Book 3 Chapter 14: Costs of Business
Book 3 Chapter 14: Costs of Business
++Good advisors are useful, but not vital. I did away with them almost entirely in my first reign. My second rise to power featured them heavily. This may not have made it more effective, but it was certainly more interesting.++
- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E.
Thirty thousand barrels a week meant I was generating a gross revenue of some sixteen thousand, five hundred crowns a week. Of that five hundred crowns were disappearing as pay for my mundane employees, while another thousand were being leached away by the magicians under my service. Then there were maintenance costs to the refinery itself, raw materials and such, which were setting me back another three hundred, plus six hundred for the engineers needed to perform maintenance. Transportation for the oil was costing me a full thousand a week. Various other expenses added another five hundred and fifty.
So all in all, I was enjoying a total profit of some thirteen thousand crowns a week. Part of that would be eaten through taxation of course, and it was still relatively slow in coming. A truly rich noble of Garamon was generally considered to possess income roughly equivalent to what I was now drawing in, though with a significantly better financial situation.
I had my debts for one thing. Hurrying to assemble the refinery as I did would pay off in the long-run, starting my revenue that much sooner and cutting down the time I took to climb the ladder of industry, but for now I was staring at payments owed to the total sum of roughly two hundred and thirty thousand crowns.
Fortunately, I had arranged to pay these off at a controlled rate of forty thousand crowns per month. So long as I continued earning close to what I was already, I would be able to free myself of debt in under six months and still enjoy about three thousand crowns of free profit in the meantime.
Until the tax men came. Ugh, bastards.
All of this was very good and helpful for becoming a noble of prominence, but it would not do very much to let me influence the fate of a whole, globe-spanning Empire. For that I needed more than crowns in the tens of thousands, I would need to control millions. Many millions.
That would be a while in coming. Years, most likely. The most exhaustive part of my legitimate business was now overseen, what came next was the illegitimate part. I called on Sethira and Alira to meet me by the leyline while I prepared to start it.
“Are we finally going to find out why you bought the deed to a half-collapsed peephole into the Depths?” Sethira asked me. I stiffened as Alira frowned at her.
“The Depths?” she asked.
“Orapathaqi magical theory,” I cut in before my fellow lich could do any more damage. Sethira liked to throw me obstacles, seemingly just for fun. “It is of no concern now.”
Sethira smiled, enjoying my frantic damage control.
“What is of concern then?” Alira asked, looking around and sniffing. “I don’t know about these ‘depths’ or anything, but I can recognise a dead leyline when I see one. There’s plenty of magic here, sure, but not enough to do anything on its own. Or do you have some ritual planned?” she sounded nervous at that, for good reason. Channeling the power of a leyline was a very good way to accidentally vaporize yourself, as well as any other living thing within several miles. Even with my skill and experience I would not be doing it unless something gave me very good cause.
“How familiar are the two of you with enchanting?” I asked.
The question was more to see how upfront they would be, I had been given detailed accounts on Alira’s studies and accomplishments following Winzorth from the Grandmaster, and I had seen Sethira use her whole repertoire with my own eyes already. I knew they were both just what I needed.
Alira answered truthfully and Sethira told a blatant lie, neither response modified how I intended to proceed.
“I need you both to supply mana for enchanting work, very particular kind of enchanting work.”
“For the refinery?” Alira asked.
“Oh,” Sethira smiled. “Smart.” Had she worked it out already?
“This leyline is dead,” I explained. “But they have been known to resurge, yes?”
“Right,” Alira nodded, still not understanding. “But the odds of that are pretty narrow, Isa.”
Isa. I did not like nicknames.
“It doesn’t matter how narrow the odds are,” Sethira cut in. “She’s not planning on getting lucky. You want to enchant objects to look like naturally-occurring magical production from the leyline right? Make it seem like this has suddenly become functional again, as an extra source of income.”
She had worked it out, though of course she had a hint that Alira did not. She knew I was Lord Dread.
“Correct,” I said. “This gives an excuse to produce cheaply made enchantments en masse.”
Alira frowned. “I don’t understand why you need the leyline though, can’t you just sell the enchantments?”
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“I have a new method, one that allows me to make them faster, but I am keeping it a secret,” I explained. “I will reveal it one day, though I doubt anyone else can learn it on account of the talent difference. For now, there is more money to be made in not devaluing the enchantments we make.”
She understood fast once it was pointed out.
“You want my advice on something then, not just my work in enchanting?”
“Correct. It helps that you are familiar with enchantments, but I do not need you to put any magical labour into this. I was hoping to draw more on your experience as a jeweler.”
Understanding dawned. “You should’ve gotten my dad,” Alira noted.
“Your father does not understand enchanting. You do.”
“Alright…well, I guess one thing I’d say is that you’ll need to keep the people you’re trading these enchanted materials to happy. That’d be my father in the jewelling business, for us it’ll be whoever’s cutting and making things out of the raw materials you ‘find’ in this leyline cavern. They pretty much have you by the balls, and vice-versa, so a working relationship is important.”
She continued talking, and for once both Sethira and myself fell silent.
You learn a lot in long centuries of existence as a lich, and even more in millenniums, but the mystique of Capitalism was still something of a novelty to us both. In Sethira’s age, kings and conquerors had been the powers of the world. I had been born yet sooner, and still sometimes ruminated on the transition from tribal warchiefs to imperial governors.
Mining tycoons were painfully modern to our ancient experiences, though we were adjusting fast.
“You’ll also need to make sure this mine passes inspection,” she concluded. “Ideally by making it actually…you know, pass inspection, but I guess if that’s not feasible then put aside a few…uh, a few thousand crowns for future bribes.”
Making money, I was quickly learning, cost quite a lot of money. This was probably why commoners were always whining about ‘generational wealth’.
“What would be a good choice of partner to begin selling our wares to directly?” I asked Alira. “You mentioned the importance of that decision, so let us make it now, before anything else.”
She thought about that for quite some time. That was good, it was, after all, why I had chosen her as a consultant on this task. And given that I was now paying money for her services, I would make sure I got my damned money’s worth.
“Can you make sure to make, enchant, materials in sort of…jewellery-friendly shapes? I could help advise you on how to sell them to actual jewellers that way. There are ones in the trade who focus on enchanted goods. Making them I mean, fitting naturally magical stones into rings and that sort of thing.”
In fact, I could do that, and with one stroke Alira had set up the business model.
“You are now in charge of overseeing the quality control of the newly-rennovated leyline mines,” I told her. “How much do you want as a wage?”
Alira seemed briefly stunned. “Uh, forty crowns a week?” she asked me. It was barely more than she was making already.
“That is a pathetic sum,” I told her.
“Really not much,” Sethira chimed in.
“It shows a lack of imagination,” I noted.
“A weakness of character,” Sethira concurred.
“An ignorance of one’s own worth,” I concluded. “Ask for another.”
Alira glared at me, then at Sethira, then at me again.
“Did you two coordinate this or something?” she accused us.
“No,” Sethira frowned, offended by the very notion.
“I would sooner conspire with a rat,” I noted.
Alira just shook her head. “Two of them.” She muttered. “There’s bloody two of them.”
“Name your price,” I ordered her.
“I’m thinking!” she snapped. “Fine, uh, two hundred crowns a week.”
I nodded in satisfaction. “Good, that is an acceptable starting wage for my second in command.”
It also ate somewhat into my funds. Not a terrible amount, but losing just a little over one percent of my revenue for one person’s wages was…a sting.
On the other hand, Alira’s job was extremely important. If I could guarantee her loyalty with an exorbitant fee then so much the better. She seemed to like me, and I had to admit, or rather I could no longer possibly deny, that I liked her. Agrian had exposed that much in me, Lord Dread had developed a soft spot.
But that did not mean that I had become blind to the threat of betrayal.
Better to have happy, well-paid employees who were well aware just how much they stood to lose by falling out of favour with me. I had learned the benefit of a well-delivered threat millennia ago, but this new life had taught me how slavish people could truly be to ones they felt a debt to.
Shackles of gold were just as strong as ones of steel, and their wearers tended to be far better behaved.
“Was that all?” Alira asked me.
“Yes,” I told her. “For now. Though I suppose you should have an office somewhere, too.”
“We should talk about housing in general,” Sethira cut in. “The shelters we’ve set up already are doing their jobs shielding people from rain and wind, but at the moment they’re still not popular. Most of the workers seem eager to leave.”
I considered that. None of them knew anything that would put me at risk, but still…replacing endless cycles of workers who showed up, tolerated their conditions for a few weeks to save up the high wages and left would be annoying.
“What is your suggestion?” I asked.
“I think proper dormitories are the most efficient choice,” Sethira replied. “With actual beds. That’ll set you back some, but it’ll keep the workers happier and it’ll do wonders for your reputation.”
I was instinctively opposed to parting with so much as a single coin, naturally. Money was, though not magic, still power, and therefore automatically among the most important things in existence.
On the other hand, if I could make more money in the future by spending some now…it was worth it.
“Do so,” I sighed. “Have the magicians start work on construction tomorrow, can you oversee them?”
“I think I’ll manage.”
Sethira and Alira left me there to ponder, and I could not help but let a deep sigh escape me.
It truly was expensive to make money.