“No, you don’t,” Margaret waved her hand to emphasise her words, “They will be ever grateful to have someone take those people away. Otherwise the food they have won’t be enough. In the event that the number continues to increase, it might even become possible that the food shortage could lead to riots.”
…
After the dinner, Roland returned to his office and called for Theo, his personal guard.
This incident made him aware of how backwards his intelligence system currently was. If he had received knowledge about the refugee problem immediately, he could have done the preparations earlier. In the end allowing him to bring even more people to Border Town. At present his understanding of the outside world laid only on the information he got from the caravans that arrived once a month, and a rate like that was simply unable to meet with his demands.
Even with his stationed army in Longsong Stronghold, which had been establishment as a relay post. he could only monitor the Western Region. If he really wanted to compete for the throne of Graycastle, he would have to extend his intelligence network to cover the whole kingdom, or even better, the whole of the mainland.
Right now, Roland did not have a sufficient number of loyal and devoted subordinates that he could use to establish a complete intelligence network, not to mention sending spies to all parts of the country to work as his secret agents. Therefore, he first started with laying down the foundation by sending some people over to King’s City, and let them collect information from the city and the outer regions. It wasn’t needed that they start with detailed monitoring, but this way he could still at least receive a rough understanding of the overall situation and wouldn’t have to be passive any longer as with today.
Being aware of Theo’s influence on King’s City’s black street rats, the prince knew that he was the best candidate for the job.
“You want me to follow the caravan to King’s City?” Theo gawked in disbelief.
“That’s right; you will have two duties. Your first mission is to meet up with the refugees of the Eastern Region. I will send a group of one hundred or so soldiers with you who will be in charge of the escorting them back to Border Town. I will inform you later about the specific conditions of the screening, but that will still be before the caravan leaves.
“Yes!”
“Second, when the flood of refugees has calmed down, you will stay behind in King’s City and starts to collect information from everywhere in the city for me. Since you’re are already used to dealing with the underground rats, you should be clear about how you have to go through with it. Furthermore, Margaret’s caravan will be fully supporting you, in case a tasks requires you to spend some money you can go to her. Compared with your task of going to Redwater City to spread the news about the witches, this time your funds will have no upper limit.” He then put a revolver on the table, “Pay attention, and protect yourself, I hope that I to hear some good news from you soon.”
…
Four days later, the merchant fleet set sails leaving the docks.
Theo and one hundred members of the First Army went along with the ship, setting out to King’s City.
During these days, Roland and Margaret had come to an agreement, Theo could come to her shop to request any amount of gold royals. The amount would then be deducted from the price of the steam engines, in addition, Roland also needed to pay an additional one percent of interest.
This time the amount of saltpeter and ore was two times that of the previous transport, but with the deposit for the transformation of steamboats, Roland had still received more than 2200 gold royals. Which was a monthly sales income Ronald almost wouldn’t even dare to dream of during the Months of Demons — even by selling one month of ore, he would also only have gotten an income of three hundred gold royals.
When the caravan had left, Maggie’s day for temporally leaving Border Town had also arrived.
In accordance with the agreement made with Ashes, she would travel to the islands in the Fjords, bringing them news about the West.
Roland wrote an especially long letter which Maggie had to take along. In addition to expressing his wish for cooperation, he hoped that the 5th Princess could dispatch some auxiliary witches who could come and help him. In the letter, he did not address himself as her brother but as the Lord of Border Town and now after killing Duke Ryan, Lord of the Western Territory. Although the possibility that the other side would go along with his requests was minuscule, he still wanted to give it a try — anyway, spending some time writing a few more words wasn’t an effort at all.
The farewell took place in the castle’s backyard, all of the witches were present.
Nightingale gave her a small bag of dried fish; while Lightning gave her a package of ground pepper.
