s easy for you to say when you don’t—”
“When I don’t have people to protect?” I interrupted, pointing back to the Tavern. “This bar is full of people that I swore to protect. People who are depending on me daily for survival. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe, even if it sometimes means pushing back against a cartel that just wants to take and take and take.”
Liza slowly nodded. “And if we lose this fight? They burn us to the ground. Both of our villages. Gone.”
“And if in a month, the Tradesmen tell you the price of wheat is now six times what it cost? What will you say to them?” I asked. “Other than, thank you, masters?”
Liza grimaced at what I said. She fidgeted for a few moments and then looked at me. “Would they do that?”
“When you roll over immediately, they can do whatever they want, and you’ll have no power. Forge your own destiny and resist. The Tradesmen are only as strong as we allow them to be.”
“If I agree to this, it’s not just going to be a one-time deal,” she said. “This means we’re permanent allies. The full deal. That means we discount resources in trades, we always rally up to protect the other and—no matter what—we never take actions that harm the other.”
“I’ll agree to this with you, but not Peters,” I said. “I’m still unsure of him.”
Liza looked at me for a moment. I could see the weariness upon her face, the exhaustion of having to weigh such difficult choices. But I could also see a spark of relief in her eyes, as if she had finally realized the secret to having her own autonomy. “I’ll draft the paperwork,” she said. “And believe me, it will be extensive.”
Chapter 16
The Reed-Tine Alliance was cemented that night in the Tavern. There were many benefits that came with having a permanent alliance with another village, namely that when using the Gr
eat Picture, I could see around their territory as well as my own. I had a real-time view of what was happening over there, and could see whenever new buildings were being constructed, or who was moving through the nearby road.
On top of that, I also had the ability to see Reed’s detailed economic situation, their spending, their resource reservoirs and how many specialists they had. I also had the power to immediately call for military help from them, that is if either of us had a standing army to utilize. The alliance wouldn’t bring many benefits to us right now, but was certainly enough to help Liza feel safe enough to invest her money in the Mercenary Lodge. This was a guarantee that I wouldn’t use the Mercenaries against her and that, no matter what, I would always be looking out for her.
In the end, she agreed to pay for the entire lodge, with no need for return pay. It would have been around the same cost as the back pay for the Tradesmen anyway, she said. I would pay the maintenance cost of the Lodge in perpetuity, although if I was unable to pay due to a deficit, she would take over a payment here or there, to ensure the lodge never broke down.
Peters was excluded from our dealings, but he didn’t seem to care. Privately, he had asked me if he did a good job in the negotiation, to which I told him he was fine. I began to wonder if it would be appropriate to start mentoring him at some point, as he was a pleasant man, but just had no idea what he was doing in his life. I mentioned the possibility and he was elated, but understood that I needed to take care of the Tradesmen first.
The Mercenary Lodge was constructed in the center of the Amber Forest, across from the Bandit camp. Within a few days of being erected, I could see several new factions appear in the Faction List, each with a name of a mercenary company, their combat rating and their size. Since we had built the lodge and were paying for their maintenance, any residing company was contractually obligated to protect our villages from an attacking force, but to use them offensively would cost an additional fee.
Since the creation of a new lodge attracted new factions, I didn’t need to worry about any of their loyalties to the Tradesmen. The men and women who arrived to fight were completely independent, attracted by the powerful magics that governed this land. As long as the lodge existed, so they would go out into the world and serve various factions in exchange for pay. The lodge itself was only level 1, but would slowly progress as they achieved more and more. Since it was an Independent Faction Building, there was no way that I could directly influence its development. It would grow on its own, over time.
With the newfound alliance, the creation of the Mercenary Lodge and the Brewery finally being built, things were looking up for my village. Although we had now lost 100 gold per week from Reed, thanks to the fact that we were sponsoring the lodge, the Brewery was producing a large excess of beer. The only thing that I needed was to find someone interested in buying large quantities of it. Yet, without contacts in the big city, nor any villages nearby, I would need to expand our trade routes even further.
Opening up the map that my alliance with Reed had now provided me, I could see that the Amber Forest contained three villages: Tine, Reed and Cornet. The one and only road led all the way to Igithor, which served as the main trade network. All roads in this part of Liora were connected to Igithor, which was one of the main cities controlled by the Tradesmen. But while all major roads were connected to the big city, not every village was on those routes. To the west, I could spot three other villages, located near the Pentington Planes. There were no trade routes, or roads on those villages.
How costly would it be to construct a road in that direction? Fixing up my own section of the Amber road was quite expensive, so creating a brand new road must be even more costly, right? But then again, if I could open up new trade routes to myself without the need for going through Igithor, I’d be able to control an entirely new area of trade. Best of all, if other villages or cities wanted access to my trade route, they’d have to move through my checkpoints. Theoretically, I could bar anyone else from gaining access to these routes, giving me a monopoly with these villages.
But I was getting ahead of myself. I’d need to make contact with the villages first, ascertain their wealth level and then move on from there. On top of that, I’d also need to find a cheaper way to construct roads. I opened up the construction panel on the Great Picture and began to read up on how to build roads.
From what I could see, creating roads cost 10 gold per mile, in both materials and labor. However, if I had access to a Logging Camp, I could create extremely cheaper roads that were fairly efficient, made of timber instead of gravel or stone. The cost per mile would be a single gold piece, including labor. And since there were plenty of trees within the forest, creating a Logging Camp would be fairly easy.
There were other types of roads that could be created, but the price tag was simply too high. While it was true that wagons would be able to move faster through those roads, timber would be fine for now. In fact, I might be able to simply replace our current Amber road section with timber as well, saving me a tremendous amount of gold.
This meant that the only thing I really needed to plan was my trip to the west, to the Pentington Planes. It was a far journey, nearly 300 miles away from us, which meant that I would be gone for at least a week. If conditions were safer at home, I would happily make the trip, but I still had the impending arrival of a mercenary army to deal with. It had only been a few days since our retribution against the Tradesmen. I could not be gone when they arrived to put us in our place. It wouldn’t be fair to foster that kind of responsibility on Liza or, worse, Mayor Hemmings.
So I shelved the idea of travel for the time being. Instead, I turned my focus back to the village of Tine, to check how things had been developing. With the arrival of the Brewery and the activation of the Tavern, Satisfaction sharply rose. It was no longer sitting in the negatives and had made its way to zero. The only satisfactory type of zero was on how many taxes one owes, so I took a look at the general temperature of the population, looking for reasons for their unhappiness.
Most of the positive satisfaction came from the presence of a luxury building and access to higher quality meats. The rest of the dissatisfaction came from the fact that I had made a misjudgment, at least in the eyes of the people. Why was this the case? Why would one elderly lady have such a profound effect on how everyone else thought?
I called in Hemmings, to discuss this situation. The Mayor had been becoming less and less useful throughout the weeks, especially as I took over more and more of his job. He shuffled around the townhall, looking for something to do, but more often than not was just twiddling his thumbs. The few times that I called him for advice was when he came to life. Other than that, he just sort of milled about.
“You called?” Hemmings asked as he entered my office. The mystic sight faded from my eyes, returning back to the real world. I blinked a few times, to clear the afterimage of the overlay from my vision, and looked at him.
“Satisfaction is higher, thanks to the Tavern and Brewery,” I said. “But the people are still irritated due to my judgment call. It’s an almost universal sentiment in the village that I did something wrong.”
“Hire a judge then,” Hemmings said. “They can’t hate you if you don’t make these calls.”
“I’m not sure that I want to outsource these decisions. I feel capable enough as a leader to make these kinds of choices, and besides, it helps me get a better understanding of the people,” I replied.
“Apparently not. Listen, Tine’s government is a Gerontocracy. The oldest people are revered and listened to, while the youngest are looked down upon. We have elders who run the town. When you judged against an elder’s word, you went against our government type.”
I slowly nodded at those words. “So, my talk about evidence and due process…”
“Was talk of a different type of governance. While you are the direct leader, the champion, you are not the government. The government answers
to you, they also want to have a say in what you do and make requests of you.”
This made sense why she had been so angry. And why the town had still not forgiven me. “How can we change governments?” I asked.
Hemmings grimaced at that. “If they didn’t like you going against their value system, why do you think changing it would help?”
I shrugged. “I’m fairly certain that equality is a better route.”
“Pick your battles, friend,” Hemmings said as he stood and made his way out of my office. “You’re a single point away from going into the positives. Don’t throw it all away.”
“So what should I do?” I asked, standing as he went to close the door. He looked up at me and frowned. “Apologize to the elder. You were the one who wronged her.”
Chapter 17
Appeasement. This was the word that never went over well in my home world. To appease was to let terrible men gain power. To appease was to placate, to give up your own sacred rights, just to be allowed to live. I wasn’t the kind of person who believed in just saying words to appease someone, to help them feel better. If I believed in appeasement, I’d be letting the Tradesmen take every last resource I had, leaving me broke and miserable.
But now, as I walked through the village, approaching Elean’s house, all I could think of was the words that would appease her. That would make her happy enough to tell the rest of the people that I was okay. We were entering the fourth week and I absolutely needed to have the village accepting of me. I had promised to turn things around in a month and I was correct in the matter. We had good food, great drink, trade relationships and access to a military force that could protect us. I wasn’t about to be destroyed because of a refusal to make an old woman feel better about herself. I had come too far for this.
I knocked on her door and waited, a bouquet of flowers in my hand. I was no stranger to flattery and schmoozing. When I had been much younger, well, younger in my old life, I had to lay on the charm with many a man and woman, to convince them that going into business with me was a good idea. Charm was the poor man’s currency, for if you had no credibility, you’d have to make them like you enough to give you their money. I wasn’t the smoothest or slickest of men, but I was often pleasant enough to convince an investor to give my business ideas a try.
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