54 - Interlude 5
More than ninety days had passed since he had asked his people to start investigating the ministries meddling in the guilds. More than ninety days spent looking at old laws and trying to figure out the ministries game plan.
And yet, he was no closer to a definitive answer. Oh he had learned much over this time. Still there were still pieces missing.
He had been told that the new guild, yes singular, was taking on the responsibilities of all the old guilds combined and that anyone from any profession could join the guild. When he had asked how they would address trade specific issues if everyone was part of the same guild, he had received a confusing response. He had been told the answer was committees. It had taken a long time to work out what that had meant. That they had instituted what to him looked like sub guilds under the main umbrella was neither here nor there. What did matter was the fact that the ministers claimed that they had significantly lower running costs, and had proven it with accounts.
This had only made his controlled guilds look even more inept. That this organisation, run by government scholars could be more efficient than private organisations had been shocking. Moreover it had taken a strong arrow from her quiver. He had tried to argue that the guilds would impact taxes, especially with a portion going to another kingdom, but again the ministries had used those damned accounts to show that taxes had in fact risen.
Between the lower running costs for the guilds, better prices for raw materials and higher rates for government contracts, the businesses were making higher profit margins, leading to much better tax revenue for the government. It was only him and his cabal losing out, everyone else's good fortune coming out of the share that they would have taken. He was forced to acknowledge the point in open council, the only way he could refute it would have been to admit that he was taking a share of those increased profits. That would have led to his group being accused of treason.
As news of the more favourable rates had gotten around, along with no retaliation from the existing guilds, it had led to a significant number of the smaller businesses switching allegiance. In some trades, the foreign guild now had more members and higher revenue than his own. Since this had led to a significant increase in the quarterly tax income for the kingdom, it had been encouraged by several of the older noble families.
And then there was the new fangled accounting method coming out of that damned detestable guild. They had called it double entry bookkeeping. At least that change had helped him. It had started with only the new guild and associated businesses using the new style of keeping accounts. Then as it had been shown that it was easier to find and stop fraud, the methods had started to spread. Slowly at first, in the last month it had been gaining momentum.
To give credit where it was due, the new accounting method was great for accuracy and accountability. The problem was that it also made it much harder to skim. It had caused problems with the scholars and accountants who were used to supplementing their income by massaging the figures. Now they had lost that and were understandingly upset.
Some of the noble houses had gone so far as to start to fire people caught by the change to the new methods, not realising that it was considered a work perk by many, or perhaps not caring.
That had actually caused anger and enmity amongst those professions towards the new guild. Yet there had been no push for the accounting methods to be replaced. It had just happened organically as more people realised the advantages of such a method. New businesses had started offering accounting services to others to take advantage of the new trend further muddying in the waters.
It had taken a lot of time, effort and gold to get details about the organisation behind the new guild. He had received a name. The guild was backed by the kingdom of The Rising Dao. A pretentious name in his opinion. Again he had his people looking through all the records they could get their hands on, and this was a kingdom never mentioned anywhere. It was like the kingdom had appeared from thin air.
More research and more bribes had led to the confirmation that the kingdom was recognised by the imperial bank. Though he had not been able to ascertain where the kingdom was, or if it even existed. Nor had he managed to find out who was representing the kingdom here.
The next break in his search had come from a coincidence. Only a month past, a new form of bread had started to be available in bakeries. He had developed a taste for them himself, the soft white rolls were a delight.
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When he had started to look into the source of the new bread, he had found out they were coming from a new commercial operation based on the old fallow diplomatic estates. This had confounded him and so he had his people look at sales and lease deeds relating to the property. He had finally learned that this upstart kingdom that he had never heard of had purchased not one, but two diplomatic estates in the heart of the city.
Once he had started to pull on that thread, he had realised that they had not stopped there. They had purchased multiple businesses in the capital, and also purchased significant land holdings just outside. All the deals were above board, so he could find no reason to ask for an enquiry. What he could not find was the person who was orchestrating all of this.
There had even been attempts made by other members of the cabal, against his advice, to target the shipments and caravans of the new guild. All those attempts had failed, in small part due to each shipment and caravan being protected by the army itself.
Since this was outside the scope of army operations, he had lodged a formal complaint, not about the failed ambushes, but rather that the council had not been informed in advance about the use of the army in civilian operations, a clear breach of their powers. The answer had left him shocked to the core. The army belonged to the kingdom of The Rising Dao. The army had then been seconded to the new guild to protect its operations. The cost of the army had been fully funded by the guild itself. Instead of using enforcers and guards, they were using the goddamned army. Since this guild and its operations were outside local laws, there was no justification provided, nor had there been any reason to report to the council.
There seemed to be no diplomats, or foreign nobles. There had been no announcements made or introductions arranged. Even the other noble families seemed to be entirely oblivious to the changes happening, though the bread had found its way into every noble estate, every wealthy manor, and was even being made available to the commoners.
He had sent out his people, in the guise of delivery people, to the new estate and learned that they were building several massive new buildings. There was talk of a party at harvest time. All the people seemed to be local. The person who was apparently in charge was a thirteen year old girl. Not that he believed it for even a minute. No thirteen year old girl could have possibly made such arrangements in such short order.
No, in his mind there were only two possibilities. That she was the get of whoever was meddling in his affairs and that person or people were out of the city at present leaving her ‘in charge’. Or more likely in his mind, she was a patsy setup by the ministries to justify their actions. That they had come up with the name and formation of this kingdom to use archaic laws to meddle in his business.
The problem was that there was no way to check if this girl was a noble. No one would allow a stranger to approach them and scan their spirit roots after all. Given her properted age of just thirteen, it would take years to get an answer from that angle. He had at least learned her name. Sa Bina. The name had clicked, it was the same girl his daughter had been complaining about for months.
That new direction had accelerated his search, and muddied it at the same time. It was much easier to get information out of the academy than the diplomatic estate.
The girl was bright, but was a contradiction in many ways. She was young, yet seemed to excel in certain subjects. She had no knowledge of local history and culture, yet seemed to speak the local language fluently and without any foreign accent.
Worse still she had made friends with Jia, Qin and Cheng families. The friendship had strengthened over time. When questioned Earl Cheng Lei had not known much beyond the fact that the four had become close friends.
Without knowing anything more, a few of the more ambitious in the cabal had sent assassins after the girl. The assassins had vanished without a trace. Obviously the girl was well protected. Discrete enquiries after the fact had not shown any evidence that the girl herself was even aware of the attempts. Either her protectors were so good that she had not realised anything was wrong, or the girl was so inured against assaination attempts that it had not phased her. He did not know which situation would be worse.
Still with a name and description, he had started the hunt for her family. Whether she was related to the nobles, the diplomats, or her family was just in service to them, it was a solid place to start. He needed to get to the bottom of who was behind these changes before he could even start to formulate a response.
He had been forced to discipline his own cabal twice now. Their recklessness had given their enemies both ammunition and intelligence about them, while gaining very little concrete information in return.
It had been a long time since he had been blindsided and out-manoeuvred so thoroughly. He had spent decades implementing his plans. He was not going to have his plans fail now. If he could not show progress soon, he would start to lose the confidence of the cabal, and that would lead to its own set of problems.
No he needed to find out who this girl was, then use her to trace the people behind her. He would find all their secrets, only then could he start to formulate a response and stop the haemorrhaging.
He hoped his agents would come back with results soon.