The Founding
Do not meddle in the management. Take nothing but the profit.
So this is what it comes down to.
Having taken in Allan Madoff's counterproposal, Sienna toyed with a lock of her hair and sank into thought. It was the habit she always fell into before a decision of any weight, and it had begun when she was twelve, the day she had a maid executed for stealing her necklace.
Petty theft among maids was so common that a flogging and a dismissal were the usual remedy, but the Sienna of that day had deliberated, and then had the culprit killed. Not by her own hand, of course. She had ordered a subordinate to do it. The maid's face, sobbing and begging to be spared, was still vivid.
She had not killed for amusement. Obviously not.
I can't let them take even what little I have left. That's as true now as it was then.
Watching people flounder with shock written across their faces was agreeable enough, and there was amusement, too, in watching them mind every step so as not to sour her mood. But Sienna's true motive was the defense of her property and her rights. Anyone who encroached on those, whether by design or by mistake, she could not abide. The reverse, she could tolerate to a point.
Is Allan trying to take what's mine?
He was not. Not quite.
The offer he had set before her looked reasonable enough at a glance.
"I will allot Your Highness a forty-nine percent stake. My holding fifty-one is a measure to protect control of the management."
"I will hear Your Highness's counsel with all due attention, but the decisions will be mine. Even you will grant that this is the most efficient arrangement."
"I know Your Highness's brilliance better than anyone. But surely you have matters far more important than some trifling opium venture?"
Allan at fifty-one and herself at forty-nine rankled, and yet the condition was that he would handle every piece of dirty work himself. She need only lend a moderate amount of support and collect the money. It could hardly be called a losing trade.
Raising Allan up wouldn't be a bad thing, either.
She was not boasting, but there was no one around her.
Or rather, if one counted heads, there were many. Five hundred people worked at Thames Palace, where she resided. But soldiers, servants, and beastkin slaves could hardly be called confidants, and not one of them would be of any use in a struggle over the succession.
Whatever resources were worth having had already been gathered in by her elder sister, Victoria, or her younger sister, Anais, and those not yet recruited held to the line that it was too early to speak of who would come next, and remained on the fence. Most of them kept their distance from Sienna.
In the end, the only ones lingering at her side were refuse that nobody wanted.
If, in circumstances like these, Allan raised his standing through business, that would be welcome. It was an age in which even a commoner could receive a barony in his own lifetime, so long as he made enough money. Allan had martial strength besides, which only raised his value. An Expert, and one of the higher order among them, who also knew how to make money — who would dare slight such a man? If Allan succeeded, even the notoriety he had accumulated might be covered over, a little.
And yet, when it came to accepting, one thing still caught.
Can I really trust this man, and leave it in his hands?
Surrendering the power of decision to someone else kept snagging in her mind. Once he had risen, he might begin to harbor other thoughts. They were in it together, so outright betrayal was unlikely, but he might suddenly grow expensive. The mere fact that he had concealed things about the opium and the psilocybin was enough to breed doubt.
However she turned it over, a forty-nine percent stake alone was not enough.
I need proof. Proof that he won't turn his back on me.
Something caught her eye as she brooded. The sword Allan wore at his hip.
Come to think of it, he was a knight as well. In an age when guns and cannon held sway, the pride of men who had risen on a single blade was greater than one might imagine, and that pride sometimes showed itself in warped forms. There were more than a few knights who ran down army and navy officers as men who had gone to the military college because they lacked the makings of a knight. Elite officers, for their part, were just as ready to sneer at knights.
Allan was probably no exception. He favored a bludgeon over the sword, and he more often beat down opponents who offered no resistance than he fought anything one could call an honorable duel — but he would not be wholly without pride.
This will do for the test.
It might prove rather hard on Allan, but it was necessary. Her mind made up, Sienna spoke.
"Allan. It's a good proposal."
"Thank you, Your Highness."
"The thanks ought to be mine. Still, if you're the one leading the business, you'll have no shortage of trouble. There will be times you clash with people who wouldn't normally spare you a word, and times you may even have to humble yourself before them."
"A fair observation."
"Invoke the fact that you're my escort knight, and most matters will settle themselves. But that isn't what you want, is it? You said you wanted to succeed under your own name."
"That is correct."
"Then it would be right to set the identity of a knight aside for the time being, and live accordingly. Wouldn't you agree?"
She had thrown the words out as a demand. If he truly meant to run the business on his own, and if he had no intention of permitting her interference, then let him show a resolve to match.
"...Yes. I take Your Highness's meaning."
Quick as he was, he seemed to understand at once. His face was composed, but Allan did not look entirely at ease. His hand started toward his sword belt and faltered; he closed his eyes and let a sigh escape. Attachment, no doubt, to the long years he had spent training the blade — a reluctance to throw away even a knight's pride merely for the sake of selling a little medicine.
The hesitation was brief. Allan moved.
"Understood, Your Highness. I had no intention of stepping into this on a light resolve."
He unfastened the sword at his waist, scabbard and all, and set it carefully down before Sienna, with a gravity that said he had no wish to cross his liege.
"Why are you giving me your sword?"
"I am entrusting it to you for a time. So that I may show you my resolve."
"......"
"It does not mean that I am merely giving up a single blade. For the time being, I will not use a sword. You would not know this, but I have trained without missing a day since I was five. You will understand what it means for such a man to relinquish the sword, even for a while."
He would go this far? Sienna's eyes widened.
"I am in earnest. I do not regard this as some convenient sideline. I will succeed, without fail, and become Your Highness's strength."
So he added, a faint smile rising, as if to say that should further proof of loyalty be required, he was prepared to offer as much as she liked. At that, even Sienna had to concede.
Pressing him any further would be pointless. It would only turn him against me.
Another knight might have taken it as an insult and declared his retirement and withdrawal to the country, and no one would have thought it strange. Allan had swallowed even that, and proven his good faith.
"All right, Allan."
Sienna was not fool enough to distrust a retainer who had gone so far as to offer up his sword.
The proof she wanted was settled more easily than I had expected.
The moment I offered up the sword, Sienna summoned a clerk and had an agreement drawn. She consented to the split of fifty-one to forty-nine, and she gave me six hundred thousand thalers in cash along with a single slave for menial labor. I answered in kind by putting the opium in as my capital — though the opium itself had come from her. The terms governing how we would divide the work, and who would control the money, were settled in my favor as well.
"As you know, there's a modest annex on the west side of Thames Palace. Use it, if you like."
"Yes. And for the name of the company, I was thinking Madoff Pharmaceuticals."
"Fine, Allan."
She even let me put my own surname on the firm.
That was the end of the agreement. I observed every courtesy, and left the office.
In truth, I'd braced for demands more extreme than this.
In the worst case I had even weighed a scheme for pressuring Sienna — making use of Empress Yeonhwa, enthralled by the psilocybin, or the Third Princess Anais, backed into a corner. It was a relief to reach a peaceable agreement without going that far.
It went without saying that the villainess had not suddenly grown kind.
Sienna herself probably hadn't thought I would give up the sword. That was as good as renouncing one's identity outright. It must have weighed on her; she kept glancing at me as if she meant to give the blade back.
"It's quite all right, Your Highness. I would ask you to return that sword later, once the business is on its feet. Say... yes. Around the time someone demands that our company be taken public. We aren't desperate to raise capital the way the trading houses are, so I doubt we will actually list, but it will serve as a measure of success."
With that rough deflection I made certain the sword stayed in Sienna's keeping. I didn't expect much. I only hoped she might feel a little guilty toward me.
I felt nothing like regret.
The original owner of this body had, of course, been a diligent swordsman. Even on the day he beat some blameless man to death, he closed out his routine with mana-circulation training, and whatever time his pleasures left him he gave to the sword without fail. The habit was worked so deep into the flesh that I myself, in the middle of drying psilocybin, had once found a spare moment and stopped by the training yard. I was swinging a blade without a thought in my head when I manifested aura before I knew what I was doing, and it gave me a start.
Thanks to him I came into a sturdy body, so I suppose I ought to be grateful. Every other condition is the worst imaginable, but still.
Given the nature of the business, there would be times I needed violence in one form or another. When that happened, a bludgeon would do as well as a sword. The morningstar I had been holding when I came into this body, a mace light enough to carry, a hammer — none of them were bad options, and this was as good a time as any to acquire something new. As it happened, every weapon I had handled in my previous life was a bludgeon too. I had once taken a crowbar and wrecked my parents' office by way of protest, and I had been struck by a wrench in the hands of a man my father had stripped of every last coin. Not a memory I cherished.
But weapons occupied me only for a moment.
Before long I meant to scatter something far more dangerous than any such weapon across the world, and not even for free. I would be taking money for it. Let my attention slip, and I might face a mess that no iron mace could put back together.
If I mean to live, I'll have to keep my wits about me.
Officially I intended to operate as president of Madoff Pharmaceuticals, but that very fact might make me more vulnerable. I had chosen it, yes. My person was exposed all the same.
If I was going to build a business while carrying that risk, there were several things that needed doing, starting now. The first was securing people to serve as my hands. I needed men I could drive hard.
Fortunately, I already had one such man in mind.