Herald of Steel

As Lord Janus was unable to accurately answer why Lady Miranda had chosen to ally herself with the Heeat family, Alexander could only make educated guesses.

Perhaps her family had previous dealings with them.

Perhaps they had reached skind of deal with regard to the family's debt.

Or perhaps they were the only ones willing to make a deal with the Margraves in the first place.

Whichever the answers were, Alexander would have to wait till he met the lady of the house.

For now, though, he returned his attention to Lord Janus, who was still answering his questions,

"As for Miss Linda's husband, Lord Parker, I'm afraid I have already told you all that I knew, my lord. Recently, I have been busy managing my own fiefs, so have not interacted with the family much."

"But I can tell you about why the family is leaving the Marsh Ducal family. Following their house's head- Lord March's death, the Marsh family is currently in tatters."

"Many of their most productive lands have been taken by Iyizarid, devastating their revenue stream. And that was perhaps not even the worst of their loss. The loss of the skilled labor force was perhaps even a greater blow than any access to those raw materials. And this has caused many nobles to have … thoughts."

"Couple that with the succession war they have been fighting among themselves till now, they do not even have the tto take stock of their own situation. Forget about anyone else! And after all we did… bastards!" As Lord Janus ended his speech, he gnashed his teeth in rage and fury.

It was easy to see that the elderly man still held great love for the ducal family, but their recent inaction had greatly displeased him, causing him to view them as almost traitors.

Alexander did not pry into these matters.

Neither about Lord Janus's grievance on the March family nor about their well being.

Frankly those things did not matter to him.

From Lord Janus's description, that family was already on its last legs, with possibly ongoing armed conflict between the various family members.

So what was the point of knowing about them anyway?

Thus having heard all this, Alexander felt he had gotten at least a preliminary understanding of the situation Lady Miranda was facing.

Thus he turned to address, "Okay, so to recap, the reason why Lord Janus you are here is because the family's treasuries have becempty due to piracy and cheap goods entering the market, all while Lady Miranda risks being ousted."

Saying so, Alexander then turned to glance at Lord Janus to see if he got it all right, receiving a curt nod in response.

Thus he at last posed the million dollar question,

"So what do you wantto do then? I mean I understand you wantto help Lady Miranda. But how do you wantto do to help exactly? Annul the free trade agreement? Lend the family money? Use my army to quell the rebellion? Or sother proposal? Which is it"

'Yes, all please!' Lord Janus would have loved to have picked the 'All of the above' option when Alexander had presented his buffet of options.

But that would have been of course too rude.

Thus he could only politely reply, "We… The lady simply wants to meet with you, my lord. The details can be discussed there. Here is the invitation letter."

Saying so Lord Janus quickly produced a long, handwritten by the matriarch of the house from a hidden pocket in his robe.

It seemed that for now, his top priority was getting Alexander to the island.

The rest could wait.

Alexander took the letter with a steady hand, and unfolding the several pages of text, then spent the next half an hour in silence reading the very long summary.

The document pasted with text on both sides basically retold Lord Janus's story.

But with two ' additions.

First- it asked for gold.

Like a lot of gold- like a few hundred million ropals of it!

'Fuck you, bitch!' The quoted number was so large that seeing it for the first time, Alexander almost shouted this out of incredulation, and had to try to stifle his eyes from turning into saucers right in front of Lord Janus.

In context, Lady Miranda's second ask was much more manageable.

She wanted Alexander to cwith s'good quality' troops- 'To help with the negotiations' as she put it.

After all, might makes right in any part of the world.

And anything you said, needed to have the sharpness of swords to implement it.

Then lastly, the letter ended with Lady Miranda professing her sincere apologies that she could not personally cto invite him to her island since she was still mourning her son, as well as tackling the ongoing crisis in her family.

As a side note, she also promised Alexander to address his concern about the Kaiser family's involvement in Tibias when he got to the island, quoting, "This attack on our allies is a serious breach of the treaty. Being able to prove it will even force the Confederation Council to intervene. Such a thing will be greatly beneficial to both our families."

'The Kaiser family… I had forgotten about them.' Reading that name, Alexander was suddenly reminded that they had not discussed this obvious culprit's name.

So many family names had cup, but Lord Janus seemingly made no mention of it.

'Was it because they are innocent? Or the Margraves have found no evidence of it?' He hence wondered where this troublesfoe fitted into the whole puzzle of a mess.

Alexander's gut told him so.

Alexander finally finished reading the letter after a while and then scanned it a few times more to make sure he did not miss anything.

Before finally raising his head to look at Lord Janus, his gaze sharp and gaze.

And the elderly gentleman knew exactly why he was getting such looks, and thus he could not help but suddenly produce an embarrassed smile.

It was the matter of money.

As a businessman himself, Lord Janus was not unfamiliar with loans and debts.

He had both taken and given it many, many times.

But never in the scale Lady Miranda was asking here.

Thus the old man was too ashamed to admit saying the number when Alexander first asked directly.

But since the thad finally cnow, Lord Janus quickly elucidated on the matter, "We will not need all the mo… money at once my lord. This is simply the lady trying to guarantee a line of credit if the need should occur. Funds we can slowly access over a period of time. It will not burden Zanzan!"

"..." Alexander neither commented yes or no to this request.

He was currently thinking, weighing his options.

On one hand, he could ditch Lady Miranda and forget about her, thus effectively losing that market and all his hard work with it.

Which was clearly a very bad idea.

Or on the other hand, he could spend a ton of money to try and keep the entire thing afloat.

Problem was, then Alexander would be using a lot of money gotten from that market just to keep that market.

It would be kind of like digging oil to keep the oil wells running.

Or like getting better loot in a game, just to get even better loot later on.

Mostly futile.

Thus many would advise that it would be better to cut one's losses and keep the up until now earnings to oneself.

An argument made all the more powerful by the fact that Alexander's side currently seemed to be on the losing side of the 'rebellion', thus making the prospect even grimmer.

However, if one moved their greedy eyes from money for just a second, they would immediately see a problem with that kind of thought.

Alexander of course knew that Galiosos was a huge market that provided a lot of jobs in Zanzan.

And if he were to suddenly lose access to it, and he did not want unemployment to sharply rise causing social unrest, then he would have to start paying these workers unemployment benefits.

So all that potential debt money would just be converted into unemployment benefits.

And this was nothing to say of social impact.

Alexander could already imagine it- A lord who gives out free money!

Can you imagine a whole society who lived their whole life hand to mouth suddenly getting 'free money'?

Why would anyone in Alexander's lands ever work again!

And all of this even did not go into mentioning the strategic partnership Alexander had with Lady Miranda.

She was supposed to give him the most advanced, newly built ships for his navy, as well as train those crews on the Galiosian expertise of the sea.

It was something the lady had even made mention in her letter, saying, "The construction of the boats have been moved to the 'Royal harbor', right next to our house. To ensure their safety from the rebels. I'm sure my lord will be pleased to see their progress."

This was a tof update, invitation, and reminder to not screw her over all wrapped in one.

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