NOVEL NEXT Chapter 346: Trip and offer
The task of hosting Leon on his trip across the new world fell on Makary's shoulder, just like the task of keeping our guest entertained and answering the questions the answers to which Makary could share.
When it came to me, I was only needed around just to lift the importance of the trip as the other VIP and the creator of this whole opportunity.
And so, while Makary guided our guest around the camp, I was present only with my flesh while my spirit actively repeated my entire supervisory routine from earlier in the day.
For Leon, the temporary housing project was extremely interesting, given the low cost and effort necessary to create it and the immense benefits of having a place to hold all the new workers before we would build them some proper housing.
He was also positively surprised by the quality of the improved housing, although the idea of twenty-five people living within the same building made it hard for Leon to swallow calling it "improved housing".
Still, while Leon wandered around the project with Makary making sure he would not bother the workers too much, I went to do my own check, only to confirm that ever since my visit in the morning, the number of the proper houses reached around forty.
Quite notably, though, the massive crowd of workers from the morning was now nowhere to be seen, with only about four brigades present on the scene. A change from over three thousand men to just shy of half of a thousand couldn't be random… And wasn't all that hard to figure out.
'I guess it is as they told me in the morning,' I thought, looking at an empty field with nothing but a bunch of long, narrow ditches that would serve as the basements for the houses that have yet to be built. The only reason why the workers present on the project simply moved stuff around rather than focusing on construction was the exact same reason why Leon's presence was so important.
The work stalled because we didn't have any more materials to keep it going. And as cheap as those materials were to someone on Makary's level… There was only so much that could be bought off the city's markets before the local supply would dry out. And, in fact, just by clearing all the shelves of the available products, we would draw a lot more attention to our project than we could handle.
And even if we dared to do so… This would be a mere drop of resources within the ocean of things that we lacked and desperately needed for yesterday.
"So many tents… But I can't see any new ones being set up," at some point, Leon pointed out only to prompt Makary to roll his eyes and pretty much repeat my entire line of thinking out loud.
"Oh," Leon twitched a little before taking another look at the camp as a whole… and then slowly turning his head to give Makary a long, intense, and strangely empty look.
"What?" Unnerved by the unnatural glance, Makary barked at the man.
"Ah, it's nothing," Leon shook his head. "I was just amazed by how much you could do with just what money and resources you had on hand," Leon revealed in a voice that somehow made it hard to doubt its genuineness.
"The last time I checked, most of your fortune was located in all sorts of city investments, was it not?" Leon pointed out only to lean his head over his shoulder and give Makary a curious look.
"I don't recall any jumps on the stock market, so I can't imagine you dumping all of your shares without anyone noticing," Leon elaborated on the topic a little only to take a step closer to the man and look straight at his face. "How did you get all of this stuff, then? Where did you get the money for it?"
The air between the two men tensed up. Judging by the annoyed look on Makary's face, he had no plans of revealing whatever the truth was to the man.
"Well, it's fine if you don't want to tell," Leon gave up after a few moments of silence, pulling back and fleeing Makary's comfort zone. "It's not like it matters now, doesn't it?" he threw with a small smile before turning away and pressing ahead.
"This little…" Once Leon walked quite some distance, Makary finally released an angered mutter before rolling his eyes again and following after the man.
Those two clearly didn't like each other. But they also knew each other well enough to know how to not tease the other too much. Or, in other words, how to tread the line of their delicate relationship while maintaining both their cooperation but also ensuring the benefits for each, respective side.
That's why, from the looks of things, annoying Makary like that with well-aimed questions appeared to be nothing more but Leon's tease, aimed at nothing more but conditioning the man for Leon to have an easier time once the actual negotiations would start.
In this sense, this small beef that happened was simply a means for Leon to upset Makary and make it all the harder for the latter to keep his wits when we would come to discuss terms of Leon's patronage over the entire project.
"Oh right," merely a minute after leaving the housing project, right as we walked down some unattended road, Leon turned back and looked at Makary first before turning her eyes over to my face. "Where did all of those workers come from?" he asked, proving that he did spare the whole thing some thought, as opposed to dedicating all of his mental resources to just teasing Makary.
"It's the first batch of five thousand war captives turned workers," I replied, seeing no point in hiding the truth from the man.
If he was to properly support our activity here, we really needed him to have the full picture of the situation.
"We will get ten thousand every week for three weeks and finish off with five thousand more a month from now," I continued my explanation. "And as you can see, we don't have enough materials to finish all of their houses to begin with. And while we are making do with what we have and what we can easily obtain or buy nearby…"
There was no need for me to finish the sentence. In fact, cutting it off like that only helped to better pass the message behind my words, as I didn't restrict our needs to anything in particular.
"Okay then, let's drop the bullshit," Leon suddenly announced, speeding up to catch up with me only to get ahead, turn around, and stop, waiting for Makary to join up with us. "I saw enough to understand both what you might need, what this place has to offer in the short term, and just how much potential there is in here," Leon stated, his usual, energetic flamboyance now nowhere to be seen. Explore more adventures at empire
And for one, fleeting moment, Leon appeared just as I imagined the chief magistrate of the city to be.
Only for a moment, though, reverting back to his usual self the very moment our small group gathered up.
"I could offer you the city's full support… But I don't think doing so would be wise. The moment we cooperate openly, all sorts of people are going to start to dig into how former enemies turned bestest of friends," Leon smiled, proving that even in a tense moment like this his humor refused to leave his mind. "So, let me ask you this first," Leon requested and turned to Makary.
"Do you still have your stocks, or did you liquefy them in some way that stopped the markets from fluctuating?"
"Most of them are gone," Makary replied while making a sour face. "And for a far worse price than I would get if I sold them through traditional means," he added while forming a small grin that he then flashed at Leon.
And in turn, that made the young man's expression sink a little, clearly proving that they were talking about some sort of financial machinations that I didn't get any real clue about.
"Still, you have some left, right?" Leon pointed out the small detail of Makary's words.
"Yeah, you want to buy them off me?" Makary smiled at his own thoughts, most likely imagining how he could now make up for the loss he sustained when selling his other assets below their market value to prevent the news from spreading.
"More or less, yeah," Leon replied, raising his hand to rub his chin as he thought hard about something. "If you can sell them to me…" Leon hesitated for a moment as he judged his options, "that should give me some means to help you with the resupply."