Chapter 684 (1/2)
Chapter 684: The First Winter Snow
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Three days later, namely the second day after winter arrived, Barov delivered the message that the Joint Chamber of Commerce contract had been successfully signed.
The result of the negotiation was that Margaret got the dealership of the inner land of the Kingdom of Graycastle; Sunset Island and Shallow Water Town got the dealership of their own lands, Kingdom of Everwinter, and the Kingdom of Wolfheart; Crescent Moon Bay got the dealership of the Fjords islands and the Kingdom of Dawn.
To Roland’s surprise, he saw an equation on the contract, which set some conditions into unknown numbers that would be determined according to specific circumstances. In this way, the annual shares could be derived for that year.
“Who wrote this?” Roland asked with curiosity.
“My student,” Barov smilingly replied while stroking his beard, “While summarizing the numbers, he found a complex annexed table which could be better expressed by this formula and all three parties agreed with its precision.”
“But I remember such a formula wasn’t covered by the universal education.”
“Didn’t Your Majesty start an intermediate class? I bought each of my students a set of maths textbooks and asked them to attend Lady Scroll’s class whenever they had time.” Barov exclaimed. “I’m too old to catch up with these young fellas at learning, so I had to leave this opportunity to them. If I were 10 years younger, I would carry these materials that Your Majesty wrote and study them all day.”
Roland was very much pleased by this flattery. His minister must have had good foresight if he realized that maths could be helpful to finance and administration.
“How about Edith? How did she perform during this negotiation?”
“Just so-so.” Barov coughed twice. “Although those merchants were fascinated by her, when it came to the specific trade terms, she clearly showed a deficiency in experience. I guess she had little contact with maritime merchants. After all, the commerce and trade in the Northern Region are underdeveloped, unlike the old king’s city where the Treasurer had to attend to visiting the Fjords merchants every day. There was a time…”
“I see.” Noticing Barov was starting to reminisce, Roland immediately interrupted him. “Since that’s the case, please put more effort into teaching her.”
The old minister was startled. “Um, this… Your Majesty, actually she’s…”
“It’s decided,” Roland said gloatingly. Judging from the frequency that Nightingale pinched the back of his shoulder, he knew that Barov was not telling the truth. But he did not meddle with such little snitching tricks among his subordinates, as long as they did not screw things up. “Well, what’s the increase in population in Neverwinter? Has it reached our expectation?”
Although there was about one month before the end of the year, since the winter had come, the immigrant emissaries would gradually return to Neverwinter so it led to a drastic reduction of people moving away. The current figure would already determine whether the goal of population increase had been realized.
Once this was mentioned, Barov’s face expanded into a smile. The wrinkles on his face were almost squeezed into ravines and the awkwardness also vanished into thin air. “Your Majesty, City Hall has made a calculation. The subjects that immigrated from other places exceeded 80,000, with 50% of them coming voluntarily. If we include the natives of the Border Area and the Longsong Area, the population in Neverwinter has now reached 110,000.”
“Oh?” Roland was elated. “50% of them came voluntarily?”
“Most of them were from the center area of the kingdom and the Eastern Region. It was not obvious in spring and summer, but in autumn this percentage began to increase. At this rate, those Rebels who support Timothy will become anxious next year.”
This must have been a result of Theo spreading the message of the church’s defeat in the Eastern Region, but yet Roland had hoped that those nobles would resist longer. He was looking for an excuse to eradicate them altogether so as to give the Eastern Region subjects a stable and orderly new kingdom.
“Have you made preparations for winter?”
“Yes, City Hall completed preparations two months ago,” Barov replied with complete confidence, “The Ministry of Construction had entrusted Miss Lotus to build a batch of cave dwellings between the Impassable Mountain Range and Redwater River, in replacement of the air-leak shanties. We’ve also hoarded a large volume of charcoal to ensure every civilian gets one basket.”