A wooden door creaked open, allowing light to trickle into the darkroom. The light fell onto a small wooden table. Several women entered the room carrying flaming torches. Moving around the room, they began to light the torches. Their light began to illuminate the room. The Chiefess walked inside, Charlie close behind her.
“Here,” she said, taking him to the messy table of documents.
“The Merchants insist on us keeping these papers, as does the Region Lord. These are the trading documents, right?” Phukomeia standing with Nolkonoe in the doorway. Charlie moved to the papers.
“Bloody hell, you are shit at organising. This is giving me an aneurism, let me organise these first,” Charlie said, his inner merchant taking over as he began to decipher the clumps of papers. Ourupadia entered the room and walked over to his side. Kneeling down by his side, she looked at the papers.
“She says she will help with anything she can, as shall Phukomeia and I,” Nolkonoe said, also moving over to the table. Moving through the papers, Charlie picked an overly familiar one. The contract in which he had signed away his rights.
“No idea, I have copy,” the Chiefess said, placing a kiss onto his head and giving him a little bite on the neck as a warning to not try and destroy the document.
“Don’t worry, my priority is finding dirt on the Region Lord. But there is something I think I may need,” he said, looking back to the doorway. The Lead Huntress and Klipesia stood in the doorway. Both were here originally to banish the failed huntresses so the tribe could sacrifice and eat them, now though they were here to give support to their warriors.
“My jacket, keep it if you want, but inside are two things, my merchant badge and merchant handbook,” Klipesia looked to the side angrily.
“Klipesia,” the Lead Huntress said, staring daggers at her daughter.
“I only took it as a way to say I liked him,” she said, looking down as she crossed her arms.
“Klipesia!” her mother said far more sternly.
“I’ll go get it,” she said, quickly waddling away.
As she went to do this, he returned to organising the documents.
“Place sales on the left, purchases on the right. After that, we shall separate the documents further into other groups to see what sales and purchases your tribe have made,” Charlie said, and with that, the group began to separate the documents.
To the side stood the Chiefess, watching him, wanting to help but knowing she would only distract him. Not from her being there no, but she would probably lose control and start cuddling him or trying to make him sleep in her arms. All she could do was sit and watch, hope that he was correct in his theory that there was something they could try and make the Merchant Union give them compensation in terms of money or land.
Glancing from Charlie to Nolkonoe, she watched as she translated documents to the small group of huntresses who had now gathered around the table.
Lifting a document, Charlie saw the familiar mark of the Region Lord. Glancing down the paper, he saw the sales for blocks of salt. 10 Kg block for five silvers (five hundred coppers) and this transaction was repeated one hundred times. Charlie stared at the purchase. Something wasn’t right. Placing the document into a new pile, he decided to try and see if there were any more documents like this.
Moving through the documents, he found another, then another. In total, he found ten. Ok, now he needed to figure out how much money was spent.
One silver - one hundred copper
Five silver – fiver hundred copper.
On the first contract, it was done one hundred times. So, it was five hundred silvers? That meant fifty thousand coppers. Timed by the other ten contacts, which meant five thousand silvers, which translated to five hundred thousand coppers.
What was that in gold?
Ten copper was one-half silver.
One hundred copper was one silver.
Five hundred copper was one-half gold.
One thousand copper was one gold.
So, it was five hundred thousand divided by one thousand. So, five hundred gold. No, that couldn’t be right.
“You look worried?” Nolkonoe asked on behalf of the Chiefess.
“It’s nothing, it’s just that these documents don’t look to be correct. May I ask for documents regarding the purchase of salt to be given to me?” Charlie asked, seeing the contracts all seemed to be for the same amount but simply at different times of the months they were purchased.
Ten, twenty minutes or so passed and Klipesia returned with the book.
“May I ask what this booklet is for?” Nolkonoe said, asking on behalf of all the four major clan leaders present in the room.
“Well, I assumed you would have one? Are all leaders of the tribe present?” Charlie questioned, seeing the forgers loitering in the corner, the Vultures were next to him, and the warriors, huntresses and the Chiefess stood not far from him.
“No, everyone here are all main leaders. We are the ones who make the important decisions for the tribe,” The Lead Huntress explained.
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“And are you sure none of you have this booklet?" Charlie said, making sure everyone had a good look at it as he held it above his head. Still, no one spoke.
“No one has seen one of those books before,” the Lead Warrior said.
“Well, that’s a problem, as the leaders of the tribe who do business with the merchants, you should have one of these books each,” Charlie waved for them to gather around as she flicked through the booklet.
“Here, the selling price of salt by the KG,” Charlie did his best to try and make sure the group could see the page he was looking at.
“For every 10 KG of salt, the minimum that a merchant is allowed to see it for is 1 gold, ten silvers, or one thousand coppers. This is in place to sustain a fair market in which merchants can’t rob or undercut other merchants, as well as a scam the sellers,” Charlie explained, showing the part in the book which went through what he said in more detail.
“In other words, you have all been selling 10 KG of salt to the Region Lord for f silver when in fact you are meant to be selling it for one gold,”
“That bastard! He told us that salt from our mines isn't that valuable!” Nolkonoe said, being the first to recognise that the Region Lord had been scamming them.
“Basically, the Region Lord has been getting salt from you for half price,” Charlie thought for a second.
“Fuck, which means he should have paid you one million coppers for those five contracts alone,” Charlie said, knowing that since those contracts were all from the same month, there were probably many more documents where he had scammed money from the natives.
“This is frustrating, but can we do anything with this?” the Lead Forger said, wanting to get straight to the point. Charlie smirked, seeing now how the Head Merchant of his caravan was right about how they would need to hurt the pockets of the union to hurt him.
“If we gave these documents to the Merchant Union, to avoid embarrassment or us leaking this to the Empire (their biggest client) as well as other Kingdoms about them not following their codes and allowing their ranks to be filled with crooks, they would probably give us the amount of money owed and a little more to keep quiet,” Charlie explained.
“Give me a few hours, I’ll look through here and see what I can find,” Charlie said, placing the five documents to the side before going back to looking through his pile of files.
Liking his results so far, the group slowly tricked out of the room, leaving only Charlie and the tribe leaders in the room. The stack of ten contracts soon grew to twenty, the debt increasing as well from one million to two. Another ten came to the pile, then another, the dept now four million coppers.
“We are going to have a quick break; you want to join us?” Nolkonoe said the tribe leaders all stood by the doorway. Charlie blushed a little, he had a habit of doing this. He would get distracted and end up spending hours digging through documents even though to him it felt like only minutes.
“Sorry, but I have just found another load of documents that could help to get some money back to you guys. Considering the amount here, combined with the sexual harassment charges, the Merchant Union would probably be pushed into a corner by the Clakain as anything the Union does reflect onto them as their biggest supporter,” Nolkonoe placed a hand onto his back.
“Relax, you are speaking too quickly. Now who are the Clakain?” she said, herself and the women chuckling at his sudden burst of words.
“Oh sorry, the Clakain are the Empire. We just call them an Empire because the Empire of Clakain is the biggest empire, so it is the most widely recognised one,” Charlie said, almost stumbling over his words as his mind thought quicker than what his mouth could produce.
“Ok, now would you like to come with us, or stay here with Ourupadia? I have shown her what the documents you are looking for look like so she will be able to help you find them,”
“I’ll stay, thank you,” Charlie said, smiling at Nolkonoe and then to the group. The women left, tired and ready to relax, but not the Chiefess. She stayed by the doorway, peeking around every now and then to try and catch Ourupadia trying to seduce Charlie. But not once did she try anything.
Peeking out the corner of his eyes, Charlie saw the ears of the Chiefess peaking around the door, giving away her position.
“You see her?” Charlie asked Ourupadia. Not understanding his language, but also noticing the failed attempt to be subtle from the Chiefess, Ourupadia nodded.
Both went back to the documents, picking through them for any information they could gather to help increase the evidence against the Region Lord for scamming the natives and disobeying the Merchant code of fair trade.
Hours passed before the tribe leaders returned. None questioned why the Chiefess was lying on the floor, staring around the corner at the Charlie an Ourupadia. Even if they did want to know why they could just look to the straightened tail and stuck up to attention hairs along it. Jealousy was something that their kind felt in great force, so they all had sympathy towards the Chiefess.
But not enough to stop themselves from laughing at her stubbornness to just go inside and make her presence known. Why didn’t she just go inside? None were sure but they assumed that she just wanted a reason to be angry at Ourupadia and make her leave his side. Moving past the Chiefess and into the room, they all patiently moved to the back as they saw the look of focus on Charlie’s face as he seemed to be in his natural zone.
“I found a few more papers. It seems that since the Region Lord hasn’t been keeping the merchants in check, they have been openly robbing you. For example, us merchants are told that if something we are going to buy isn’t in the Merchant Sales Booklet, we have to pay twenty to forty percent for the product compared to what we plan to sell it for. SO, if we’re going to sell something for one silver, we have to pay between twenty to forty coppers for it. And that is exactly what has happened here,” Charlie said, tapping the pile of papers next to him.
“From what I have calculated, the Region Lord and other merchants have scammed you out of thirty-eight million coppers,” Charlie placing a metal pen given to him by the Head Merchant down. Lifting a page of calculations, he placed it next to him.
“Most likely, the Union will probably try to force the Region Lord to pay the debts as it would be too much hassle to track down the merchants individually,” Charlie said, flipping onto the next page of a blank paper booklet where he had done even more calculations. Placing that down, he brought up a document.
“This document here is something I think you will all be very interested in,” Charlie said, taking a few deep breaths as he readied himself to try and explain it, as well as brace for the inevitable anger.
“What is it,” Nolkonoe said, taking the document and showing it to the Chiefess.
“It is a land rights document, five hundred years old, one hundred years left on the contract for your people to be on the land. It was personally created, and preserved using magic to preserve the document by the eight Emperor of the Clakain,”
The lead forger looked at Charlie, her eyes narrowing.
“How do you know this?” she said, looking to the contract.
“There are few people who can use magic in the imperial capital, as well as have the stamp of the Imperial families,” he explained, noticing they must have also seen the unique mark of the emperor as well.
“Basically, it says that for the next hundred years, and for the past five hundred years, the land for eight hundred miles beyond this point is your land,” a silence hung in the air after he said this. Nolkonoe nodded and verbally confirmed what he said. Phukomeia did the same, then did the lead Huntress.
Reading the document several times over, the Huntress confirmed, her face screwing into a scowl. For the first time, Charlie saw a similarity between the Huntress Leader and the Lead Forger. Simply, it was a look of unbridled, upspoken of before, hatred.