“Accepting a gift and then acting like this goes against the principles of commerce, does it not?”
Jenkin was not a fool after all, for he realized that this situation was not a demonstration meant to demand a larger bribe.
“If my sincerity was lacking, you could have simply said so. Why go to all the trouble of preparing something so cumbersome?”
However, a man for whom civil service was his dream, his talent, and his calling would not be swayed by a paltry envelope of money.
Even in his previous life, Aiden had been an exemplary civil servant who had received the Integrity in Public Service Award from the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.
“Ah. Are you saying you’d like to contribute more to the Northern Development Fund?”
“The northern... what?”
“The Northern Development Fund.”
“What is that?”
Jenkin’s eyes trembled uneasily in every direction.
“You said it earlier, didn’t you? That it was a show of sincerity toward those working for the north.”
Aiden picked at his ear and looked at him casually.
“You know donations are non-refundable, right?”
He had clearly told him earlier.
He would put it to good use.
Aiden could look up at the heavens without a speck of shame.
***
“Um, Administrator.”
“Yeah.”
“Will this really be all right?”
“What will?”
Jenkin, who had been shouting that this could not be happening, had been driven out by Brikal, the head cook.
The merchant company had guards and mercenaries, but the servants working in the lord’s castle were pure-blooded northerners.
In other words, their frames were different. Their very frames.
Before overwhelming physicality, weapons and the like hardly mattered.
However, the aide seemed worried about what would come afterward.
“Do you think we tolerated those merchant bastards’ tyranny because we liked it? It was only because people could at least scrape by with them around that we kept our heads down, frustrating as it was....”
“That’s exactly how things ended up like this, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you think such a thing as a necessary evil exists in this world?”
“But...!”
“No matter what label you stick on it, evil is just evil.”
The aide wanted to refute Aiden’s words, but there was nothing suitable he could say.
“Aide—no, Jamie.”
“...Yes, Administrator.”
“Let’s be honest. You know just how badly those bastards have been beating down the north’s prices all this time, don’t you?”
The aide, Jamie, bit his lip.
“Do you know why they were able to do that?”
“...I do not.”
“Because we handed them the hilt.”
Aiden shrugged.
“Ah, I’m not saying it was your fault.”
What power would an aide have when even merchant riffraff looked down on him?
The problem was the damned previous administrators, who had thought of everything except doing the work they were supposed to do.
“What do you mean, we handed them the hilt...?”
“I mean we were too desperate over a few sacks of grain.”
“But we had no choice!”
Jamie protested.
“Right away...!”
“Because people’s livelihoods were at stake?”
Robbed of the very words he had been about to say, Jamie fell silent as if he had swallowed honey.
“Precisely because people’s livelihoods are at stake, we must not take such a low posture.”
Once you showed every card in your hand?
After that, the only thing you could do was rely on sympathy.
And as everyone knew, the plea of “We are all going to die, so please show mercy just this once” inevitably gave most merchants, whose eyes had been overturned by gold, a single realization.
Something like,
“I can do cruel things to you, and you still won’t be able to move, will you?”
“Even so, the residents will starve immediately.”
“They won’t.”
“Administrator!”
“Why do you think this trade matters only to us?”
Aiden, who had not let go of his pen even once during the conversation, finally set it down and stared directly at the aide.
“There’s no such thing in this world as a deal that happens because only one side wants it, Jamie.”
Rattle.
Aiden took several new documents out of his desk drawer.
The aide, Jamie, wondered when on earth he had made those as well.
Looking at him closely, Jamie’s new superior seemed to live as though his day was twice as long as everyone else’s.
“Where are the other merchants now?”
“We sent people to each village, so they should all gather at the lord’s castle within a few days.”
“Good.”
“But will it truly be all right to leave Jenkin like that? His is the largest of the merchant companies dealing in fur....”
“That’s exactly why I struck him down as an example.”
“He is not the sort to leave the north quietly.”
“Then that’s even better. What are you worried about?”
Aiden’s face was full of the look of a man who wished Jenkin would struggle with all his might.
“In any case, don’t look down on merchant companies just because they’re small. Treat them the same. The same. When public offices give preferential treatment to a few companies from the very start, all of that causes problems later. Mm, you know what I mean, right?”
The words “No, I don’t” rose all the way to Jamie’s throat, but he covered them with a vague smile.
Aiden had not expected an answer either, so he did not blame him.
“Good grief, the work really never ends. It never ends. Ah! What about the map I mentioned?”
“I’ll bring it right away.”
“Right. When I personally went around for the census this time, the roads were such a mess that I couldn’t grasp the terrain at all. What about the farmland ledger?”
“Ah, that is still....”
“The vegetation survey table?”
“T-That is also currently being drafted....”
“Huh? I gave you an entire week. Why?”
“Well....”
“The monster habitat classification?”
“That also needs a little more time....”
“Still, you finished the lord’s castle inventory ledger, right?”
“......”
“That’s strange. You seem to be working hard, so why is none of it done yet?”
“I apologize.”
“Working hard is good, but doing good work is important too, all right?”
“...Yes.”
As an ordinary person who could not live each day as though it had forty-eight hours, Jamie somehow felt a little wronged.
‘I’m stuck working overtime again today.’
Still, when one was told to do something, one had to do it. There was no helping that.
With his spirits somewhat low, Jamie had to return to his office while carrying an armful of work.
Even so, somewhere in his heart, he felt as though a warm breeze was blowing.
It had already been five years since he had become an official with the single-minded wish to work for the north, the homeland where he had been born and raised.
He had served three superiors until now, but he had never once seen anything that could be called proper work.
The orders his superiors had given until now had consisted entirely of things like, “Bring me this kind of liquor,” or, “The taxes are lacking, so find some more.”
While a corner of Jamie’s heart was slowly wearing away, Aiden became the fourth superior he served.
He was certainly a somewhat strange person, but...
‘Compared to my previous superiors....’
His current superior was someone who awakened an emotion Jamie had never felt before.
Jamie did not know how to define that emotion, but...
‘I need to work!’
What was certain was that this was different from the past, when he had been crushed beneath a sense of defeat.
***
“You must have had a hard journey coming all this way.”
A few days later.
On a day in April when the weather had eased considerably, as if spring was now truly approaching, the lord’s castle bustled with guests for the first time in a long while.
“Haha. Th-Thank you for welcoming us like this.”
“Thanks to you, we were able to recover from our fatigue, Administrator.”
They were all merchants who had come to the north for the fur trade.
‘He looks rather young.’
‘That whelp of an administrator really drove Jenkin out?’
‘Trade permits? Has he mistaken himself for a real lord just because he came here as acting lord?’
Some merchants looked Aiden up and down, making no effort to hide their displeasure at the newly created procedure.
However,
‘The fact that Jenkin’s bribe did not work means... perhaps this could be an opportunity for our merchant company as well.’
‘I’m not asking for much! I just hope I can secure more than last year!’
Some of the merchant company heads, unlike in ordinary years, quietly began to harbor expectations toward the changed situation.
After all, opportunities bloomed amid crises.
“Now, now. Please sit down first. You should have breakfast.”
At Aiden’s words, the merchants each took their seats.
As though the kitchen had been waiting, food began to be laid out across the long table.
In truth, it was meager for a meal prepared by the acting lord of a region, but everyone at the meal knew that the food itself was not important. Thus, no one pointed it out and ruined the atmosphere.
‘These bastards haven’t paid a single coin of tax yet, so why would I go out of my way to treat them lavishly?’
Of course, if he had wanted to prepare something presentable, he could have done so.
However, Aiden had no intention of spending blood-like tax money on outsiders who had not contributed even a single sack of flour to his storehouse.
‘Hey, public officials’ meal reception expenses are capped at thirty thousand won per person.’
Clatter, clatter.
For a while, only the intermittent sound of tableware striking tableware could be heard in the awkward atmosphere.
“As you were informed beforehand, from this year onward, merchant companies without a trade permit cannot conduct transactions in the north.”
“Cough, cough!”
They said one should not even bother a dog while it was eating, but Aiden was not considerate enough to concern himself with such things.
“You are all busy people, so I’ll keep this brief.”
Aiden set down his fork and met the eyes of each person seated at the table.
“There will be no compromise. There will be no negotiation either. If you dislike it, you may leave.”
“But Administrator!”
“If you intend to threaten us with food, you would be better off giving up on that.”
“......”
At Aiden’s firm words, the budding second Jenkins who had been preparing to wield food as a weapon were left speechless.
“Are you saying you will tell the residents of the north to endure suffering in order to tame the merchants?”
At that moment, the only woman present opened her mouth.
“I am Kalisa.”
The cool-eyed woman was a merchant Aiden had been watching carefully from the beginning.
She was the only person who had shown interest rather than annoyance when he handed over the documents required to receive a trade permit.
“The residents of the north will not suffer.”
Aiden stated it as fact.
“Even if all the scattered villages of the north are gathered together, the population does not reach three thousand.”
A few merchants wondered why he was bringing up the north’s weakness himself, but the answer soon came.
“This lord’s castle still has some history of its own, so I found that there are things here that would fetch a price if sold.”
“...Pardon?”
“Taxidermy, paintings, sculptures, arms, furniture, horses, carriages.... If I strip them all out and sell them, I should be able to secure enough food to feed three thousand residents for at least two months.”
Aiden picked up his fork again and cut off a mouthful of gamy bear meat, filling his mouth with it.
“As you can see, here in the north, as long as we can fill our stomachs, quality does not matter much.”
Munch, munch.
The bear meat still reeked strongly of game, but...
Gulp.
Aiden swallowed the meat without so much as a grimace.
“But if you fail to obtain even a single fox pelt in this fur trade....”
After chewing and swallowing the bear meat, Aiden smiled vividly and said,
“I don’t think you will be quite so fine.”
This was the move Aiden had been relying on.
The north needed food to eat immediately.
In other words, if they could somehow endure the two months of the spring famine season...
‘We’ll be the ones holding the hilt.’