That evening, upon returning from the inspection, I was in my office at the government building.
I summoned Zoe and told her about the conversation I had overheard in the paddy fields.
"That is wonderful, Master."
Having listened quietly, that was the first thing Zoe said.
"Things are naturally heading that way for now, but there's no reason to let this opportunity slip by. I intend to push this trend even further through policy."
"How do you plan to do so?"
"If people feel they can marry because their income is expected to rise, then we can give them an extra push through governance."
"Yes."
First, I put it into clear words.
If the objective isn't stated clearly like this, things can waver or go off track, so rather than cutting corners, I started with this.
"You know that the empire still has many widows, right?"
"Yes."
Zoe nodded firmly.
Then, like a student who had been posed a question, she began speaking fluently with a straight face.
"The empire is a nation of warriors, constantly fighting against foreign enemies. Men die in battle, leaving behind an equal number of widows."
"Exactly. Taking the previous conversation as an example, if an eldest son dies, the second son simply marries his elder brother's widow. That's a common practice, especially in farming villages."
"Yes. To a farming family, children are assets, and an elder brother's wife is naturally an asset as well."
Zoe, who originally hailed from the farming village of Dosso, said as much.
Her intuitive grasp of such matters was likely far sharper than mine.
"Even so, there are widows who are cast out because there is no one to take them in. The remarriage rate for widows in such cases is low. Why is that?"
I posed another question in the same manner.
Ever the model student, Zoe answered immediately without hesitation.
"If a woman has already borne children, she is viewed as guaranteed to produce offspring, which raises her value. At times, the betrothal gift demanded for her becomes higher than that for a maiden of marriageable age."
"Right. It's putting the cart before the horse, but there are plenty of cases where her value makes her so expensive that no 'buyer' can be found."
"Yes."
Zoe nodded and asked me:
"Then will you cap the betrothal gifts?"
"Direct intervention to that extent is undesirable. Even if we forcefully intervene, it will only end up being circumvented through superficial formalities."
"Then what will you do?"
"There is the poll tax. We can exempt remarried widows from the poll tax for ten years—or even grant a lifetime exemption if she has already borne children."
"Would that not reduce tax revenue once again?"
"Even if we lose the tax from one widow, we turn a profit as long as even a single child is born."
"Not merely breaking even...?"
"It is the remainder of an adult's life versus the entire lifespan of a child. I don't think it even requires much calculation."
"—Ah!"
Zoe gasped softly.
Her expression looked as if scales had just fallen from her eyes.
Suppose a widow is twenty years old.
Assuming a person lives roughly until age fifty, the remainder of her life is thirty years, amounting to thirty years' worth of poll taxes.
If she remarries and bears even one child, and that child also lives roughly until age fifty, that increases the poll tax revenue by fifty years' worth.
Even if we exempt a woman who has already borne children for her remaining thirty years, gaining a single child who lives for fifty years already puts us in the black.
"Naturally, I don't expect it to be just one child. The common folk will have children as long as their pockets have room to spare. And I intend to keep making sure their pockets stay that way."
"That is incredible, Master. The men will surely welcome having one less person's poll tax to pay as well."
"Individual exemptions from the poll tax fall within my authority as Governor-General. I'll leave the phrasing to you; make sure this spreads throughout the province during the rice harvest."
"Understood!"
"I will draft a letter. There's no need for immediate urgency, so send it by horse at a normal pace to Oscar in the imperial capital."
"Yes, Master!"
And so, alongside the reconstruction of Enlil Province, I devised another policy to increase the population.
This was something I could do precisely because I was acting as the Governor-General—closer to the field and able to make swift decisions—rather than as the Emperor.
I carried them out one by one, starting with what was feasible.
☆
One evening, I was invited to Cindy's mansion.
It was a grand residence Cindy had established as her base of operations in Enlil Province, and despite having been set up only recently, it already had nearly a hundred servants.
She's generated employment for a hundred people already? I thought. I ought to commend her for that sometime.
With that thought in mind, I was guided into the mansion's parlor.
In the parlor, Cindy seated me, her guest, in the seat of honor while taking the lower seat herself.
We sat facing each other on sofas across a low table.
As soon as she settled in, Cindy bowed her head slightly.
"Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come."
"Don't worry about it. Did something happen?"
"Please look at this."
Cindy produced a letter and slid it across the table toward me.
I took it, broke the seal since it was still unopened, and drew out the contents.
It was a letter, so I unfolded it and read through it.
It was addressed to Cindy.
Apparently, it had been sent by the head clerk of Cindy's main store in the imperial capital.
As I read through the contents...
"A Tsari merchant went bankrupt, did they?"
"Yes. As you know, the empire borders Tsari to the north, and merchants from both countries trade actively near the border."
"Yeah."
Strictly speaking, Russi-Tsari lay between them, but I glossed over that for the moment.
"More than ninety percent of the merchants with shops near the border have adopted the communications drafts invented by Your Majesty. As a result, they were able to gain an overwhelming advantage over the Tsari merchants, who trade using ordinary promissory notes."
"And this was the result?"
I asked, holding up the letter.
"Yes. And I have just sent my reply."
"Oh?"
"Using communications and communications drafts, I immediately deployed fifty percent of my assets near the border. I have made arrangements to buy up all the rights held by the bankrupt merchant by tomorrow."
"You certainly don't miss an opportunity, do you?"
I chuckled softly.
I was reminded of the time I first met Cindy as a child.
When we first met at the residence of the Third Prime Minister back then, both she and I were still mere children, and she was nothing more than an adopted daughter who had just been taken in by a merchant.
Now, she had grown into a merchant capable of moving instantly to sweep up vacant rights the moment an imperial merchant's rival went under.
"Impressive as always."
"I am honored by your kind words, but..."
Cindy looked at me with an earnest smile.
"The one who is truly incredible is Your Excellency. Without Your Excellency's communications drafts, this would have been impossible. I have shops on the border as well, but they are merely branch stores without much capital on hand. The only reason we could take action immediately was thanks to Your Excellency's communications drafts."
"Hmm."
I nodded.
The strongest asset in any transaction was, without question, cash.
Slightly inferior to cash, but still considerably strong, were merchants' promissory notes.
Or even a verbal promise could carry significant weight if it came from the head of a major merchant guild.
However, in this case, none of those applied.
The person overseeing a branch store near the border was certainly no nobody, but they didn't possess full authority either.
Furthermore, their master, Cindy, was far away in the south, here in Enlil Province with its humid climate capable of producing two rice harvests a year.
There was no way she could travel there quickly.
Under normal circumstances, it would also take time just to deliver a promissory note.
That would take far too long.
Yet Cindy had completely bridged that required time using communications and communications drafts.
She had maximized every single aspect of what I had envisioned.
"With traditional letter exchanges and transporting promissory notes..."
"Even using a super express that disregarded human life, it would have taken at least a month."
"I imagine so."
A message would have to travel the entire length of the empire, and even if Cindy made an immediate decision, she would have to contact the imperial capital's main store—which held the most funds—and then send the note from the main store to the border.
Even trying to do that with humans—courier horses—would take a month.
"And that was done in about a day?"
"In half a day."
"I see. With that kind of speed, there's no way the Tsari merchants could ever compete."
This occurred after the Tsari merchant had already gone bankrupt, but if this kind of speed applied to everything across the board, it was only natural that the Tsari merchants couldn't keep up and were driven to ruin.
"As expected of Humbaba."
I gave thanks to the awakened spirit inside me, Humbaba.
『Ufufu.』
What came back was a gentle laugh that felt almost maternal.
"Thank you very much, Your Excellency."
"Yeah. But if that's the case..."
I pondered.
I thought deeply about it.
I organized my thoughts, putting together what Cindy had said with the current situation.
"Without the Humbaba thread, providing something comparable to communications... would be impossible for Tsari."
"Yes. To begin with, they were already lagging behind the empire when it came to communication networks."
"That is thanks to the late Emperor's great achievements."
The late Emperor, my father, had built an astounding information network.
Even when I, an imperial prince, met with someone and discussed things in a parlor like this, it would already have been reported to Father by the time I had an audience with him immediately afterward.
He hadn't set up that same level of information network just within the imperial capital, but across various regions to obtain swift intelligence.
To make such an information network function, maintaining highways and public roads was naturally a necessity.
Father had put a great deal of effort into that.
Thanks to that, traveling between major cities within the empire had become easy.
The scale and quality of the major highways were on a level that could be called the finest in human history.
As a result, civil engineering techniques improved, to the point where selling just one of Father's villas would enrich the national treasury—though that was beside the point.
When roads were well-maintained, the efficiency of courier horses naturally increased as well.
The empire had done that, but Tsari had not gone that far.
Or rather, they couldn't.
Father was only able to achieve that much because the empire had entered its greatest era of prosperity, backed by the financial power born of that wealth.
Therefore, Tsari had lagged behind the empire in terms of communication methods from the start.
And on top of that came communications via the Humbaba thread.
The gap had widened so much that it wasn't even a contest anymore.
Naturally...
"There is no way they can prepare a countermeasure in one fell swoop."
"I believe you are entirely correct."
"Unless they happen to win over someone like Humbaba, that is."
『Ufufu, don't worry.』
Humbaba's voice reached me again.
Layered over her maternal tone was a faint hint of playfulness.
I didn't know what exactly I was supposed to be at ease about—no, perhaps the mere tone of a being of Humbaba's caliber was reassurance enough.
"A merchant's power is proportional to national strength. Which means—"
I thought.
I formed the words in my mind.
"For Tsari, from here on out, 'today' will always be their strongest state."
"What do you mean by that?"
"If their national strength is on the decline, then tomorrow will always be weaker than today."
"Ah... That's why today is their strongest..."
"Yeah. The rice issue is on track as well. Once the reconstruction of Enlil is finished, it will be time to launch a large-scale expedition."
"Do you mean a personal campaign?!"
Cindy asked.
Her eyes were sparkling.
"Yeah."
I gave a firm nod.
"If we carve out not even half, but just a quarter of Tsari... the empire's territory will become the largest in history. We'll start with that."
"Incredible..."
The largest in history.
Hearing those words, Cindy's eyes sparkled even more.