Chapter 34.5- The Seadragon's Roar

“Now to the matter of the slaves.” I broached.

“Having us turn over our slaves would an overreach”

“One that we must all stomach, I am afraid. It is a non-negotiable. I will have twenty thousand slaves who work in the following industries: shipbuilding, glassmaking, dyemaking, pleasure, administration, customs enforcement, cloth making, and agriculture” I said.

“You mean to build industry in the Stepstones?”

“What I mean to do with the Stepstones is none of your business. I have made my demands.”

“Demands we can not fulfill. How would we make the gold to pay you your due when we will be giving out integral parts of our workforces and propping up a competitor in all our major industries?”

“Are you not the most industrious magisters in the world? I am sure you will find a way”

“It is impossible”

“What can you afford?” I asked the question again.

“A thousand slaves”

“Have you no interest in negotiating? I came here with a list of minimum requirements. If you are not able to match them then there will be no deal between our peoples and we will go right back to fighting each other without recourse. I assure you, that is not what you want to happen. You have no more Navy. You are bleeding gold every day that your goods sit in your harbour and are not being moved to the massive market across the narrow sea. You have the threat of my dragons hanging over your heads. You have been sent here to make a deal. So make a deal. Because I can promise you that if you leave here without one, then there will be no peace between us that comes without total vassalage” I laid out the threat knowing full well that Igneel was more than excited at the thought of burning a city down. He wanted to see if he could manage it just as surely as I could.

Maybe it was something they saw in my eyes, or something they saw in the dragons that stood behind me, but they agreed, and the negotiations moved forward.

Fifteen thousand slaves was the consensus while I made the concession that they would be chosen from the lower ranks of the various industries. I was sure they were going to give me the least competent people they could while abiding by the letter of the deal, but that didn’t matter to me. They might have thought I was looking to establish the industries from scratch using their expertise, but I had ideas of my own. I just needed hands to move the stones where I needed them to be, and even idiots could manage that.

The rest came easily. Terms as to shipbuilding were negotiated, and then I granted the concession that they could freely build ships as long as they did not build more than six dozen warships over the next ten years. They’d probably flout that one, but if they’d thought this war with me just setting my roots into the Stepstones was bad for them, then they were going to have another thing coming in a decade or so.