The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 538: Cramped Hands
Chapter 538: Cramped Hands
Dominic sighed as the spell finished. “Well, that process was simple and painless. I’m glad that I could help.”
The Advisor smiled at him, then took out a stack of paper.
“Not so fast. Now that we know everywhere that you’ve been, there are reports to be written for all of them. Fortunately, I know the spell to duplicate a message, or we could be here all day. If you count the King of Cygnia, and Crown Prince Fahad, we will need five copies of each in total.”
“How long does the report need to be? Some of those visions are mostly just a big fireball.”
“And whose fault is that? But you only need basic details for each of them, and then I will write a slightly different version, so we can submit them separately.”
“Dammit, I was hoping the spells would be enough.”
“That’s not at all how things work. It all gets sent, then some pencil pusher in the relevant department summarizes them and makes notations. Then they pass it along to the relevant Royal Advisor, who rephrases the summary and looks up a few of the details.
Then they get presented, and the Royals request details on the parts they find relevant, and someone will come back to us for another report saying basically the same thing, but in new words.”
Resigned to his fate, Dominic moved to the desk, and waited for Trionne to bring up the first location so that they could make their reports about the incident.
He was sure to include how this was a provoked response, chasing war criminals across the border, and to emphasize how it was all ’reasonable and justified’ force on his part, while conveniently omitting the total body count.
When he was finished, they moved through the events one at a time, and Dominic wrote a detailed story of an avenging Duke chasing criminals all over the nation, with one stop further away, though he left the name of that location out of his report, in case it caused an incident.
If the ones reading it thought that he believed himself to be in Dagos the whole time, tracking Dagos-based mages who had attacked him at home in Cygnia, it was much better.
It was lunchtime before they had finished the reports, and Dominic could hear the festivities outside as the courtship process got underway for the day, with most of the guests already familiar with their options, and only a few major disagreements about who might be a suitable match remaining.
Everyone seemed to either have someone in mind, or have given up on the options that were available.
“It seems that we’ve had some success,” he noted as the food was brought in for him and the Advisor.
“Indeed. The girls that I brought have had wonderful luck finding matches here. The gentlemen of Wistover Duchy seem quite keen to get a mage as a wife, even if she’s not of a strong and wealthy Noble lineage.”
“Indeed. There is a different mindset here than in most places. The men are looking to start something from nothing, and build up a reputation for their own branch of the family, not to build on what their parents made, so the lineage of their wife isn’t a matter of political alliances, but of practicality.
What I’m more concerned about is that we might not actually have enough midwives.
There are going to be a lot of bellies showing soon, and that will take a large medical team when all the new brides start expanding the family next summer.”
Trionne laughed at his innocent expression. “What makes you think that your own will not be part of the problem?”
“We’re not ready for children yet, I’m still practicing the making them part.”
“You know, if that was how the scheduling worked, there would not be many children at all. But there is a saying in Shersdonia. The commoners joke that half of all firstborn children are the result of practicing for the wedding night.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Not at all. I’ve got a number of them myself. I’ve outlived three husbands, you see.”
“Three? That’s either incredible longevity or terrible luck.”
“A bit of both, I suppose. I had to kill the third one after I caught him with his mistress.”
Dominic nodded understandingly, and the old Techno Witch cackled with laughter.
“You know, most men look horrified at the thought, which says a lot about their faithfulness to their wives. But you understand.”
“Well, we did just watch a montage of what happens when I get truly upset about something, so I am not really in a position to judge on this topic.”
In the corner of the room, the maid giggled quietly, unable to keep her composure anymore when these two were doing nothing but making jokes.
At least, she hoped they were jokes.
Once they finished eating, the pair got back to work and finished their reports, so that Trionne could make copies and Dominic could file a set away in his own cabinet.
“Alright, that is done. And now we can relax for a second, before I get back to catching up on Ducal affairs. Did you want more tea?”
Trionne shook her head. “No, I will head out to the garden to get tea of the other sort. I can hear that there are a number of smooth talkers still trying to close the deal on a contested marriage proposal.”
That stack of papers was larger than Dominic remembered. He wasn’t gone that long, only a day and a bit. But somehow the size of the stack had doubled from what it was when he had been ignoring the reports for half a week.
It must be time to sort them, some of these had to be duplicates.
The first few were the morning report from Julio, and then some reports on incoming orders from the Merchant’s Guild. Those were easy, he just needed to review them and set them aside.
Then there were purchase requests, mostly sent through Julio again.
Those needed more attention so he could be certain that they weren’t already ordered, but the Castellan was good about updating the order logs when he did place an order on the Manor’s behalf.
Only after that did the reports start to get concerning.
