Chapter 73 Tail Trading
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"We welcome you traders of the dwarves. My name is Sarielle of Regoia, and this is Lord Lily of Edenthal Region here to fulfill our pact." Sarielle bowed down elegantly.
"Thank you for welcoming us in such a short time. My name is Hammeroak. Here to fulfill our pack. Here in these caravans are the ores we harvested from our mountains." He pointed to three carriages full of various ores.
"Very well, First, I apologize for our rude behavior towards our guest by not accepting you into our warmest house but this outside hut in the middle of a jungle. I hope you understand our decisions to protect our citizens." Sarielle bowed once agiain
"We understand. We didn't know if the epidemics would infect elves, but they could certainly infect tailfolk, and thus I understand your concern." He bowed again.
"Father, this is getting boring. Let's just give them the stone and go home! The food will rot otherwise." Some of the smaller dwarves whine. Are they their kids? I could not tell.
"Shut up, we are in the elven territory, so we have to follow their rules." Another dwarf chided him while hammeroak kept on his regal shota face.
"Well, the food is here." Lily pointed towards the ten carriages she brought full of various food.
"I see. Thank you for bringing that food on such quick notice." Hammer nodded again.
"Will you purchase more? In the future?" Lily asked him.
"Can we?" The dwarves looked at her as if she was talking nonsense.
"Ah, Not now, of course! But you can come to use monthly." Lily replied. "Though our goods would be more limited, especially meat. This region focuses on farming. Our poultry and livestock are still growing."
"Ah! No. I mean. We can come without the king's permission?" Dwarves looked at her. Then he also looked at Sarielle. He, in turn, also looked at Lily.
"I am the lord of Edenthal, and thus the good you bought will be limited, okay. But yes, I can permit you to operate trading caravans here as much as you like."
"Ah, appreciate the honor. But 40% tax is too much for us. But we will take your offer in our minds."
"I see. Don't worry about the taxes! But please remember that the goods will be limited only to what Edenthal produced, okay?" Lily smiled. The dwarves looked at us again while contemplating.
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"Ah! it is this one of those Nepotism things that tribal chiefs employed all the time!" Jona interjected.
"Ohh! So they practiced one of those as well! I thought the elves could not do that according to the law. So the lords have the same power as tribal chiefs! This is news to us. Is this okay?" Hammeroak asked while smiling.
"Ahem. It is very uncouth of you to speak of it as Nepotism. We practice fair and just systems. However, suppose a lord judges you to be without malice to us. In that case, their region is permitted to circumvent some administration laws." Sarielle coughed while criticizing the poor dwarven choice of word.
We knew about lord's legal abilities back in our short lord's curriculum and also etiquette lesson so Sarielle could not openly reprimand us. What we did is permitted, but there was never a precedent of doing it to outsider nations. However, Lords do it all the time with their fellow lords. Building trust and rewarding well-behaving lords were essential, so these rules were explicitly allowed in the elven book of law.
"If there was a law that could permit us to buy food in times of need and not rob us of our earnings, we would take it." Hammeroak nodded with glee. Lily tilted her head in confusion.
"Why did you impulsively try to buy food anyway? Isn't arranging it with the king easier and cheaper? Though I did accept to slacken some laws, I could not view it in good light of what you have done. You are well aware that food is important right? We needed to prioritize our citizen's food sufficiency before selling you our food." Lily openly chastised them for such a lack of awareness of managing food.
"So, the truth is our nation relied on the west valley for our food…."
"Wait a minute! That's our country's classified information." Another objected to Hammeroak.
"We are allies, right? She has slackened her laws and never hit us with the fact that we had epidemics in negotiation."
"Well, that's true…."
"So, this valley produced a lot of food for us. But there was a time when a bad harvest happened. During good harvest, we could sustain ourselves no problem, but if there was atlas movement or Tiamat's drought or Hephaestus song… our harvest would suffer."
"I see."
"And honestly, the advance notice of three months required before purchasing food from your king really is a problem because we could not afford that long wait. We managed some sort of deal with Lord Edelweiss to forward it into one month but some of the poorest dwarves resorted to eating goats because of that, so one month of waiting is not exactly ideal for us…."
"Ehhh…. you eat that thing!?" Lily was horrified.
"Just the poorest of dwarves, and if we had a bad season, that's all," Jona interjected.
"Once again, we would welcome it if we could maintain sufficient trade stability over food. I hope our friendships be everlasting." Hammeroak replied.
"We might come again next month for another trading."
"Wait a minute. Though I said I will slacken the laws, it would be best if you give advance notice, okay? We don't have unlimited food for an entire nation, and our food industry is still growing." Lily tried to put some limitations. "And while the epidemics are ongoing, no dwarves can travel farther than this hunter huts. Okay? That one is final."
"Yes, we understand."
And so, they had dinner together. Since they were in quarantined areas, we had our dinner a little bit of distance away. Sarielle asked for forgiveness once again due to our rudeness. He claimed it was quite an ordeal since we had to neglect many kinds of elven customs just to make these impromptu quarantine zone. Like beds, separate tables, house decor, etc.
The dwarves didn't mind it a single bit. Surprisingly they preferred our cramped cabins instead of the usual welcoming OCD rooms in Regoia.
They left with haste the following day, and we now turned our heads into our own Edenthal troops.