The carriage rattled violently over the uneven cobblestones of the courtyard, making Petrov's teeth chatter. The young ambassador from Longsong Stronghold stepped down, adjusting his velvet doublet with a discreet sigh. Border Town was exactly the hole of mud, ignorance, and freezing wind he had always heard it was, a place forgotten by the gods, good only for extracting ore and sweating blood. However, there was something different in the air that afternoon. The smoke rising from the chimneys didn't have the usual smell of green wood; it smelled more acrid, something industrial.
A silent, intimidating-looking guard led him through the rustic corridors of the castle to the main hall. When the double oak doors opened, Petrov stopped in his tracks. The scene was not that of an exiled prince lamenting his fate among puddles of wine.
Roland Wimbledon, the 4th Prince, was already sitting casually in the main chair of the large banquet table. But he wasn't alone. To his right, analyzing a thick parchment with clinical attention, was a young man with fair skin and short black hair, wearing impeccably tailored, dark, smooth-fabric clothing that did not belong to Graycastle.
— "Mr. Ambassador, please, sit down," said Roland, his voice cordial but carrying an unusual weight of authority. He made a broad gesture with his hand and, before Petrov could even process who the stranger was, clapped his hands twice.
The side doors opened and a succession of maids entered carrying steaming silver platters. The smell invaded the hall, and Petrov felt his stomach rumble undignifiedly. There was a perfectly grilled whole chicken, a massive boar haunch swimming in a stew of wild forest mushrooms, baskets of fresh bread with melted butter, and a colossal bowl of vegetable soup fragrant with spices. It was absurdly clear that, even at the end of the world, a member of the royal bloodline would not let the Town's supply shortage interfere with his personal gastronomic luxuries.
Petrov swallowed hard. The sea voyage from Longsong Stronghold to Border Town, even with the blessing of the autumn winds, had taken two long, tedious days. If he had come on one of the old cargo barges that crawled up the river with supplies, the trip would have dragged his bones through four or five torturous days. River ships of that size didn't have safe stoves or ovens, so his diet for the past few days had consisted almost entirely of slices of cured meat hard as boot soles and stale whole wheat bread. Seeing that hot, abundant feast made his mouth water almost uncontrollably.
He sat at the table. Thanks to years of rigorous, grueling etiquette training at the Longsong court, Petrov kept his back straight and his face neutral, serving himself with the expected elegance. Unlike him, His Royal Highness's table manners were, to say the least, curious. More specifically, the absence of a silver fork.
Petrov watched, fascinated and mildly shocked, as the prince used an exquisite knife to slice his piece of boar, then quickly set it aside and picked up what looked like two small, smooth wooden sticks. Roland used those sticks with almost magical dexterity to grab the pieces of meat and mushrooms and bring them to his mouth, completely replacing the use of the fork. And to the ambassador's utter bewilderment, the two pieces of wood seemed incredibly more practical and faster than any metal cutlery.
The mysterious man to the prince's right also ate using the same sticks, his movements even more precise than Roland's, as if he had been born doing it.
— "What do you think of the tools, Ambassador?" Roland suddenly broke the silence of the meal, pointing with the sticks.
— "Huh? Pardon me, Your Highness, what?" Petrov blinked, caught off guard.
— "This." Roland twirled the chopsticks skillfully between his fingers before explaining: — "The uncomfortable truth, Petrov, is that an iron fork is an unattainable luxury for ninety percent of my population, let alone a silver set. The people eat with hands dirty from dirt and mines. When you shove food down your throat with the same fingers that dig in the mud, it's inevitable that you mix filth with the food in your belly. Count Arthur taught me a fascinating concept from his kingdom: 'Plagues and diseases enter directly through the mouth'. Have you heard of this?"
Petrov blinked, looking at the dark-haired man, who merely nodded slightly without stopping eating. The ambassador didn't know exactly how to formulate an answer. He didn't understand the exact medical concept of "diseases through the mouth," but, judging by the brutal context of frontier survival, Roland was likely implying that the visible dirt on the food was the root of the people's weakness. But, in Petrov's noble conception, when a serf fell ill in the mines, it was a divine matter, not something related to dust on the bread; after all, no one knew the true organic cause of common deaths.
— "Think of the economy of scale," interjected the calm, calculated voice of the stranger, who wiped his lips with a linen napkin before speaking. — "How many thousands of these perfectly smooth, clean little sticks do you think we can produce by cutting down a single medium-sized oak in the forest? They are clean, disposable, or easy to sanitize, and practically free. We are going to introduce and mandate their use throughout the town to reduce deaths from poor diet. Ah, forgive my lack of manners." The man smiled politely. — "I am Count Arthur. Merchant, scholar, and alchemist from the Kingdom of Dawn. My military colleague and I have come to offer our services to ensure the crown lands on the right head in this Royal Decree."
Petrov swallowed his piece of boar almost whole. Kingdom of Dawn? Alchemist helping the prince? The variables of the negotiations had just changed drastically. He wasn't just dealing with a spoiled noble, but someone who had foreign connections.
The prince took a long sip of his red wine and continued to speak: — "Of course, the use of the sticks is only the first step in hygiene. Currently, my people barely have bread, much less consume enough meat, but my advisor Arthur and I are drawing up plans to alter this grim scenario very soon."
Petrov let out his breath, finally finding solid ground in the conversation. Politics he knew well. He quickly strung together a diplomatic response, verbally expressing his total moral support and the best blessings of the gods for the prince's grand vision, although, internally, he was laughing at the naivety. Letting all the plebeians eat meat regularly? That wasn't just utopian, it was a childish whim that bordered on insanity. Not even the richest capitals of Graycastle could sustain such a luxury for commoners, and Roland wanted to do it in the most desolate, infertile, and cursed place on the map.
When Roland finally signaled for the maids to clear the main courses and serve the sugary desserts, Petrov thought it was time to touch upon the vital issue. The reason he was there.
— "Your Highness," he began, his tone now strictly business. — "According to our procedures established by contract, today is formally the day for the delivery of the ore shipments. However, when I passed by the terminal yard near the river waters... I didn't see a single rock of ore."
Roland quietly set his sticks down on the oak table and nodded with a sorrowful expression. — "It's a tragedy, Ambassador. Unfortunately, a large section of the North Slope Mine collapsed catastrophically a few weeks ago. It was a true disaster. During this past month, the town's workforce has only been able to focus on trying to stabilize the galleries and resume some minimum level of safe production. The colossal volume of rubble from the collapse still hasn't been completely removed. Based on the logistical calculations Count Arthur performed, we will only be able to resume conventional mining rates early next year, at the earliest."
The entire mine collapsed? For a fleeting moment, desperation hit Petrov: could that be too convenient an excuse, an elaborate lie? However, his political training quickly corrected his thinking. Roland wouldn't be stupid enough to lie about something physical. If Petrov mounted his horse right now and galloped to the North Slope Mine, the truth would be wide open in the form of tons of rocks blocking the tunnels. Obviously, covering up a fake collapse would be impossible and would ruin Roland's image.
— "That is terribly unfortunate, Your Highness," said Petrov, choosing his words carefully. — "But then… what happened to the stockpile of ore that had already been extracted before the unfortunate collapse?"
— "The stockpile wasn't abundant to begin with," interjected Arthur, with the professional voice of a ruthless auditor, leaning over his parchment. — "The quantity extracted up to the date of the accident strictly followed the baseline of your infamous 'trade convention'. The workers of this town, malnourished and poorly equipped, were never able to produce a single gram more than the crushing volume stipulated by your six families."
Roland took the lead, emphasizing his next words in a somber and pragmatic manner: — "Mr. Ambassador, you, being a literate man of the court, must remember very well the catastrophe that ravaged this place during the Months of Demons two short years ago, correct?"
Petrov's stomach dropped. Of course he vividly and shamefully remembered that: the unforgiving, cursed winter had dragged on for four long months. In Border Town, abandoned to its fate, nearly one in two people, half the workforce, simply died of starvation and hypothermia in their mud hovels. The hidden and unofficial cause of that carnage was the greedy, insatiable, and corrupt avarice of the then municipal administrative governor sent by the Stronghold, Sir Reynold. There was much whispered outrage in the halls and strong internal opposition among Longsong's noble aristocracy because of the loss of useful lives; some progressive nobles even demanded that Governor Reynold be severely punished posthumously for the damage to the economy. But, at the end of that political circus, absolutely nothing happened to the man. Why? Solely and exclusively because Reynold was married to the beloved second daughter of the Duke himself. Nepotism trumped starvation.
When Roland rubbed that obscure incident in his face, Petrov had a terrible, icy premonition about the direction of that negotiation.
— "I guarantee you, Petrov, that this time things will be exponentially worse if the old order is maintained," sighed Roland. — "With the scarce ore we managed to pull from the rocks before the roof gave way, and with the starvation prices you impose, the value wouldn't buy enough food for even the first eight weeks of snow. I will move heaven and earth to sustain my people and stop them from eating their own shoes, but I sincerely fear they will not survive the winter under the current terms. The Duke's archaic old ways of trade must be extirpated and abolished immediately!"
Petrov opened his mouth, but the words died in his throat. He wasn't a born diplomat trained to debate morality versus profit. Faced with such overwhelming humanitarian grounds and a documented accidental collapse, he found himself cornered and unable to point out any flaw in the Prince's, and the Count's, argument.