Fair Trade, If You Call It That (1)
“We can coordinate the details during tomorrow’s meeting, so—.”
“Do you really think I have the time for such trivialities?”
Jefferson, who had been on the verge of relaxing his tension, was terrified once again by that cold, sharp retort.
“O-of course not... My apologies, Administrative Officer. I spoke out of turn—.”
“Have the agreement finalized and brought to my bedroom before midnight.”
“Y-yes, sir! Right away, Administrative Officer!”
Roland, whose complexion remained poor, answered reflexively.
Jefferson felt a flicker of pity for him. With screams still echoing outside the window and the ice-cold Administrative Officer of the North being so cruel, the hatred he once felt toward the man who had occupied his seat was beginning to dilute.
“Hey, are you alright?”
Once the Administrative Officer, who resembled the frost of the North, had left, Jefferson finally felt he could breathe a little easier and asked after Roland’s well-being.
“Huuuugh!”
A sob burst out immediately.
How often does an average person get to see a grown man cry? Naturally, Jefferson had seen it so few times that he had no idea how to comfort him.
“J-Jefferson! Please, get me out of this place! Take me back to Lontes, this is hell! Please! I beg you! If you do that, I will serve you like a mentor for the rest of my life!”
“So, you’ve finally caught on to how things are running here.”
Roland, his face a mess of tears and snot, clung to Jefferson’s trouser leg. Jefferson felt a strange, inexplicable thrill at the sight of his former rival, who seemed to have completely crumbled.
“Please, I beg you. Director of Administration! Please, take me back to Lontes!”
“I am an Adjutant now.”
“Yes?”
“I said I am an Adjutant, not the Director of Administration.”
However, that pathetic thrill vanished in an instant at the word ‘Director of Administration’ coming from Roland’s lips. It was true that he had briefly felt the urge to save this poor young man, but the fact remained that this guy was a dangerous element who could threaten his own position.
“It’s a pity, but what can you do? You’re already a dead man in the Lontes Viscountcy.”
“What? What on earth are you talking about?!”
“The Treasurer gave testimony. He said that you and fifty soldiers were all unable to escape the rat swarm.”
“B-but I am standing right here, alive and well, Director!”
That, that.
That damn ‘Director’ title again.
It had been ages since he’d lost that title!
Jefferson almost let his irritation show on his face, but he managed to maintain his composure and kept up a good-natured facade.
“What do you think would happen if you returned to Lontes now?”
“That is...”
“The Treasurer and the knight will be pointed at as cowards who ran away without saving their superior, you. Do you think those two are the type to just take that lying down? No, absolutely not. They will definitely try to harm you. And what about the Viscount? Do you think he’ll throw you a party because you returned? Or will he lock you in a dungeon as a defector who lost fifty soldiers and has been working for the North all this time?”
“······!”
“I’d bet on the latter.”
Roland’s posture collapsed once more. This time, he couldn’t even manage to grab Jefferson’s trousers.
‘So, even if you manage to escape the North, don’t even look in the direction of Lontes. Heh heh.’
Jefferson thought his own cunning was quite brilliant. He never noticed that Roland’s face, sprawled on the floor, was filled with a mocking sneer.
“Did he fall for it?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re good at acting. You were trembling so much that I actually wondered if I had really bullied you that hard.”
“The academy I attended had a pretty strict military culture. Thinking of you as a malicious senior made the lines flow right out. Your acting wasn’t bad either, Administrative Officer. I’ve felt it before, but the way you cut people off and only say what you want to say in short bursts—it puts an incredible amount of pressure on the listener.”
Yeah, that’s the tone of our district’s three-term assemblyman...
Aiden recalled the face of his senior secretary, who had been incredibly good at mimicking the assemblyman he served.
‘Are you doing well?’
He was a man who catered to that temperamental old man better than his own parents just to get into the National Assembly. I hope he achieved that dream.
“Administrative Officer?”
“Ah. Just remembered someone. How about the contract?”
“Here it is.”
Aiden began to check the contract Roland handed him, starting from the first line of the first page. A contract is a tricky thing where the meaning can change based on a single word or a single particle. Moreover, a contract filled with numbers like this could lead to unexpected expenses, so he had to read it with his eyes wide open.
Tap.
How much time had passed? Aiden set down the sixteen-page contract with a look of pure satisfaction.
“Wow. Roland.”
“Yes, Administrative Officer.”
“You’re good at wordplay, aren’t you?”
“Heh heh. This is what I learned while eating and breathing at the academy.”
“Were you this good at your job in Lontes, too?”
“I didn’t have much authority there. The Treasurer took all the money-related documents, claiming they were his, and that fellow Jefferson you saw earlier was keeping a sharp eye out to make sure I didn’t get a single scrap of administrative work.”
“They brought in a raw gem from the capital only to let it go to waste.”
The reason for Aiden’s high praise was clear. It was due to several clauses cleverly hidden within the contract. For example, this one:
- Incidental costs related to logging, transportation, storage, etc., shall be calculated separately and settled according to the actual costs incurred before completion of delivery to the location designated by Party A.
“A masterpiece, truly.”
Here, Party A is the Lontes Viscountcy. However, the subject responsible for calculating the incidental costs was not clearly specified, making it ambiguous whether Party A or Party B was in charge. The importance lay in the following phrase, ‘settled according to the actual costs incurred,’ which served as a clause allowing the North—the party responsible for logging, transport, and storage—to engage in what is known as ‘act first, report later.’
“Still, if we charge excessive costs, it will cause problems, Administrative Officer.”
Kalisa, who had returned to the office, pushed up her monocle and added.
“How much can we charge before they accept it without a word?”
“This is the estimated cost when bringing in timber from other regions. Since trading with us is profitable as long as it doesn’t exceed this cost, we should be fine as long as we don’t cross that upper limit.”
“Excellent. And I think we should look at this clause, too.”
- Worker wages shall be based on the standard wages of the Technical Labor Department of the Administrative Welfare Center under the Lord’s Castle.
“What is our standard wage right now?”
“Here it is.”
“It is quite low.”
It was definitely cheaper than the average wages in other regions. Even if things had become a bit more livable, the North was still a backwater, and the value of human labor wasn’t very high.
“Still, we have to concede at least this much for Lontes to reach a reasonable agreement... My apologies.”
Roland scratched his head, wondering if he should have been greedier.
“No. No need to apologize.”
“Next time, I will somehow...”
“Are you sure you attached the standard wage schedule and gave it to Lontes?”
“Yes? Ah, yes. I copied it exactly as it was in the original and gave it to them.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
Aiden’s lips curled upward.
“······?”
“We set our standard wages anew every year.”
“Yes?”
“It should be somewhere in the instructions at the back of that wage schedule. You might need a magnifying glass, though.”
Even if the print was small, it was definitely there.
“There they are, there!”
“Catch the rope! Don’t let go!”
The shipyard workers of Lontes were lined up on small work boats in the harbor, shouting in excitement at something they saw. Appearing before their eyes were massive rafts floating down the river. On the crudely lashed rafts were the giant trees of the North that the shipyard craftsmen had been waiting for so long.
Boom—.
The rafts, which the workers had connected with ropes and pulled into the shipyard, were swarmed by craftsmen who jumped onto them, unable to wait any longer.
And then,
“Oh my, they’re huge!”
“Let’s see the wood quality... Hmm! Top grade, for sure!”
The signal of approval was given. The craftsmen gave thumbs-up with satisfied expressions. Seeing this, the lower-ranking officials of Lontes finally let out a sigh of relief and nodded at each other.
“I was worried the Northerners would waste time with useless tricks, but thankfully, they arrived without delay.”
“Indeed. And they don’t seem to have played any games with the wood quality, either.”
Jefferson, who had been promoted to Adjutant, would surely become insufferably arrogant once this news reached the Lord’s Castle. He would repeat like a parrot at every social party how well he had handled the North, and how active the Lontes shipyard would become because of it, boasting of his own achievements.
“Here is the invoice for incidental costs.”
A giant of a man stepped off the leading raft. It was Jamie, without a doubt.
‘They said the North was overflowing with fur, but how many layers are they wearing?’
The Northerners looked like they were wearing at least three or four layers of clothing. If they had seen them in the dark of night, they would have certainly backed away, thinking they were bears. Still, business was business.
“The wages seem a bit excessive...”
“It’s not an easy task for an average man to move trees of this size, so what can you do? If you have complaints, you should have selected and sent your own laborers. Though, they would have to be men capable of enduring the Northern winter.”
“Hmph-.”
Jamie was being difficult, knowing full well that such a thing was impossible under the contract, but the Lontes officials quickly accepted it, as the amount didn’t exceed the upper limit set by their superiors, even if it was a bit tight. Such bickering was just a form of greeting between officials meeting for the first time.
“We’ve finished the transport, so we’ll be heading back immediately.”
“Are you going back on the rafts?”
“They aren’t even ships, just logs with no market value tied together, so it’s hard to go back up the river. We plan to walk on the way back. We have things to buy on the way.”
“Would you like to buy some carts? I’ll give you a good price.”
“With the value of the timber on those rafts, shouldn’t you be giving us the carts for free?”
“······.”
At Jamie’s indifferent expression, which suggested he’d rather just smash the rafts and let them flow into the sea, the merchants who had been watching from nearby quickly raised their hands, offering to trade carts for the rafts. Even if they had touched water, Northern wood was straight and tall, making it highly advantageous for furniture making.
“See you again.”
Jamie and the Northerners, as if they had taken everything they could, led their carts and began their walk back to the North.
The journey was quite long. Strangely long.
During that journey, Jamie and the Northerners’ carts became filled with supplies that were scarce in the North, and the carts that had been pulled by men were soon being pulled by horses and oxen. The Northerners’ attire became a bit lighter, and as much fur as had disappeared, the number of carts increased.
The number of people handling them seemed to have increased along with the number of carts, and strangely enough, the voices of women, the elderly, and children could be heard little by little.
It was, of course, not an officially permitted trade. That would involve paying too many taxes.
It was just a bit of ‘pocket money’ that any official visiting another region for public business would do, but the large scale wasn’t intentional—it was just that the Northerners had a bit of a ‘big hand.’
They had swept up supplies, livestock, and even people, but...
Anyway, that’s just how it was.