Herald of Steel



As the ships sailed off, Lord Janus turned his head from looking at the harbor to glance at the back of his mistress with a complicated face.

"My lady, are you sure?" His question was filled with concern and doubt.

Trying to ally with such an unknown individual with no background and an unknown history seemed very dangerous to him.

"......." Lady Miranda only stayed quiet, simply clutching her swollen belly and looking down at it.

It seemed she felt allying herself with Alexander gave her and her unborn child the best chance to survive.

The house politics going on in her family were about to turn very nasty.

And she needed every ounce of help she could get.

And Alexander was the only one she had.

Though whether Alexander would actually extend that hand was yet unsaid.

As was how Alexander's territory would be affected by his aiding the Margrave against Sybarsis.

Only time would tell.

For now though, Alexander turned his attention to the harbor, or more importantly the expansion of it.

He had felt the inadequacy of it in the prior days, and he also wanted to create his own navy, which would need special docks.

To this effect, he raised the concern to his council members.

But before he bought up the most important thing.

"My lords, we are running low on money. What are we going to do about that?" Alexander addressed in one of his morning council meetings.

Which made everyone look at each other.

Because they certainly had not the capital to contribute.

Or at least contribute meaningfully as compared to Alexander they were beggars.

But Alexander could no longer let this situation go on, as he pointed out,

"Up until now, I have paid 700 million ropals from my pocket for Zanzan. And every day I pay even more to cover everything, from the food to everyone's salaries."

"This cannot go. And I wanted to talk about that." Alexander spread out his palms and gestured, symbolizing his destitution.

Zanzan currently was entirely a government-funded entity, or even more specifically entirely funded by Alexander.

And Alexander could not be expected to fund everything by himself, as he had done in the last six months.

"Does my lord want to raise taxes?" Heliptos really had that one trick up his sleeve.

To which Alexander inwardly scoffed.

Increase taxes for whom?

There were only two real types of tax in this world, a sales tax, akin to VAT, and a land tax.

If Alexander were to increase the sales tax, he would be taxing himself as it was him who made much of the products like iron, cement, bricks, etc.

As for increasing land tax, that was a landmine he was not willing to touch with a ten-mile pole.

They had just recovered from a brought and increasing taxes immediately would be far too unpopular.

Maybe a few years into the line.

And besides, again, it was Alexander who owned almost all the planted farmland.

So by raising taxes, he would just be increasing the price of his own goods.

And as for increasing the taxes of the nobles, if Alexander proposed it, Heliptos might be the first one to revolt.

Other types of taxes like income tax and capital gains tax did not exist as they were modern inventions.

For example, in the US, income tax was implemented in 1913, which was enabled by the invention of modern tools and institutions.

But since those did not exist yet, so in this time period personal earning was simply too hard to keep accurate track of.

Thus Alexander was left with two rudimentary tax options, neither of which he could raise.

"There is no point in increasing taxes. Who are we going to tax? Ourselves?" Alexander loudly shut down Heliptos, as he then proposed, "No! What we need is people from outside buying our goods. We need to attract more merchants,"

This got a unanimous nod from the others, for more trade meant more sales tax, following which Alexander then posed,

"And so to expand the volume of trade, I wish to expand the harbor. I had noticed it was getting a bit crowded here and I believe a better port will attract more merchants." He raised the issue of the dock's capacity to the group, looking around for their thoughts.

And Heliptos, who was put in charge of the port as part of his economic minister duty, responded first, "Hmmm, yes. Though I think it is adequate for the time being my lord. Perhaps we can expand it once a few merchants starts coming." he seemed to cleverly object to the plans, reasoning, "The only frequent ships who come to us are from the nearby villages. They are quite small in total numbers."

"And the recent large number of vessels from Adhania and Sybarsis was really an oddity."

He did not seem to share Alexander's concern and had correctly guessed that Alexander came up with this idea after seeing the recent congestion in the ports.

Heliptos was the type to solve problems when they arose.

"This is only for now. But soon our specialties will be known to all those around us. Then the small port will be not able to accommodate that, now will it? Alexander posed.

"So why wait till later? Now that the harbor is relatively quiet and traffic is light, is it not the best time to expand it?" To Alexander it seemed like a no-brainer.

While for the group of council members, they had no problem imagining that the specialties Alexander created would have no shortage of buyers in the near time future.

Heck, even if there were, they would be glad to purchase all of them for themselves.

But they did have a problem imagining the current port being small and inadequate, at least for the near time future.

"Small? The harbor is 300 meters wide sire. Sure it's no Kaisos, but it's still quite large!" Heliptos sounded incredulous and compared, "It would easily be one of the bigger ports in Thesos if placed there."

Kaisos was the port area of Cantagena, one of the largest regional trading hubs, and if Alexander was comparing that to Zanzan, now and here, then there was a problem with his head.

A view that seemed to be shared by many.

A port that could service 15 to 20 ships at a time seemed to be very large for them.

"*Ahem*". And so with his signature cough, Menicus felt he should express the joint decision of the council, where he said, "My lord, I think we can wait on the docks. Let us wait a few more years until the shipping volume increases a bit."

But for Alexander, who saw these 15 to 20-m-long ships with less than 10-meter beams as quite small, he felt the 300m harbor as tiny.

He wanted to build much bigger ships and had much grander plans.

And so he made his case, "We just suffered a naval blockade. And if we had not won that battle, we would have all been killed or starved. So it is imperative that we build up a navy. For which we need new docks."

"Am I right?" He pointedly asked.

Here Alexander not actually asking, but saying.

Pasha Muazz had built few ship-building facilities here in Zanzan as he much preferred to buy naval ships from Adhan.

But that was not an option for Alexander who was very much eager to develop his own shipping industry.

"Yes. That is true. We do need a navy," Menicus heavily nodded as the group's representative, but then said, "But we do not need it right now,"

"After your recent win, we have at least 5 years in our hands. We can use that. And slowly build the navy up. There is no need for it right here and now."

He seemed to be of the opinion that the resources to be used for extending the port and building the navy were better off being used elsewhere.

While Helipots chimed, "I agree with Lord Melodias. We have time. Besides maintaining a navy is very expensive. One needs experienced sailors who demand 250 to 300 ropals a month. That is not to mention the ships themselves. We neither have the men nor coin right now. You yourself it said, my lord."

Alexander was now only reminded that the original talks were about money.

But just as he was about to track back to that, Diaogosis suddenly spoke up,

"My lords, may we see the proposed designs first? If it's some small renovations, perhaps we can accommodate it."

He wanted to at least get a sense of Alexander's scale.

And he was not disappointed by Alexander's ambition, who passed along a large scrolled paper, that he quickly unfolded.

The picture on it was of the current crescent-shaped harbor placed in the middle, with two long horizontal strips of land touching its edges and running far into the sea.

From above the sky, the whole thing kind of looked like a ball which had two flat sticks attached to its either end.

But what really gave the project its grand ambitions were the numbers written next to them, denoting their dimensions.

The plans labeled the crescent crest-shaped harbor as 500m wide, meaning the harbor would have to be extended, while each of the two horizontal strips read 500m long and 50m wide.

Truly Alexander did not dream small.

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