Herald of Steel

Hearing of Seelima’s planned journey, Alxx was of the mind that she did not take even that risk.

Who knew how the nobles would react upon actually seeing her?

Or how accurate Pasha Farzah’s information was?

But that was ultimately her decision and not something he could really butt his head in.

And so he nodded and thinking the conversion was over, attempted to excuse himself.

“Lord Alxx, please sit, we have something more to discuss,” But he would be proved wrong was this invitation came from Lady Inayah.

Who then explained to a surprised Alxx, “Although you will not have to go Adhan as an advisor to the king, we would appreciate it if you could at least come to the capital during the Jtaama this year. As a guest.”

This made Alxx raise his eyebrows at this request, “….for social purposes?”

He asked with an enigmatic smile, knowing that during this pilgrimage many nobles or their representatives would come to Adhan to perform the holy rite.

Even Amenheraft would be there.

But Alxx was not really interested in meeting anyone there.

He knew he was not welcomed by most Adhanian nobles, so what did it matter what the others did?

“Haha, no, no I know that you have no interest in that,” And it seemed Lady Inayah knew Alxx well enough.

So she reasoned, “No, the reason why I want you to come is because I believe the journey will be quite fortuitous for you!”

“I believe you have a lot of gain from going there, so much so that you might even regret not going there.”

This bold statement produced a intrigued low mutter from Alxx, “Oh?”, as he could see little of that happening.

Other than the legummum, there was little he desired from Adhan.

And he was pretty sure Lady Inayah knew this.

So he waited for the ruler of Agrinat to explain herself.

And the mature lady began, “For instance, I remember that my lord wants to mint his own coinage.”

“But have you thought about minting the ropal!?”

The moment she said this, it felt a loud boom had erupted across the whole room, and the whole place seemed to have all its sound taken out.

The ropal was the exclusive coinage of the royal family and one of their most powerful trading tool to control Adhania.

For instance, the royal family could impose sanctions on misbehaving nobles using the ropal, by such as declaring that their own coins could not be traded for the ropal, which would cripple their local economy because it meant they would be unable to pay the temple tithe demanded of them every year.

The royal family did not even need to go that far most of the time, as they could just peg the ropal too high against their coin to make them bleed.

This move would mean more expensive imports for the nobles, and though it would also make exports cheaper, but because many nobles produced just enough to satisfy their own needs, most could not export enough to take advantage of the lower export cost.

But they were almost socially forced to export many expensive things, such as fine food, clothes, timber, and jewelry to keep their social status.

And because no one noble was capable of producing everything they enjoyed, such policies would grievously hurt nobles below the Matbar (Marquiss).

,So Lady Inayah suggesting giving another power the ability to mint this, and thus removing this restraint and even enabling him to employ some of the aforementioned policies was an almost absurd thought.

It would be something like America giving another country the ability to print the dollar.

And so understandably it was enough to make the Queen Mother go, “Inayah! What are you saying! Yo..you!”

It seemed it was her turn to be shocked as she thought, ‘This kid is already hard enough to control as is. And Ptolomy has already made so many concessions.”

‘Now even giving him the ability ropals…will we even be able to call ourselves the royal family a while later?’

And Seelima knew that Lady Inayah must be aware of all the inside plays, which made her suggestion all the more shocking.

And in that same vein,, Alxx too was very much moved. .

He certainly knew of the ropal’s powers and understood that if he had the ability to mint them, instead of making his own coin which had no name or prestige would make both his internal and external trade a hundred times easier.

Now, in this time period, a coin’s prestige was very important, as it made that coin made it very much recognized, and its value very much trusted.

Now what did it mean by ‘very trusted value?’

Well for coins of this time, their value was usually determined by the amount of gold, silver, or any other precious metal it contained.

There were exceptions where nobles minted their own coin made of iron or bronze and fixed it against the ropal or gold, even when the value of the metal did not match the value of gold it represented.

But those were the rare exceptions, and never usable outside that noble’s particular territory.

Because if you only use it between yourself, you could even use bottle caps as currency.

But that did not mean other powers would exchange their gold and silver for your crappy coin.

So in general, coins were made of precious metals.

And many times the value of these metals was so much that they were usually never made purely out of them.

For instance, 1 gm of gold was 5 ropals, which was already too big of a note.

And conversely, if a coin was to be made of just 1 gm of pure gold, it would be also physically too small, making it prone to breaking or one losing it.

So usually coins were mixed with everyday metals to give them weight and dimensions.

And this gave the ones minting the coin the chance to mix more filler metal and decrease the weight of precious metals in their coins.

And because the public value of the amount of precious metal would be said beforehand, traders would trade according to that, and lose out on every transaction.

This phenomenon was called debasing and had been widely practiced throughout human history, both here and in Alxx’s previous life, usually when an empire’s finances were not doing so great.

And it was not like only mixed coins were subject to this.

Even pure gold coins could have a bit of their edges shaved off, not enough to make a visible difference in size or weight, but in this way, over the minting of billions of such coins, tons of gold could be saved.

Or worse, so-called pure gold coins might just be mixed with impure metals to keep the coin’s size and weight but decrease its value.

Now, all such techniques could be caught.

In fact, this was the kind of problem the king had given Archimedes.

But as it could be easily seen it was a very hard thing to do in everyday trading, and made even harder when these lower quality coins would be mixed with genuine ones.

And this is where the ropal came in as it was very prestigious and its value ‘very trusted’.

Because for all its faults, the Adhanian royalty had never debased its currency.

So the ropal was the standard that every noble traded against, confident they would get a fair trade.

And it was this trust in the coin that gave the royal family power to enforce the sanctions.

So knowing this background, it was not difficult to see the Queen Mother’s shock and Alxx’s intrigue.

“What do you mean, Lady Inayah?” And his tone clearly changed here, from nonchalance to thick anticipation.

“Haha, well, I know that you have some interesting things being made here. So if you could divulge some to His Highness….” Lady Inayah trailed off in a wistful tone, indicating for Alxx to trade his inventions for the privilege.

“…” Alxx did not say anything but looked expectantly at the Queen Mother.

If the thing had the slightest chance of working, it would need the strong arm of the Queen Mother.

‘No! Never! Forget it,’ And this was the instinctual response of Seelima.

But she intelligent woman did not utter them outright.

Seelima had known Lady Inayah long enough to know she would not make the suggestions without very deep consideration.

So she only clenched her teeth and lowly growled, ‘Explain!’

“Haha, oh Seelima, I see that you are still stuck in time.” Contrary to the heavy mood of her counterpart, the black lady was much more breezy, as she reasoned, “The ropal had its power when the royal family was united. But now….well, I would not be surprised if Amenheraft starts minting his own coin.”

“In fact, I think it is only a matter of time.”

“And it is very possible that many pashas will switch to that.”

Lady Inayah’s prediction made the Queen Mother flinch because this was not just possible, but inevitable.

Hence Lady Inayah’s next statements came naturally,

“So the question is how to boost the amount of ropal?”

“And I believe you know the answer.”

As the mature noble lady then turned to Alexander to sweetly smile and say,

“This will require personal negotiations with His Majesty.”

“And although I cannot promise anything, it is certainly worth a try, wouldn’t you say?”

It seemed Lady Inayah was right.

Alexander would really regret it if he passed up on this chance.