[The Price of Greed]
Rewinding the clock to last night.
Upon returning to the Lord's Castle, Aiden summoned a group of administrators. The officials from the Livelihood Support Department, who had been preparing to head home, arrived at Aiden’s office with nervous expressions, as if they were students being called in to have their homework graded. They swallowed hard, waiting in silence.
“Administrative Officer!”
Jamie, who had come running late, had a flushed face—likely from a bit of drinking—but his eyes looked sharp. Since this was the first time Aiden had ever called in someone who had already clocked out, the alcohol seemed to have evaporated from his system instantly.
‘This must be serious.’
Jamie, who had been pondering what could have possibly made his superior—who had been happily eating dumplings at a street stall earlier—lose his temper, realized the gravity of the situation the moment he saw the title on the document Aiden was flipping through.
‘Drifters.’
Something had clearly gone wrong at the drifter settlement. Jamie was well aware that a large group of drifters had recently set up camp just outside the village near the Lord's Castle. It was a group three or four times larger than the average Lontes drifter band that had visited the North, so he had been putting his head together with his department staff to figure out how and where to assign them to avoid chaos.
— The job matching rate for this group of drifters isn't very high.
— Unlike before, they aren't a group that fled a village together; it seems they are a collection of wanderers who merged into a larger group, so they don't seem very proactive.
— You mean the drifter group itself hasn't finished adapting to one another yet?
— Yes, Adjutant.
— Tsk. Can't be helped. Let’s keep an eye on the situation. We can't force them to work.
Jamie, a native of the North, had assumed that the drifters' lack of enthusiasm for finding work stemmed from a desire to protect their families from strange neighbors. Protecting one's family, friends, and borders was the most important value to the Northern people. It was Jamie’s mistake, however, for failing to realize that there were people in this world who lived by sucking the blood of their own families and neighbors.
“I apologize. I will handle it.”
As soon as he realized his error, he tried to organize what needed to be done.
“Start with the method.”
“It would be better to make an example of those who embezzled the relief goods. Even if it seems harsh, it could serve as a warning to the drifters who will arrive next.”
“And?”
“Evil is like a contagious disease; once it breaks out, it tends to spread again. Once the ringleaders are gone, more cunning ones will try to fill their spots.”
“So?”
“If we split the drifter group into the smallest possible units and move them to various villages—.”
“No, that’s not it.”
If Aiden had to grade Jamie’s answer, he would have given it an 80. A score that wasn't bad, but certainly not the best.
“The cleanup and the solution are fine, but you missed one thing before that.”
Aiden tapped the table.
“What might that be...?”
“Compensation.”
And,
“An apology.”
Some say that if a public servant apologizes and offers compensation every time they make a mistake, it would become impossible to work due to malicious complaints. Aiden, who had been drafted into civil complaint windows and public service support duty often enough, knew this better than anyone. He had realized, long before the ink on his civil servant ID had dried, that reality was not a fairy tale where the weak were always good and the powerful were always evil.
Nevertheless, compensation and apologies were necessary. It wasn't because he had some grand philosophy.
“If you’ve punished the bad guys, it’s only natural to offer comfort to the victims.”
Why else would they compile fairy tales to teach children how to read while simultaneously teaching them character? Lying is bad. You shouldn't steal. Greet people when you see them. If you do something wrong, apologize. These were the rules and principles that must be upheld for a society to function properly. That was what Aiden was talking about.
“My thinking was shallow.”
Fortunately, Jamie seemed to understand immediately.
“However, excessive compensation and apologies can lead to side effects, so I will find the appropriate balance.”
“Good.”
“Lastly, when we accept drifter groups into the North in the first place, I think we should distinguish them a bit.”
“Distinguish?”
“To be precise, I think a pre-screening system is necessary.”
At those words, Aiden nodded immediately. One might ask if they hadn't even had that until now, but most territories didn't have a need to distinguish such vagrants or drifters in the first place. Since the power of a territory in this era came from farmland, the appearance of a drifter group simply meant an increase in labor, so there was no need to screen them. You could just turn them all into serfs; what would be the problem? If they caused trouble in the eyes of the higher-ups, you just had them executed, threw them in prison, or simply banished them.
Occasionally, problems arose when serfs—the property of another lord—ran away to a different territory, but that was a problem that could be solved simply with monetary compensation. If you don't view humans as humans, things become this simple. Of course, that wasn't what Aiden wanted.
“The most important thing is to filter out spies or criminals hiding in the mix.”
“Yes.”
“It would be difficult to distinguish spies and criminals just by talking to them...”
“How about we isolate them for a certain period and observe them? We could station administrators at the drifters' campsites.”
“We should also make labor mandatory.”
“Of course. There is no benefit to accepting those who have no will to work.”
“But we can't treat those who are unable to work by the same standard.”
“For now. We would need exception criteria, such as having a family or possessing special skills or knowledge.”
Aiden had no intention of running a charity. Wasn't he the one subtly poking at Lontes, which was in the middle of a war, to encourage the flight of their territory’s people, all for the sake of the North's revival? It was a cruel decision, but increasing the number of freeloaders who didn't contribute was not a desirable direction.
“Those who fail to integrate into the North must be banished after the observation period ends, so establish criteria for that as well.”
“Yes.”
“It will also be necessary to notify them from the start that they can be banished.”
“Of course.”
Although the night was already deep, the conversation between the two showed no signs of ending. And the administrators of the Livelihood Support Department, not wanting to miss a single word of their conversation, busily moved their hands to record everything and organize the tasks that could be solved immediately and those that had to be done.
Knock, knock.
“Please have some late-night snacks.”
The head maid, accustomed to the work continuing until dawn, brought in a snack cart. Since the kitchen, which hadn't had its lights on at dawn for a while, had effectively worked overtime, Aiden felt a little sheepish.
“Why go through all this trouble... We could have just grabbed something ourselves.”
“It is a duty I must perform.”
The administrators squeezed their eyes shut at that exchange. There was a ghost story among the Northern administrators: if the Administrative Officer provides snacks and meals, you won't be able to go home that day.
“Hang them!”
“Eek!”
Clatter—.
People were hung at the gates of the Lord's Castle. This wasn't a metaphor; they were truly hung alive. Beneath them, large wooden signs were erected, detailing exactly what crimes they had committed to deserve such a fate. The only mercy was that their necks weren't in nooses; they were bound tightly by their torsos. In other words, their lives were not in danger.
Though, being hung in mid-air with their eyes covered by black cloth certainly brought on a wave of terror.
“Are those the ones?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Able-bodied men who stole relief goods from their neighbors to fill their own bellies?”
“Not just neighbors! They even took the food meant for their own children and traded it for booze!”
“Those bastards are lower than vermin.”
However, the fact that their lives weren't in danger didn't necessarily mean the situation was better. For this Northern traditional event, which hadn't been held in a long time, the residents came out with something in their hands.
Thwack—.
“Ugh! Ugh! Blegh!”
An elderly gentleman, who would have at least been a pitcher in amateur baseball if he had been born in the 21st century, threw a half-rotted onion with pinpoint accuracy. One of the hung criminals reflexively shouted, only to gag when a piece of the mushy onion entered his mouth.
As if waiting for that reaction, one of the soldiers guarding the eight hung men shouted softly.
“Direct hit!”
The one who took the rotten onion to the face was the man with the longest list of crimes among the eight.
“Learning to read is great for this.”
“Yeah, we don't have to ask one by one who the bad guy is.”
“Look at this guy? He sold out his sick parents to get medicinal herbs, then sold those herbs right back! You unfilial bastard. Take this!”
Slap!
As if the green onion thrown by a woman who had pulled a few stalks from her field to prepare dinner was a signal, all sorts of things began to fly.
Most were half-rotted vegetables or tree branches, but some threw dried livestock excrement or clumps of mud.
“Hey, hey! No rocks! Put those down!”
“Haha, ha. Sorry, I got too excited.”
The soldiers mostly let people throw whatever they wanted, but they stepped in if someone tried to throw something dangerous.
“They have to be hung for nearly a month; if they get their heads cracked open, we can't hang them again tomorrow.”
“It’s been so long since we held this event, I forgot about that. Hehe.”
It wasn't that they were being considerate of the criminals. It was just that they had to hang them for a few hours a day for the next month before sending them to forced labor, and it would be a problem if someone broke a bone and couldn't pull their weight.
The Northern traditional event continued for three hours, and the people dispersed with refreshed faces, looking forward to tomorrow. The criminals, dragged down from the air, were already covered in filth and emitting a foul stench.
“We’ll have to dunk them in water and pull them out.”
“Yes. It would be a big problem if they caught a disease.”
“Huh?”
“Yes?”
The veteran soldier looked at the rookie as if asking what he was talking about. The rookie was from Lontes and was part of the first wave of drifters who had migrated to the North with Roland. Since he had been a soldier before, he had become a soldier again after getting used to the North, but it seemed he still didn't fully understand Northern culture.
“Washing those guys is just so the residents who participate in the event tomorrow can have fun.”
“...Yes?”
“Don't they have to be clean when we hang them again so it’s fun to throw things at them?”
Otherwise, who cares if they get sick or feel uncomfortable? With that muttered to himself, the veteran soldier dragged the shell-shocked criminals and shoved them into the prison.
“Aha!”
The rookie soldier admired the veteran’s wisdom. ‘I guess so. Even when you’re doing graffiti, the wall has to be clean to make it satisfying!’ The rookie soldier even went as far as to stick close to the veteran and ask, “By the way, can we throw things too? I want to do it. I have some rotten turnips at home...” He was certainly, steadily assimilating into the North.