Feeling cornered, Petrov opted for a classic evasive maneuver, delaying the central issue:
— "Your Highness, I ask that you accept my deepest regret for the tragedy at the mine. I assure you that this time we will not allow a macabre repetition of the previous winter. As a gesture of good faith from the Stronghold, I can arrange a loan of one month's food supplies for your population. And when the town can resume safe mining next year, you can repay the loan debt gradually, deducting it from the ore."
— "With all due respect to your dubious charity, Ambassador, the need for loans has passed," Arthur's voice cut through the air like a razor, a small, victorious smile playing on his lips. — "His Highness has already authorized the full sale of the remaining ore stock to the merchant routes of Willow Town. We can very well return the favor with their cash flow."
— "But... Count! That is a breach of exclusivity!"
— "There is no room for conjunctions or 'buts' in my new kingdom," Roland interrupted him with a cutting coldness, not allowing Petrov to regain control. — "The merchants of Willow Town operate in the real free market. They are perfectly willing to buy our humble ore paying with heavy, real, ringing gold coins, and, what's better, simultaneously sell us their vital stocks of wheat, large wheels of cheese, honey, and dried meat at competitive open market prices... goods we can acquire immediately with the gold we just profited. It's a clean system. But you, Petrov... even if you were magically willing to charitably lend us an extra month of wheat sacks, would the other five influential factions of Longsong passively agree with your isolated decision? From what Count Arthur has gathered from intelligence documents, it is not easy at all even for the dreaded Duke Ryan to force a financial agreement with the other parasitic families without causing a mutiny in the Stronghold."
Petrov swallowed hard and remained dead silent. The 4th prince, guided by that foreigner, had dissected the fragility of the problem with surgical precision. Roland was absolutely right. It wasn't just about convincing the remaining five houses; Petrov genuinely feared that his own father, the patriarch of his family, would violently repudiate the loan if it meant a lower profit margin. If they wanted to maintain the lucrative and tyrannical monopoly over Border Town, the rigid commercial scheme would have to be completely restructured, but Petrov possessed neither the political capital nor the title to have the final say on the council. His pompous title of "ambassador" was a farce; in the cruel hierarchy of Longsong, he was just a glorified errand boy, a mouthpiece for a greedy committee. It was evident that the Duke would never allow any house to make independent agreements or private contracts with Border Town to prevent them from gaining influence. Whether in the days of the late governor or now under the yoke of the 4th prince, the Stronghold purposefully assigned a different diplomat each season to prevent corruption, and these envoys were always heirs or sons, never the actual rulers who held the power to sign real agreements.
Regardless of the political swamp, he couldn't return empty-handed. It was his head on the line. When he reached this conclusion, Petrov decided to bluff and spread the only bad cards he had left.
— "Thirty," Petrov said, straightening up and raising three trembling fingers toward the prince. — "The Stronghold's council will buy your extracted ore and the rough stones and gems from the mountain for a value that is less than thirty percent below the free market price. That is an immense leap. I firmly believe that, in matters of volume and security, this net price must be much higher than what the barges from Willow Town can pay in the long run, Your Highness."
— "Your math is almost correct," Arthur analyzed the parchment. — "Indeed, in gross terms over the long run, the amount is larger. But the equation fails at the foundation, Ambassador. Let's return to the old chronic question you didn't answer: do you have the military and political power to guarantee the signing of the agreement by all six families today?"
— "I will depart back to Longsong Stronghold at dawn! As soon as the assembly reaches the necessary consensus, I will return immediately with the newly sealed contract and the food!"
— "But the empty stomachs of my mining people cannot hibernate until the paperwork is ready. You know very well that when it comes to sharing profits at the high aristocracy's table, you spend weeks or months arguing over commas."
Panic began to erode Petrov's facade. He went all or nothing, desperation tinging his tone with a threat.
— "Your Royal Highness, the alliance with the Stronghold would be, by far, an infinitely wiser choice to guarantee your future and that of your people. Willow Town is very far to the west... So, I suppose Your Highness and the masses could simply try to escape there, through the deep snows, during the unforgiving Months of the Demons," Petrov's voice trembled and he felt his throat go dry, the road dust seeming to choke him as he uttered those treacherous words. — "But the forest path west in the middle of a blizzard and under attack by beasts is not easy at all... I would say it's a journey... quite lethal for a prince."
My God, by the seven hells, what did I just do? Petrov's heart hammered against his ribs deafeningly. Had he lost his mind? Had he, the son of a secondary lord, just veiledly threatened a direct member of the Wimbledon royalty with the harshness of winter and road blockades in the presence of a foreign nobleman from Dawn?
— "Hahahahaha!" Roland's explosive, crystalline, and genuinely amused laughter echoed through the hall, breaking the deadly tension. Surprisingly to Petrov, the prince wasn't furious or calling the guards to cut out his tongue. — "Mr. Ambassador, you seem to be under a tragic and profound geographical misunderstanding. I have never, at any time, even considered the humiliating possibility of retreating through the snows running to Willow Town."
— "What exactly does Your Highness mean by that...?" Petrov gasped.
— "And, to be perfectly clear, I also have not the slightest intention of going knocking on the Duke's steel doors at Longsong Stronghold begging for shelter, losing my sovereignty over this territory."
Roland leaned back in the heavy oak chair, his eyes shining with amusement as he watched the paralyzing confusion take over the ambassador's pale expression. — "I will not flee anywhere."
Petrov blinked slowly, his mind struggling. He momentarily doubted whether his eardrums had played a trick on him due to the exhausting journey.
Fortunately, before the silence grew even more awkward and pathetic, the prince explained patiently, as if speaking to a foolish child: — "Pay attention. Throughout this terrible approaching winter, and for the next ones to come, I will remain firmly planted here forever, at the edges of this Town. This place will cease to be a refugee camp and will become the heart of the new impenetrable frontier of our glorious kingdom. Do not look at me with that face of astonishment, my skeptical friend, these are not just the delusions of a drunk prince. If you don't take my word for it, I can invite Count Arthur to accompany you outside and show you the mileage of our new masonry and cement walls rising along the North Slope of the Mountain."
— "The Town... possesses its own Wall?!" Petrov's voice cracked.
— "Exactly," Arthur replied, the tone of an artist showing off his masterpiece. — "An unbreakable defense connecting the foothills of the North Slope Mountain directly to the banks of the Redwater River. It is a solid wall of continuous masonry, a special alloy designed under the instructions of my companion and myself, rising to nearly 12 feet high and 4 feet of impact-resistant width. With it, we will not flee. We will slaughter and defeat all the demonic beasts right here at the borders of Border Town."
Petrov felt his logical reasoning melt away. That was madness. When last season's envoy returned, his reports didn't contain a single mention, a single scribble about wall projects, only mud and thatched huts. No, back then, in the previous season, the cowardly lord of Border Town himself and almost his entire entourage had already fled behind the thick walls of Longsong Stronghold, so how the hell could a decrepit, decimated, and malnourished workforce build an entire wall out of nowhere with rudimentary tools? In other words, in the days when the infamous 4th prince arrived at his exile post and stepped out of his carriage, did he immediately, without warning anyone, start pouring stone and erecting the defensive foundations of a besieged city? Even if that were the case, the mathematicians and engineers of Longsong knew that only about three months had passed since his arrival... how, under God's light, could they have built such a colossal continuous extension in such an impossible timeframe?
And the scale? What had His Highness just dropped in his lap? Twelve immense feet high of rough stone and nearly four feet of compact width, connecting the great North Slope Mountain and the muddy waters of the Redwater River? Petrov's brain feverishly calculated the mass and the necessary labor in his heart. Building a continuous, defensive, and stable wall of that monumental size with the kingdom's techniques would never be humanly possible to complete in less than 3 to 5 long years of continuous slave labor. And, the most glaring detail that unraveled the lie, Roland didn't possess anywhere near a fraction of the fleet of master masons or craftsmen to cut, measure, transport, and lay that many tons of stones in the mountains! On top of all that, the humble Border Town was, in its unchangeable essence, just a village focused on mining extraction, and the absolute majority of the miserable residents were ordinary, illiterate peasants who had never held a plumb line in their lives.
When his brain, now broken down, had not yet managed to process and swallow the geographical magnitude of that explosive news, Roland's next financial statement came to shock him beyond any recovery.
— "As for our humble ore sales trade with your beloved Stronghold," Roland uttered, leaning back like a tycoon who had the market in his hands. — "Starting from the thaw next year, I will be more than willing to cut and reduce the current price directly by half, sir." Petrov's eyes widened. "But... the rules change. We will not sell this bargain solely and exclusively to the Duke at the Stronghold, for the simple mechanical fact that your army does not have the need to consume such an industrial scale of iron. On Count Arthur's advice, I think that, compared to our pathetically low profits selling raw iron ore to swine, your council of nobles would vastly prefer to spend their gold coins importing our manufactured metal products, ready for use, with a handsome built-in profit margin... civilized things like forged hoes, reinforced shovels, standardized armor, and similar high-value-added items."
Roland made a dramatic, rehearsed pause. The prince waited quietly until Petrov's confused brain finally seemed to decipher the revolution in trade relations embedded in his words.
— "And, as for the rare rough gems extracted from the depths... we will no longer accept crumbs for them. Arthur suggested to me that we will sell them in open auction events, and any greedy businessman or noble who shouts the highest gold bid will be able to win them exclusively. Frankly, I would prefer to polish and cut these beautiful stones in my castle myself, increasing the price even more, but unfortunately, in my humble current situation, there is not a single working soul with that kind of fine skill."
You dump on me that you have the divine industrial capacity to erect a cyclopean wall of thousands of stones in a few months in the wilderness, and now you try to convince me that you can't polish a little colored rock because you lack the skill?! The noble Petrov's heart almost stopped beating out of pure rage at that mocking contradiction. And what the hell did he and that foreign Count mean by that commercial insult? Longsong Stronghold has no demand and doesn't need that much ore? That was a logistical absurdity! The Town's total production in the past was a pittance valued at only about a thousand gold coins per season. Even if, by some miracle, production were doubled through whippings and new veins, the hungry Stronghold could absorb the impact peacefully! After all, why the hell wouldn't a mere two thousand gold coins be produced and processed by the Stronghold's great forges? That wasn't just diplomatic arrogance; it was a planned affront, designed to dismantle their commercial positions.
Petrov breathed through his nose, clenched his fists under the table, and swallowed his bleeding aristocratic pride. He managed to contain the intense hurt and insults in his heart and forced every muscle in his face to maintain the composure of a rational man.
— "Everything you have just dictated at this table has been perfectly engraved in my mind, Your Highness. I will return immediately to the eastern gates and enter into severe discussions and direct negotiations with the council of the six families to analyze your... new policies. However, if it is not too much to ask," Petrov looked suspiciously at Arthur and then at Roland, "the grandiose and miraculous Town walls you have just described so confidently... as your appointed Ambassador, first I would like and need to take a look and verify the work personally with my own eyes."
— "But of course you may," Roland smiled, his white teeth shining in the afternoon candlelight, the smile of a man holding a hand full of aces in a rigged card game. — "But, do not be in such a hurry with the weather outside, young Ambassador. Let us all first enjoy the banquet and finish savoring every last crumb of these sweets and delicacies of wonderful majestic flavor. The stones we erected are not going anywhere. And even if they were, by this point... wouldn't it be incredibly too late for the Duke to try and stop them from going up?"