Herald of Steel

Edit- In the previous chapter- instead of tradesmen, it should be trade agreement.

Alexander had up until now been listening to Lord Janus's story with mostly a detached interest.

And yes, it was just a story to him.

Sure, he was curious and even a bit concerned after learning about Lady Miranda's troubles, wishing she would be able to extract herself out of it as soon as possible.

But that was really the extent of it.

The reason for this apathy was because Alexander was still a tiny bit peeved about how Lady Miranda had rejected his marriage, not out of any manly ego, but by how this had made him lose out on the abundant resources of the Margrave family.

Thus, he frankly did not care who sat on that family's chair, as long as they were still friendly to Alexander.

"What do they have against me? What is wrong with that agreement?" Thus it was only with Lord Janus revealing the other side's planned agenda that Alexander at last brought his full attention to the discuss, quickly making the inquiry.

He had paid a lot to get that trade agreement and was not going to just sit and suck his thumb while the other side unilaterally annulled it.

"Ah.. you see my lord, ummm… we…our treasury is currently empty… because we are currently running a trade deficit with you. So…" The elderly Janus seemed slightly reluctant to further reveal his family's situation.

"Deficit! How?" This was news to Alexander because he felt such a thing should not be the case.

As he then went on to pose. "Shouldn't you be making coin hand over fist by taking my unique good materails and selling it to the rest of the world using your fleet of ships? How are your treasuries empty? You guys should be richer than me!"

The logical conclusion seemed so certain that if not for the fact that Alexander could see no reason for Lord Janus to lie, the paranoid man would have suspected that the elderly lord was here with a much more hidden agenda.

"That…" At Alexander's reasonable query, Lord Janus once again appeared reluctant, his ears slightly burning this time, as if he was unsure if he should reveal their vulnerable position.

But after a slight pause ultimately he choose to confess.

He knew this topic was going to come up eventually, and it might even be needed to convince Alexander to come with him.

Thus adjusting himself, Lord Janus elucidate in a slightly embarrassed voice,,

"Lady Miranda can better explain the matter better, but you see my lord those large profits we made were part of the problem. In the past few years, we have been able to sell a lot of your goods to all the surrounding regions around the Central Sea, which let us earn enormous profits."

"But that also caused many greedy eyes to be cast upon us. Did you know pirate attacks on our fleet have more than quadrupled in the past few years, my lord? We have been unable to protect many of them, even leading us to lose a few of our biggest cargo ships! Their destruction has led to significant losses."

This was once again a brand new reveal to Alexander.

He had never received any such report, neither had he suffered any such losses on his own shipments.

Thus with Lord Janus's information, Alexander even wondered if the two years he was away from Zanzan had led to him overlooking even more crucial aspects of his governance.

"I… see. I did not know you were targetted with such enmity. Lady Miranda never mentioned anything in her letters." Alexander thus sounded genuinely shocked, and then turned to then ask, "Who are attacking your ships? Is it the work of all the various foreign powers combined? Or a specific single one?"

Alexander prayed with all his heart that it was the latter, as that would still be manageable.

But if it was the former, that would mean massive trouble, if not absolute doom for his nascent trade routes.

However, despite Alexander's trepidations, Lord Janus was not able to give a concrete answer,

"I'm afraid the details of the attack are not fully known to me. Lady Miranda tried to suppress all the incurred losses- the ships sunk, the amount of cargo stolen,, and even who attacked us. She probably did this so as to not spook the shipping merchants or the family. Clearly the latter had not worked. But I'm afraid only she knows the exact details." The elderly man sounded a bit dejected for he was quite offended that Lady Miranda had not trusted him with the numbers.

Then, although Lord Janus was not able to fulfill all of Alexander's wants, he was able to use his vast experience to make an educated guess.

Thus with a pause, he further hypothesized, "My guess is that it is not the actual navies of the various powers attacking us, but various pirate groups funded by them. The small size of the attacking fleets proves that.

For any standing government to do such a thing would be too scandalous. I do not believe any of them would so blatantly break the customs of the sea, lest they earn her wrath!" Lord Janus placed his logic on the fear of gods.

And it made sense to Alexander as people really acted according to such beliefs.

This logical conclusion thus brought some water back to Alexander's heart, as he traced his chin thoughtfully, 'Hmmm… pirate.'

Being from the modern times, this was a pretty uncommon term for him save for the occasional Somalian pirates.

So Alexander had to be reminded that maritime piracy was still a thing here.

There were no US supercarriers keeping the sea lanes open for the rest of the world to trade freely, but instead, each nation had to fend for itself.

And many times these nations had the incentive to sponsor piracy to pit their adversaries.

Alexander had briefly forgotten about that because he never got any such reports.

"Hmmm… pirates… I never heard of them being near Adhania. I wonder why?" He murmured to himself, finding the phenomenon quite strange, especially given Adhania had no great navy, or perhaps more accurately, no navy at all.

"That's because Adhania rarely treaded with the outside world, my lord. So no pirate fleet previously bothered to come here." It was fortunate for Alexander that Lord Janus was there to quickly solve his confusion, who then went on to warn in a cock sure voice,

"But trust me, now that you have started trading, and such lucrative products at that, these scums will soon come… like sharks drawn to fresh blood! Be sure of that."

"...." Alexander could only pursue his lips at this, feeling a slight headache coming as he tried to think about how to tackle that eventual problem.

Fighting piracy was like fighting an insurgency, it was really, really hard, and sometimes even futile, especially in this time period.

However, while the threat of piracy was certainly real, Alexander also still had some questions for Lord Janus.

"Okay, I get that piracy has hurt your treasury. But it still should not be enough to bankrupt you right? Most of the cargo ships must have been able to reach their destinations. And besides, what does all this have got to do with the free trade agreement we signed?"

To Alexander, some parts of the story still did not seem to add up.

And clutching both his slightly clammy palms together, Lord Janus readily answered, "We had a lot of debts accumulated from Lord Margrave's time that we needed to pay back in the last two years. The creditors had come knocking. Then there was a special tax introduced to fight Iyizarid that took another significant amount of funds from us."

"And lastly, the rebuilding of our main city Caira from that horrific tidal wave demanded a prodigious amount of gold. So in total we spent the money almost as soon as we got it."

Saying this, Lord Janus then paused a bit, as if sighing in his heart at the regrettable turn of events.

Before composing himself once again and explaining,

"This is where your free trade agreement comes in, my lord. Since there is no tariff on your products, it means our treasury gets nothing when we import your goods. Only when we sold it to others for a profit do we make the money. But as I have already told you… selling it has become more difficult."

"As for selling them domestically, my lord, well you should be more than aware of the quality of your goods. They are not only cheap but of very high quality. Goods from Zanzan was a real want among all Galiosians." Lord Janus inadvertently had buttressed blacksmith Marvin's claim, before going on to say,

"But the problem this has caused is driving many of our domestic workshops out of business. Especially iron smelting, which had been our biggest industry. However now, everybody only wants your things and nothing else. And in this instance, our own blacksmiths cannot compete. With the trade agreement in place, we are also unable to put tariffs or duties to protect them. Hence there is a growing frustration about the deal in a section of the society."

Truly one man's opportunity was another man's misfortune.

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