After asking Mutnep several more questions I returned to the surface, collected my squire, and returned to the castle. I spent the whole ride back thinking about who I could tell the secret of the Dungeon to and came up with three main possibilities, Shau Rayun, Elias Labil and Mavin Abela. That is not to say others weren’t considered or there were major reasons for not picking them but rather that I was slightly closer to the three and thought I could trust them with the secret. For the time being, I didn’t try to whittle it down to a single individual but instead to have a good think about it for another day or two.
Upon arriving back at the castle I was informed that Nazma wished to have a word with me at my earliest convenience. Not having anything else to do until later I decided to get it over and done with. When I got to her rooms she was alone other than her daughter and a wet nurse.
“Good of you to come so soon Amondo.”
“You message simply caught up to me at a good time now what can I do for you?”
“Ah yes straight to the point, I asked you here to inform you that I will be moving into the Manor House the day after tomorrow if you have no objections that is.”
“No I think it’s for the best, so will your cousin Gru be taking up employment with you?”
“No, not at this time anyway he has decided to visit your friend the Baron of Brugan and at least listen to his offer of employment.”
“He’s actually more of an acquaintance than a friend.”
“Either way I think he’d be a fool if he took it up but he has made even less wise choices in the past so who knows. Anyway, he’s likely to look elsewhere for work if that doesn’t pan out. I have sent messages to other relatives and some friends of the family hopefully one of them will end up helping me run my household.”
“And what is your sister up to.”
“She’s in a meeting with your treasurer and others going over the amount of income I can expect from various sources. I would have had it all sorted out earlier, but I expected a son and thus wasn’t that worried about it.
“I thought that wasn’t until tomorrow?”
“No it’s today, I don’t image there will be any problems, I should have sufficient money coming in each year to live reasonably well. Not perhaps as well as I was hoping for but still, well as long as you manage to hold on to the Barony that is.”
“Don’t you go worrying about that too much I hope to have everything in hand to defeat him, not perhaps as soon as I would like but still?”
“I thought that about your brother and look how that turned out so forgive me if I worry.”
“Well, nothing’s going to happen until next year anyway so leave your worrying until then.”
“If you say so, now I’m going to need some help moving if that’s ok with you?”
“Please make use of any of the castle servants you might need, now if there’s nothing else I must be going.”
“No that is all, until the next time.”
My next and second to the last meeting of the day was with the incoming and outgoing Baronial Stewart’s Tagas Onus and Dusti Levun. Machiulmis was coming up in eight days and amongst the other things that were to happen on this day, the villagers of Membe would be electing next year’s Reeve.
The meeting was to determine which three individuals from the village we would be nominated for this position. The current Reeve unless he had advised us otherwise would automatically be one of the three so in reality, we only had to decide on two. The only qualifications required was that they had to or have been a member of the seven-member village council, not older than fifty and willing to put their name forward. Besides Edvard Gruven the current reeve there were only eleven individuals who met the first two criteria. Of the eleven only six of them had but their names forward this year way back in Joly.
They were Rett Novak the baker, Nagesh Dietz the miller, Erwin Mack the Innkeeper plus three farmers Bruno Leckie, Alwyn Morant and Johannes Botha.
“Alright you two which of the six do you think we should nominate this year, Dusti why don’t you go first?”
“Well Amondo I cannot claim to know much about the three farmers, I haven’t interacted with them that much so I will only address the qualifications of the other three. The Miller is in my mind out of the running he is too young in my mind and his time is best spent in the mill. The baker is in my mind too much of an outsider for the other villagers to be comfortable taking orders from him having been born elsewhere. The innkeeper’s son is of an age where he is more than capable of the day to day running of it without him especially since it’s his mother who does all the brewing. With all that in mind, Erwin Mack seems like the better candidate.”
“Well said Dusti, what about your thoughts on the subject Tagas?”
“I feel the same way about the innkeeper now as to the three farmers I much prefer Bruno the only one of the three who is a Freeman the other two being villeins. He is also, in my opinion, the best farmer out of the three by far the more knowledgeable about his craft out of the three of them and hopefully, this would help him be a better reeve than the others.”
“I have been away to long so I will take your word for it and nominate your two choices. Is there anything else either if you wish to talk about before we meet with the village council?”
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