Road to the Crown 162 Trade deal

"I'm all ears."

Even if the deal that I was going to propose to Peter wouldn't affect his coffers directly, from how profitable it might turn out for the country as a whole, he could at least rack some favours with the king and get off my case in return.

"The idea is fairly simple. I will keep selling my beer in my lands just like I used to, while the crown won't meddle with this affair within the country… But you will encourage the traders to sell it outside our borders with custom tax added on top of it! With how cheaply I'm selling the barrels, even tripling its costs wouldn't be a problem. That's the first benefit for you. As for the other, do I really need to spell out what would happen when people outside of our borders learn that they can get this beer for half the price that our traders will offer in their countries?"

For me, the most important part about the entire business was to sell as much as I could and produce more with each passing day while keeping my ability to sell everything. And after several years spent in the marketing department, I perfectly knew what would, for example, German or Austrian merchants do if they were to learn that rather than spending about ten golden ducats for a barrel as I assumed that would be the price my beer would reach in their lands, they would much prefer to just go on a short trip to Tarnow, stock up there, pay the due customs and make the profits themselves!

And what would this influx of traders mean for my lands?

From all the wares that they would bring to the Tarnow, the prices for most of the products would plummet due to the supply greater than ever. After all, no one liked to move around with a sack of gold if they could take their wares and just sell them when reaching the place they wanted to reach!

"This really seems like a good idea… But are you sure your beer can gain that much traction in their lands? It's not like those westerners can appreciate the quality of a good drink!"

Rather than listening to what Peter tried to imply, I simply allowed him to speak for a moment, just to prevent making this entire discussion look like it was orchestrated by me from the beginning to the end. 

"But after giving out so many potential profits that you can go flaunt to our king, sir brother, I need you to do something for me in return."

When one looked at the flow of this entire conversation, then it would start with an unreasonable demand by Peter, followed by my refusal and a deal offer that would exceed any of his initial intentions. Given this fact, it would be unthinkable for me to let the country profits so much off my back without securing some of my interests!

"Speak up, I will see later if I can fulfil your demands."

Since he was only an advisor, not the King himself, he could only promise me that he would forward my request to his majesty, rather than giving me the response right away. While knowing how Henry treated Poland during his stay in the country, I had no doubts that he wouldn't bother refusing such profitable offer, I had no way to conveying this message without either insulting the King or betraying my knowledge about future events.

"I want you to lift most of the customs for the wares entering the Hungarian border on the White River. Additionally, I want to have full control over moving the wares downstream, so that no merchant will use this opportunity to evade the customs and sell his wares elsewhere. And before you will ask why, I just want to tunnel them all to my lands, so that they can profit from a huge increase in all sorts of wares."

Rather than keeping this sort of information, what was my reason for insisting on this tradeoff, I came completely clean, instantly explaining it all. If I were to keep it to myself, rather than increasing my chance at making this trade, Peter could very likely start suspecting that I was trying to do something funny, from cheating on the taxes or customs all the way to trying to remove the king himself!

And thinking about it, with how the next King of Commonwealth would come from the Hungary, this kind of suspicion would be really grounded in reality!

"I think that's doable. Anything else?"

Most likely noticing that I was still on the edge, Peter kindly gave me the chance to continue speaking.

"Yes. With what I was busying myself for the last few days, I found a way to build roads relatively cheaply. But since this method is not yet tested, I would like to set a road between the three cities under my jurisdiction… But to do that, I will require an immense investment from the Crown. Considering how our entire country lacks any proper roads, I think if I could slash the normal price by half, then both the King and most of the nobles would love the idea to test this new method out!"

This was the most important part of the entire negotiation. If I could get the financing to build the road from Tarnow through Pilzno all the way to Ropian, all three of those cities would effectively become a single, huge metropolis with the introduction of the train system that I already had in mind, finally turning the commonwealth into the first, real powerhouse in terms of both the economic capability and the technology prowess!

"A new road… While I would love to see something like this happening, with how our dearest king is more interested in foreign whores rather than managing this country… Obviously, I never said that gentleman, but we will need some serious convincing to get him to agree to such a big investment!"

Chapter end