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Shaking the hand half as small as his, Chimente watched the boy put away the copy of his contract and smiled. Never would he have thought a child the same age as his son could be so interesting. His instincts as a merchant aside, as a traveled man he knew just how special a person like this was. If given time, he would definitely accomplish great things.
The thought of stealing from the kid never even crossed his mind, and he only assented to a written contract after the kid insisted a few times. If this thing worked well, he swore to definitely take good care of the runt, even if the smartass was obnoxiously arrogant at times.
As he sat in his carriage and mulled over the agreement, he couldn’t help but nod a few times at how strict and stringent its clauses were. Even as an experienced merchant, Chimente failed to spot any loopholes try as he might. Roughly, the terms were as such:
The Daedalus Astula (Atelier) loaned their product, namely the piccolo flute, to Chimente the salt merchant who would act as its representative seller. A collateral of 700 tari was set, and should the flute be lost or damaged, Leonardo would technically be able to muster the guards to retrieve it from Chimente. Should he fail to make up the sum, his properties would be seized to make up the amount. Should the flute fail to sell, it would be returned after 91 days to the atelier, with neither party paying a penalty.
In the event of a successful sale, after deducting the costs such as auction fees, Chimente would bring the sum back. For his services, he would then be paid 10% of the sale volume. After each sale, he had to bring back a signed receipt from the auction house or individual noble, acknowledging the sale and the value at which it was purchased.
Frankly, Chimente was a bit annoyed by this clause, though he also understood that there’s little trust to be had about a trade hundreds of kilometers away. Although, as Leonardo explained, the receipts could also be used to set up the future catalog. Leo only needed it as confirmation, he would then hand the receipts back to Chimente, who could use them as a means to prop up future sales.
For example, if a rich baron purchased a masterwork for 5000 tari, when he brought the next item to that auction house, he could directly start the bid at 3000 by referencing a past sale, instead of having to negotiate from scratch. By eliminating the poor sale records and only displaying the most successful ones, it would artificially hike up the price.
In addition to these individual item contracts, Leonardo and Chimente signed an exclusivity agreement for 5 years. The Daedalus Astula would provide new masterworks every 3 months and only sell them through Chimente. The agreement could only be broken if Chimente broke trust and violated prior contracts. Leonardo could also break the contract on his side, though he would have to pay a sum of 5,000 tari.
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All in all, both sides were very happy with the agreement. Leonardo had lunch and immediately retired to his workshop to start designing new products. He borrowed 2,000 tari from Chimente and had him acquire a vast amount of raw materials. Primarily metals, as he intended to smelt a lot of brass alloy and start making stringed instruments next.
Normally, people used twined animal guts for instruments, but the quality and durability was lacking. Gut strings had to be changed after around 150 hours of playing, which wasn’t ideal. Metallic ones could last longer and were easier to play on as well. That said, it was also much harder to create a thin string of metal. Your average blacksmith could only scratch his head.
With the aid of modernized tools, while it would still be a pain in the ass to manually wind each string, it was at least doable. Luckily, this work didn’t require a lot of strength. With some diligence, he could have the runts in the orphanage do it.
Just as he’d promised Anabella, he set aside a portion of the funds and bought some food every week. The children would complete tasks fitting to their age, and in return they’d be rewarded with food from the storehouse.
It wasn’t much, but it brightened their day. Having previously lived like gloomy zombies, they now had something to look forward to.
The tasks themselves weren’t all that difficult, and mostly had to do with foraging things around the forests. There were no wolves in the vicinity so it was pretty safe as long as they were careful.
He painted a few images of things they had to look out for, whether it be medicinal plants or wood types, then had them go wild. Yuki was directly put in charge of the whole system after he tutored her for a bit. She had a direct table of task to reward ratio and merely had to assign tasks and issue rewards.
Despite being only seven years old, she was pretty smart and dealt with the task appropriately, allowing Leonardo to focus on his training and craftsmanship. He was originally worried, since she used to be bullied by everyone, but she handled it perfectly.
It had barely been a week since their trade and everyone was in high spirits. The details of the contracts were known only to Leo and Chimente, but he had promised the children that if they work hard, the merchant would return with gifts. They didn’t trust Leo so much as they trusted Chimente’s loaded wagon, but as long as it all worked out in the end, Leonardo wouldn’t be bothered with who took credit. If Santa Claus worked, he didn’t mind perpetuating the lie.
Anabella gradually recovered from her trauma as well. With the boisterous atmosphere in and around the monastery, she found herself busy looking after the younger toddlers while the big kids busied themselves in the forest from dusk to dawn.
Leo also noticed that whenever he was testing out new instruments, Anabella would inadvertently pop around to listen in while pretending to be disinterested or busy with one thing or another. The girl stopped showing off her authority for some time now, and seemed content with just serving as a caretaker.