"Of course," Kivamus nodded at the merchant's request. "Duvas will give you a small pouch of acelos powder when you leave. Make sure that nobody sees you carrying the paper or the medicine on the road. I don't want even a vague rumor to start about Tiranat being its source."

Pydaso smirked, "Don't you worry about it, milord. Traveling merchants like me always have a hidden compartment or two in our wagons when journeying for long distances, to carry, well... stuff which we would rather not be caught with. These things won't take too much space anyway, so I'll keep it as a part of my personal belongings so that even my wagon drivers won't get any idea that I'm taking something like this with me."

Kivamus laughed loudly hearing that. Of course a traveling merchant would have a way to hide things which he wanted to transport away from the eyes of any guards at the town gates. "I guess I shouldn't ask too much about it."

"That would be... benevolent of you, milord," Pydaso grinned as he stood up. "It's always good doing business with you. I can't wait to return with good news about that Ulrigan trader."

"Let's hope for the best," Kivamus agreed, as the merchant turned to exit the manor hall. "Wait," he stopped Pydaso as he recalled something. While an adzee was still much smaller than an elephant, its bones and teeth might still be useful, like ivory from elephants was used for making jewelry and such in some places. "What about other salvaged parts from an adzee's carcass? Don't you want to buy them too?"

Pydaso looked at him in surprise. "Like what?"

"You have already bought the adzee pelt, but what about its fangs? Or maybe the skull? Won't they be useful for something?"

"How did you even get such an absurd idea?" Duvas interrupted him with a shake of his head. "Nobody in Reslinor wears animal skulls to protect their heads in a war or wears their teeth as necklaces! I would know... I've lived both in the very north and the very south of the kingdom, as well as in the center, and I've never seen such a thing anywhere. We are not brutes like the Binpaazi, milord."

Pydaso snorted. "What are you both even talking about? Binpaazi don't wear that either. That kingdom is just ruled by an iron fist, but they are not savages. I know a merchant who used to travel to Binpaaz in the past before they closed giving entry to any outsiders after the previous war. He often used to tell me stories about life inside Binpaaz." He shrugged. "While he could tell nothing about how their rulers lived, the common people there were just like those living in Reslinor - poor and oppressed by the nobility, but still normal people - just like us. He never even mentioned seeing anything like people wearing animal teeth as necklaces! Haha... It's just a legend that their ancestors used to do that centuries ago. So I don't think people are going to buy adzee teeth or their skulls." He squinted. "Did you really store them?"

Kivamus looked at Duvas for an answer.

"Of course we didn't!" the majordomo insisted. "I had no reason to order the guards to do that. I think they buried it somewhere in the eastern hills, along with the rest of its carcass."

Kivamus sighed. While it was easy to see that this world of Eranityn was still in a medieval era - even though he barely knew much about this world even now - perhaps he had wrongly assumed that people would be wearing animal teeth necklaces and such here. This wasn't the dark ages and people weren't savages here. He scratched the back of his head. "I guess I was wrong. Still, those adzee bones must have been huge. Couldn't they be used to carve some ornaments or something? Perhaps in the bigger cities?"

Pydaso shrugged. "Ulriga is the second biggest city in the kingdom after the capital. While I've never been to Dorastiz, I've heard that Ulriga is easily the biggest port in the kingdom, and sees far more visiting sea merchants from other countries of the world than the capital. Having lived near Ulriga for all my life, I know the local markets inside out and I don't think I remember seeing teeth or bones of any animal used as necklaces or something. Still, I'll ask around when I visit there this time to see if any foreign sea merchants might be willing to buy it. Don't hold high hopes for it, though."

Kivamus laughed. "I wasn't counting on it anyway. Still, let's hope your contact in Ulriga is trustworthy enough for us to sell paper and medicine through him."

"We'll find out in a month," Pydaso shrugged, "one way or another." He bowed deeply. "I'll take my leave now, if that's all."

Kivamus nodded and waved him off.

Once the merchant had exited the hall, Duvas looked at him. "The 200 tablets we have promised to sell him in the future will take the space of what... a small pouch?"

Kivamus nodded. "Something like that. Why?"

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The majordomo shook his head in wonder. "It's just that after selling wagonloads after wagonloads of coal for decades here - which barely earned us anything - I never thought we'd be able to earn that much gold by such a little thing. I can't even imagine how much we can earn just by selling this medicine in the future!"

Kivamus smiled. "Of course, often the priciest and the most profitable trade goods are the smallest in size. Just take gemstones or jewelry for example. Anyway, while our earnings will increase quite a bit once we can scale up producing the medicine, it won't be by a simple multiple of how much more we can produce acelos. At the current price of 20 silver coins per tablet, there is a very limited number of people who can buy it, since paying even 7 silver coins is often too high for most commoners. To be able to target a bigger market and sell to everyone, we'll have to continue lowering the prices as we scale up the production and make more and more tablets. That will certainly decrease our profit per tablet, but it will allow the medicine to be bought by a lot more people, so our profits will still increase, although at a slower rate than what you are imagining right now."

"That does make sense," Duvas nodded. "Still, you know that we earn somewhere around 500 gold every month by selling around 40 wagon loads of coal, so even adding up a few hundred gold to our revenue every month by selling this medicine would do wonders for our finances."

"That would just be a start!" Kivamus snorted. "I'm not going to stop when our monthly revenue reaches 700 or 800 gold. We have far too many enemies around us, so making sure nobody can harm our village is not going to be cheap. I've also been thinking of some new ways to improve the daily life of our people and increase the village's efficiency - which'll need gold as well. So we are going to need a way higher revenue than that."

Seeing the frown returning on Duvas' face, Kivamus grinned. "Don't you worry about it. I am only going to increase our spending once we have already created a way to earn that much gold." Knowing that life didn't always work perfectly like that and they might still have to spend first before earning it, he muttered, "Well, kind of..."

***

It was just after lunchtime and everyone had returned to the more comfortable armchairs after eating. Apart from him and Duvas, Gorsazo was also present for lunch today. Ustaimo and the knight were sitting nearby, while Feroy and Hudan had joined them as well, with another two guards standing in the corners of the hall as usual, just in case the knight got dangerous ideas in his mind - since he was wearing his full plate armor as always, apart from his helmet which was kept next to him.

The ex-mercenary looked a little tired today, since he had to stay awake last night to guard the stairwell from the knight, while Hudan looked as energetic as always, and should be leaving soon to take another round of the village on a horse to check their defenses before returning to train the six newly recruited guards later in the evening.

At this point, Kivamus knew that they would certainly be able to pay the taxes on time, but that would mean nearly emptying their strongbox once again. That might cause problems since they had promised to pay Trevalo soon for all the wheat he had given them on credit, while paying the smoked fish merchant in Kirnos for two wagon loads of fish which Feroy had bought a few weeks ago on credit was still pending.

Even then, that fish had long been eaten up by the villagers, while most of their recently bought wheat was going to be used for sowing - which would leave just around ten days worth of food for the village, especially since the guards had stopped going out for hunting these days in anticipation of a raid from Torhan. After realizing that they would be short on seeds for sowing, Duvas had already reduced the amount of weekly grain rations they gave to the villagers since the past couple of weeks, and everyone had to return to having only two meals a day instead of the three they had been getting in the winter.

Despite that food rationing, they would need to buy more wheat within a week or risk the villagers starving. There was still an option of using the Rizako mushrooms as food in a pinch, but he wanted to prevent doing that since giving the mushrooms just two or three more weeks to grow would make them a sustainable source of protein for the village. He had also promised Hudan on their last dam visit that they would start paying at least some part of the guards' wages soon, which would also need gold. That's why he wanted to save some of their newly gained gold if possible.

He glanced at the tax collector, who had recently announced for the knight's benefit that he wanted to take some rest after eating before he started checking the numbers in the tax ledger again. On the other hand, Tuilas looked sullen and had been grumbling about having to stay in the village for longer than he had expected.

"Ustaimo," he began, "you already know that two merchants have arrived in Tiranat by now, so we did gain some gold from selling coal, but we still need to save some of it to buy food for the village. Can't you allow us to pay half of the tax now, and half after a month or so? That would help us a lot."

"I already told you about that, milord," Ustaimo began, "it's not in my..."

His words were interrupted by the knight, who scowled at Kivamus. "Huh? Again this shit of trying to get away without paying taxes?"

"We are not trying to get away from paying taxes!" Duvas insisted. "You know that we lost most of our tax gold when the previous baron was ambushed on the road. We just want some more time to pay it."

Sir Tuilas turned fully towards the majordomo and glared at him. "That's none of our concern! Uncle Ebirtas told me to bring back all the gold you owe us, one way or another. If you still can't find enough gold to pay the tax by the time Ustaimo gets done with his review of your tax ledger, you'll leave me no choice but to seize enough slaves to pay for the difference."

Ustaimo looked worriedly at Duvas, while Kivamus clenched his fists at this young upstart's audacity. However before he said anything, the ex-mercenary sat straighter.

"I'd like to see you try it!" Feroy growled. "You are just one man here with only a few other guards, you know? If you try forcing any condition on Lord Kivamus, I guarantee that your uncle wouldn't even receive enough intact pieces of your body to identify you."