Manufacturing Public Opinion
In my previous life, my mother was a political broker.
Every election she rigged the party primaries, introduced corporations to the political world, and, as her price, saw this favor and that one pushed through. Running an operation on a chosen politician until he was a social cripple—or, when the job called for it, until he was eating prison rations—was another of her specialties. Unexpectedly, she used to say, that paid the best of all.
Anyone prepared to do time could attempt a petty primary fix. Singling a man out and reducing him to trash was a different order of difficulty, and it was no easier even when the target truly was trash.
The method she used then was what she called the lift. You placed him where the public could not help but see him. There were even cases, she told me, of deliberately boosting a rival into a candidacy for prime minister or minister, solely so he could be paraded and torn apart.
It had always seemed excessive. I understood it anyway. Drag a nobody's faults into the light and no one cares. That was the whole of it.
Bringing Anais down required exactly that kind of work.
Right now, she has no presence either.
It was true the health syrup was selling. People lined up to buy it before the stock was even set out, or so I had heard. Even so, it was nothing more than goods off a street stall, and the daily volume hovered around four thousand bottles. Most of the buyers were the middle stratum of the Imperial Capital—not the poor, scrambling merely to put a meal on the table, but not the sort who could move public opinion either. Unless the side effects started producing corpses in droves, of course.
Leave it alone and it will become a sensation soon enough. Maybe bigger than morphine.
Anais was already scaling production. In a month or two it would be moving tens of thousands of bottles a day, and once it reached that point the nobles and bourgeois who held the purse strings could not fail to notice. People would swarm her, desperate to get into her good graces, and just as many would suddenly want a stake in the manufacturer, Gordon Lennox Corporation. They might not care about the health syrup itself. They would all care about the profit.
All I meant to do was hasten that pace. Waiting would only make the aftermath worse.
When I laid the argument out in those terms, the villainess nodded without hesitation.
"So you're doing the job yourself?"
"Yes. Strike now, and the Third Princess will only try to cut the tail loose at Mrs. Chandler. And in any case, it would be difficult to make the matter public. There is simply no one paying the health syrup any mind."
"True enough. How many people care if a few commoners die? They'll all tell themselves it isn't their problem."
"Which is why they must be made to care, even by force. I will step forward myself and draw attention up onto Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup."
"I could do it for you."
So she didn't want to sit quietly in the palace and wait. I knew Sienna's appetite for action well enough. There was no world in which she would turn her back on something as amusing as a political operation against her half-sister.
"Your Highness. I will carry this out myself."
"And I'm supposed to sit around and play?"
"Not at all. You would not remain still even if I asked you to, would you? There is a separate matter for Your Highness. The work goes much more easily if you keep step with me."
Only then did Sienna look satisfied.
"Fine. What do I do?"
"Please go to the Military Ministry. There, you need only denounce the health syrup."
"I don't know. You know as well as I do how foul the mood in the army is these days. They're saying the fighting with the elves has gotten fierce, and in the middle of that you want me talking about health syrup... Oh. No. That's why you want me to go, isn't it?"
"Precisely."
She was quick. I would not have to spell it out point by point. Ordinarily that sharpness of hers set my teeth on edge, but this once it did not grate. In a situation like this, it was an extremely useful talent.
"Good. Allan. Let's move."
The moment we divided the roles, we moved. Sienna made for the Military Ministry. I made for the stock exchange of the Imperial Capital.
It was a world dressed in the seventeenth century, so fewer than a hundred issues were listed, and half of those were trading companies. Bonds changed hands in greater volume than shares. Even so, there was no disputing that this place was the heart of finance, and the individual investors' attachment to money was outstanding.
"Allan Madoff...!?"
"Is that really him?"
Proof enough: the instant I stepped into the lobby, every eye swung my way. Morphine's success, of course. I intended to use that attention to move opinion.
The exchange was also a social club for men with a bit of money. I had only to sit quietly on the trading floor before they began to drift over.
"Sir Allan, I have longed to meet you, and at last the chance has come! If you will permit me, I have a proposal to our mutual profit! I have connections in the Tourre Republic, and if Sir Allan were to agree...!"
"Finally expanding the business, are you? Come to raise capital? I knew it—morphine's too fine a thing to waste on the army alone! Not that I've tried it myself, but that's what I hear. They say the military hospitals praise it as a gift from God."
"I'm close with a gentleman who'd count as Your Lordship's second cousin!"
Men begging for a partnership out of nowhere, men letting their hopes of a listing show, men invoking relatives I had never heard of. More than fifty of them hovered about me without the slightest regard for my notoriety, and the number was still climbing.
This many will do.
I let the flood of talk wash past, then opened my mouth.
"Gentlemen. I am sorry, but I did not come to advance a listing of Madoff Pharmaceuticals. Nor did I come because I require a partner."
"Even so, a medicine that good—"
"I am content with the military contract."
"Ah...!"
Sighs rose on every side. I could guess how often morphine had been discussed among men with money. A drug priced at a thousand thalers a gram had appeared, and not one of them had been given the chance to get a spoon in the pot. Of course they had been eating themselves alive.
Walk out now, and it will be no different from dangling it in front of them and running.
Faces of every kind were still fixed on me, unable to let the hope go. It was time to throw the bait.
"The truth is, I came to stop Gordon Lennox Corporation from raising capital on this exchange. They are the firm that manufactures Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup. I expect most of you have at least heard the name."
At once came the murmur of recognition—ah, that. Men who handled money; of course they knew it. That made the talk easier.
"The health syrup must be stopped from becoming fashionable in the capital."
"What...?"
"No. The capital is not the issue. Within six months at the outside, you will be able to find the health syrup in every city of the Empire. Neighboring countries may even begin to import it. By then it will be far too late, which is why I mean to cut off the inflow of investment now."
"......"
For the moment, most of them only looked puzzled. A few pairs of eyes, though, had already started working. Empire-wide. Foreign imports. They had bitten on talk like that.
A natural reaction. The president of a company that had booked twenty-five million thalers off a single military contract had just set a high value on a health syrup barely out in the world. Had I praised the syrup's virtues, I would have gotten nothing but baffled looks. I meant to tear the product down instead, and to do it with great enthusiasm.
"Gentlemen. Contrary to its name, the health syrup is a medicine harmful to the human body. Seeing people line up to buy a bottle of syrup filled me with a sense of crisis. Leave it alone, and every household may come to treat it as something they are obliged to keep on hand."
"Of course, take it and you will feel healthier for a little while. The pain vanishes, the fatigue eases, one is not even hungry—how convenient that must seem. But swallow it without thinking, and you have no choice but to end as a ruin."
"...Hah. It may sound impious, put this way, but I believe Her Highness Anais is conducting a dangerous gamble with the lives of the citizenry. Of all things, why that?"
I slandered the health syrup with everything I had. Now and then I heaved a sigh, or sought agreement by glaring at some innocent bystander. The close, of course, was what mattered most.
"Ah—and lest there be any misunderstanding, allow me to say that I am not seeking to check the health syrup. Morphine was made for military supply; what reason would I have to contend with a syrup? I am concerned only for the health of the capital's citizens."
"Ah... yes. Of course you are."
"I wish only to stop a medicament that ought to be prescribed with the utmost caution from being consumed without restraint. I hope you will lend your cooperation."
By then, some of them had begun to look at me with suspicion, as if they thought I truly meant to suppress the health syrup. The men around me moved for money. That was the whole of it. Once I had confirmed the syrup's commercial value, they had no choice but to take an interest, and some would want more than interest. Some would want to invest.
My guess was not wrong. Already someone was asking.
"Er... Sir Allan?"
"Yes?"
"This health syrup—can only Her Highness Anais make it? No, I mean, only this person called Mrs. Chandler?"
"That is correct. Who else would manufacture something so dangerous? But why do you ask? ...Surely not."
"Ah, no! Ha ha."
No, my ass. Given half a chance, he had meant to jump in himself. But I had answered that Mrs. Chandler held the monopoly, so only one route remained.
Before long, people will be swarming Mrs. Chandler—and Anais, the one who owns her.
I was not, of course, manufacturing opinion alone. By now Sienna would have reached the Military Ministry and be throwing a scene at the generals, all to block a military contract for the health syrup—a contract that had never even been discussed.
Beneath our blatant opposition, the syrup's presence was due to surge by force. That attention would make an excellent stage. I only hoped the Third Princess would enjoy her brief blaze of glory to the full.