Chapter 353: I Am Going In!

"The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices."

-        Augustine of Hippo

"I you allow, my lord, I can tell you the back story of Drama from my perspective of view." The teen bowed down facing the admiral and continued, stuttering in her words due to pure nervousness.

"Oh?" Antonius raised his eye brows and gazed at this kid who looks like he is still in his teenage years. He totally did not believe that these two children brought back by Yuri could provide him with any form of information since the start, and was even blaming Yuri for not completing the task properly trying to make the job easier by getting to kids here. Though his interest is still aroused despite already making a decision to send these two kids back to safety right after this. "Alright, what do you got to say young child?"

"From my humble little knowledge acquired from my perspective of view, your highness, that the problems you face in Drama is not entirely because of the governor Tom you assigned here. Yes, he is corrupt, he abuses his power, he has a natural greed for money. But his level of corruption is nothing as compared to the Ottoman officials ruling over here last time round."

"What is it then?" Antonius dropped the quail and supported his chin with his two hands.

"It is because of government policies." The next thing that came out of this young boy's mouth gave Antonius a surprise, and at the same time also gave the guard standing beside a shock, making him regret the decision to bring this trouble maker to his boss. But the teenager obviously does not care about all these, as he continued spitting out what he got in his mind.

"From what my understanding of how the current government works, most officials are basically war veterans, merchants and military commanders who got appointed here after acquiring a basic lesson on things like how to read, write and calculate, with a bare minimum amount of scholars and scribes. Thus, the higher ups in the government of Thessaloniki is unable to tell how well is a region developing from the tons of reports and evaluations, instead they adopted another system of rating the local official's abilities, which is called…"

"Key performance indicator?" Antonius interrupted with a not so pleased look on his face. "I am aware of it, as I am the one who approved this system to be implemented."

"Oh…" The teenager started stuttering as he feels like this conversation might not go according to the way he desires, and the soldier standing beside him ear picking on the conversation since the start now felt cold chills down his back, wanting to step forward and cover the mouth of the boy, but it is too late, as the boy continued. "Your highness, that thing, called key performance indicator, is exactly the thing that caused all the fuss."

"I know that this system has a lot of flaws and errors that cannot be neglected." Antonius sighed and complained. "But for now, I am sorry to say but right now this is still the best kind of governing structure we can have, with the kind of substandard governors we have…"

"I know, I know, my lord… But this time, the problem is not mainly with the governor." The boy replied with earnest and truth in his pair of dark brown coloured eyes. "Governor Tom is a man that is thirsty for a promotion from this rural border region to the metropolis wanders of Thessaloniki, and thus he needs to raise his key performance indicator as much as he can to appease the assessors who checks his annual end of year governing results, and the problem with the assessment standards we got now in the system is that the results is almost fully dependent on one thing, that is the amount of taxation the governor is able to acquire from his domain."

"But when Governor Tom reached here and worked for one and a half year, he realised some thing, that is collecting the little amount of tax through the pitiful amount of harvest the farmers can get every year is insufficient to impress the testers, and he definitely does not have that level of strategic thinking to work out a plan to attract trade and commerce to his region. Thus when he is thinking hard about it and complained it to a local merchant who is supporting his career, the merchant gave him an idea; Why not sell of the land for revenue?"

The teenager stopped for a second to observe the facial expression of the lord, and found out that he is still listening attentively, which gave him a relief in his heart and continued his speech. "And thus, after some thinking Governor Tom agreed and stepped his foot in to selling acre after acre of land to 'friendly investors' who are willing to buy them for a relatively high price. At first he only started with those pieces of land that is owned by no one, or lands that are unsuitable for agriculture, but as time goes on, greed started getting in to him as he saw fresh coins flow in to his treasury day by day."

"Thus, after a while of doing business with these 'kind people', these people offered the governor a high stake that the governor simply could not reject, and started robbing the commoners and farmers of their properties, ripping them off their land their families depend on for a living, just to sell them to these kind fellows who flushed him with tons of gifts, political donations and taxations which kept on buffing up his appetite for more gold… But these new land lords, they do not have such a big requirements for so many farmers, and so they chased these commoners out of their homes in to the wild, with a few conflicts resulting in casualties, of course."

"Then, as you can expect, these people, who just got all their properties stripped off, still has a family to feed, and you can guess what they are going to do next; They become thieves, robbers, syndicates and bandits roaming in these areas hijacking carts and looting every thing they touch. As time passes they gathered up together forming several powerful clans each with a few hundred bandits, posing a severe threat to the safety of the area, totally devastating the local law and order making this place literally inhabitable, which is why this place is in a ruined state now…"

"But is it not because of the Ottoman raiders?" The soldier who has been keeping quiet thinking of a way out interrupted in an anxious tone. "It must be the evil Ottoman raiders! And infiltrators! They must be the ones that devastated this entire place, making its breath taking scenery a history, because they are the ones who are feeding and funding the bandits roaming around, it must be it!"

"The Ottomans!" The teenager, seems to have his guts buffed by the attitude of the admiral, stared back towards this guy who literally kidnapped him here against his will and increased his voice. "The Ottomans is an issue, but thanks to our troops at the borders they never formed a real issue except for raiding one or two villages, burning down some houses and stealing some animals; They never even touched the heart land of this region, what are you even talking about?"

The interior of the tent entered back in to a state of awkward silence. After a while Antonius called out to the soldier feeling tired and exhausted. "How long has Yuri left?"

"Admiral, he left for around half an hour."

"Half an hour…" Antonius mumbled. "It would be too late if I would send another person to tell him to bring that governor here instead of slaughtering him… I have so many questions to ask him, so many questions, I can make him an example, tour him around the state demonstrating his fate, making a clear signal to every one on what can I tolerate, and what I will get them punished for… But most importantly, how many governors in our state currently that is like the same?"

"Admiral…" The soldier wanted to say some thing in defence of his old veteran friends, as he in the near future might also be posted to regional governments once he leaves the military, but when he tried to open his mouth, he found himself with nothing convincing to say. In the end it became merely a few dry words. "Admiral, I am sure that we still have some governors that are loyal to the laws, beloved by their people and faithful to their code of conduct."

"We are going inside the city of Drama." Antonius gave a sneer and ordered. "At once! I need to see with my own eyes on how things became like this."