Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 190: Frankish Audit

While Ragnar and Gyda were preparing for the absolute certainty of a corporate civil war in the Midlands, the Abbasid Princess had an important prospect visit her.

At the moment, Zaynab was entertaining herself in the geometric courtyard with her pet caracal, Al-Jabr, utterly unaware that her arranged merger was about to finalize.

Since Zaynab was five, she raised the desert lynx as her pet, and it was quite honestly her only sounding board for complex equations.

She was the only daughter of the current Caliph, and to say her relationship with her mathematically illiterate brothers was strained could be considered an understatement.

Since a young age, she had been heavily sheltered by her father’s administration, to the point where she had never even audited the markets outside the palace walls.

The only men she had met outside of her family were either her father’s Viziers or the various suitors who had heard of her legendary intellect and traveled a long way to secure her dowry.

Despite this, she found every man who attempted to gain her hand in a joint venture to be genuinely mathematically deficient.

Thus she had rejected their proposals ruthlessly, to the point where she was now twenty and close to the age of asset depreciation without a partner.

That is, until relatively recently, when her father had, against her projections, signed a binding contract engaging her to the Crown Prince of the Franks.

Zaynab wore a rare, genuine smile and chuckled as she played with her pet caracal. Its tufted ears swiveled as it batted at a silver pendulum she swung back and forth, like a furry guardian of physics.

However, seeing an unknown man approach Zaynab’s sector, the caracal instantly dropped into a predatory crouch and hissed, blocking the man’s path.

This man was Charles the Bald (though he currently possessed a full head of hair), the Crown Prince of the Franks and Zaynab’s contractual partner.

He had traveled a great distance to audit the assets of the gorgeous young princess whom he was engaged to. However, the moment Zaynab processed the man in front of her, a scowl instantly spread across her olive-toned face, and she merely recalculated her escape vectors.

Charles was by no means an intellectual heavyweight, even though he was said to be a talented jouster.

The young man was overtly vain, not just in his heavily embroidered silk tunic but also in the amount of perfumed oils he wore.

He was preening, self-important, and had the arrogant swagger of a man who believed his bloodline was a substitute for a balanced budget.

He had curled, shoulder-length hair and a vacant expression in his pale blue eyes. If one did not know his net worth, they might mistake him for a court jester upon first glance.

This was one of the reasons Zaynab was not fond of the prospect; another was that he was a well-known squanderer of capital.

Despite the Frankish Kingdom’s vast agricultural wealth, Charles was infamous for blowing his quarterly allowance on extravagant feasts and useless baubles.

Seeing his contractual partner in front of him and a large, angry feline blocking his path, Charles put on a practiced, vapid smile as he maintained his distance, the sight of which instantly disgusted Zaynab’s logical mind. Afterward, Charles spoke in a voice so dripping with unearned confidence it made her teeth ache.

"Princess Zaynab! I am so thrilled to finally consolidate our houses! I am Prince Charles of the Franks! The Caliph said you were a jewel of the East; it appears his ledger was accurate. How do you keep your silks so pristine in this heat? I must have your tailor’s requisition form!"

The man did not even try to hide the fact that he was not the slightest bit interested in Zaynab’s intellect.

The way he complimented her was as if he was evaluating a decorative rug for his hunting lodge.

Zaynab was convinced that if the man were handed a basic abacus, he would try to wear it as a necklace, and nobody in his court would be any the wiser about his actual cognitive deficit.

As such, Zaynab merely snubbed the prospect and snapped her fingers before issuing a command.

"Al-Jabr, return!" With that, the caracal padded back to her side and sat at attention, where the young princess proceeded to turn her back on the Prince without offering him the slightest bit of market data.

Seeing his asset turn away, the young man attempted to close the distance.

However, the moment he stepped into her personal radius, the caracal quickly bared its fangs and let out a low, vibrating growl at the Frankish Prince.

Though Charles was a knight, the overprotective nature of the beast sent a shiver down his spine as he could very clearly calculate the risk to his shins.

He immediately became aware that with the feline protecting Zaynab, he would have no way to approach her and accomplish the goal his father had set for him, which was to secure her dowry.

After all, the Kingdom of the Franks needed a massive capital injection. It was currently engaged in a trade war with the Norsemen.

Their neighbors to the North were presently restructuring the entire British Isles, with a notably ruthless industrialist holding a monopoly over the iron trade.

If the Franks wanted to maintain their economic dominance over Western Europe, they would need to cultivate a strategic partnership with the major financial power of the Mediterranean, and that was the Abbasid Caliphate.

However, before he could even begin to pitch his proposal, the princess had dismissed him as if he were a bad investment.

Charles quickly let out an exasperated sigh, and seeing that he was the only one around, he promptly began to complain as he expressed his thoughts.

"If only I could just marry the treasury directly. It is much easier to spend gold than it is to woo a woman who stares at me like I am a math problem she can’t solve, and no merchant can resist my royal seal!"

After leaving Charles behind with his depreciating thoughts, Zaynab swept into the palace with Al-Jabr at her heels before leading him up to her private observatory, where she quickly threw the heavy brass bolt behind her.

Afterward, the caracal leaped onto a pile of scrolls and rested upon them while gazing at his master with a feline smirk.

The caracal was brilliant and was essentially mocking the fact that Zaynab would be forced to merge with someone who was more of a liability than an asset.

Seeing the smug look on Al-Jabr’s face, Zaynab tossed a rolled-up parchment at the beast before chastising it.

"What are you looking at!?"

Al-Jabr, of course, dodged the projectile and began to groom a paw. Zaynab slumped onto her silk cushions and began to aggressively recalibrate her astrolabe, the brass rings clicking sharply in the quiet room.

After releasing her pent-up academic frustrations, Zaynab felt a little bit better about the variables, and she began to think aloud, as she so often did when calculating probabilities.

"Am I destined to be traded off to the bankrupt Frankish Prince and live out the rest of my days balancing the books for a man who can’t count his own toes?" 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Zaynab instantly began to tap her stylus against her chin as she continued to analyze the deficit she was in.

"Isn’t there a third-party buyer who can disrupt this merger?"

At that moment, she heard a polite knock on the door and the measured tone of a familiar voice came from the outside.

"Princess, are you logging data in there? I noted that you terminated the meeting with the Frankish envoy prematurely. Are your metrics stable?"

Zaynab instantly began to scowl once more before yelling at the heavy teak door.

"Access denied!"

She knew exactly who was behind the door, and she did not feel like submitting a status report at the moment.

The man standing in the corridor was Vizier Al-Hakam, and he heavily sighed when he heard her rejection before acquiescing to the princess’s demands.

"As you dictate, Your Highness."

Shortly after hearing his footsteps recede, Zaynab processed a new variable; she was intensely curious about the data Al-Hakam had brought back from the North, specifically the intelligence he had shared with her father in the gardens.

Thus she quickly ran to the door and slid the brass bolt back. The sudden sound surprised Al-Hakam, and her subsequent demand further confused him.

Zaynab avoided eye contact and looked at her astrolabe before stating in a clinical tone.

"Enter... I require clarification on a few variables!"

Hearing that his presence was requested, he stepped into the observatory, carefully navigating around stacks of complex geometric proofs, where he quickly sat down on a cushioned stool.

The princess herself sat back on her cushions and stared analytically at the man who had acted as an economic mentor to her growing up.

Al-Hakam was one of the Caliph’s best trade ministers and was a close logistical advisor.

Though he had been away securing supply chains for the last few quarters, he commonly acted as a sounding board for the princess since she did not have any intellectual peers other than her tutor.

After a few moments of silence, Zaynab finally set down her stylus and voiced the inquiry on her mind.

"I require a full dossier on the CEO known as Ragnar..."

Al-Hakam was genuinely surprised when he heard this request; just where had the girl intercepted that data? And why was she interested in a brutal industrialist from across the continent?

Nevertheless, since she had submitted the inquiry, he had no choice but to provide the data to the best of his ability.

"What specific metrics do you wish to review?"

Hearing that Al-Hakam was willing to open the books, Zaynab became slightly flustered; she had not organized her queries, and so she took a few moments to calculate before the first question was formalized.

"What is his management style?"

Al-Hakam thought about this question for a few minutes before giving an honest audit of the man.

"Director Ragnar is a ruthless and highly efficient CEO who will leverage whatever assets it takes and liquidate whoever he desires so long as it maximizes his market share..."

Hearing this, Zaynab was about to close the file; though she wanted to partner with an ambitious and logical man, she did not care for mere barbarism.

However, before she could entirely dismiss the prospect, Al-Hakam continued his evaluation.

"Despite his aggressive corporate strategy, he provides excellent benefits to his executives, his workforce, and the infrastructure under his monopoly. Every time I inspect the region he has acquired, the contractors seem more productive and better compensated than they were under the feudal lords.

He has invested massive capital into building iron railways that rival the Roman roads to protect his supply chain and has even developed an enhanced system of steam-powered sanitation to ensure the operational uptime of his labor force.

From the interactions I have observed with his CFO and his inner circle, he seems to calculate their safety and efficiency as his highest priority. If I had to grade his credit rating, I would say he is an invaluable asset to his partners but a devastating liability to his competitors.

He will breach any tradition to protect his monopoly, no matter how volatile the market becomes. Director Ragnar is undoubtedly a market disruptor, one who is destined for a global monopoly... Assuming his infrastructure doesn’t collapse under its own weight."

Hearing Al-Hakam, the greatest Trade Minister of the Caliphate, so thoroughly endorse the man’s business model further fueled Zaynab’s intellectual fascination with Ragnar.

A sharp glint appeared in her dark eyes as she blurted out the next variable on her mind.

"Is his aesthetic... symmetrical?"

Al-Hakam was taken aback by the statement, though he never wanted to admit it; Ragnar possessed a striking, terrifying charisma, and his iron-and-smoke aesthetic was undeniably commanding.

Something that Al-Hakam greatly respected from a branding perspective.

However, when the princess was the one to ask him the question, he had no choice but to provide the data.

He nodded his head in agreement rather than waste breath describing Ragnar’s tailored black suits and mechanical leg brace.

Hearing that Ragnar was aesthetically pleasing on top of his exceptional corporate acumen made Zaynab even more interested in the prospect.

Thus the last question was one of critical legal importance to her. She began to tap her stylus rapidly against her palm, avoiding Al-Hakam’s gaze.

"Is he legally bound to a partner?"

It took Al-Hakam a moment to process the query, but he finally calculated why this genius girl was auditing Ragnar; as such, he began to chuckle before giving her the hard numbers.

"I wouldn’t project a merger if I were you, my dear Princess. Not only is his capital entirely merged with his CFO. Her intellect is not inferior to your own, just applied differently. I am sorry to say, but a hostile takeover of his affections would yield a negative return.

Even if Ragnar is a valued vendor of the Caliphate, and one day becomes the Chairman of Europe... your father will never allow you to become a minority shareholder in a Viking firm, and I doubt Ragnar will dilute his stock by breaking his partnership with Gyda.

I hate to deliver a bad quarterly report, Zaynab, but you have to face the market realities. You are currently contracted to the Crown Prince of the Franks, and despite your protests, that deal is finalized."

Hearing this data, Zaynab’s logical framework nearly suffered a fatal error.

She felt like she had found the perfect intellectual peer, but his assets were already tied up, which means there was zero equity available for her.

On top of that, Al-Hakam had reminded her of her dreaded, unprofitable merger.

As such, her expression immediately flattened, and she nodded her head, calculating the depressing reality.

Seeing the state of the princess’s plummeting morale, Al-Hakam felt a twinge of pity, but the contract was binding. As such, he decided to leave her be to recalculate her options.

After logging out of her room and shutting the heavy teak door behind him, Zaynab slowly rested her head on her desk.

She would spend the rest of the day running depressing simulations about her future.