A New Money Line!
Crusaders. The word itself made us wrinkle our noses, so we sent word through our merchants to call out France and the German states: why did you crawl onto someone else's land, stir up a mess, and slink away?
"Right. They're ignoring us, I take it?"
How were we going to make these people regret it? Of course it had to be France and the Holy Roman Empire, conveniently glued to the western edge of the continent. The Suez Canal didn't exist yet, so sailing all the way around the Cape of Good Hope was absurdly far, and crossing over from the Eastern Continent would take mountains of preparation. The land route, meanwhile, was stuffed with obstacles — Kievan Rus, Poland, Hungary. Quite a few familiar names in there, weren't there?
"What if we just stop selling them our goods?"
"Won't that squeeze the mercenary states, Your Holiness? Our merchants might grumble a bit, but they'd get over it."
Right — a little grumbling they could manage. Grumble too long, though, and the Temple Public Security Department would come knocking, so they couldn't grumble forever. And there was plenty of money to be made elsewhere.
"Then block only the French and Holy Roman merchants. Everyone else just pays a higher tariff."
"Yes. We even supply some of them weapons for free, so they can hardly complain about that much."
Go crawl to Southeast Asia and buy pepper the hard way, boys. Or pay some middleman an obscene markup.
A few years passed like that, and the merchants' complaints began to swell. After all, we'd been selling at genuinely dirt-cheap prices, since we had the stuff pouring out of our ears.
"Just tell them prices went up because production fell."
"They're apparently threatening to cut off trade entirely, ma'am."
Oh? Which fat-walleted fool was this? A threat, pointed back at us?
"Who is it?"
"The Doge of Venice, or someone like that, they said."
"A doge? What's that, some kind of guildmaster federation?"
"I honestly couldn't say, ma'am. I don't know that much."
Merchants of Venice? Is that the sort of people they were?
"Tell them if they whine one more time, I'll close the port to them entirely. Not a single ship gets in."
Those people had been sailing in from the Mediterranean all the way to the far end of the Black Sea, after all. If we let the kids off their leashes just a little, not one of them would ever make the voyage again.
I'd left the Black Sea alone partly because the trip back around was so long, and partly because building and maintaining ships all the way out there was too much of a hassle. And this is where they decided to get uppity.
"Our mercenary friends can always be fed by us if it comes to that. Tell everyone not to worry too much."
"If you do that, they'll ask why, and the answer will be 'entirely France and the Holy Roman Empire's fault,' ma'am."
Good, good! They'll go over there and raise a fuss themselves, then.
"The key is to push it hard — this is all the Crusaders' doing!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
After a few years, the city had definitely quieted down. Not empty, mind — there were still plenty of merchants, since there were so many nations around us. The Arab traders, recently reconciled after our earlier fighting, were practically giddy about it. Mind you, the Arabs had no sea route, so they were crawling overland like mad, sweating through the deserts.
Even when we told them to just take a ship down to Daedo, they insisted it would take forever to chart the route and kept stubbornly crossing the desert on foot. Determined lot, those friends of ours.
"By the way, what have the mercenary kids been up to lately? They've been awfully quiet."
"Word is they're busy stabilizing the southern territories?"
"There's something to eat in that desert wasteland?"
More land never hurt anybody, but what exactly are they planning to do with all that desert? The only livable stretch around here is the grassland up north.
Year 3643. Several decades had slipped by since the Crusaders came and went.
"Ah — and it seems the Iwami Silver Mine is just about tapped out."
"We mined it, what, a hundred and sixty years?"
"One hundred seventy-three, ma'am."
All that dynamite, I suppose — we blew the thing out far too fast. Wasn't it supposed to last three or four hundred years?
"Anyone who says they want to ask the workers first, send them south. They'll be mining gold and silver down there next, after all."
When I visited last year, the area around the mine had been blasted into total ruin — who knew how many charges those kids had set off? Forget UNESCO; that ship sailed long ago.
"This is as good a time as any to go collect the principal and interest in person. Time to ask when they intend to pay up."
Lending to that country had dropped off sharply — something must have happened over there.
Five days by train across the continent, then twenty more days by ship across the sea, and at last we'd reached Japan.
"It really is far."
When do airplanes get invented... Well, once we wrapped up Iwami, it was time to seriously develop that gold deposit I'd marked on the southern flank of Mount Fuji. We'd bring all the workers from Iwami too — they'd tasted real money, so none of them could bear to live here anymore. They'd all want to come along.
It took a full five years. The water was deep, so the harbor took ages to build.
"Now this is a place where people can actually live."
"The workers have been through a lot, ma'am."
The people we brought over from Iwami were decent enough. Even among the Japanese, there were some real gems, apparently.
"You all worked hard too."
"It's so convenient here — the vein runs right along the coast."
Yes, exactly. That's why we came to strip this place. We'd hand the kids all the scattered little inland gold and silver deposits and take the big one for ourselves, then sail away.
That was the plan, anyway — and while we were lounging about over here, the whole country turned itself inside out.
"What about the Emperor?"
"He's fine. It's the nobles who've been purging each other — total chaos."
"Hm. Whatever. We'll just keep sending the bill every year."
China or Japan, it's the same old mess either way. China had briefly unified, then splintered apart again and was busy fighting its own civil war.
How do they expect to punch roads through those mountain passes and govern the place? I can't wrap my head around it. Anyone could have pulled it off if they'd hurried and consolidated while they were still simple-minded like us, but now it's everyone bragging about how special they are. Fat chance.
"The Emperor absolutely must confirm the debt."
"He keeps dodging us, little by little. What should we do?"
"Well then. The capital just happens to suffer a few mysterious fires and explosions, doesn't it?"
A handful of the kids sneak in, hurl a satchel of explosives, and run. Japan has mountains everywhere — who's going to catch them?
"Ah!"
"No one can ever find out, right?"
"We will not be caught, ma'am. Absolutely not."
Right — not getting caught is the important part! If they did get caught, this couldn't be resolved short of war, and there's no need to go that far. Our envoys only stir up trouble when they're stationed there, so people would catch on quickly enough — but so what? Not getting caught is what counts.
Of course, this was strictly a last resort.
"You know, this place would actually be a nightmare to attack."
"Getting here by land would be nearly impossible in the first place, ma'am."
You'd have to wind through one mountain valley after another. Recruiting more workers was getting harder too.
"We don't need more workers, do we?"
"No, ma'am. The veins discovered so far aren't that large."
No point rushing things. It's not like this work would be finished in a day or two.
"The ceiling supports — we're shipping the iron in from home for those, right?"
"The main tunnels use iron supports; places scheduled for demolition soon still use timber."
"Be careful. Nobody gets hurt."
"Yes, ma'am!"
After we dismantled the place and left, surely nobody would be crazy enough to crawl into Iwami hunting for silver? We'd pulled out every last support timber...
There'd still be traces of silver, but it was mostly lead. Could those people even refine it? And more than that — the supports we'd left behind were dangerous. Surely no one would rip them out to sell as scrap iron?
"Don't skimp on rations for the workers."
"Of course not. It's not Daehan, but they eat and live better here than anywhere else in Japan."
They had their own way of dressing here, so we handed over some cloth and they tailored clothes themselves. The miners, though, still went underground in nothing but their drawers, complaining about the heat. The women went in too, which surprised me — apparently no one was the least bit shy about anything.
The biggest shock since arriving was how freely people married and divorced. A man would stay at wife number one's house for a while, and if things didn't work out, he'd move in with wife number two — and before long, wife number one's house had another man coming and going.
Truly an advanced nation. The culture was simply different, that's all.
"Here is the newsletter, ma'am."
"Thanks, dear~"
Even way out here, the news found us. It was something like a report — a letter telling you what had happened and what was likely to happen next.
Oh. Saladin and Richard the First? Familiar names from somewhere or other, and the Western Crusades seemed to be churning along entertainingly. At least this batch had come to its senses and marched on Jerusalem. The last crowd to show up here were clearly lunatics.
"Also, the Shogunate has sent someone over. How should we handle it?"
"What do they want?"
"They say that as long as we pay taxes, they won't concern themselves with whatever we do."
"Hm? As if they could do anything about us anyway."
"Well, one can't know for certain until it's tested, ma'am."
Hm. What to do. Honestly, paying the tax and quietly sliding by would be the simplest.
"Did you happen to hear how much they want?"
"They're asking for ten thousand ryō of silver a year. Only that."
"Excuse me?"
What's with these people and their tiny little sums? Was silver worth that much?
"Is silver that scarce around here?"
"Hard to say — there's no proper trade port. They don't seem to have a real currency of their own either."
"Ha. Just pay it, then. Saves us the headache. In exchange, tell them their ships don't come within a hundred leagues of our harbor, and anything that happens around here gets handled under Daehan law."
Then where in the world did all the money the Imperial House borrowed go?
"Did anyone ever look into what the Imperial House spent their money on?"
"Mostly luxury goods, ma'am. The actual silver they took away amounted to very little."
See? Elite extravagance is what eats a country alive. They squeeze the people to fund their luxury, the squeezing makes life unbearable, and then rebellion erupts. Simple as that.
Oh? Should I try squeezing people myself? Would that set off rebellions too?
"Sigh..."
"What's the matter, ma'am?"
"Just thinking a pointless thought."
That's right — it wouldn't be my own country I'd be squeezing, it'd be foreign ones.
"Oh, and ask the Shogunate this too: the Imperial House owes us a mountain of debt. What do they plan to do about it?"
"They don't have anything to offer but land, do they?"
"Oh-ho. You've lived here, you know better — earthquakes come like it's a hobby."
"There was one time a great wave rose up. If it hadn't been for the sea walls, it would have been a disaster."
This was on the southern coast, so I'd ordered wing walls built just in case — and there had been a cracked section, too. Without those walls, the whole harbor would have collapsed.
"If they offer to pay in goods instead, tell them we'll take copper. As much as they can pile up."
"Copper, ma'am?"
"Yes. More common than you'd think, but somehow still precious."
"Understood."
Stringing power lines, building generators and motors — copper vanishes fast when you get to work. Bullet casings too. There were a thousand uses for it.
"So while we're paying taxes to the Shogunate, this region should stay quiet, hm?"
"I imagine so, ma'am."
Now that was clean and tidy. If they'd just taken the tax and left last time, nobody would have needed to spill a drop of blood — but no, they had to attack, ruin their own house and all.
"On the way back we should stop by and see his face at least. We'll need a signature on paper, won't we?"
"Yes, I'll prepare it."
"Kamakura, you said?"
"Yes. A day's sail away — but it's tight, so two days with an overnight stop is more comfortable."
Oh? So near yet so far? Right — dropping in on a host unannounced in the dead of night would be poor form.
"Send a messenger ahead, then. Their leader should receive us properly at least once."
"Yes, ma'am."
Swooooosh — screeeech, screech
The swells ran a bit high, but the black whale cut through them without any apparent trouble.
"She really is beautifully made, isn't she?"
"The ship, ma'am?"
"Yes."
"She's probably been improved some twenty times from the original design."
Oh? They refine them too? Ship design can't be easy, and these hulls had been around for ages. They'd clearly kept at it.
"We still build the ships at Ryeonhwa, don't we?"
"Yes. We log every problem and every strength we find while sailing, bring the records back, and they improve the designs to match."
Oh? So these kids weren't just paddling around on whatever floated?
"Well, I'm impressed."
"Hahaha. She's our lifeline, after all. Once we took a hole in the hull and had a rough time hunting a harbor with it plugged."
Hulls don't just spring holes sitting still, do they?
"What on earth were you doing to punch a hole in the ship?"
"Well, someone said Fist Potatoes go off underwater too, so we tried fishing with them, and, hahaha."
"The shrapnel went through the hull, didn't it?"
"Yes! We took holes in four compartments — without the bulkheads it would have been a disaster."
It's a miracle they're alive. Remarkable creatures, these.
"Incredible."
"Yes, it was! And while we were at it, the rain started pouring down — bailing water, plugging holes, total chaos."
Could you not tell it like a war story? I'm applauding your ignorance, mind you, not your skill.
A day passed at sea, and in the morning the sailors took their bearings and set their course.
Clocks really do save the world.
"Land ho!"
Before long, the shore came into view. Kamakura, was it? Mountains on three sides and open sea on the last — it was practically a fortress city.
And these people had themselves a little fleet? Beyond fishing boats, what could they possibly need ships for?