Heroin
The thought that he might have made too much of it only struck him after the packaging was finished.
"Mr. Allan. The total comes to five hundred and nine."
The report was Jacob's — Bono's elder brother.
Five hundred and nine bricks of heroin, each one a clean hundred grams.
He had spent nearly nine million thalers on raw materials and equipment alone, so perhaps the figure was only to be expected. When he had first laid eyes on the stock piled in the warehouse, he had wondered whether he would ever get through it all; once manufacture began, though, the work found its rhythm, and in the end he had used every last measure.
Fifty-point-nine kilograms of heroin.
A single dose varied with the method of administration, but if one assumed it would be snorted, the lot was enough for five million people to take it at the same time.
Cut with sugar or starch, the volume could have been doubled. As a businessman, though, he had no appetite for so mean a trick.
He needed to put the purest product he could manage into elven hands.
I'll have to use my head instead.
Bringing a whole society down with this quantity would not be easy.
By their nature, drugs could not even be reckoned as a tidy five million doses.
At the start, less than ten milligrams taken by mouth would be enough to sweep away every worry and care and drown a soul in a soft happiness, as if gathered into the arms of the Mother World Tree. The more the dosing was repeated, however, the more the amount would have to grow.
In practical terms, would it last twenty thousand elves two or three months? It might run out sooner than that.
He could always make more. The trouble was that he alone, in effect, bore both manufacture and distribution.
His aim, for the present, was to spend the stock he held with enough care to force the elves' submission, and only then return to the production room.
For that, he needed to move quickly.
"Jacob. Seal the goods while I watch."
"Yes, sir."
The employees began stacking the bricks of heroin, one by one, into lockboxes fitted with fastening mechanisms.
He called them seal-boxes, but they were coffins in all but name — stout, handsome things of metal, their lids peaked like roofs.
He had not chosen them himself. He had told the staff to find seal-boxes of a suitable size, and this was what they had brought back.
He had not the slightest urge to scold them for the omen. Given that what would rest inside was heroin, the choice was, if anything, apt.
Someone may actually die.
There were drugs in the world that killed you if the measure was off by even a little.
Ketamine, which one could class among the soft drugs, still left a fair chance of waking even after a hundred milligrams. His younger sibling had gone so far as to supply VIPs with Super Ecstasy — tablets carrying two hundred milligrams of MDMA apiece.
Heroin, in the matter of danger, stood in another dimension entirely.
Misjudge the dose and you died, or sank into a state worse than death. It was kinder than that other substance, the one whose lethal dose was two milligrams — but only by comparison.
He would keep it under management. Perfect control, though, was impossible.
Absolutely.
"Mr. Allan. The packing is finished. The keys are here."
"......"
"Sir?"
"Right. Good work."
He looked over the employees who had handled the drudgery, and gave his orders. They were to rest for the time being. The moment they left for the day, they were to wash, and to have their clothes laundered at once.
A little packaging alone was unlikely to cause trouble, but one never knew. Keeping one's people from sliding into addiction was a fundamental of the trade. In his previous life, dealers who broke their droppers in by feeding them the product had been common enough; he, however, had no need of couriers.
He meant to move the goods himself.
I can't simply haul it to the Great Forest and scatter it.
The borderlands of the Great Forest were, at present, in a state just short of war.
Clashes, he had been told, broke out every few days around regions where sovereignty was ambiguous, and plenty of soldiers were coming to harm while doing nothing more than ordinary patrol.
It would be no surprise if a proper battle erupted before long. The Saintess had not thrust herself forward so eagerly to mediate in the original story for nothing.
Selling narcotics into an enemy nation required a measure of preparation.
It won't take long.
He had already drawn two imperial princesses into his camp.
First Princess Victoria, behind whom — directly or indirectly — more than a hundred houses had lined up.
And Second Princess Siena, who on the strength of her foundation alone could not begin to be compared with her elder sister, and who was somehow more frightening than Victoria all the same.
Through the two of them, he intended to arrange conditions under which the drug could be sold without difficulty. The design was already complete; he had finished it while the heroin was being made.
All the princesses had to do was move as they were told.
The Imperial Palace. The Regency Room, the Emperor's official office.
"Your Highness the First Princess. His Majesty bids you enter."
Only when the Lord Chamberlain delivered the summons did Victoria set foot inside her father's office.
Had she wished, she might have made the request over a shared lunch, but this was a moment that demanded formality. She had not come to see his face. She had come to lay an exceedingly difficult petition before him.
It was, of course, a thing done at Allan's request.
"Your Highness Victoria. If we are to neutralize the elves, our side must first take a step back. There are, of course, ways to release the drug while holding the present standoff. But the time and the resources required would multiply several times over. ...If Your Highness will help us, we can reach our goal far sooner."
In short: pretend, for a while, to withdraw, and under that cover bring the elves down quickly.
She had promised to help, and so she accepted gladly. Part of it was that the words our goal, coming from Allan's mouth, had struck her with particular force.
The truth is, I don't want to ask this of him now either.
The Emperor would still be sunk in despair over the matter of Anais.
He was tending to the business of state as usual — presiding over councils, receiving foreign envoys; only yesterday he had reviewed even the Imperial Guard.
But he could not have escaped the pain of having cast out his own daughter. To demand a grave decision of him in such a season was something she could hardly bring herself to do as a daughter.
Even so, Victoria chose to break through head-on.
Before he was the head of a household, her father was the ruler of the Empire.
This is for subduing the Empire's enemy. Even Allan, a mere knight, is shouldering that much of the burden. Father goes without saying. And so do I.
Turning those words over, Victoria entered the audience chamber.
And yet — what was this?
"You've come, Victoria."
The Emperor's expression was brighter than she had expected. At a glance, it was as if the days before Anais's disgrace and fall had returned.
"Your Majesty. I have come with a petition."
"Good. Speak."
"......"
"I told you to speak."
Caught off balance, Victoria only watched his face.
Fortunately, the Emperor answered the question himself.
"That aside, Victoria. It seems your younger sister has finally come to her senses."
"Pardon?"
"I hear that yesterday evening Siena visited the Archdiocese of the Imperial Capital and met with the Saintess. She donated a million thalers to the Church, and even made her confession. I am told it took more than two hours — perhaps because she has a great many sins behind her."
"Siena... Your Majesty?"
"Fine conduct indeed. Of course, knowing that child's temperament, it was hardly a thing she did because she wished to. Still — she bent that stubborn streak of hers. That counts for something. Heh."
So that was it. Only then did Victoria nod.
Siena, too, had surely moved on Allan's instructions. If even the daughters who remained could be said to be walking a righteous path, it would be an immense comfort to the Emperor — and a difficult request concerning the elves would be that much easier to make.
So Allan has two princesses moving at his word.
He must have done it because he needed to. Victoria paid it no mind and went straight to her business.
"Your Majesty. Matters on the border of the Great Forest are not favorable."
"I know. However—"
"Please hear me a moment. I am not arguing for more troops. Rather, I believe it would be better to lower the tension at the border. It might even be acceptable to reduce a portion of the forces and pursue a peace agreement."
"......?"
A peace agreement. An absurd proposal.
The Empire was not quarreling with the elves over territory out of boredom.
Silver mines. Iron mines. Vast caverns where natural saltpeter was cut by the ton. Forests from which fine timber could be taken. They had tried to trade for the resources of the Great Forest's outskirts — resources the elves neither lived upon nor used — and when that fell through, they had in the end committed the army.
To cut the troops is to say we abandon the resources as well.
A misstep could render every sacrifice made so far meaningless. Small wonder the Emperor was puzzled.
Victoria added an explanation, to clear his doubts away.
"Your Majesty. I am not saying we should give up."
"......?"
"I know well enough that reconciliation, in any true sense, is impossible. I am only saying there is a way to take the profit without shedding blood. If things go according to plan, the elves will bring the concessions and offer them up of their own accord."
"I do not understand."
He could hardly understand. That stubborn, prideful kind, yielding their interests of their own will.
Elves were not wholly without greed, so trade was not impossible — but they would never compromise so easily as to let humans into the Great Forest. Had they been willing, there would have been no fighting.
If I'd known it would be like this, I should have brought that junkie... no. Leon Lauderdale.
Then persuading the Emperor would have been far easier.
Freshly aware of how wanting her own eloquence was, Victoria clicked her tongue. Even so, she could not withdraw like this.
After a moment's thought, she decided to show her father her resolve in her own way.
"Your Majesty. If you grant my request, I will produce visible results within a month."
"Explain more specifically."
"I am sorry, but it is a matter I cannot explain in detail. Once it has begun, however, Your Majesty will understand it at once. By then the elves will already be collapsing. Should I fail, the responsibility will be mine."
A term of one month.
A proposal she could make only because she believed Allan would produce results within that month, one way or another.
"Very well. Do as you see fit."
Only then did leave fall to pursue the false peace.
The moment the sanction was hers, Victoria carried the news to Allan, hoping only that a month would not prove too tight a term.
Fortunately, he answered with a bright face.
"Yes. It's enough."
A month, he said, was time enough to ruin elven society.