With the peripheral scraps brushed aside, it was time to address the first of the two elephants looming over the field. Alpheo intended to reinstate the very casus belli that had set the South aflame.
"The Regalia Ordinum," Alpheo said, the words rolling off his tongue like a vintage wine. The taste was made all the sweeter by the brief, ugly scowl that twitched across the Crownless Prince's face. "The caravans bearing my falcon shall, now and forevermore, travel unbothered through your lands. No toll, no tax, no nothing of that. If they sell their wares within your borders, you shall levy no more than a tenth of the product's price. Take more, even a copper more, and the trumpets of war shall sound again. I recall you never had the displeasure of hearing it, would you like a taste?''
Perhaps this term would sow the seeds of a future conflict, but Alpheo intended for his state to be far too formidable to oppose by then.
