Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Asag shifted in his cushioned seat, the last to take his place at the council table.

One month had passed since Yarzat’s banners were planted in Oizen’s soil, and it had taken until the seventh birthday of the heir for the prince’s eldest to call the first diet since victory.

A month of papers, seals, and wrangling. It had been quite tiring for Alpheo, who was the main victim of the paperwork.

There were unfortunately, a lot of jobs to administer, like the carving of the conquered land into neat parcels for grateful lords, and also the weighing out of loot like a butcher at market.

Still, they were at least positive things, both of them:

Forty-two thousand silverii had been hauled into the capital in blood-stained chests , quite the fortune to any man, though as always, half was claimed by the crown.

He had, of course, also counted the other gains that came from the war, like the nine hundred hectares of new, actually worked , farmland under his writ.

Along with the forty-five hundred in yearly taxes flowing to his coffers from broken cities.

Still despite the gains, the treasury still bled. Not empty, not in debt, but thinner than he liked , twenty-two thousand silverii remaining when once there had been more.

Victim of the latest budget, he had given Pontus to see the blast-furnace be done, still those funds would come back once it was built, so really the expenditure did not taste as foul as it should have.

They were not in ruin, hell...they probably had more than some other princes given him some months , but it was not safe enough for them.

And Alpheo, who had slept soundest when wealth lay fat in his grasp, now found his nights broken by the thought of having to borrow like some supplicant. A prince begging coin. He despised the very taste of it for many reasons ranging from political to personal ones.

At least the monthly balance stayed in the green. Barely.But still on the green

Fifteen hundred silverii, a trickle instead of a stream. With care, with parsimony, it could swell again. But parsimony was a stranger to Alpheo. Gold and Silver in his hand never sat long; it wanted to be spent and thrown around.

Especially now that he was raging around to prepare for a possible storm, that he did not have much time to work around.

So yes, the treasury was heading for lean days. But lean days could be endured if fat ones returned or even leaner one could be avoided....

”I believe we can finally begin,” Alpheo said at last, leaning back into his seat. He drew a paper from the bundle at his side, the draft he had bled hours over.

Such a small and yet dangerous thing: an attempt to snap one of the bones of landed nobility. His script ran wronged from fatigue; his eyes stung from nights without sleep.This would be an hard thing to pass, but Alpheo had always been a rat, and he could always find a hole to wriggle in

He knew this would cause ripples. Perhaps waves, he did not know how much of those but he also knew how it must end.

As always with his victory.

But before he could even open his mouth, a voice cut him off.

”I believe I see a seat still empty,should we not wait?” Jarza observed, his low tone rumbling, his gaze flickering to the chair where Egil should have been.

”He is in the field,” Alpheo replied evenly, though his grip on the paper stiffened. ”Cleansing the newly acquired lands of bandits.I am sure he is having fun torturing bandits to discover their hideouts.”

Jarza’s eyes narrowed, the faintest twitch of disapproval at his lips. ”And before that? He rode home. To see his son. His wife. Curious, isn’t it? He spends half the year in the capital, idle when not on duty , yet suddenly, with the war behind us, he finds himself so busy elsewhere.”

”As you said , when not on duty,” Alpheo countered, sharper than he intended. ”Now he is. He, much like you, will have a political task to tend to when peace is among us.

And even if he were not, I doubt he would have offered much counsel in matters such as these. Numbers, decrees, balances of land and coin, they lie outside his expertise.

He is a man of simple tastes and simple tasks...”

The words tasted of iron as they rolled out.

For a time Alpheo had carried guilt like a stone in his gut, heavy and unshakable. But stones wear smooth if carried long enough. Guilt corrodes. It turns inward, then outward, reshaped into something easier to bear: anger.

Egil had not sought him out. Alpheo had not sought Egil either. Beyond the necessities of duty, they had lived as strangers in the same city. No shared cup, no word unbound by rank. No bridge was built when a river now runs.

And in the silence, the mind finds excuses.

All that he had done for Egil, all he had given, all he had sacrificed. The war, the alliance, the choices that had to be made. Did Egil think it had been easy? Did he think Alpheo relished chaining himself to Romelia, to the very empire that had ground Egil’s people to ash?And that held him in slavery?The same slavery that he had led all of them out?

This was the thanks he received back.

No. There had been no choice. None at all.

And the more Alpheo told himself this, the truer it became. His choice was not betrayal but necessity.

Which left only Egil’s stubbornness. Egil’s blindness. Egil’s refusal to understand.

What had begun as guilt now smoldered as blame.

He had thought he had hidden it well, the bitterness clawing at his chest, the frustration he carried from Egil’s absence, the gnawing guilt turning rancid inside him that no matter how much dirt he threw, he could not bury. But as his eyes swept over the stares leveled his way, he realized he had not. His mask had slipped, and they had all seen it.

No use dangling on the matter. Best to redirect. Best to seize control.

”I am sure,” Alpheo began, letting his voice harden, ”that you all know my opinion regarding the trade guilds operating out of the capital.”

”You haven’t exactly made a secret of it,” Asag quipped

Alpheo offered him a thin smile in return, stale and brittle. ”No, indeed, I have not. And I do not intend to. My distaste for them doesn’t come from whim or prejudice. It comes from reason.” His throat was dry; he took a long sip of water, savoring the coolness before setting the cup down with deliberate care.

Then his words came sharper, louder.

”I believe the trade guilds are parasites upon this city. And parasites must be crushed with the same fervor one uses when grinding a cockroach beneath his heel.”

A few brows furrowed. Shahab, the old man with eyes like polished amber, raised a hand slightly. ”You were a little more... composed, when you spoke of this before,” he noted, the faintest trace of reproach in his tone.

”Well,” Alpheo shot back, ”before I couldn’t do a fuck about it. Now I can. And I will.” He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes burning with a conviction honed on battlefields. ”They are parasites who cloak themselves in respectability, but they are nothing more than stranglers of commerce, leeches upon honest labor.”

He began to enumerate, finger by finger.

”They monopolize entire trades, tightening their grip on artisans and laborers. The mason, the woodworker, the potter , each bound to the guild by contracts that do not protect them, but bind them. They control demand by choking supply. They jack down the prices of raw materials, bleed merchants until only the guild itself can afford to sell, and dictate to craftsmen what they may or may not take, who they may or may not serve. A new hand, a new dreamer, a new worker who dares to enter the trade finds his path barred , ostracized, threatened, strangled in the cradle. That is not commerce. That is not prosperity. That is rot.”

His voice carried through the chamber, clipped and cutting, the rhetoric of a soldier rather than a courtier.

”Under them, competition dies. Without competition, prices stagnate. And when prices stagnate, so does growth. New artisans, new merchants, new blood find no purchase , and so they leave, or they starve. This guild strangles not just men but the city itself.”

He paused, allowing the weight of his words to settle, before driving the knife deeper.

”Or at least,” he said with deliberate calm, ”that was the case until I arrived.”

He let that hang a moment.

”When I came to this city, I did not bend knee to the guilds, even when they offered bribe. I brought in artisans, craftsmen, specialists from beyond their reach, some from their own choice as they had heard of the expansion of the capital.

To them I offered privileges, five years of tax relief if they refused to bind themselves to guild contracts along with some small funds of loans to allow them to start their shop.

With that, I created demand outside of the guild’s grasp.’’ He smiled as if he had just gained one step over his enemy

’’Merchants beyond our walls took notice of the new opening . They brought raw goods to Yarzat , stone, timber, iron , and the crown rewarded them with untaxed passage for supplying our new blood. The guild’s monopoly cracked. New opportunities arose outside of it . And suddenly, even those who had once bowed to the guild’s contracts began to whisper of breaking them.”

Alpheo’s hand tightened into a fist on the table.

”This is what I have done with only a fraction of our power. With the full weight of the crown, we can break their stranglehold entirely. We can open Yarzat’s veins not to leeches, but to lifeblood? The economy gave signs of improving, with many prices going down and being more affordable to the people, calling more workers inside the city and increasing our tax revenue, isn’t that proof that what we are doing does actually have an effect?”

He looked around and reassured himself in seeing the stare of approval coming from the other.