Chapter 13

Usurping the Market

“What’s worth the Light if we use it to entrench each other in the Dark? I ought to believe the ancient Sages we donned Outlanders gave it to us to protect one another, not kill.”

Mind of the Heretic, Vol. II

Sounds of the clanking silverware bounced around the small dining hall, occasionally sentence or two uttered in the otherwise silent experience. Olivia sat on her usual seat, mostly focused on her food rather than her siblings or parents, her mind adrift. It was somewhat difficult to forge Noah’s identity without anyone finding out, as she could hardly hire any random person to be her Dacent. However, the process was finalized yesterday, and there seemed to be no one besides her, Vorvil, and Noah that knew.

Part of her worries, with that, was squashed – while the other part, the much bigger one, had to do simply with the future itself. She didn’t know, couldn’t foresee, how the events would unfold. What her unleashing of Noah upon the Kingdom would do to it – perhaps it might be the best thing that happened to it, and, yet, it might be the thing which destroys it from inside out.

Sighing inwardly, she continued to absentmindedly nibble, downing the dry bread with a mouthful of freshly squeezed grape juice. Before she even realized it, the table was empty once again, only her parents and she sitting still, eating. The latter two chattered about some Kingdom affairs, hardly anything that caught Olivia’s attention.

“… something on your mind, honey?” Jovyer, her father, asked after a while.

“Ah—nothing,” she answered. “Just haven’t slept well last night.”

“To me,” Moria, her mother said, smiling cheekily. “It seems more like the sort of look girls have when they’re having some trouble with boys.”

“… is that the case?” Jovyer asked, frowning slightly.

“Eh? What? No—”

“It’s not that Ludwig boy, right?” he interrupted. “I’d rather you marry a common beggar than him honey.”

“… why? He’s a handsome boy.” Moria chimed in.

“He’s a snake in the kitten’s cloth – just like his father.”

“As I recall, his father fought for you tirelessly in the early days.”

“He fought for himself,” Jovyer shrugged. “I just happened to be the one he bet on.”

“Don’t listen to your father, honey,” Moria said. “He’s just jealous of the boy’s youth and face; if you fancy him, just let us know.”

“… I’m afraid I’m with father on this one, mother.” Olivia smiled bitterly, somewhat missing the days when her parents barely talked to her besides greeting her.

“Ho ho,” Jovyer chuckled proudly, stroking his gray beard. “A smart girl, just like her father. You’ll make it far, honey.”

“… ha ha ha,” Olivia laughed meekly. “May I be excused? I think I will lie down for a bit.”

“Of course, honey,” Jovyer nodded. “Take care of your health. Unfortunately, it seems as though Physician Roggul had passed away untimely. But, I am sure there are many other talented Physicians to examine you.”

“Ah, yes,” Olivia nodded, pushing down the swell of emotions. “If it gets worse, I will. Until later, then, Father, Mother.” She bowed respectfully before walking out, moving toward her mansion.

Her mind was a jumbled mess of many thoughts she didn't know how to organize. She had already forgotten just excited she was when she first found out Noah was an Outlander; right now, his entire existence was drenched in the cloud of worry for her.

She reached the mansion, as well as his room that had been transferred over to the one situated right next to hers, on the upper floors of the mansion, stopping in front of the elegantly-carved wooden doors, knocking until a moment later when she heard faint “Come on in.”

Stepping inside, the first thing that surprised her was a rather prominent scent of the Eastern Lavender, a rather peculiar flower that grows only at certain heights. She quickly spotted a vase in the corner with three whole flowers, hanging just within the corner of the sunshine piercing through the window.

Noah was sitting on his new worktable, stacks upon stacks of parchments and tomes rolled around seemingly at random around him, his posture straight like a spear. She'd realized that even the loose robes failed to completely conceal his physique; part of the reason why she forced him to wear them was exactly that – no Dacent in the history had his physique. Rather, no soldier had it. It would be too shocking if other people realized it.

“Ah, am I interrupting?” she asked as soon as she stepped in.

“Of course not, Your Highness,” he replied politely, putting down the quill and smiling at her. “Would you like something to drink?”

"No, thank you," she shook her head, keeping an appropriate distance between the two. She once again realized how frequently she put herself in isolation with him. "May I ask what were you doing?"

“Ah, this?” he pointed at the stacks of parchments. “These are all the public merchant proceedings that Vorvil managed to get his hands on. I was trying to figure out the margin of error in terms of profits and calculate the buoyancy of the market.”

"Eh…" though she wanted to engage with him, the economy, especially the profit-oriented one, was one of her weakest subjects – and the one she hated the most.

"I'm trying to figure out what's the easiest way to earn money," he smiled as he sipped himself a cup of wine, sitting down on the dining table situated on the other side of the room, inviting her to sit opposite of him. "In truth, it's going to be more difficult than I first thought."

“Why?”

“Most of the merchants have complete monopolies over the products they’re selling,” he said. “For instance, as far as I’m aware, the entire supply of alcohol within the Kingdom is provided by the Uvolt Family.”

“Hm. They have the most connections to the other two Kingdoms in terms of trading for the specific herbs or the brews themselves.” Olivia confirmed.

“And, while that’s great and all, it will be impossible to make any money while selling alcohol,” Noah said. “Or wheat. Or clothes. Or figurines. Or fruits. Or, well, anything.”

“…” Olivia frowned slightly, starting to understand what he meant.

“Market is too closed,” he said. “And is on a constant uptick. I’ve skimmed over the records in the past four years, and there has never been a dip in the consumption – only incremental increases. It’s great for the Kingdom itself, but terrible for any new person who wants to join the game. We’d have to make money while, at the same time, avoiding being spotted completely, which is simply unfeasible.”

“… you don’t sound too worried, still.” She noted.

“Because I’m not,” he said, smiling. “I never intended for us to form a mercantile company or anything of the sorts. The build-up period is too long, and we’d have to wait years to see any worthwhile profit.”

“… what is your plan, then?”

“What are the lending policies in the Kingdom?” he asked suddenly.

“The lending policies?”

“If someone needs money, where do they go to borrow it?”

“… uh, if it’s the Nobles, they usually approach one of us, Princes and Princess, with some proposal. For others, as far as I’m aware, there is no way to borrow any.”

“… then that’s where we strike.” He said confidently.

“…” Olivia remained silent, waiting for his explanation.

“Back… where I’m from,” he started. “We had something we called ‘banks’. They were woefully annoying institutions, but they served a key role in the expanding economy. Furthermore, they also just happened to be the most profitable ventures that were ever put into place. The concept behind them was simple; say, you need a hundred Crowns today for some reason. Instead of begging your friends and enduring the shame that comes with it, you go to this bank – and say you need a hundred Crowns right now. They give you, saying that you have a month to pay it back, with some interest.”

“… interest?” Olivia frowned, trying to complete the picture inside her head.

"The margin of profit," Noah said. "Instead of you paying back just a hundred Crowns you've borrowed, say the bank puts on a one-percent interest – you pay an extra Crown on top of the hundred. That one Crown is a profit."

"… a Crown… is too little…" Olivia said, her frown deepening.

"Yes, but what if you increase the interest to three percent? And you lend a hundred Crowns to a hundred people? And each of those hundred people has to pay back three extra Crowns? That's three hundred extra Crowns a month."

“…” a faint shimmer of understanding lit up inside Olivia’s eyes as she slowly started piecing together what Noah was explaining.

“Naturally, there are some problems we have to combat; no matter how much capital you have, it’s impossible to create a bank that will serve the Kingdom itself immediately. Rather, we couldn’t even sustain the Nobles’ needs, let alone anything else.”

“… that’s true.” Olivia nodded, knowing well-enough the depths of greed and desire of the Court.

“So, for the first year,” he said. “We’ll target the neither-the-poor-nor-the-rich – the skilled labor. We’ll cap the borrowing to two hundred Crowns per person, limit the return to a month at most, and charge two percent interest per lender. We don’t necessarily need to keep it a secret, but it would be better if the information about it stayed within the circles we want using it.”

“… how would we go about it?” though she could see the potential profit of the venture, she had absolutely no idea how to set up something like it.

"I'll take care of the logistics," he said. "We won't have an 'official' headquarters just yet. Instead, we'll set-up something called an 'invoice box' at various places around the city. People will write their names, occupations, desired Crowns and the length of repayment on the piece of paper, put it into the box, and I'll hire someone to collect those papers daily while hiring someone else to fan out the Crowns, and yet another to collect to repayment when it is due."

“… if they refuse?”

"… I'm sure we can think of something." Noah smiled frighteningly innocently, causing even Olivia's blood to freeze for a second. At that moment she realized he was hardly just a thinking-force; he replied to her question without even thinking, meaning that he'd already known exactly what he'd do. "We'll definitely have a few at the beginning that think themselves clever enough, but, after a few examples, we'll see how, deep down, people are really just honest creatures."

“How confident are you in succeeding with this? And how much of the starting capital do you need?” she asked, somewhat letting his last statement trickle through her mind, refusing to register it and all the implications it carried.

“Absolutely,” he replied immediately, the sheer confidence he exuded almost turning corporeal. “As far as the starting capital, I’ll take however much you can give. However, it’s not necessary to do anything stupid such as borrow money yourself; I’ll limit it heavily at the start, anyway, due to those clever folk, and only intend to flood the market around four-five months later, once we start seeing exponential growth in profits due to the increase in the number of people using it.”

“… how long until it starts making the sort of money you can use?” she asked, feeling very much as though he truly was her Dacent – and, in a way, he was. She learned more about the economy from him within the last ten minutes than she did from anyone else throughout her life.

"I project it will be about a year before we start also nibbling away at the Nobles," he said. "However, it will be much riskier with them; we can't exactly do the same thing to them as we will do to the clever folk, so, at that time, we'll have to go completely public, and put out the announcement if they default on their loans. I imagine that the wound on their reputation will be far harder to swallow than on their coffers."

“… many won’t be happy about it.”

“It won’t matter by then,” he shrugged. “We should control around 20% of the entire Kingdom’s economy by then – we’ll be too large to take down. They’ll try to suffocate us, no doubt, but we have a year until then; I won’t only be playing with that in the meantime. Ah, right, before you go,” he said, subtly indicating that he told her everything she needed to know for now; though she felt somewhat frustrated, as though she was being treated like a child, she swallowed the words for the time being. “Can you have someone escort me to the city’s slave markets?”

“… what do you want with them?” she asked, frowning. Though she didn’t really care either way about them, she’d much prefer not to get herself involved with the industry.

“Buy them,” Noah replied honestly. “Who do you think will be working for us in the upcoming years?”

“I can—”

“Loyalty can be bought,” he quickly interrupted her. “Especially among the people you can pull in. On the other hand, slaves will be inconspicuous. Nobody will pay attention to them. And, furthermore, because I’ll treat them like human beings, they are far less likely to sell me out if they ever do get found out.”

"… I'll arrange someone." She relented in the end, though barely bothering to hide her agitation. Bit by bit, he seemed to be removing her agency from the matter, treating her entirely as a tool instead of his benefactor that he was helping.

"I am not a wall, Your Highness," before she stepped out, his voice caused her to come to a halt and turn around. "I am very much open to your ideas. But, first, you have to change your perspective on things; what we're doing, what we're planning, is effectively treason. If we are ever found out, we'll be executed, no questions asked. Until I can ensure that it doesn't happen, one way or another, I won't mind reaching toward the most morally corrupt choices if it means ensuring our safety. It's a dangerous game we're playing," he looked her squarely in the eyes, his expression dead cold. "One chance – that's all we get, Your Highness. There will be no do-overs, no 'we'll get them next time'. Though you keep telling me you're well aware of how dangerous your thoughts and ideas are, I hardly see that same caution put into practice. Come and see me tomorrow morning," he added, getting up and walking over to the worktable. "We still have to discuss what you'll be doing in the meantime."

“… yes.” She nodded awkwardly, truly feeling like a young, helpless girl being lectured by a teacher after she’d done something wrong. In part, however, she understood his concerns; she was acting a bit lax, largely because she thought he was a miracle-maker. And, he may as well be, but as he said, so long as their lives were in jeopardy over one mistake, she can’t afford to think everything will be just fine as long as he’s around.