Herald of Steel

Lady Felicia's opinion about the merchants was a common viewpoint shared by most of the upper aristocracy of the time.

According to them, the most prestigious job of the time was being a farmer, with many proverbs and sayings singing their praises.

Such as- 'It is the farmer who toils away in the field just to feed us and from them comes the strongest and best soldiers.'

They were then followed by the artisans who were respected for their craft and artistic talents, with the best of them even being called the architects of the gods.

While at the bottom of the barrel were the merchants, who were seen almost as leeches.

The prejudice was so strong that there were even instances where fathers would refuse to marry their daughters into such families, even if the latter was very wealthy.

Simply because of the social faux pas.

Adhania too had these conceptions, but nowhere this strong.

And it was because of this reason that even though Alexander was aware of Lady Felicia's thoughts, he did not bother to change her worldview.

She was already too mature for Alexander to effectively bring her over to his side with words alone.

And besides, he did not really need to.

It did not matter what she thought.

This was Alexander's city and he had strictly instructed her to encourage the gathering of merchants, regardless of her personal views.

But perhaps this was also one of the reasons why Lady Felicia was this peeved.

If she could be just allowed to close the gates to these merchants, much of her housing troubles would disappear overnight.

And she tried to deliver this idea to Alexander, albeit in a roundabout way as she knew the man would not accept it easily.

Hence Lady Felicia added with a further scowl on her face,

"My lord, I have no issues with the merchants. But accompanying them and their large families are always a whole host of other good for nothing rabbles- beggars, and vagabonds who have nothing better to do."

"These wastes follow behind the merchants, hoping to gnaw at the scraps left by their betters like vultures stalk the dead. These miscreants are nothing but a source of trouble!"

Lady Felicia sounded very annoyed by the presence of these men, as she thus turned to urge Alexander,

"You must deal with them before they start to become a problem. The city guards are already having a hard time trying to keep order. Just last week, we had three tavern brawls, two fires, and three dead!"

"Crime is skyrocketing and the number of beggars, thieves, and robbers is swelling like the Diannu is going to flood. If we do not act soon, it is only a matter of time before the streets are ruled by the gang!"

Here Lady Felicia was certainly exaggerating a bit, as she wished to use these examples to alarm Alexander and convince him to close the gates.

"The gates stay open, no matter what!"

However regardless of her efforts, Alexander instantly shut the lady down with an unequivocal flick of his wrist, then rebuked her in a slightly annoyed tone, "If you are having trouble keeping order, then recruit more guards. You earned so much coin from taxation. What is it for? To sit on it and lay eggs? Use it!"

Alexander could easily see what game Lady Felicia was trying to play and it peeved him since her end goal would result in undermining the city's growth, all because the problems it caused were proving challenging for her.

Thus he ended with the following instruction, delivered in a hard tone,

"Start recruiting 100 new guards… or more if you need it. Have it done by the time I leave for Zanzan. In the meantime, I will lend you the numbers from my army. So stop making any more excuses."

"Yes, my lord. Thank you." And facing this lashing, Lady Felicia finally stopped trying to weasel out of her work, and instead obediently nodded.

'Really, you have to be harsh on this woman to keep her straight.' And seeing so Alexander could not help but muse.

Following this, the pasha then moved on to other topics, as he clasped his hands up and asked,

"You mentioned people are also coming to the suburbs of the city. Tell me about that! Why?"

"Yes, this is because many of the shops and guilds are hungrily looking for new workers. It is not that we are only buying from Zanzan. It appears we are selling a lot too." Lady Felicia quickly opined, knowing such a situation created a lucrative draw for the poor and destitute folks of the war torn countryside who were more than happy to respond to this demand.

Many families, scarred by the war and perhaps even without a place to go, due to having their villages burned down, came flocking into the city, hoping that they could luckily land any job, that their son could luckily catch the eye of a craftsman like a blacksmith or carpenter and potter and become their apprentice, and perhaps if they were really, really lucky, that their daughter could catch the eye of such an apprentice and be married to him.

For these poor folks, that was the dream, since artisans generally earned 30% to 50% more than farmers and even had a steady source of income, while the latter's annual income varied greatly depending on the weather that year.

Lady Felicia, after informing Alexander of this, then added with a bit of a surprise in her tone, "It seems there is a lot of demand for Thesalian products in Zanzan. Especially our pottery and wine. Who knew?"

It seemed the current volume of demand for their product had caught the woman a bit off guard as she did not think they would be so lucrative.

It should be noted that even before the conquest of Thesalie, both sides still traded, albeit with a lot of trade barriers.

So none of what Thesalie was offering should be totally novel, unique products like Alexander's cheap steel or brown sugar, or soap and paper, which sold as hot cakes in large part due to their first time appearance.

Hence when accounting for all of that, even the removal of the trade barriers should not have created the kind of ravenous hunger currently being displayed by the other side.

It seemed too high to be true for the lady.

Alexander on the other hand, due to having a much greater insight into this quickly figured out the reason why, and let her know with a smirk,

"The reason for this sudden demand is because it's just the nouveau riche Zanzantines celebrating their ill gotten loot from the war."

"What is Thesalie famous for? Wine!"

"And for many people, this is the first time they have the coins to enjoy this famous drink!"

"Don't worry, this is just a fad. The coin will soon dry out and the hype will soon pass." The man finished with a casual reassuring flick of his hands, while Lady Felicia nodded with a bit of a sigh of relief.

The reason made sense to her and at least this meant her housing troubles were mostly temporary.

While at the same time, the woman was also intrigued by Alexander's choice of words, feeling this was probably the first time she heard a thief call his gains 'ill gotten'.

Because that was what Alexander essentially was in the more baser sense of the words.

A thief who had gotten rich by taking from others.

As for Alexander, he was more concerned about what would happen to all the excess supply that was going to build in response to the current demand.

Because, as he said earlier, this was not going to last forever.

Alexander initially thought about being a good samaritan and warning the merchants not to get carried away.

But then assumed better of it.

Because most will not listen either way and only think he was trying to swindle them and keep them poor.

'Well, whatever. You win some, you lose some.' Thus he decided to leave the men to the cruel claws of competition and elimination.

Instead, he turned to the next item on the agenda.

Perhaps even the most important kind, as Alexander turned to inquire.

"How goes the planting around these parts? Did you properly implement what I asked you to do?"

Before he left, Alexander had transferred thousands of heavy plows and hundreds of draft animals from Zanzan to the vicinity of these lands, asking the lady in charge to lease these instruments out to the surrounding farmers for a portion of their profit.

"Yes!" And the ask got a large grin from Lady Felicia, a clear evidence of good news to come, as she expertly relayed,

"We did as you asked. And the results… hahaha. The farmers claimed they got almost double the yield than at any other time of their life. 650 kg per hectare for wheat! Hehe, you should have been there to see their grinning faces, Lord Pasha!"

Just like those farmer's facades, Lady Felicia's countenance too appeared flushed as she found herself subconsciously giggling, while reporting this, letting Alexander sense she was genuinely excited by it.

Any true daughter of Thesalie would be by this bumper harvest.

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