When he was finally back at the castle, he couldn’t allow himself any time to rest, instead, he immediately went to his office to call Barov, letting him report about Border Town’s actual situation and its materials.
The assistant minister has already been prepared for a long time now, so he only had to take out a roll of parchment out of his pocket and spread it out on the large wooden table.
“Your Royal Highness, the amount of materials you sent back to Border Town really scared me,” that said, the upturned corner of his mouth still gave away his mood, “twelve of my apprentices needed a whole night to count all the coins, which were more than fourteen thousand gold royals. This is equivalent to the annual income of an ordinary cities!”
“I haven’t had the time to convert them yet, by conservative estimates they are also worth around 10,000 gold royals, if they were auctioned in King’s City, their price would be even greater. But for now, they are only stored in the basement of your castle,” Barrow paused, “However, this means that the original storage room isn’t big enough for all the food, so I suggest that you will increase the castle’s area, building further storage warehouses to store other supplies. ”
“What can you tell me about the people they’ve sent?” Roland asked.
“That’s right, please take a look below,” the Assistant Minister pointed to the bottom of the parchment, “Until now 1’100 people were sent to Border Town. Most of them belong to the ranks of serfs, in accordance with your request have all been held outside of the town. The thirty-five craftsmen have been placed under Karl’s command and their homes are all located in the ‘New Civilization District’,” Barov spoke these unusual mouthful of the terms, “But Your Royal Highness, is this really okay? I thought that area had specially been prepared for the witches.”
“The people I have sent out to spread the news about the safe haven haven’t returned yet, their progress is slower than I would’ve imagined. So, the first houses will be used for the craftsmen and their families, we can still build more afterwards,” Roland’s plan was to renovate the whole Border Town, the wooden houses and mud cottages would be converted into brick houses, while at the same time leaving enough space for wide streets between the houses, rather than the alleys just wide enough for two people to walk side by side, that they had now.
“Understood,” Barov nodded, “Your Highness, I’ve heard that there will also be cattle and sheep being shipped here?”
“Ah that’s true. But not now, I deliberately let them come a few days later, they will come together with the shepherds. They will be sent to the grasslands between the western city wall, the Concealing Forest and the Impassable Mountain Range; that should be a good area to turn into a pasture. We should reopen the destroyed part of the city wall and use it as an exit, after all, the wall is only useful during the Months of the Demons.
For now, they finally had enough people and money to break through the bottleneck and allow Border Town to develop further, so Roland was finally able to use all of his otherworldly knowledge.
He called one of the guards into his office and ordered them: “Go find Karl and tell him to meet me in the executive office, I guess if he isn’t at the mine he will certainly be at the new area outside the town.
Half an hour later, Karl walked into the office and bowed in greeting to Roland. “Your Highness.”
It has been nearly six months since he had seen the mason for the first time and since he had been recruited into the staff of the Town Hall, he could be regarded as the busiest official in the last half-year. First he had to preside over the construction of the city walls, and then there were the houses in the new district and the temporally wooden sheds for the new inhabitants of Border Town. Now, on his thirty-five-year-old silhouette, he revealed the first few strands of silver and his skin has also started darkening from always being outside. But the spirit Roland had seen burning in him at their first meeting was still burning as strong and hot as ever before.
