“So Second Prince Balthazar is colluding with Gorthuk...”
Once I was finished sharing all of the information I’d gotten out of the interrogation with Nia, she trailed off, looking troubled. A prince having connections with an arms merchant wasn’t that unusual, but it was a whole different story when that merchant actively schemed to make trouble in other countries.
“Gorthuk has been the subject of dubious rumors even before all this happened. He would trigger problems here and there, causing squabbles that would allow him to sell his wares for easy money.”
“Yeah, that’s way past ‘dubious.’ He was acting as a merchant of death,” I commented after Nia’s explanation, frowning.
In war, not only did you need a massive number of people, but you also needed enough food to make sure that those people didn’t starve, as well as enough bedding, tents, and burnable fuel to make sure they didn’t freeze. And even though the nation was the one consuming it all, it wasn’t as if they were getting it for free. Aside from a few exceptions, the country paid for all of this stuff. If you knew just how much cash Sylvario was raking in from trade, you’d know that they would have very little reason to be stingy. If anything, pouring their funds into war supplies could be an actual strategy of theirs.
Wait.
“Balthazar, who wants to rack up achievements by solving conflicts, has teamed up with Gorthuk, who profits off of them. In fact, it’s possible that they’re causing conflicts just to profit, isn’t it? And if Balthazar was getting some sort of kickback from Gorthuk for it...” I puzzled out.
“I can’t deny that there is a chance that the second prince is using Gorthuk not only in his quest for the throne, but to enrich himself. Though I don’t want to think he’s sunk that low,” Nia said, letting out a small sigh. She’d come to the same conclusion I did. And if our hypothesis was true, then this would mean that a member of the Sylvarian royal family was embezzling from the national coffers. Once money entered the national treasury, members of the royal family were unable to spend that money as they might have wanted to. Most countries drew up proper budgets for their royal families that were put into place after being agreed upon by the council of nobles. Even as the second prince, Balthazar had limits on what he could spend freely.
But on a separate note, it was generally known that military affairs were grossly expensive, and they would become only more so as unexpected circumstances would require an almost literal pouring of more funds from contingency budgets. Which—and this I was realizing quite rapidly—they had caught on to.
And so they spend money without regard to cost in order to solve a conflict. Gorthuk would sell his military supplies and receive money that way. Balthazar, who made that possible, would get whatever percentage of the profits back. If the prince was using that method to filter cash from the national treasury, it would be difficult for anyone to notice or stop.
If they really were doing all of that, then that would mean they’d have set up a system to line their pockets with the citizens’ hard-earned tax money all the while making those same people suffer—and die—unnecessarily. Even if Nia had lost any familial feelings for Balthazar long ago, she must not have wanted to believe that someone she was related to by blood could do something that abhorrent. I understood that. What’s more, that person was a member of the royal family, someone who should, above all, steward and guide the people. But utterly heartless people could be found anywhere.
“The ceasefire treaty restricted the royal family’s personal budget quite a bit, but at the time, Balthazar had barely objected,” I commented.
“I would hazard a guess that either he had enough savings that restrictions on his budget wouldn’t be an issue, or that he didn’t care, since he had...alternative streams of income.”
I gave her a little nod of agreement, and she sighed again. While we were only working on circumstantial evidence, if I put all this together with what I knew of Balthazar’s personality and everything he’d done so far, then I felt there was probably a ninety percent chance we were correct. Hell, it would even make me understand what he’d done.
“If we’re right, that would explain why he’d employ such a forceful scheme to take back the territory Sylvario ceded,” Nia continued. “The large-scale battle it would trigger would be on entirely another scale to a little regional squabble, and so it would naturally cause Gorthuk to get involved and practically rake in the profit. Balthazar would then receive unimaginable profits too, plus he’d gain a significant advantage in the fight for the throne.”
“Yes. I don’t think it could be helped that he believed this method would help him kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
He was nasty. Not the worst, but completely disgusting. I could tell from the look on Nia’s face that she was thinking the same thing. I wasn’t going to say the guy should, as a royal, only selflessly devote himself to the kingdom. Be it a royal or a plain noble, they could go ahead and make as much profit as they wanted, fairly.
But this was wrong. This was just wrong.
“There are things you should do and things you just shouldn’t,” I said. “Does Balthazar even realize that?”
“Unfortunately, he’s always had that side to him. Though I would say that it’s probably just gotten significantly worse. Or no, we aren’t sure of it yet, so we can’t make conclusions,” Nia said, giving her head a little shake to put on the brakes.
Hearing Nia verbally restrain herself made me realize that the whole thing was getting me pretty heated too, so I let out a gust of breath at once, a hard exhale. With my kind of background, I wasn’t about to start championing justice or anything, but some things still just pissed me off. But anger clouded your judgment, especially the type of broiling anger that could make you lose it entirely.
Calm down, calm down, I told myself, dropping my anger into my stomach. Once I was calmer, I took another hard exhale, more or less clearing my head.