Herald of Steel

The monopoly nature of these guilds and counting houses actually came about naturally, as only by sticking together, collaborating, and fixing prices could these businesses stay alive.

Otherwise, these gold laden geese would have been long slaughtered by the greedy nobles and kings.

Hence in Tibias, it had by now even become almost a custom for sons and daughters of the large trading houses to marry each other, turning all of them into nearly a giant family run conglomerate.

This was also mainly how these guilds and counting houses found the guts to swap client accounts like that- knowing the other side would have a hard time swindling them when both of their grandkids called each other grandpa.

Now, this was the advantage consumers got from these trading houses being a monopoly.

As for the disadvantages, well there is little point in beating a dead horse. Everyone knows these.

So a far more interesting question could be why the Tibian court and nobles tolerate such anti competitive behavior.

And the answer was simple- they did not care.

As it could be guessed, the very concept of market competition did not exist at the time, and so as long the nobles and royals got their taxes, and there was no big trouble- like murder, they hardly ever bothered to look down at these ’peasants’.

Many of the nobles even supported these guilds, believing they helped keep the more unruly and unscrupulous merchants in check, as laid out in the price fixing example by Lady Parthia.

She and Lady Nanazin were not appalled by the fact Alexander wanted to create a monopoly but by the method he planned to do this.

Both of them actually truly believed these guilds were in large parts a force for good.

And it would be too imprudent to simply dismiss their thoughts as being wrong.

After all, in Lady Parthia’s case, these guilds were indeed vital to many parts of the Tibian economy, to the point the royal courts were even willing to overlook their lending business even though it was something they seemed to abhor.

And speaking of money lending, it was from the ’Security business’ that these counting houses started to develop this ’side’ business.

Alexander imagined there was a genius man who one day saw all the money just sitting around inside locks and vaults doing nothing and thinking to himself-

’All this money… sitting around doing nothing. So why not lend some of this to others? Nobody is going to use it anytime soon anyway!’

And just like that, instead of letting the money gather dust, these counting houses began to slowly give out loans to interested parties, charging them an interest, and pocketing it.

The only difference between them and traditional banks was that they did not cut the depositors on the deal, and neither did they even tell most clients that their money was being used for such purposes.

Alexander was initially shocked to hear this, so much so that he even had to repeatedly confirm this with Lady Parthia.

And the lady who had foreseen the audit of a few such houses indeed confirmed her claim without any ambiguity.

This made Alexander then slump back to the chair in absolute incredulity, thinking how it was a miracle that these trading guilds had not had a ’bank run’ yet.

And then that got him wondering what would happen if such a thing did happen- if a significant amount of their loans turned bad and clients came knocking in for their savings.

’It will be a disaster! Many businesses will go bankrupt, food prices will erupt and there will be wild scale riots. Many of those guilds would likely even get torched to the ground.’ Alexander pessimistically thought, before gearing up his mind to bring these guilds under proper business regulation

However just as he was about to suffer from an immense migraine thinking about this herculean endeavor and how he could possibly get the guilds to enforce it, a sudden bright bulb went off inside his head.

A ray of optimism chimed,

’But given that these guilds have not had such a problem despite going through two wars and a regime change, I think it is safe to say that is unlikely. They are probably very cautious about who they lend their money and how much.’

Alexander quickly remembered that these loan sharks mostly served the poor and desperate as most businesses and nobles shunned away from this vice.

If these blue bloods really needed money, they would prefer to borrow from each other or even just suck it up- like how Perseus refused to recklessly borrow from these guilds to raise levies despite his kingdom being on the brink.

And so, when your target demographic is mostly just the poor and needy, how much loan can you give them anyway?

These people were no state builders needing money for new roads, a port, shipbuilding, or even large scale farming.

They were bottom of the barrel men who were barely scraping by.

Hence these counting houses concentrated more on quality rather than quantity- i.e.- getting the most from each individual loan rather than making huge commitments.

And this meant at the end of the day, although the interests were very high, the total returns from this money lending business were really not that big.

For these guilds it was more of a side income.

….

Alexander made various such notes to himself while listening to Lady Parthia’s elaborate explanations until it soon became time for lunch.

So feeling hungry and wanting to refresh his mind, Alexander decided to call for a recess and broke the meeting for lunch.

Lady Parthia and Lady Nanazin naturally joined the man at his dining table and were presented with a luxurious feast. Mean had the kitchen make extra items knowing the two royals were coming today.

So alongside the usual assortment of dishes, there were various slices of meat like chicken, beef, mutton, boar, and pheasant, all cooked in a variety of ways, many types of seafood- trouts, salmons, catfish, mussels, crabs, lobsters, eggs of different birds- chicken, duck, goose, quails, pigeons, salted and buttered summer vegetables and lastly the most anticipated part of the meal- the various fruits, desserts, and drinks.

The many pies with their sweet fillings and creamy cakes with tarty toppings drew that two queens, with Lady Nanazin even loudly cheering,

"Mmmm, mmmm, Alexander… this is why I love eating at your place. These new items you make are all so delicious." This queen was so enamored by the sweet taste that she even forgot the royal etiquette of never talking with food in her mouth, instinctively praising the sour cheesecake with honey drizzled grapes the moment it hit her mouth.

"Hahaha, thank you, Your Highness. I once remember Princess Mikaya saying the same thing. She even said that if I had failed to become a noble, she would have hired me as her cook, hahaha…" Alexander very casually made this small talk, although much to Lady Nanazin’s embarrassment. Experience more on empire

This was because when she said ’the food you make Alexander’, one of the ways it could be interpreted as was Alexander personally preparing the food.

As per Adhanian as well as Tibian tradition, it was scandalous for a noble to even go near a kitchen.

Now, Alexander of course did not take Lady Nanazin’s words in such a misconstrued way, it was simply his way of teasing the mature queen.

And the charming blush Lady Nanazin produced on her cheeks was well worth it.

"What is this sweet wine, Lord Alexander? Is it made from strawberries?" While chiming up from the other side, Lady Parthia seemed more entranced by the chilled drink she was served, taking multiple gulps of it even as she was asking, unable to resist.

Alexander hid his amused smile at the sight, knowing, having been only recently introduced to sugar, even a refined lady like Lady Parthia was unable to always control herself.

The dopamine receptors in her head were likely going haywire from this sudden sugar rush.

Hence without betraying any of his emotions, Alexander replied in a smooth, controlled voice,

"Indeed, it is something like that, my lady. This drink is a wine and syrup mixture I and my wife Mean made. We quartered some strawberries and covered them in sugar for a week. This caused all the fruit juices to dissolve the sugar and after draining the solid fruits, we got left with a very sweet water called a syrup."

"Mixing half of that syrup with wine got you the drink you have having. I am glad you liked it."

"...I.. *Gulp*, *gulp*, see!" It was unknown really how much of Alexander’s explanation entered Lady Parthia’s ears- likely not much, as the quite smart queen had mistakenly even asked if the wine was made from strawberry, a simple mistake she would never do before.

So it seemed she was too taken by this sweet drink.

The regal queen had also never even peeled a strawberry before, so even this simple recipe was difficult for her to understand.

Thus she seemed much more interested in having her cold drink and cooling off from the hot, humid summer noon.

The one who did pay attention was Lady Nanazin, and in a tone full of praise, quickly admired the drink.

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