Family Business 14 (Patreon)

Family Business
Chapter 14: Expansion

-VB-

I sat next to Lux, while my sister-wife breathed heavily in the aftermath of our son’s birth. I caressed her sweaty and hair strewn face while she held our son to her bosom. The little angry and red ball of lungs stopped crying and sucked away happily.

To everyone’s surprise and anxiety, Lux had gone into labor a bit early. Sona, who had been pregnant for longer, hadn’t yet. It was rough twelve hours for everyone in the manor, but it was worth it.

“I want you to name our son,” I spoke up to her while staring down at our son.

She looked surprised. It wasn’t the Demacian custom to let the woman name the children; that was the purview of the man.

But I wasn’t truly a Demacian culturally; I had more American, European, and Asian than Demacian culture.

She smiled. “If you are okay with it…” she looked down at our son. “But it might take some time.”

I nodded.

I stayed with her until she and the baby fell asleep.

-VB-

Just because I now had a son didn’t change my position as the count of Jorasmang.

And Jorasmang needed to be taken care of with the recent boost to its population.

Over the course of the last few years and the influx of both immigrants and refugees, Jorasmang hit the limits to its housing and began to go over it.

It was time to expand its city.

I wanted to do this by first setting up a wall, but my treasurer objected to that.

“The population is growing twice faster than we expected at worst, huh?”

My treasurer, the son of a local merchant, nodded resolutely.

For me, seeing the number of people rise was not a bad thing. It was always a good thing. However, overpopulation in a small given area was a problem, and this was starting to realize itself in my city. While I had no slums popping up around the gates of the walls inside and outside the walls, the cramped conditions of the people were starting to be come noticeable.

“It is best if you release new building permits for lands outside the walls, milord.”

“But you know what that means.”

While it was the prerogative of the lord to decide the expansion of the city (or the mayor if there was no baron or count in direct control of the city), people would eventually go out of their way to build their homes with or without my permission. Allowing the first expansion without a set wall would mean that I had no way to control this.

I wouldn’t have minded it if it wasn’t for the fact that a sprawling town without any clear entrances and exits made for easy infiltration targets, which I had to be wary of.

And there were sure to be infiltrators. Vayne, for all of her violence and hatred against magic, was one such person. There will be others - some under service of Demacian nobles, some spies of other nations and tribes - and I was adamant about preventing any unnecessary info-leak.

But the overpopulation would lead to higher cost of living, reduction in standard of living…

I sighed. I wished I had a solution to this that would satisfy all of my and my people’s needs…

I thought about it.

Thanks to a lack of magical and technological developments, my city only had buildings that went up to four stories, and that was pushing it. If I could get advisors, engineers, and even architects…?

But where?

Noxus, for all of its magical might, was not a technological or architectural master.

Zaun was filled more with assholes than prodigies.

Piltover?

Now, that was a place that I could hire people from. I needed contacts.

“Fahan?” I spoke to my treasurer.

“Yes, milord?”

“Get me a carriage. I need to see Mr. Reaumonte.” Just as I had helped the tailor extraordinaire, he would help me now.

“Yes, milord. What should I do about the paperwork?”

I glanced nervously at the one hundred plus pages of paperwork sitting neatly on top of my desk. My normal workload per day was around thirty pages, and I have been neglecting my work in favor of spending time with Lux and our son, Staeron. And with Sona. And Delilah. And Vayne.

So yes, I might have let the workload pile after completely neglecting it for a few days.

“I’ll… get to it myself when I come back after this visit.”

“You have a meeting with your father scheduled three hours from now, sir. I believe that won’t be possible.”

I stiffened.

Of course, our father had learned about his first grandson and rushed over with mother and the rest. They were supposed to be arriving today…

“You know what, delegate anything lower than Rank C in priority.”

He smiled. “I shall do so, milord. That should remove about half of the paperwork.”

“And the other half?”

“Strictly necessary for you to see them, milord.”

“... Actually, you know what? Would you send a missive to Mr. Reaumonte to see me in my city office tomorrow at … noon, if he is available? It’ll be a lunch meeting, if he is comfortable with that.”

“I will note it down. However, the festival of the Thrine-Tol is coming soon, and it is expected of you to show yourself.”

I opened my mouth to dismiss his concerns about the festival that I started in the first place, but got cut off when my chancellor rushed into my manor office with a letter in his hand.

“Milord, bad news!” he gasped as he stumbled in, disheveled and unkempt. “T-the capital city is in turmoil in the devastation left by an escaping mage!”

Of all of the shenanigans and shitfest to hit the fan -!

“My father?” I asked calmly as I stood up. Paperwork would have to wait until Lux was out of bedcare; only she had the necessary authority to process these.

“He has yet to arrive, but it will reach his ears soon.”

“Good. Fahan, lock down the city as best as you can without disrupting trade.”

“Of course.” He left.

“Eberral, I need you to go and talk with Duke Morvoro.”

“Your western neighbor.”

“Yes, I need you to confirm whether or not he will keep to our deal. Now go.”

When they were gone, I sighed and collapsed into my chair.

Always so much work…

I glanced at the stack of paperwork before sliding one paper down to the top of the table.

‘I have time. Let’s get it done.’

Better dealt with earlier than later.