“Obviously!” Kenox spun around with a blustering voice, slipping the key into a tunic pocket as he shot the newcomer an angry glare. He set his shoulders trembling, eyes darting towards the woman standing at the front of the line and the small crowd of people behind her. He made sure not to keep eye contact with any of them for too long, clearing his throat and looking away while planting a haughty expression on his face. “You’ve kept me waiting for quite a long time! I’m almost surprised you turned up!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kenox saw a satisfied smirk cross the woman’s face, her body frame outwardly relaxing as she realized this palace man was just as weak-willed in person as he came across on paper.
Good. Kenox was playing his part well.
“So sorry to have arrived late.” The woman in the front said smoothly, sweeping into the room and beckoning the others after her. “You see, we had assumed a certain head of finance would be waiting to meet us in the hallway to take us to the meeting space.” As the women brushed up to the table, her eyes landed on the still-dusty chairs with a flash of glee. “And that the meeting space would be adequate.” She sniffed in disdain, wiping a critical finger across the back of the chair and peering at it scrutinizingly.
“Poking at the man’s insecurities to put him on shaky ground at the meeting’s beginning.” Kenox thought calmly, watching as the others followed the woman’s suit, offering reprimands about the finance rep’s tardiness and the dismal state of the room. “Effective, but basic. I’ll show them some real tactics soon enough.”
Aloud, Kenox merely blustered a bit, waving his hands and spewing nonsense about terrible servants and unexpected delays to cover his case. The cracks in his under-used voice were working to his advantage now, simulating a sense of panic and anxiety that Kenox probably wouldn’t have been able to get across on his own.
The people in the room were clearly eying his exaggerated antics with amusement and glee, each one of them slowly coming to the realization that the man before them was no threat at all to their oncoming plans. And in all likelihood, Kenox wasn’t planning on being a threat to them. He was going to fund their plan to the fullest if he thought it would succeed.
They just needed to impress him with it.
“But none of that matters.” He coughed loudly, cutting his own speech off and settling into a chair at the head of the table. He made a big show of shifting around in the chair, smoothing down his tunic while his legs bounced with nervous energy. He lifted his head to meet all the amused smirks directed at him, wiping at his forehead once like he’d seen the actual Myrrone Callimud do earlier.
“Let’s begin our discussion of Cannesia’s new finance plan.” His voice trembled weakly with the effort of projecting over the table, Kenox lacing his fingers together and placing them on the table before himself. “What exactly would you all, ah, like to accomplish?”
“Economic prosperity through dominance in a new portion of the global economy that we’ve yet to breach so far.” The woman from the head of the group spoke immediately, crossing her arms over her chest and eying Kenox’s with a hawk-like expression. “We aim to integrate ourselves with this unfamiliar portion and become a primary exporter of goods in this area.”
“We have endless resources to choose from that would allow us entry into this field.” Another financial representative spoke up, a bespectacled man who pushed his glasses up his nose with a broad smile. “Plus, many of our previous wartime allies have their hands in the receiving end of the business, so we can easily form new trade lines with them via those connections.”
“It’s a form of trade linked closely with war, anyway.” Another man spoke from the lower end of the table, nodding his head in agreement with the others. “We wouldn’t need to waste time presenting a new image of ourselves in the eyes of the world, convincing people that we would provide quality goods.”
“It’s a fast solution, and one that will surely bring a turnaround to this dump of a country.” A different woman at the table declared, shooting Kenox a harsh stare. “And we wouldn’t have to sacrifice the current quality of life we strive to maintain among the upper classes. All that’s missing is the funding from the royal coffers for the ships required to begin our trade.”
“We need to provide ships?” Kenox frowned, his mind racing with the precious bits of information the teacher had told them about Cannesia before beginning the simulation.
It had sounded like Cannesia had primarily depended on the war for income, which likely meant it was a production country that manufactured wartime weapons. While many production countries could feasibly spend the excess towards shipping out their own goods to clients, Cannesia with its notoriously low work ethic would’ve likely gravitated towards merely building the goods and exchanging them with passing allies in local ports. Or in the best-case scenario, borrowing shipping lines from allied countries rather than risking the expenditure of their own.
Cannesia wanted to actually build ships for this new trade venture? Why was that?
“Why should Cannesia spend the money to create these ships? We barely have enough to keep royal life afloat.” Kenox huffed aloud, leaning back in his chair and fiddling with his thumbs nervously. “Why are Cannesian ships so necessary to this venture?”
“Because if we own the ships, then we can more easily keep a handle on how much of the cargo would get disposed in emergency cases.” The second woman said immediately, sighing at Kenox’s seeming incompetence. “If we borrowed another country’s shipping line, and the ship was boarded and searched, then Cannesian cargo could very well be selected for disposal over the native country’s.”
Cargo being selected for disposal? What sort of cargo would need to be disposed during a ship search?
A sinking, dark feeling was rising in Kenox’s stomach as he stared carefully at the faces of the representatives around him. Each of the faces were either watching him with that same amusement from before, or with a new edge of boredom, as though they couldn’t wait for this meeting to be over. There was no outward change in their appearance that indicated a major shift in the tone of the conversation yet.
But for Kenox, the tone was shifting in a landslide.
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“Cannesia is low on resources across the board.” Kenox said calmly, intentionally twiddling his thumbs once more as he kept his eyes directed on the wooden table before him. “You seem quite confident that we’re rich in resources for this venture, though. I don’t understand where you want to pull the resources you’re discussing, and without knowing that, I’m afraid I won’t put a cent of royal money towards shipping them out.”
“Is it not obvious?” One of the men scowled, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “Cannesia has a plethora of resources that we’ve yet to dig into. They’re all over the place, in every stinking city, slum, and worthless village across the nation.”
Kenox closed his eyes briefly as his stomach turned.
“You’re implying slavery.” He said simply, keeping his eyes shut as bile rose in his throat.
“What else would we be talking about?” The woman from the beginning jumped back in now, tapping the wooden table with a long fingernail. Kenox barely managed to open his eyes and look at her as she spoke. “Cannesia is depleted from the war, and unfortunately, a lot of its remaining resources have been going towards feeding a population that isn’t doing anything for the country. We’ve done the math already, and at least 26.7% of the Cannesian populace is unemployed, living off the social welfare programs we hastily installed post-war.”
“The irritating rebellions and strikes are only worsening the economy as well.” One of the men from before agreed with her, folding his arms across his chest with a huff. “Those fools don’t understand that when they put their selfish needs ahead of others, all they do is make things worse by shutting down an already dismal workforce.”
“So why perpetuate our economy’s ruin by fueling the needs of a lazy, decrepit working class?” A new woman from down the table pointed out, gesturing with her hands in the air as though Kenox would be able to see her perspective in the space above her. “We can start in smaller waves, exporting the unemployed and severely impoverished. This would allow us to take out roughly 39% of the welfare-feeding inhabitants in the country, and use that welfare money for middle and upper-class citizens.”
“We’d also begin an influx of money with our new export chain.” A man across from her added, turning towards Kenox eagerly. “Think about it! For all the money that comes out of the royal treasury to fund a minor fleet of boats, we’d be able to bring in ten times more to begin replenishing our cities.”
“And people are a re-usable, automatically replenishing commodity.” The first woman said coolly, smiling at Kenox as though she could sense the power backing her words in the room. “We’d consistently have new chattel to ship out. A never-ending stream of resources in place of the crippling, debt-raisers they are currently. And as we mentioned before, several of our allied countries are in the business of purchasing slaves, which means we can easily re-open trade relationships with them.”
“The only potential hiccup is of course ship searches.” A man at the very end of the table coughed as he began his speech, rubbing his nose and squinting at the dust in the room around him. “After all, the main trade routes between our country and our allies are scouted by patrols. If we ship more than seventy-five slaves at once, our cargo will be confiscated by the patrols.”
“Which is why we need to have the royal palace building the ships for us.” The conversation took its final turn back to the woman leader again, this time, the ice-eyed lady leaning in towards Kenox with a satisfied smile. “If Cannesia provides the ships, we can partner with other slave-exporting countries to provide transport for them on the basis of a shipping fee that we’ll take off their slave sales. If a patrol boat stops us, we simply dispose of all the slaves that aren’t Cannesian until we’re down to seventy-five. No loss for us.”
…No loss?
An untold number of human beings thrown off the side of a ship to drown in the ocean, and that was no loss?
39% of the population ripped out of a country and sold into the cruelest debasement of human existence, and that was no loss?
An economic system warped to depend on the utter exploitation of its most helpless inhabitants, and that was no loss?
“So what do you say? Will you allow us to use the royal coffers?” The woman asked calmly, clearing seeing the matter already settled in her mind as she brushed some dust off the front of her richly-dyed shirt. “Surely, you can see all the benefit that would come from this new venture. It’s fast, affordable, and mutually beneficial to all parties. It would put Cannesia back on the map as a trading superpower.”
She looked up at Kenox with a patronizing smile, brushing a strand of pale-blonde hair behind her ear as she locked him in her icy gaze. “And let’s be honest, will someone like you ever get a chance to say he helped do something as amazing as that ever again?” She asked sweetly, eyes pinning him down.
Kenox stared back at her, his face unreadable, his fingers only absently twiddling to show his “anxiety” now. He could feel his will to put on the act draining out of himself as their words sank further into his mind.
He could see the easy way out of this scenario right away. It was an economically-sound plan. Strike out an underlying weakness in the country. Begin a new venture in a profitable field. Restore faith of the upper and middle-classes in the country’s government. Gain dominance in a little often dared pursuit.
Cannesia would certainly replenish itself with this plan. All that had been holding them back from it so far was good old Myrrone Callimud’s unwillingness to use the royal treasuries for such a thing.
Kenox could recall the nervous man’s words as he’d stood in the entrance to the meeting room, wringing his hands and wondering about the coming financial advisors and their plan.
“I’ve heard rumors already, but I…I don’t really know what to think or how to handle it.”
Callimud had definitively become Kenox’s new favorite person in this simulation. It was too bad he’d strangled the guy and locked him in a closet.
Kenox stared at the financial advisors around him, eying the blonde woman in particular as she leaned back in her seat with a bored expression, clearly waiting for him to break and give them the go-ahead. She thought their plan was all but official at this stage. The final closing remark she’d made about Callimud’s reputation should’ve driven him straight to her side. She’d said her piece and she was waiting for the results to kick in.
Oh, Kenox had some results for her, alright.
“What would Hidari do?” The thought briefly crossed his mind as Kenox rose from the table, looking down at the wood beneath his oddly-pale fingertips.
He could picture the blue-eyed boy in his mind’s eye already, smiling his too-sweet smile as he waited to see Kenox’s decision. Hidari would choose the most economically-sound option. He’d find a way to spin any recession into a blooming resurgence, no matter what was sacrificed to gain it. He was a professional at economic strategy, a prodigy of the economy, and shockingly cold-hearted when his decisions came down to the wire.
But would he sacrifice a population for the economy? He was a genius, no doubt about it. But did that genius care more about people or numbers?
Kenox couldn’t claim to know what the economic prodigy would do in this situation. He simply knew that Hidari would find a way to come out on top of the situation, in the best way possible.
A confident grin slipped over Kenox’s face as he finally lifted his head to face the people in the room, amusement flashing in his own eyes now as he observed the shocked, confused expressions crossing their faces at his new change in attitude.
Kenox grinned at them all and leaned forward on the table, planting his hands on the wood and eying the unknowing financial advisors.
Hidari may have known how to come out on top in the best way possible, but he still had a thing or two to learn from Kenox about coming out as the best king possible.
And that’s what Kenox was really here for. He wasn’t a financial advisor. He wasn’t the head of palace finances. He was the ruler of a country.
And he knew how to rule.
Because he was a king.
“This has all been some nice talk so far.” He smiled at the advisors in the room, eyes flashing triumphantly at them. “Now let me tell you what’s actually going to happen.”