The errand boy rushed over with a map of the area and trade contracts that the trade house had a grasp on. When counting all the little things, there were a great number of goods being exchanged, and when they were all put together, it became a whole torrent of commerce.
Kieman was thinking hard to find ways to not get tangled up in all this, now that he understood Eve’s intentions, but it did not seem to be going well. But now Lawrence had appeared, and if it was always the news from travelers that could quickly change the business of a relaxed market, then it was much too early to give up on reaching a breakthrough.
“It’d be nice if we could quickly whip together all the things that the Winfiel Kingdom needs.”
“The one time that snake of a woman puts together an honest trade. It shouldn’t be easy for her to choose not to sell wool if she doesn’t get her lumber.”
This time around, Eve’s strength and weakness was her connection to the honest and upright Twilight Cardinal.
If Eve was doing something villainous, then they could threaten her with Col’s tears.
That would make Lawrence himself a villainous merchant, which meant he could technically reach out to Col and give them orders, and ruin Eve’s trade all they liked, but he could not.
When he pictured the cold stare not only from Col, but from his only daughter Myuri, he had a hard time breathing.
“I know you must have thoroughly looked into the possibility, but why not leather?”
Leather came down the river from Lenos to Kerube along with lumber. They could also easily procure leather, because of the hunting at Bishop Rahden’s village, who they met in Salonia, and the mountain Tanya revived. And if they could hunt deer in the Tonneburg Woods on top of that, then that would then reduce the amount of woodland creatures feasting on leaf buds, and it would prevent the woods from becoming a conifer forest. It took care of two birds with one stone.
“The kingdom is the Twilight Cardinal’s base. Leather is considered a luxury article and does not actually sell very well there.”
“Ah, I see.”
Now that he thought about it, he had heard something similar in Karlan. The southern merchants who dealt in spices were no longer able to sell to the indulgent Church clergy, and now had no choice but to seek out smaller towns like Karlan. Karlan was fighting to make this a business opportunity, but Col’s actions were having unintended effects all over the world.
“We might be able to do something with woolen goods, however.”
“Woolen goods?”
Lawrence began rifling through the mountain of documents; he had a feeling he had just seen a contract about woolen goods.
But what he found was the trade of wool as a raw material, and thread at most. The wool would have to go through several other stages of production to become woolen goods.
“The wool comes from across the sea, is woven into thread here, then immediately shipped back across and sold there… That can’t be easy.”
Thread could be spun anywhere.
“We could at least treat it as goods if we could turn it into semifinished cloth.”
Lawrence looked at Holo when he heard that because she was dozing off after having run at full speed all the way to Kerube, and there was a blanket draped over her.
“Do you not have enough weavers?”
“Every city knows that profits would greatly increase if they could sell wool as fabric, and not just wool, so they want to produce woolen goods. But scarcely does it ever move past thread spinning. Sometimes the ash necessary to remove the oils from the fibers is not available, or they do not have the facilities for fulling or dyeing.”
Several processes were necessary in order to turn wool into fabric. From what Lawrence learned once upon a time, it was common for it to take two to three years to go from sheared wool to being sold as clothing.
“The trickiest part is the lack of water. That is the same reason Winfiel exports unprocessed wool.”
Lawrence knew that dyeing the fabric used up water. But fulling, however, required him to flip through the account books in his mind.
“Fulling… Yes, waterwheels.”
“This area has many wheat fields. The biggest rivers are full of boats, and the smaller creeks will have a mill, and that’s that. And most importantly, large tracts of land suited for wheat are typically flat to begin with. Rivers on land like that often are not powerful enough to properly full the fabric flat.”
The document Lawrence found noted that raw wool and thread were often sent inland, toward mountains.
“But gentler rivers do not require as much work in order to travel upstream, so the merchants that come to Kerube to sell leather stock up on thread and wool before going back upstream. There, where the flow of the river is stronger, they turn the thread into fabric, full it, dye it, and then come back down the river.”
And plenty of taxes and fees had to be paid during this process, including paying those who would take on the transport of the fabric, and thus profits fell drastically. Yet there was an industrial reason why that had to happen.
“Well, that’s why things would be much easier if gold came from the Tonneburg Woods.”
If so, then Matthias could hand gold over to Karlan instead of lumber, Karlan could then purchase wool and keep the economy going without wasting lumber, and Eve, no longer able to obtain lumber from Karlan, would then have to buy from Kerube as she always did.
“Mm… If only we could find a narwhal…,” Holo muttered; she was just scarcely paying attention as she dozed, it seemed.
“All in all, this situation is much like that.”
Everyone was trying to find new profits in this mess—it felt a lot like the divine creating something from nothing.
“Hmm… If we can’t come up with new products, then is there a chance there’s something in the tension between Karlan and Kerube that Eve hasn’t thought of yet? Something akin to political warfare.”
All they really had to do was drag Eve’s profits down.
That alone would lessen the burden on Karlan, Tonneburg, and Kerube, and it would be easier for all three parties to create brighter futures for themselves.
“There must be a way for everyone to work together. But I think our only choice is to come together and negotiate with the snake. But then we would probably end up arguing over the allotment of our shares. I think it would be more difficult to cooperate with Karlan than it would be to simply obstruct them.”
Kieman, who knew the reality of running a large port town, gave a tired smile. Their histories and sizes were on vastly different scales, so it was almost impossible for them to stand on equal ground, and even if they were to allot the profits based on number of people alone, the value of a great trade corporation versus a small alliance of merchants fetched different values, even if their numbers were the same.
Maintaining face was truly a troublesome concept.
Lawrence and Kieman then lit candle after candle and pondered all night long, but could find no particular standout strategy. They did consider widening the scope and getting Salonia and the Debau Company involved, but that failed to provide a better solution.
They were tired, and their time limit was looming.
Though it was still dark outside, and dawn showed no signs of breaking, Holo woke up as the morning church bell, meant to awaken the clergy, rang before even the first bird awoke.
“Yawn… Ah, dear?”
“Mm-hmm?”
Just as Kieman returned from washing his face in the well, he saw Holo folding the blanket, and his shoulders dropped.
“It seems like you have no choice but to go on and pretend like you’re going to speak to Lord Tonneburg, Lawrence.”
“I’ll do what I can to delay this, too.”
Matthias was not interested in joining the project, but he was a smart leader—he understood that his options were limited. Once he saw Lawrence, he would likely agree to the contract and head to Karlan without showing much resistance. Eve was surely confident in her own strategy, so if Lawrence had trouble with his talk, then Matthias would probably start doubting him.
Eve was not only simply making money out of this project. She was also creating a new place for refugees to work and make new homes, so it was hard to call this extension justified.
“Are you heading out by horse?”
“There’s no way to tell for certain that Eve’s lookouts won’t be in or around Kerube, so we’ll be leaving from outside the city.”
Kieman was satisfied with that. Kerube was a large city, which meant there was a sprawl of smaller towns just beyond the city walls—there were plenty of stables there.
“Sigh… Even if we don’t get any results, we could have stood our ground for just a little longer, if this was like the old days.”
Kieman rolled his neck, a hint of pain in the act; Lawrence was the same. He genuinely wondered if he might fall off Holo on the way.
“What do you think the secret is to Eve’s youth?” Lawrence asked.
Kieman gave it a moment of serious thought and said, “Her greed, I think.”